Deadpool's Biggest Easter Eggs

When a movie's main character makes a habit of breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, you know it'll have in-jokes and Easter eggs crammed into every orifice. Such is the case with Deadpool, the R-rated superhero action comedy set in 20th Century Fox's X-Men-focused corner of the Marvel Universe. Here's a list of some of the best Easter eggs that ol' Deadpool hid in his Hello Kitty backpack.

The movie opens up with hilarious title cards, setting the tone immediately. One gag comes in the form of a copy of People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 2010 issue fluttering across the screen. That issue, of course, gave Deadpool-star Ryan Reynolds top sexiness honors. Moments later in the opening credits sequence, we see a wallet flying through the air with a picture of Green Lantern popping out of it. As you probably know by now, Reynolds' career took a nasty hit in 2011 when his starring turn as the DC Comics character flopped at the box office, killing the franchise before it had the chance to take off.

Deadpool features at least two amazing references to Reynolds' past as the character. In one scene, Wade picks up an action figure of Deadpool from 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A little later, the villainous Ajax says he wants to sew Wade's mouth shut. These are some pretty awesome and brazen shout-outs to what most fans consider one of the worst movie adaptations of a comic book character. Deadpool is known for his wisecracks and non-stop talking. But in that Wolverine movie, his friggin' mouth is sealed shut.

When the bad guys in the Workshop bring Wade in to give him superpowers, he yells out that he doesn't want his superhero suit to be green or animated. That's yet another a dig at Green Lantern from 2011, which featured Reynolds wearing a CGI-superhero costume that...well, looked like garbage. By comparison, Deadpool's costume in this movie is fantastic, providing a healthy blend of actual wardrobe and CGI-enhanced facial expressions.

This is one of the few Easter eggs that isn't funny, but is definitely exciting for comic fans. For a brief moment in the workshop, the camera pans past a woman who seems to have a bunch of bones sticking out of her back. This has got to be an oblique reference to Marrow, a mutant whose power is that, uh, she has a bunch of bones sticking out of her back. Which she uses to stab people. So while Deadpool has a pretty tenuous connection to the X-Men franchise, seeing Marrow in this movie is still pretty cool.

When Colossus tries to drag Deadpool off to the X-Men's mansion, Wade offers up one of the best lines in the movie. Colossus says that they'll go see how the Professor feels about his freeway murder spree. At that, Deadpool says, "McAvoy or Stewart? These timelines are confusing!" Of course, that's a reference to the fact that X-Men: Days of Future Past gave the mutant franchise a soft reboot, allowing actor James McAvoy to take the role of Professor X from Patrick Stewart. The fact that Deadpool pokes direct fun at 20th Century Fox's crazy continuity shenanigans is yet another reason he's our hero.

When Ajax and Angel Dust head to the bar to track down Wade, they run into his buddy Weasel, who makes fun of their outfits and asks if they're headed to watch Blade II. While that's a solid burn in and of itself, the Blade franchise is actually another Marvel-based property, and yet another example of Deadpool breaking the fourth wall. Even better: Ryan Reynolds had a starring role in Blade Trinity as Marvel Comics character Hannibal King. Ryan Reynolds must really like comic books, you guys.

It wouldn't be a Marvel movie without a cameo from Stan Lee, the comic book writing legend who's credited with co-creating the Marvel universe as we know it. He hams it up as the DJ in the strip club where Deadpool and Weasel go to find Vanessa. While Stan Lee's connection to the Deadpool character is about as thin as it gets, his connection to strippers is actually worth mentioning. In 2003, he created a pretty lousy animated show called Stripperella starring Pamela Anderson, which aired on Spike TV for one year before getting axed.

Shortly before Deadpool opened in theaters, one of the film's screenwriters, Rhett Reese, revealed in an interview that the filmmakers had 48 hours to cut over $7 million from its budget before 20th Century Fox would give it the greenlight. Fast forward to the scene in the movie where Deadpool heads to the X-Men mansion to get the help of Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead to rescue Vanessa. There, he mentions how it's strange that he only ever sees the two of them...almost as if there wasn't enough budget to get any more X-Men characters to appear...

While he's cutting up Ajax's goons before the final showdown, Deadpool runs into his old buddy Bob from his special forces days. Fans of the character know that, for a while, a Hydra flunkie named Bob joined Deadpool on lots of his comic book adventures. While Fox can't refer to Hydra (since the rights to those characters live with Marvel Studios), the character's appearance is still a nice nod to true comic diehards.

There are so many references to Wolverine in this movie, probably because of the aforementioned X-Men Origins connection. We've got Deadpool telling the audience that the movie got made because he provided "oral relief" to someone whose name rhymes with "Pulverine." Later, in Deadpool's duffel bag of guns, there's a copy of the People magazine issue from 2008 that declared Hugh Jackman as the sexiest man alive. Then, there's the bit at the end of the movie where Vanessa pulls off Deadpool's mask...under which she finds a magazine cut-out of Hugh Jackman's face stapled to Wade's.

Towards the end of the credits, the movie offers a "special thanks (with tongue)" to Rob Liefeld (pictured) and Fabien Nicieza, the original creators of the Deadpool character. Considering how Liefeld and Nicieza's creation has taken over the pop culture world, they're probably more than happy to accept that extra special thanks, tongue and all.

Rights issues may forever keep them apart on the big screen, but in the comics, Deadpool and Spider-Man have a long history together. The duo's relationship is referenced obliquely on a couple of occasions in Deadpool: at one point, he jokes that he looks like he was bitten by a radioactive shar-pei (also a nod to a line from an old Deadpool comic), and at the end of the movie, he bids the audience adieu by signing off as "your friendly neighborhood Pool guy."

Negasonic Teenage Warhead starts off wearing what look like basic black street clothes, but once the action heats up, so does she—and after burning off that top layer, she reveals her superhero costume. The black-and-yellow getup seems like a nod to the fact that the movie version of the character actually has powers held by Cannonball, a member of Marvel's New Mutants team, and could hint at an eventual New Mutants movie.

Comics readers know Deadpool has a passionate love of chimichangas, and the Deadpool movie wouldn't have been complete without a nod to the merc with a mouth's favorite food. Sure enough, the big moment arrives right before the climactic battle, which he kicks off by announcing it's time to make the [expletive] chimichangas.

Deadpool's main bad guy, Ajax, keeps his headquarters on a massive ship that looks kind of like the helicarrier seen in The Avengers. It isn't exactly the same, of course, but if you're looking for similarities, they aren't hard to spot—and nudging the main Marvel Cinematic Universe like this is vintage Deadpool.

Sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that in one scene, Wade Wilson is wearing a tank top with a picture of Bea Arthur on it—which, as comics fans know, is a nod to the fact that Deadpool considers the deceased Golden Girls star one of the sexiest women in the history of showbiz. Reynolds personally reached out to Arthur's sons to ask permission for the gag.