At some point, everyone has fantasized about being a superhero. Sure, the tights may be snug in some awkward places, but that’s a small price to pay to wield amazing powers against the forces of evil. Well, luckily, those dreams may be close to becoming reality. Geneticists are tracking down specific mutations responsible for some truly incredible abilities. From immunity to electricity to Hulk-like strength, these tremendous talents may soon be as normal as eating and breathing.

10Unbreakable Bones

A broken bone is a fantastic way to ruin your entire day (your entire several months, really). Despite being the hardest substance in the human body, bone is definitely not invulnerable. Unless you find yourself with an extremely rare mutation of the LRP5 gene, that is.

LRP5 is responsible for the density of your bones. Researchers have known for a while that mutations in this gene can lead to lower bone density, or osteoporosis. However, it has recently been found that they can lead to the opposite effect as well. One Connecticut family has been discovered to have LRP5 mutations that give their bones such incredible density that they are nearly unbreakable. Not one of them has ever suffered a broken bone. Focused on the spine, skull, and pelvis, this increased strength gives members of the family the strongest known skeletons on Earth.

Researchers believe this mutation causes too many “bone-growth signals” to be sent, leading to beefier bones and a potential superhero. It is hoped that one day, a controlled form of the mutant gene could be used to end bone disease.

9Super Speed

We all have the natural ability to run, if not always the will. Yet some people seem naturally better at this incredibly basic skill. Sure, it could be down to training or steroids, but geneticists believe the answer is nowhere near that.

It turns out naturally gifted runners may be more fit for the X-Men than the Olympics. The gene ACTN3 is present within every human body, but a small percentage of them mutate to help us produce a very special substance. This protein, alpha-actinin-3, is responsible for controlling the fast-twitch muscle fibers that allow us to run. Increased amounts lead to more explosive bursts of muscle power, which translate into better performance in all kinds of sports, especially sprinting.

Interestingly, there are two versions of this mutant gene, and athletes with both have been found to perform consistently better than their conventionally chromosomed counterparts. We may be on the brink of a new age of performance enhancement.

8Poison Immunity

When it comes to poison, the human body gets very fragile very quickly; a single drop of something like cyanide or ricin, and it’s all over. Whether accidentally ingested or snuck into our food, these sinister substances are hard to defend against.

But for millennia, the villagers of San Antonio de los Cobres in Argentina have been sipping mountain water laced with 80 times the safe level of arsenic. And, surprisingly, there are still villagers in San Antonio de los Cobres. Despite extreme daily exposure to the deadly metal, residents carry on completely unaffected. This is all down to a mutant gene that has been honed by thousands of years of natural selection.

AS3MT is the name of this South American savior. It allows the body to process arsenic rather than let it build to dangerous levels, so owners of these microscopic mutants can chow down on as much of the stuff as they want. It is estimated that a total of 6,000 people now possess this gene.

7Short-Sleeping

The life of a superhero is not an easy one. Working your mundane cover job during the day and prowling the rooftops by night doesn’t leave a lot of time for sleep. But if you’re lucky, your host of mutant abilities includes short-sleeping.

The genes involved in the process of sleep are many and incredibly complex. One, however, stands out to researchers. DEC2 is responsible for regulating the amount of sleep we need each night to properly function. For most of us it demands a full eight hours or more, but about 5 percent of the population enjoy a slightly different mutant version.

Tests on a mother-daughter pair with the mutation have revealed an ability to sleep just 4–6 hours each night. Mere mortals would begin to experience negative effects after just a few days of this, but these mutants function completely normally. Researchers are hopefully working to replicate this mutation to allow crime fighters and the exceptionally busy to waste less time unconscious.

6Shock-Proof Skin

Electricity is one of the most dangerous things we encounter each day. We tend not to think much about it because we’re so used to it, but we are almost always surrounded by more than enough power to kill us in an instant. That’s never bothered Serbian man Slavisa Pajkic, though, whose unique genetic makeup makes him largely immune to electricity.

The typical human is covered with millions of sweat glands, which normally give electric shocks a nice wet path directly into our skin. Pajkic, on the other hand, has no sweat or salivary glands due to a rare genetic condition. This means electricity has no way of penetrating his body, so it skims harmlessly over his skin into whatever he happens to be holding.

