Mutant (fictional)

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The idea of a mutant is a common trope in comic books and science fiction. The new phenotypes that appear in fictional mutations generally go far beyond what is typically seen in biological mutants, and often result in the mutated life form exhibiting superhuman abilities or qualities.

Contents 1 Marvel Comics 2 DC Comics: metahuman 3 Judge Dredd 4 Mutants in other media 4.1 Movies 4.2 Television 4.3 Video games 4.4 Comic books 4.5 Music 4.6 Books 4.7 Role playing games 4.8 Other

[edit] Marvel Comics

Main article: Mutant (Marvel comics)

In Marvel Comics, genetic mutation has been used as an explanation for super-powers since the 1950s([1],[2]). Mutants have played a major role in Marvel comics, particularly the X-Men and related series. In the Marvel Comics universe, they are a heavily-persecuted minority.

[edit] DC Comics: metahuman

Main article: metahuman

Mutants play a smaller, but still substantial role, in the DC Comics universe, where they form part of the population known as metahumans. DC Comics does not make a semantic or an abstract distinction between humans (or superheroes/villains) born with mutations making them different and humans mutated by outside sources. All humans with powers are simply referred to, and treated as, one group collectively known as metahumans.

Those who gain powers after their birth may be called metahumans, but in the Justice League cartoon, the Royal Flush Gang were called mutants by the Joker because they were born with superpowers. Likewise, the mid-50's DC superhero Captain Comet was born with his powers and was described as a mutant. Batman's enemy Killer Croc has also been called a mutant.

Also characters who were transformed through radiation or a mutagenic gas are sometimes identified as mutants instead of Marvel's term, 'mutates'. In the Static Shock animated series Virgil Hawkins was first described as one before introducing the term metahuman. DC's introduction of "metahumans" to the DC universe is most likely the result of the popularity of Marvel's X-Men.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Judge Dredd

In the Judge Dredd series Mutants are caused by the effects of radiation after the Atomic Wars. All Mutants are banned from Mega-City One and are deported into the Cursed Earth Wasteland. This policy has left the mutants resentful and they often attack the city. Dredd himself has voiced doubts about the policy and when on duty in the Cursed Earth treats mutants the same as any other beings. He will however carry out the law when they enter the city.

In at least one version of this world's future, (see Strontium Dog and Durham Red) this will lead to the normals attempting genocide against mutants in the mid 2160's, and a long war called the Bloodshed in the 24th century.

[edit] Mutants in other media

Mutants also are a frequent topic in other comic books, and in many science fiction stories.

[edit] Movies

• In the film Total Recall, mutants are the descendants of Martian colonists inadequately shielded against cosmic rays. Some, such as Kuato, have psychic powers.
• Beneath the Planet of the Apes features radiation-scarred mutants with telepathic powers who worship an unexploded nuclear bomb as their god.
• The original Planet of the Apes film series was about a world where mutated apes replaced humanity as the dominant species.
• The movie version of This Island Earth features a mutant, not present in the original novel, as a menace to the film's heroine. Its large-brained appearance is now somewhat of a cliché of how mutants look.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (film) franchise involves mutants as both heroes and villains.
• Godzilla: Final Wars features a race of mutant humans that share an extra DNA base with the aliens and most monsters. Many of them acted as soldiers for the Earth Defense Force's M Organization, but when the Xilians arrived, the leader managed to take control of them, having telepathic power over those with the extra DNA base. Godzilla himself is also a mutant.
• Freaked revolves around a bunch of mutated people in the form of freaks.
• The film Hell Comes To Frogtown features a post-nuclear world in which humanity is endangered by a race of mutated frogs.
• The Toxic Avenger is another mutated character.
• The Spanish film Acción mutante is a dark comedy about future mutants who take up arms (those who have them) against "beautiful people".
• Bill Plympton made a 2001 animated film called Mutant Aliens.
• The 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes showed Jupiter's Clan as mutants caused by nuclear bomb testing.
• The 1956 film World Without End had one-eyed mutants who dominated the primitive remnants of humanity.

