Designing The Super Mutant

“Don’t shoot him, you’ll just make him mad.” The famous line from Blazing Saddles describing Mongo, was my guiding inspiration for these guys. I wanted them to look like they would step into a tree shredder, for relaxation. Their musculature was to be straining at the bone structure underneath, creating a hyper jacked up caricature of a person in the throes of radioactive testosterone poisoning, and liking it.

This led to a lot of visual gags costume wise too. Not only did they wield parking meters like police batons, but they carried their victims caged in shopping carts strapped to their backs. You know, just in case they got peckish after a fight, and wanted a snack.

Their armor is total salvage yard, car hoods and fenders resourcefully but crudely pounded into chest plates and pauldrons. Lawn mower blades welded onto helmets. I wanted recognizable elements twisted to a more violent purpose to reflect a sinister resourcefulness to surviving in a highly dangerous world. This “junkyard wars” approach to their armor and weapons generated whole categories of unique and often hilarious Homemade Weapons that I’ll speak about next.