Suicide Squad Fan Art Mixes Sylvester Stallone’s King Shark With Rocky & Rambo

The Suicide Squad‘s King Shark posters have been riffed on in hilarious fashion — with new fan art mixing him with Sylvester Stallone’s roles in Rambo and Rocky. Created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru, an early incarnation of the titular team debuted in 1959’s The Brave and the Bold #25. A second and more modernized version, also known as Task Force X and comprised mostly of lesser-known villains, was created by John Ostrander in 1987. The latter has served as the basis for many on-screen adaptations – including within the Arrowverse and David Ayer’s 2016 version of Suicide Squad.

For the sequel/soft reboot, James Gunn assumed the director’s chair. Highly anticipated, the overall plot has remained firmly under wraps. The Suicide Squad‘s first official trailer, however, promised brutal action, Gunn’s singular brand of humor, and an array of intriguing elements. The latter included confirmation of Starro the Conquerer as a central villain. The new footage also spotlighted every Task Force X character in The Suicide Squad. Firmly among them was King Shark. Though the motion-capture performance was delivered by Steve Agee, the trailer cemented that Stallone would provide the popular character’s voice.

Popular digital artist BossLogic opted to celebrate that revelation with some posters of his own. Posting on Instagram, he blended King Shark with some of Stallone’s most iconic characters. The first saw the creature adorned in the shorts and boxing gloves of Rocky Balboa. Confetti could be seen floating around him. In an especially amusing detail, the gloves would be read as being emblazoned with “Won” which ties to Rocky. Conversely, they could also read as “Nom”, which King Shark uttered in the trailer before snacking on a Corto Maltese native. The second poster turned the character into John Rambo — complete with mullet, headband, and grenades displayed all around him. Check them both out below:

Even prior to The Suicide Squad, Stallone was no stranger to working with Gunn. He appeared as Stakar Ogord (a.k.a. Starhawk) in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 — one of the original team members from the comics. Stallone clearly enjoyed the experience, with Gunn recently recounted that it only took a brief phone call to sign him up. The veteran actor has a number of other films in the pipeline. These will reportedly include another sequel in the self-referential Expendables franchise. In terms of his other legacy characters, Stallone has reprised them repeatedly across the decades, including in recent years. He last embodied Rambo (for the last time) in 2019 and Rocky Balboa in 2018’s Creed II.

Following the trailer, King Shark jumped up to become one of Stallone’s most highly-anticipated performances. Despite Gunn’s efforts to avoid him being viewed as cute and the like, thus joining the ranks of Baby Yoda and Groot, he has already taken social media by storm. Whether or not the character will ultimately join Rocky and Rambo‘s titular figures in terms of cinematic legacy shall remain to be seen. Whatever the case, as the above posters attest, King Shark has already captured fan’s imaginations. As such, even if he doesn’t survive the runtime, it would not be difficult to imagine him overshadowing even Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and becoming the scene-stealer of The Suicide Squad.