"Salvation Run", by Bill Willingham, Lilah Sturges and Sean Chen, is the story of various supervillains who have been captured and deported via Boom Tube technology to another planet. Regarding "Countdown", Newsarama asked writer Willingham "Just to try and point out an example of this in action, would it be safe to say that Pied Piper and Trickster would have found themselves on this world had they not escaped capture in "Countdown"?", to which the response was "That's a fairly safe guess." The Suicide Squad, behind the attempted captures of Piper and Trickster were also shown to have captured other Rogues in "All-Flash" #1 who are pictured on the cover for issue #1. In "Countdown", after escaping Suicide Squad member Deadshot, Piper and Trickster later evade capture from four other members in Gotham City. Among those captured in the limited series include Lex Luthor, Scandal Savage, and the Joker, and the title refers to the planned escape from the planet as led by Luthor.