This unique talent has earned Pajkic the title of “Battery Man.” Able to cook food, boil water, and even set things on fire by passing electricity over his body, he has set a handful of records and appeared on several TV shows. He also uses his gift to treat (or at least claim to treat them) various ailments like migraines and back pain in his native Serbia.

5Super Partying

The lifestyle of rich and famous musicians is notorious for being pretty hard on the body. Countless lives have been snuffed out prematurely due to the stresses of constant drug and alcohol use. But bizarrely, one of the men associated most strongly with this life of dangerous excess has been going strong for decades.

Rocker Ozzy Osbourne’s ironically long life may be due to more than simple luck. Researchers analyzing the legendary musician’s genetic code have recently discovered a staggering number of mutant genes. Most of them have to do with the way the body breaks down alcohol and various other chemicals. For instance, a mutation of the ADH4 gene gives him increased amounts of proteins that remove alcohol from the body. Genetic variations like this help explain Osbourne’s continued existence despite the “swimming pools of booze . . . cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol” he has admitted to indulging in over the years.

4Metal Munching

There comes a moment in every superhero’s career when defeat looks certain. The villain’s doomsday device is ticking away, and all hope seems lost. But luckily, the hero still has a genetic variation or two up his sleeve. He grabs it, adds a dash of salt, and crams it down his mighty throat. The day is saved.

But only if his name is Michel Lotito. This phenomenal French showman spent his life chowing down on absolutely everything as the amazing Monsieur Mangetout—Mr. Eats-All. Televisions, shopping carts, beds, and even an entire airplane made their way through his super-powered stomach. Swallowing shards of glass and twisted scraps of metal would of course kill most people, but Lotito survived his deadly eating habits for decades.

It is believed that Lotito’s stomach-turning talent was the result of a very specific genetic defect. Born with bizarrely thick lining in his stomach and intestines, his system was durable enough to avoid the inevitable shredding most people would experience. A few gulps of lubricating mineral oil were the only safety precaution he required.

3Super Flexibility

Inhuman flexibility has been a comic book staple for years. This is mostly because the ability to warp the body into bizarre and amazing shapes is dramatic and visually stunning. But its pop culture popularity may lead some to think of this talent as mere fiction. It isn’t.

For those born with the genetic condition known as Marfan Syndrome, tendons and ligaments may as well be rubber bands. Mutations in the gene responsible for producing the protein fibrillin-1 cause the body to create connective tissues with superhuman flexibility. Selectively dislocating joints to twist the body into shapes worthy of Mr. Fantastic is nothing for the typical Marfan sufferer.

Of course, this gift comes with a price. Sufferers may develop unnaturally long limbs and facial disfigurements. Problems with the skeleton, nervous system, and even the heart can also arise from the genetic defect, some of which can be fatal.

2Super Strength

Super strength is the quintessential super power; it has been the go-to ability for comic book writers since Superman first flew onto the scene. The raw power it represents is fascinating, leaving many yearning for rippling muscles and brute strength with absolutely no effort. Well good news: It’s possible. Bad news: You have to be born with it.

For a lucky few born with mutations of the gene responsible for producing the protein myostatin, the dream of effortless abs is a reality. Myostatin tells the body to stop producing muscle when enough has been created, but defective genes keep it from being made. This means muscles automatically grow to twice the average size, while fat deposits are halved.

A handful of people around the world have this condition, and scientists are trying to harness its power. It is believed that by studying these mutant genes, we may one day be able to cure muscle conditions like muscular dystrophy.

1Immunity To Pain

Pain. Whether by banging your toe on the corner of your bed, cutting yourself shaving, or walking into a door, we all experience this annoying sensation almost daily. Pharmaceutical companies make billions offering us ways to avoid it, but the secret to true painlessness may be hidden in the garbled genes of a very rare few.

The SCN11A gene determines the amount of sodium in the body’s cells. This might not sound terribly impressive, until you realize that nerve cells use sodium to decide when to send a pain signal. With the mutant gene lowering sodium levels, nerve cells never have enough to send those signals, rendering the body completely immune to pain.

Bizarrely, however, people with this seemingly enviable condition are prone to broken bones and accidental self-mutilation. Without pain to tell them not to do something, they have a tendency to injure themselves, especially as infants. Still, their mutant genes are incredibly rare and valuable, as they may be the key to revolutionary new pain medications.

