The Boys season 3’s Russian laboratory includes a strange hamster known as Jamie. This comic book Easter egg has a much more disgusting backstory…

Here’s where that cute little hamster in The Boys season 3 comes from, and why it’s a smellier Easter egg than you might think. Coming to the business end of their mission to locate whatever weapon killed Soldier Boy, Billy Butcher and his trusty Boys find themselves in a secret Russian laboratory.

This facility has spent decades conducting experiments on the all-American legacy hero following his 1980s capture in Nicaragua, and although The Boys doesn’t reveal precisely what the Russians were trying to achieve, viewers can safely assume it relates to Compound-V.

But Soldier Boy isn’t the only experiment subject in The Boys season 3’s lab scene. Exploring the area, Frenchie spots a cage containing a light brown, furry hamster, and he calls over MM who translates the critter’s Russian name tag as “Jamie.” Tapping on the glass provokes Jamie into a frenzy, and as the hamster smashes wildly into its confines, Frenchie and MM realize this cute little pet has been imbued with Compound-V. Fortunately, he’s on the Boys’ side, as when a Russian soldier has Frenchie cornered, a floating Jamie rides to the rescue with vengeance in his tiny little heart.

The Boys’ hairy new recruit brings the franchise’s trademark gross-out humor to an otherwise serious action scene. The image of Jamie violently ramming himself into nearby soldiers in a hail of blood is as gory as it is raucously ridiculous. Far from a total newcomer, however, wee little Jamie has history in Garth Ennis’ original The Boys comic books – and you’ll not be surprised to learn it’s even grosser than the “death by angry hamster” moment in The Boys season 3. Comic Hughie’s first mission devolves into a massive fight against Teenage Kix, ending when the Boys’ new rookie accidentally kills Blarney Cock. As his corpse lies on the street, a live hamster (not with powers, sadly) crawls out from the supe’s ass – a grim sexual kink Blarney Cock apparently liked to indulge in. Hughie feels sorry for the liberated animal and adopts him as a pet, naming it “Jamie.”

Hamster-related violence is one thing, but a rodent scurrying around a supe’s anal passage then innocently popping out once its owner dies is quite another. How many times did comic Hughie wash the little guy before the smell went away…? Compared to comic readers, The Boys season 3 audiences got away lightly with Jamie as a violent flying hamster. Then again, maybe the TV adaptation had its fill of small creatures clambering inside bodily orifices with Termite in the season premiere…

The Russian lab sequence of The Boys season 3’s “Glorious Five Year Plan” might seem an odd place to incorporate Jamie the hamster from Garth Ennis’ comic books, but slotting the Easter egg here actually makes perfect sense. Numerous parallels can be drawn between the laboratory battle and the comics’ Boys vs. Teenage Kix fight where Jamie debuted. Without spoilers, similarities include the Hughie fist shot, and the fact this is The Boys‘ first official team battle where protagonists are dosed with Compound-V. There might not be a Blarney Cock in sight, but at least Jamie managed to wriggle his way into The Boys eventually.