Although still somewhat unclear and inadequately documented, it seems that Gotham's southern borough "South Hinkley" was renamed "Sandy Hook" sometime between earlier Batman films and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) which released mid-2012. Both promotional material for the film as well as a map shown early in the movie (at least on the DVD release), has the borough named "Sandy Hook". If any of this is corroborated, it would place this change before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (killing 20 students and 6 staff) which occurred on December 14, 2012 ... and a conspiracy theory is born.