Suicide Squadcast: TDK vs Arm-Fall-Off Boy

We recorded this one on August 29, a couple weeks after The Suicide Squad movie came out, to give everyone a chance to watch and then we'd discuss it here without having to worry about spoilers. One of the topics we touched on was TDK, played in the movie by Nathan Fillion, and how he was "inspired" by the one and only Arm-Fall-Off Boy. So here's what I put together to talk about AFOB.

• TDK is most likely based on Arm-Fall-Off Boy (who in turn was based off of a character in Legion fandom called Ear-Fall-Off Floyd, which is where the name Floyd Belkin came from). The character has appeared with the Legion 3 times in various continuities: Secret Origins #46 (Silver Age), Legionnaires #43 (Reboot), and LSH31C #16 (TV).
• For April Fool’s Day 2010, I wrote up an article on the Omnicom about the history of AFOB, starting with Ear-Fall-Off Floyd, and then interviewing via email Mark Waid and KC Carlson, both of whom said it was probably Gerry Jones who came up with the idea for AFOB. So I asked Jones, who wrote to me:
• Early in my comics-writing days I joined Interlac briefly and even afterward hung out with several of its members. From one of them — possibly Mike Forrester or Mike Valerio, but maybe someone else entirely — I'd heard, or thought I'd heard, about a pseudo-character in Legion fandom called Arm-Fall-Off Boy. It could be that they were saying "Ear-Fall-Off Floyd" and I misunderstood, or it could be that one of them had misunderstood Ear-Fall-Off Floyd as Arm-Fall-Off Boy and passed it on to me. In any case, when I stuck Arm-Fall-Off Boy into that Secret Origins story I thought I was making a nod to Legion fandom but later discovered that I'd accidentally brought in something entirely new. Had we had more time I probably would have talked to Waid about it and gotten all this clarified, but that story was a last-second replacement for an earlier story that had been cut. Which is fortunate, ultimately. Now we have Arm-Fall-Off Boy, and yet Ear-Fall-Off Floyd is still out there awaiting his moment in the spotlight. ... I think I left [AFOB's design] mostly to Curt, although I believe I did specify that when his arm pops off we should somehow see the open socket in his body. It was a thrill to be working with Curt Swan on a Legion story, I must say.
• Curt Swan was thanked in the closing credits of the movie, but Gerry Jones was not (for likely obvious reasons). Note that it’s not a requirement to get thanked, but for creator payment purposes, if they include Swan they’d likely include Jones as well. (For example, Joe Gill and Pat Boyette created Peacemaker for Charlton in 1966, but they weren’t in the credits either.)
• Roger Stern came up with the name Floyd Belkin for Splitter’s appearance in the Reboot #43, but I never got in touch with him to find out where that name came from. AFOB’s third appearance was in LSH in the 31st Century comic, written by Matthew Manning, who had come up with the story idea as part of a pitch he had proposed when Steve Wacker was the editor (around Shooter’s time on the Threeboot, I think). He was able to write the story for the cartoon’s tie-in comic, and proposed the Adventure 247 homage cover. 
• My headcanon: Cory Pitzner (TDK's real name) was a teenage superhero called The Detachable Kid, but then he grew up. He liked being a super-hero and he was well-known by that name, but he aged out of it and changed it to TDK. But what got TDK sent to Belle Reve and joining the Suicide Squad?
• James Gunn revealed that Nathan Fillion’s The Detachable Kid has a hidden ability that he never used in The Suicide Squad. The Detachable Kid can telepathically control his limbs after detaching. As per James Gunn, in The Suicide Squad, Fillion’s character’s legs are also detachable. Gunn said that “TDK is just a guy whose arms and legs come off. That’s his only power.” This revealed an ability that TDK never reflects on screen. (This was a deleted scene.)
• If you go to DC's character page for TDK, you’ll find the character with TDK’s costume description but a picture of AFOB from Secret Origins, and his real name listed as both Cory Pitzger and Floyd Belkin.
• There’s a TDK Funko Pop, but it’s a Hot Topic/Funko Summer Convention exclusive (#1122 if you’re keeping track)
• In a video interview with ET Canada, Nathan Fillion said (joked?) that when James Gunn offered him the part, he was told that TDK stood for “The Dark Knight”.
• Nathan Fillion has described the process that went behind creating the character of TDK along with director and writer James Gunn. He said that “My participation in the invention of the character kind of went like this, James saying, ‘Here’s how it’s going to go.’ And me saying, ‘That sounds good.’ That’s what I call dissipation…I take a lot of credit. It’s all about the function of the character in the story. What is his function in the story? And TDK’s abilities, for me, clearly spelled out his function and I got it. I know exactly what you need. I know what you’re looking for. I know what you want. Boom. Let’s do this. I get it.”
• Via Sean Gunn’s Instagram: “Thrilled to announce my new show ‘T.D.K & the Weasel’ with @nathanfillion coming soon to HBOMax!* *note: some information in this post may be untrue,” Gunn joked. “My catchphrase is, ‘Let’s see you WEASEL your way out of this one.’ And I lean on the word Weasel really hard,” Fillion joked in the comments. “…and announcings Javelin as the awkwerd naybor,” Flula Borg added. 
• TDK was never shown or otherwise confirmed as deceased; when he was last shown, he was in critical condition, but still alive. It is therefore possible that he survived.
• And now TDK has more discussion time in this podcast than he had screen time in the movie.