[edit] Television

• The Tomorrow People featured a homo superior race born to humans, that manifested psionic powers in adolescence and were discriminated against.
• In the television series Futurama, there is a race of mutant creatures living in the sewers of New New York City. In this setting, the mutations are the result of exposure to "radioactive waste, chemical runoff and good old American feces." The mutants are normally confined below ground, in a caste system. One of the main characters in the series, Leela, is eventually revealed to be a mutant.
• James Cameron's defunct television show, Dark Angel featured a large cast of mutants created by genetics corporation Manticore as the next breed of supersoldier.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series and recent animated series
• NBC's new hit show Heroes is based on the theory of evolutionary mutation in individuals, who can be traced through an equation which shows their DNA to be one with abnormalties.
• The animated series Thundarr the Barbarian showed many mutant races and monsters in a post-apocalyptic world.
• On the series Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld Nirrti used an alien device called a DNA Resequencer to mutate human beings, as part of an experiment to produce a superior host body for her symbiote. Though most of these subjects were severely deformed, some developed abilities such as telepathy, telekinesis and precognition.
• On the television series Mutant X, a group of genetically engineered superhumans are referred to as "New Mutants", presumably to distinguish them from naturally occurring mutations.
• The short-lived series Prey was about a new offshoot of humanity called the Dominants.
• The enemies of the ThunderCats were the animal-like Mutants from the planet Plun-Darr.
• An episode of the original Outer Limits series called, appropriately enough, The Mutant, showed a bug-eyed, telepathic psychopath born after a radiation storm.
• A Doctor Who serial called The Mutants was about humans on a distant planet who found themselves transforming into strange creatures.
• There was an animated series, Mutant League, based on the videogames Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey.
• The show Power Rangers: Time Force used mutant characters as their monsters-of-the-week. see List of Mutants in Power Rangers: Time Force
• The television series The X-Files features several mutants over the course of the series, such as Eugene Victor Tooms and Flukeman. There are also numerous characters in the series with various unusual characteristics or paranormal powers whose origins are unexplained, some of whom may in fact be mutants.
• On the Adult Swim live-action series Saul of the Mole Men, there is a mutant Mole Person named Fallopia (played by Irina Voronina) who is lacking in fur, fangs, claws, and whose unusual body proportions and coloration make her a hideous freak by Mole Men standards-- and a blonde, voluptuous knockout by human standards.

[edit] Video games

• Baraka's race from the Mortal Kombat series was referred to a mutants before the creators of the game gave them the designation of Tarkata.
• The first Fallout game features an army of super mutants as well as mutated animals and humans. The sequel, Fallout 2, also features mutant beings.
• The Resident Evil/Biohazard series features Hunters and other mutants created by viruses along with zombies.
• Timesplitters: Future Perfect features mutants with the ability to attack by projecting an arc of electricity and turn invisible for a short time. They are a prototype of the Timesplitters race. Timesplitters 2 features mutants in the Siberia level who were created by exposure to the Timesplitter remains.
• Cold Fear features zombie-like creatures that are originally humans, but are mutated by a parasitic creature that goes into their heads via the mouth. This game also features failed mutated dog experiments, invisibility experiments, and giant behemoths that resemble Tyrants (creatures from Resident Evil).
• Wolfenstein 3D & Spear of Destiny features mutants created by the manical Doctor Schabbs. These mutants had white skin, green clothes, black hair, red eyes, held cleavers in both hands, had a gun lodged into their chests, had black boots on and had purple blood.
• The MMORPG City of Heroes and its stand-alone expansion City of Villains allow the player to choose "Mutant" as an origin for their hero or villain.
• The game Command & Conquer: Renegade features a Nod plot to use Tiberium and biochemistry to make mutant supersoldiers.
• The Game Destroy All Humans! features a group of mutated humans who have had the Furon (alien) DNA in their brain stems unlocked, giving them powers similar to that of the Furons.
• Tomb Raider has mutants in the form of Atlanteans, with many variations, including crawling Atlanteans, flying Atlanteans, Centaurs and a giant legless Atlantean.
• In The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, Bart Simpson defends Springfield against the titular squishy beings.
• In the turn based strategy game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Homo Superior is a technological breakthrough that implies human evolution (mutation) in the form of complete symbiosis between the biological and mechanical, via centuries of nanocellular human-cybernetic integration. This mutation results in keener senses and heightened abilities, such as improved night vision and more rapid muscle response.
• The Half-Life series features zombies, mutated by alien parasitoids called headcrabs which attach to the heads of humans and transhuman beings.

