A whole host of actors were rumored to be joining The Suicide Squad over the last several months, and when Warner Bros. and director James Gunn finally revealed the main cast, nearly every one of the rumored names was confirmed to be accurate. However, while we now know who will be in the movie, we are largely in the dark regarding who all these great talents will be playing.
However, there are still plenty of rumors abounding regarding which DC comics heroes and villains will be joining the new Suicide Squad. If these rumors are as accurate as the casting rumors were, then we may actually know who some of these actors will be playing. Most interestingly, it looks like Nathan Fillion's role in the movie may have been revealed. He's playing the utterly obscure and bizarre DC character known as Arm-Fall-Off-Boy.
Charles Murphy of the Murphy's Law podcast is confirming a report from another podcast, which claimed Fillion would be playing the character named Floyd Belkin, otherwise known as Arm-Fall-Off-Boy. While the character feels like somebody that DC Comics might have introduced in the 1960s, he actually first appeared in 1989. His super power is the ability to, as his name implies, remove his own arms, and his legs too for that matter. He then can use his limbs as weapons, so he can pull off one arm, swing it with the other, and potentially beat you to a pulp with it. This is the worst possible way to be defeated by somebody with superpowers.
Arm-Fall-Off-Boy first appeared in Secret Origins Vol. 2 in 1989. He was most recently featured in Legionnaires #43, which you can check out here, from 1996. Although, in that comic the character is reintroduced under the slightly less goofy superhero name of Splitter, though his power set remains the same.
Needless to say, a character who can beat up bad guys with his own arm is an utterly bizarre idea for a character, but at the same time, it makes perfect sense. This is exactly the sort of character that you'd expect to show up in The Suicide Squad when the director and lead actor of Slither reunite.
The confirmation refers to Fillion's character as a "non-lead role" so it doesn't appear that Arm-Fall-Off-Boy will be a major player in the film. Perhaps he'll be a character who only shows up in one scene and is a rejected candidate for the new Squad. Nathan Fillion has shown up in many of James Gunn's films over the years but he rarely plays significant roles, so this might be little more than a cameo, similar to what Fillion has done with Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
Still, the fact that a character like Arm-Fall-Off-Boy is going to even appear in this movie gives us a bit of an indication of just what sort of movie we're in for. I couldn't imagine a character like this showing up in David Ayer's Suicide Squad movie. It seems a serious shift in tone is in the cards.
We'll find out for sure when The Suicide Squad hits screens in 2021.
