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It's the giant, er, elephant in the room, so to speak. In one of those weirdly timed collisions of real news and pop culture, Bane, the bad guy from "The Dark Knight Rises," and Bain, the name of the private equity firm that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney used to head, are total soundalikes.

Jon Stewart pointed it out this week on "The Daily Show." But plenty of people were already thinking of a Bane vs. Bain homophonic battle before Stewart returned from vacation.

One is portrayed as a really, really scary entity shrouded in mystery. The other is the character played by Tom Hardy in the movie. Ba-DUM-bum.

Now others are are weighing in on the coincidence. Rush Limbaugh has implied on the air that some sort of liberal Hollywood conspiracy had a role in the similarity of the names. But that theory is so random that even the typically comics-free zone of "The View" noted today that the Bane character was created in 1993.

To help you avoid confusing Bane and Bain, here's a compare/contrast look at the current banes of our existence, except in terms of comedic potential.

Bane: A specter that haunts Batman

Bain: A specter that haunts Romney

Bane: The villain who broke the superhero's back in the comic books

Bain: The controversy that could break the candidate's resolve not to release any more tax returns

Bane: Is prompting a debate over convoluted theories about what will happen at the end of the movie

Bain: Is prompting a debate over convoluted specifics of when Romney actually left the company

Bane: Batman killer, as some are speculating?

Bain: Jobs killer, as Democratic campaign strategists insist?

Bane: Expected to help rake in about $160-million-plus for the "Dark Knight Rises" opening weekend

Bain: Expected to be continously wielded as an issue by the Democrats against Romney, who raised about $106 million in June