DC League of Super-Pets’ director explains its startling post-credits cameo

Family animated movie DC League of Super-Pets — an origin story for Superman’s best friend, Kryptonian super-dog Krypto — is built for adult viewers as much as for kids. It’s packed with DC Comics gags, some of which are visual, like the Jonah Hex-themed steakhouse in downtown Metropolis. Others are musical: At one point, Krypto sings a little impromptu ditty about how much he and Superman love each other, to the tune of John Williams’ classic theme from 1978’s live-action Superman. Some are referential: At one point, Lex Luthor (Marc Maron) complains that he doesn’t have superpowers, not even the ability to “throw playing cards really hard” — seemingly a dig at Marvel characters like Bullseye or possibly Gambit, who each have used cards as weapons.

However, the credit will not be shown until viewers see one of the bolder gags. League of Super-Pets openly makes fun of another DC property — and Dwayne Johnson, who voices Krypto, mocks himself. The movie’s co-writer and co-director, Jared Stern, tells Polygon how it happened.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the post-credits sequence in DC League of Super-Pets.]

Image: Warner Bros. Entertainment

In the post-credits sequence, set after the film’s resolution, Superman (voiced by John Krasinski) and Krypto are enjoying a Metropolis park by night when DC antihero Black Adam flies in with his pet dog. Two human heroes exchange a terse and tense acknowledgment. However, the dogs instantly start to talk. It is clear that the film’s characters can talk to each other. Humans don’t hear any barking or meowing from their conversation.

Black Adam’s sidekick Anubis brags about how his partner is a cool, edgy antihero, while Krypto chuckles that “antihero” is just another word for “villain.” He mocks Anubis for thinking “my owner breaks all the rules, does what he wants, and takes down anyone in his way” is anything but villain behavior. “It’s a fine line, I’m not going to lie,” Anubis says.

Krypto keeps calling Black Adam a traitor, and Anubis becomes more boastful and flustered, until Krypto casually declares that Black Adam is a villain. mayBe cool but not enough to fly to Pluto. Anubis instantly says that he can, so he grabs Black Adam to take off for space.

It’s a silly bit of banter ending in a sight gag, but it’s surprising because it’s such a pointed takedown of DC’s impending blockbuster Black AdamDwayne Johnson starred in the role of title. Stern said that DC’s higher-ups didn’t bat an eye on Stern. League’s irreverence toward Black Adam, though, and he says he’s fairly sure the sequence came from Dwayne Johnson himself.

“I believe it was Dwayne’s idea,” he tells Polygon. “He thought it’d be fun to act against a darker version of Krypto. And we all laughed at that and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s gonna be super fun. It’s just perfect.’”

Stern states that films aimed at comic-book fans require post credit gags. However, in this case, Stern saw it as an opportunity to move the movie in a completely different direction. “These post-credits sequences have become sort of cliche, so we thought we’d lean into it in a playful way,” he says. “The fact that Dwayne was playing roles in both these DC properties, it just seemed like a fun opportunity.”

Most of the animal heroes in DC League of Super-Pets have at least minimal canon histories — PB, aka Wonder-Pig (Vanessa Bayer), is a reference to a Justice League Unlimited episode and an early appearance of a flying pig in Wonder Woman’s comics. Merton, the tortoise (Natashalyonne), was once the super-turtle “The Terrific Whatsit.” The electro-powered squirrel Chip (Diego Luna) was once the Green Lantern Ch’p. Ace the Bat Hound is a comic-loving character.

Stern claims that Anubis was an original character created for the movie. “We based it on an Egyptian dog, the kind of the dog you see in hieroglyphics and in Egyptian statues, in tombs,” he says. (Anubis does closely resemble a black Pharaoh hound, sometimes known as an “Anubis dog.”) “We thought, He’s Egyptian, it’d be cool to model the dog after that, and also, he’d look kind of badass. So we made that up.”

Dwayne Johnson plays both Black Adam, and his dog to add a meta dimension and humor to the hilarious post-credits sequence. “It’s all Dwayne Johnson,” Stern laughs. “As if you didn’t have enough Dwayne Johnson as our star and our producer.”

“We thought it would be so funny, but we were also a little bit nervous — we were like, Do you think that it will be possible to discern the differences between voices? But he did a fun thing with his voice where Krypto leaned a little bit into a higher register, a little goofier, and then he went into his deeper badass antihero voice for Anubis, then kind of his normal Black Adam movie voice, though Black Adam just says one thing: ‘Superman.’ So, yeah, that scene was John Krasinski, Dwayne Johnson, Dwayne Johnson, and Dwayne Johnson.”