Entertainment Weekly helped spread the news of some really weird and admittedly creepy viral videos that have been posted to YouTube. Because of the nature of the videos and the YouTube user’s moniker “TheFireRises“, many people believe that the videos may have something to do with “The Dark Knight Rises”, as in, they’re official viral videos.

There are three videos: “419”, which shows a tall building on fire, “Outbreak”, which features prisoners in what may be Arkham Asylum, and the most recent one, “GCN”, which has a very terrifying view of the Gotham News showing the outbreak at Arkham. All of these videos relate to Bane (Tom Hardy)’s past, because he did break out of Arkham in comic books. The fuzzy “found footage” aspect of these videos, coupled with the creepy chanting in “Outbreak”, makes this viral campaign very effective (and effectively disturbing).

“TheFireRises”‘ YouTube account goes to a Facebook page also called “The Fire Rises”. But instead of a Facebook picture, there’s just a black square, making this particular viral campaign even creepier. There’s also a campaign poster for Nixon, who will be played by Matthew Modine in the film. Among that picture is a very odd collection of pictures, including the official Bane viral photo released a while back. While the poster may add a bit of credibility to the page, it might not add much since the poster seems pretty crudely done. But, that could be the effect the viral team is going for. I don’t know; I’m confused.

I don’t know if this is a real viral campaign by Warner Brothers (Entertainment Weekly is reporting that representatives at WB are not confirming or denying, simply saying they have no comment “at this time”). I’ll say this though; if it is an official campaign, it’s miles ahead of the very effective viral campaign they produced for “The Dark Knight”. Just think–we all thought that campaign was awesome. Now we’re faced with an entirely new, much darker entity.

Here are the videos below. You can also view the videos here. Do you think this is a real viral campaign or a very well done fan campaign?