Thinker (DC Comics)

The Clifford DeVoe incarnation of the Thinker made his live-action debut in the television series The Flash, portrayed primarily by Neil Sandilands.

In the DC Extended Universe, an original variation of the unidentified Thinker called Gaius Grieves appears in The Suicide Squad (2021), portrayed by Peter Capaldi.

"[3] In The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Man #50, the strap on Ronnie Raymond's football helmet is cut, and in the following issues the cast members come to suspect Carmichael of the crime.

Though Conway later said that he must have intended to ultimately reveal someone else as the culprit, John Ostrander took over as the series' writer and had Carmichael confess to cutting the strap.

As the Thinker, DeVoe becomes an enemy of the original Flash, Jay Garrick, and wields the "Thinking Cap", a metal hat that can project mental force.

As the new Thinker, it joins Johnny Sorrow's modern Injustice Society, provides the villains with information about the JSA members, and turns the heroes' own HQ against them.

This version is Dr. Gaius Grieves, a Scottish, sociopathic metahuman geneticist who was employed by Corto Maltese's dictatorship and the U.S. government for the secretive "Project Starfish".

Over the course of 30 years, he studied and experimented on the alien Starro using enemies of the Corto Maltesean government within the Nazi-era research facility Jötunheim.

[25][26] After an anti-American dictatorship takes over the Corto Maltesean government and kills his scientific staff with the intention of weaponizing Starro in the present, Grieves sides with them to save himself, claiming that only he can control the creature.

However, he is captured by the Suicide Squad, whom Amanda Waller sent to destroy Project Starfish and bury its U.S. ties, and forced to help them infiltrate Jötunheim until they accidentally release Starro, who kills Grieves in retaliation for experimenting on it.