7 People From Around the World With Real Mutant Superpowers

Real Name: Yves Rossi

Superpower: Flight, via a rocket pack strapped to his back.

Yves Rossi is a Swiss professional pilot and aeronautical engineer (we hope, since he designed his own jet pack) who, claiming to be inspired by his hero Batman, realized the first jet-pack-powered flight.

At this point someone should write the man a nice letter explaining to him that Batman doesn't really fly at all. We'd do it ourselves, but we don't like to argue about comics with a man who jumps out of a plane wearing nothing but a flammable death trap strapped to his ass. For all we care he can say Superman talks to fish, as long as he keeps flying homemade jet packs while he's saying it.

As you see, he doesn't just run along the ground and wait for his jet pack to lift him into the air. He throws himself out of a fucking plane, knowing either his invention will work or men in hazmat suits will be raking him into a trash bag in a few minutes. If you're still wondering where the mutant part of this guy's super power comes in, than you obviously haven't considered the size of the balls it takes to do what he does.

Jet-Man's jet pack is capable of flying at a speed of 160 mph for up to six minutes. After those six minutes, Yves has to activate his secondary power, the Go-go-gadget-oh-please-God-don't-let-it-fail-parachute since there is no way to land the jet pack without becoming a red and chrome stain on the ground.

There's no word on his plans to add a laser-shooting suit of armor to the jet pack, but of course you wouldn't let that information get out until it was time to use it. That time is coming soon, Mr. Rossi. We'll be calling.

Real Name: Tim Cridland

Superpower: Super Pain Tolerance

Tim Cridland is an entertainer and a former member of the Jim Rose Circus, which you may remember as that really creepy circus from that episode of The X-Files with the murderous conjoined twin fetus thing.

Anyway, Tim specializes in sword swallowing, fire walking, sleeping on beds of nails (once even with a Toyota over him), body skewering and electrocuting himself. Tim says he can do this because he has mastered mind over matter. Researchers on the other hand call bullshit and say it's because Tim was born with a mutation that makes it so he doesn't feel pain the way normal people do.

It's not that Tim and his ilk can't feel anything, because they can feel when they are touched, and they can feel temperature. They simply do not register pain thanks to malfunctioning receptors in the nerve cells that tell your brain "Ow-fuck-get-the-hand-off-the-stove!"

We assume this also turns off the "you just got punched by a supervillain" receptors that make most men shy away from a life of superheroism.

Real Name: Choi Yeong-eui, later changed to Masutatsu Oyama

Superpower: Super-Karate!

Masutatsu Oyama was born in Korea in 1927 and later moved to Japan, where he studied karate. Unlike most famous martial artists, Oyama is not famous for his movie roles, where stunt men and clever editing can make anyone look like a badass.

No, Oyama preferred a different sort of theater. He used to have live public demonstrations where he would fight and kill a bull with his bare hands. Just because it bears repeating, let's write that again: He could kill a bull with his hands. If you want to know how idiotically hard that is, we cordially invite you to go out and punch a bull in the face. Go on, we'll wait here. OK, we're not really waiting since whoever just went out to try that isn't coming back.

All in all, Oyama fought and killed 52 bulls, three of which were killed instantly with one blow. Forty-nine had their horns chopped off with karate blows. He gained the nickname of The Godhand and was considered the living manifestation of the Japanese warrior's maxim "One strike, certain death."

If you're thinking his skills only worked against livestock, you should know that Oyama once tested himself in a kumite, a series of two-minute fights against different opponents, each of which you must win to continue. Oyama took on 300 men over the course of three days. According to some, the only reason it didn't reach 400 was because opponents started to get tired of getting punched in the face.

There have been three movies made based on his life: Champion of Death, Karate Bearfighter, and Karate for Life. That's right, there exists in the world a movie based on an actual man's life that wound up with the title Karate Bearfighter. Why? Because it's probable Oyama actually fought a goddamn bear once, and that bear is buried in a shallow grave covered in dirt and the tears of his relatives as we speak.

Thus we introduce our superhero squad: Super-strong babies flying in jet packs, navigating with surgical precision through the darkest and coldest of nights, tearing your tanks apart with super strength karate blows and eating them, only to fly back up into the air and shit your own weapons back on top of you.

Good luck sleeping, rest of the world. We hope our maniacal cackling doesn't keep you awake.

This marks the third and final installment in our June superpower trilogy. If you missed the first two, check out 5 Superpowers Science Will Give Us in our Lifetime, before moving on to find out about 5 Superpowers from the Bible That Put Marvel and DC to Shame.