[edit] Comic books

In addition to the above Marvel and DC mutants:

• Cyberforce is a group of mutant cyborgs in Image Comics.
• Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• In Larry Hama's comic Nth Man: the Ultimate Ninja, the American Midwest is struck by a DNA-altering bio-weapon which turns ordinary humans into pale, fanged, boil-covered psychotic creatures called "moots", who crave human flesh.
• Several super-powered characters in the Justice Machine comic are said to be mutants.
• Mutant, Texas: Tales of Sheriff Ida Red tells of a town populated by bizarre mutant creatures.
• Ex-Mutants tells of a group of post-nuclear mutants surgically altered to look like "normal" humans.

[edit] Music

• The David Bowie song "Oh! You Pretty Things" contains the repeated line "You gotta make way for the Homo superior."
• The Pete Shelley song "Homosapien" has the line "Homo superior / In my interior / But from the skin out / I'm Homo sapien too"
• The Mutants (Os Mutantes) were a Brazilian rock band of the 1960s. There are also several punk and rock bands called The Mutants.
• Mutant Pop was a short-lived pop/punk record label in the '90s.

[edit] Books

• The Amtrak Wars, a post-apocalyptic science fiction/fantasy series by Patrick Tilley, features a race of mutant survivors called Mutes who suffer physical deformities and poor memory living as warring tribes.
• Mutant is a novel by Peter Clement exporing the alleged dangers of genetically modified foods.
• Slan is about a race of evolved superior humans and the persecution by ordinary humans in fear of their perceived potential dominance.
• In The Haunting of Alizabel Crey, wychkin hunters such as Thaniel Fox are described as being mutants.
• In the pulp series Perry Rhodan many mutants where the children of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• In the science fiction novels Deathlands and many others, mutants with unusual abilities are the result of a nuclear war.
• In the science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, mutants are the often deformed humans as a result of a nuclear war.
• In The Foundation Series, The Mule was speculated to have developed his powers because he was a mutant.
• In Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Philip Jose Farmer theorize that Tarzan, Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes, and other fictional characters were part of a mutant family known as the Wold Newton family.
• A clan of golden-eyed mutants with limited psychic powers are the stars of a 4-part novel series written by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg, starting with The Mutant Season, followed by Mutant Prime, Mutant Star and Mutant Legacy.
• The Psi-Man series written by Peter David describes mutant characters, some with psychic abilities.
• Robert A. Heinlein's fictional character Lazarus Long is said to derive his unusual longevity from a mutation.
• In Stephen King's Dark Tower series, a group of creatures called slow mutants are the result of a long-past nuclear war.
• In John Ridley's novel Those Who Walk In Darkness and its sequel What Fire Cannot Burn, super-powered mutants are called "metanormals" and have been officially banished from the United States by an executive order. Those who stay are hunted down by an elite police force called MTAC.
• Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Phillip K. Dick has several post-nuclear mutants, including some with telekinetic powers.
• Mute, by Piers Anthony, involves a future galaxy-spanning society where mutants, while socially shunned, are found useful for terraforming and other dangerous or specialized work; a rare few have powerful psionic abilities, and there are also hidden societies of mutant animals who have achieved (near) human intelligence.

[edit] Role playing games

• Gamma World was a post-apocalyptic gaming system which allowed characters to be mutated humans, animals, or plants.
• Mutant (1984) (with the later versions Mutant RYMD (1992) and Mutant Chronicles), Kult (1991) are role playing games from Target Games.
• Mutants & Masterminds is a superhero tabletop role-playing game by Green Ronin Publishing, based on the d20 System created by Wizards of the Coast.
• Mutants are essential to the Paranoia role playing game.
• In the game Warhammer 40,000, the many "impure" mutant offshoots of humanity such as abhumans are regularly persecuted and killed by the Witch Hunters of the Imperial Inquisition, aside from the occasional useful psyker.

[edit] Other

• A December, 1953 article in Mechanix Illustrated Magazine contained an article called "How Nuclear Radiation Can Change Our Race", warning that in the event of an "Atom War", a mutant species of supermen might arise to assist --or to dominate-- humanity. The article was writted by "O. O. Binder", and opened with a two-page illustration drawn by comic book artist Kurt Schaffenberger, which shows bald, large-craniumed mutants either helping humanity with their superior intellects (in a small section of the picture) or dominating mankind as slavemasters (in the much bigger splash image).[3]