Fridge / Rat-Man (1989)

• When he was young, Rat-Man fought against other heroes in a coliseum, and the most powerful of them was Il Drago (the dragon), a transparent parody of Dragon Ball Z's Goku. Il Drago 's most powerful move was a reference to the Kamehameha, an energy blast which sent the opponents into another dimension. I just realized that Il Drago is a spoof of DBZ in every way, even of its adaptation: since in most Western adaptations the characters are forbidden from saying "die" and "death", and even the afterlife is referred to as "another dimension", Il Drago actually kills and destroys his opponents and can get away with it! - Daddy Mulk
• When speaking of the Second Secret Squad, Rat-Man remarks they were all but a shadow of the original in spite of having been genetically altered to be superheroes. Issue 103 reveals that Rat-Man's enhancement was to his mind. That's why the Second Secret Squad was so bad: Rat-Man was supposed to be The Smart Guy! The implication is that, aside from Kimmy, they were all stupider than Rat-Man...
  • Among the other members, only Kimmy/Spectre appears to be both smart and sane (Karpa is so naive that "Santa believes she exists", we don't see much of Lightning but he didn't appear all that bright in the flashbacks, and Tresh had 'issues'), and was The Leader (or at least supposed to be, but her abrasive personality as Spectre meant the others didn't listen to her). She's also the daughter of the Wolf, the member of the First Secret Squad that acted as handler to the Second. Suddenly, the Wolf's claims the scientists didn't do much to her make sense...
  • Kimmy states that the treatments at Somewhere Else made the superheroes sterile, yet (much to her own surprise) she later finds out she's pregnant. Wolf really protected her.
    • Also, Rat-Man has a daughter he never knew about. His father too protected him.
• In light of recent events one could wonder why, for years, Rat-Man referred to Aima as Thea. Thing is, her story was turned into a comic book story in-universe by Ortolani... Who, as shown in an early story, can alter the in-universe reality with his drawings: by drawing the story but using the better known name he altered Rat-Man's memory too until they interacted again.
  • Speaking of Aima, she's a beautiful, kind and intelligent scientist, why would she fall for an idiotic jerkass (if one that genuinely tries to help people) like Rat-Man? Because she can be just as horrible as him (most notably, at their wedding she briefly pretended for a moment to have forgotten him fully knowing that her Laser-Guided Amnesia that kept them separated for years heavily traumatized him), so they can easily stand each other.