James Gunn’s career has largely been thematically dominated by the idea of found family, whether it’s a bunch of intergalactic misfits teaming up to save the universe in Guardians of the Galaxy, a pair of deranged street-level crimefighters forging a bond in Super, a gang of sleuths discovering that they’re pretty good at solving mysteries in Scooby-Doo, or an irredeemable collection of murderers and criminals doing the right thing at the end of the day in The Suicide Squad.
It’s a broad theme for sure, but the filmmaker always manages to paint it in distinctly different strokes. Another recurring trauma for his characters are parental issues, something the second outing for Task Force X leans into heavily. Ratatcher 2, Peacemaker and Bloodsport all come from broken homes, but they haven’t got anything on David Dastmalchian’s Polka-Dot Man.
Experimented on since childhood, Abner Krill is so messed up that he sees his mother everywhere he goes, in what was one of the movie’s funniest recurring jokes. Taking things one step further, an enterprising fan has created some highly specific and bizarre merch that’s been fully endorsed by The Suicide Squad‘s writer and director, which you can see below.
Of course, it’s difficult to imagine Abner Krill’s mother as King Shark flying off the shelves just in time for Christmas, but maybe the creator will end up making the whole set for a laugh. Actress Lynne Ashe ended up wearing dozens of different costumes for what amounted to a handful of visual gags, so hopefully she’d get a cut of the profits were her very own The Suicide Squad toy line to become official.