What started as a parody of literally every trope in ’80s comic books has become a juggernaut of a franchise, with no signs of stopping, even 36 years after their 1984 debut. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been adapted into cartoons, movies, comics (so many comics), board games, video games, and probably every kind of merchandise you can possibly think of. 

Here are 10 amazing facts about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

10. Their First Issue Sold Out in 1984

The success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or TMNT) is practically a rags to riches story. Turtles co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird both contributed to art and story. The original Turtles comic was never intended to go beyond a single issue, and this is evident by the fact that the main villain, the Shredder, dies at the end of the issue (spoilers!).

The duo printed off a small, 3,000 copy run of the comic using money from a $500 tax refund and a loan from Eastman’s uncle. After printing, they had just enough money to run an ad in Comics Buyer’s Guide Magazine, and to Eastman and Laird’s surprise, they sold out within several weeks. That wasn’t the end, either, as more orders came in, they were compelled to produce another 6,000 copies of the book.

The two realized that they might have been on to something big, so they got to work on a second issue, introducing many elements that would come to define the Turtles universe. As soon as they had issue 2 finished, Mirage Studios had orders for 15,000 copies, issue 3 would sell a massive 50,000 copies, and sales would continue to skyrocket, until issue 8 sold 135,000 copies, rivaling some of the best selling comics in 1985 (like Uncanny X-Men).  

9. The Turtles Came from a Simple Sketch

It might (or might not) surprise you that the Ninja Turtles were created in 1983 as a joke. Eastman and Laird were struggling illustrators, sharing a studio apartment about the size of a living room. 

One night, Eastman drew a turtle standing upright with nunchaku strapped to its arms and a bandanna wrapped around its head. Eastman wrote “Ninja Turtle” above his sketch and handed it off to his partner, hoping that it would make him laugh. 

Laird was so amused by the drawing that he started his own, more refined drawing. This kicked off a competition between the two artists, eventually resulting in the character designs that appear in the first issue.

The next day, they both looked at the drawings they’d created and decided that they just had to write a story to go with their designs. 

8. Mirage Studios Wasn’t a Real Company

Mirage Studios got its name because of the fact that (at the time of the first issue’s publication) it wasn’t a real company and Eastman and Laird’s studio consisted of their tiny studio apartment. Peter Laird described the space as only having kitchen tables and couches with lap boards. 

After the success of the first issue, Mirage would become a real company (adding further irony to the name) and would move to Sharon, Connecticut, where it would stay for two years before moving again to Northampton (a place that appears often in Turtles cartoons, comics, and the first movie). 

The company would also foster the careers of many underground cartoonists when the senior staff (Kevin and Peter) stopped being able to work on actual comics due to the complications of running the media empire surrounding the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

7. The Turtles Exist Within the Daredevil Universe

The origin of the TMNT parodied at least four tropes popular in 1980s comics. Ninjas (like Daredevil and the enemy that he fights, “the Hand”), mutants and teenagers (popular in comics like X-Men and Spider-Man), and of course anthropomorphic characters (like Dave Sim’s Cerberus the Aardvark). 

To add to the hilarious parallels to comics that were popular at the time, the origin of the Turtles directly referenced the origin of Daredevil. In the origin of the TMNT, a blind man crosses a busy New York street, walking into the pathway of an oncoming truck. 

A young man (who is supposed to be a young Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil) rushes forward and pushes the old man out of the way. The truck swerves, crashing and causing a canister filled with radioactive ooze to strike a glass terrarium held by a little boy on the side of the street, freeing four baby turtles in the process. 

The Turtles end up in the sewers covered in ooze, where their future mentor Splinter (who was watching the whole thing while doing some dumpster diving) would gather them up in a coffee can, getting the ooze on himself in the process and mutating them all into humanoid creatures.

The parallels to Daredevil do not stop there. As mentioned earlier, one of Daredevil’s main enemies was the mysterious organization of criminal ninjas, “the Hand.” Well, the Turtles had their own criminal organization of ninjas as well, called “the Foot.” Additionally, Daredevil was trained in the city by a man named Stick, and the Turtles were trained below the city by Splinter.  

6. The Turtles Craze in Europe Caused an Ecological Disaster

Due to the popularity of the Ninja Turtles, kids in the UK in the late ’80s and ’90s not only stripped store shelves of every TMNT toy they could get their hands on but also caused the demand for red-eared terrapin to explode.

