Today's Venom Legends Phage review said the Life Foundation Symbiotes all got their names from old toys. Let's take a look.
Lasher makes sense, because his design was used directly for ToyBiz's 1996 Planet of the Symbiotes line:
A volunteer in a Life Foundation experiment, a man named Trevor willingly bonded with an alien symbiote to become Lasher! Created utilizing the captured symbiote Venom, Lasher could be considered his son - if Venom didn't hate it so much! Constantly in conflict with his Other, Lasher continually battles for control of the symbiote he is bonded to! With hopes that he can use his new power to help humanity, Lasher fights for a world that can never understand him!
Scream is similarly endowed:
The first human female symbiote, Scream is deceptively powerful. With the abilities and strength of the rest of her kind, Scream also possesses living tendril hair! Able to use her hair as a dangerous weapon, Scream can also successfully battle multiple opponents at once! Mentally deranged when she was originally bonded to her Other, Scream believes that all other symbiotes are evil and seeks to destroy them to save the world!
That same toyline also included a character named Riot who, despite looking nothing like anyone in the comics (thanks to his horns, four arms, and two large talons on each foot), still somehow had his name applied to the large grey symbiote:
The most alien-looking of all the symbiotes, Riot is a frightening creature to behold! Moving more like an insect than a man, Riot is never truly at rest, shifting from foot-to-foot even while standing! Although he is unrelenting in a fight, Riot shows little interest in the affairs of humanity. Rarely speaking, he prefers to roam the countryside and disappear for days at a time. And since the identity of his host is unknown, Riot is one symbiote whose mystery is yet to unravel.
For Phage, though, we have to go forward a year, to the 1997 Venom: Along Came a Spider line, which featured a crazy alien called the Xenophage that was the antagonist of the Venom: The Hunted miniseries:
From the furthest reaches of outer space, Phage came to Earth to satisfy his hunger by destroying the Venom symbiote. His every ability devoted to exterminating Venom, Phage is one of the most terrifying creatures ever to walk the planet. Not much is known about his mysterious, deadly alien except that it means business!
And as for Agony? Well, her name appears to have been invented whole-cloth: remember, none of Life Foundation symbiotes were given any codenames in their two appearances, so fans wanting to discuss them were left to come up with terms on their own, rather like Predator 2's Lost Tribe. It wasn't until 2012's Carnage, USA #2 that the fan-names got canonized.
Why couldn't those ancient message board nerds have come up with a group name, too, so we wouldn't have to call them "the Life Foundation Symbiotes"?
