In his first foray into the DC universe in 2021's The Suicide Squad, James Gunn proved once again that he has a taste for the obscure and unexplored corners of the comics company's vast library. In the film's bravura opening sequence, Gunn introduces the latest incarnation of the Suicide Squad, with characters like Javelin (Flula Borg), who wields javelins as weapons; Savant (Michael Rooker), a combat and weapons expert; and The Detachable Kid (Nathan Fillion), who can, well, make all his limbs fall off at will, only for nearly the whole team to be brutally and hilariously dispatched.

These might seem like the products of Gunn's particularly depraved imagination, but as it turns out, they're all real DC characters. Some of them may have only made a few appearances back in DC's more wacky days, when comics writers were willing to throw pretty much anything at the wall to see what stuck.