Red-eared terrapins are not native to the UK, and as you might imagine, due to the facts that these turtles can grow as large as a whole foot (no pun intended) and turtles are not very easy to care for in the first place, most of those turtles ended up being abandoned in ponds instead of getting new tanks (a fact that is as heartbreaking as it sounds).

This caused what amounts to an ecological disaster. Red-eared terrapins eat a variety of things, including ducklings, small waterbirds, and other amphibians. This can cause damage to the balance of life and waterways where they’re introduced, and that is exactly what happened in Europe.   

5. The Word Ninja Was Banned in Europe

Turtle fans in the UK were treated to a slightly different version of the cartoon that was making waves throughout the US in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The name of the show was changed from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. 

The reason for this change was due to censorship policies in Europe. Censors in Europe thought that the word ninja was just too violent for a show aimed at children. Thus, every piece of memorabilia, every toy, and every other product to bear the name of the Turtles would feature the word Hero instead of Ninja.

Little did these censors realize, the collective shock that would come to European Turtles fans when the internet came along and revealed the fact that they had been lied to throughout their entire collective childhood.

Oh, and they replaced Michelangelo’s nunchaku with a weird grappling hook that looks like a yo-yo. It was apparently illegal for them to show a pair of nunchakus on screen.

4. The Turtles Used to Have Tails

In the original comics and designs, the Ninja Turtles were based on red-eared sliders (hence why they were so popular with kids in Europe), and they were also designed with tails.

The road to marketing the Turtles to toy companies was difficult, and the property was turned down by every major toy company in the ’80s, but Playmates Toys would finally take a chance on the property, a decision which would skyrocket the company to new levels of success.

During the early design process, playmates created a prototype sculpt of the Turtles. This sculpt featured a tail that looked more than a little phallic. 

The design was revised without the tail, and this design choice would be echoed in every Turtles property for the next three decades. 

3. Their Arch Villain, the Shredder, was Based on a Cheese Grater

Every great comic book character needs an arch-nemesis, and it might surprise you to find out how the TMNT got theirs. 

After a night of drinking, Kevin was drying dishes when he came across a triangular-shaped cheese grater. For some reason, Eastman decided to put the grater on his arm and turn to Laird, saying, “Could you imagine a character with weapons on his arms like this?”

The name Kevin came up with was less than amazing, though, calling his creation “Grate-Man.” Fortunately for all of us ’80s kids, Peter Laird suggested the name “the Shredder” instead. 

So, yes: the Shredder, the most feared enemy of the Ninja Turtles, who leads an army of ninjas in New York City that strike fear in the hearts of the criminals they work with, was named after a cheese grater.

2. The TMNT Led to a Wave of Knockoffs

Thanks to the popularity of the TMNT, both toy companies, and production companies behind children’s cartoons looked at the heroes in a half shell as a golden opportunity to create insanely popular toy lines and cartoons themselves.

As many as 20 knockoff cartoons and toy lines have been made, each following the same formula as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but without the same levels of success that the Turtles have seen.

A few especially terrible ones include Street Sharks, Biker Mice from Mars, and Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa (which centers around three teenage cow… boys, who protect their town from all kinds of bad guys). 

Of these three, Biker Mice from Mars lasted the longest, followed by Street Sharks (which lasted from 1994 to 1997), and Cowboys of Moo Mesa was the biggest flop of the bunch (only lasting one year).  

1. The TMNT Toy Line Changed the Action Figure Market

As was mentioned earlier, Playmates Toys was the only company willing to take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Other toy companies thought the concept was too ridiculous to fly with kids or parents. 

But you may be surprised to learn that Playmates Toys specialized in making dolls at the time. They had no experience in the boy’s action figure market. Despite this, Playmates would gain massive success after deciding to push forward with the TMNT action figure line despite a less than enthusiastic unveiling at the 1988 New York Toy Fair. 

After an initial 3,000 piece order, the Turtles would go on to become one of the most significant success stories in the toy industry and many fans of the line consider it to be the true start of a trend in 90s action figure lines. 

By 1990, the toy line was one of the most successful in the industry’s entire history, making $200 million in that year alone and taking up at least 60% of the action figure market.