Deadpool Characters Who Mean More Than You Realized

Deadpool has arrived in theaters, and true to what one would expect from anything Deadpool, it dropped tons of Easter eggs for eager comic nerds to find. Not only were references to Ryan Reynolds' troubled past as an actor in superhero films plentiful, but eagle-eyed viewers could also spot countless connections to the Marvel movie universe, even if certain properties are not officially connected, because Deadpool just doesn't care about that stuff. Deadpool also cameoed a ton of comic characters who have plenty of significance in the greater Marvel-verse, so check out these characters that you may be seeing again.

True to Deadpool's comic tales, 'Pool and Blind Al share a house together and have a truly bizarre relationship. While cinema's Deadpool is relatively kind to Al, comic Deadpool is her unrelenting antagonist, keeping her prisoner and antagonizing her with sharp objects and threats of torture. The two first met not in a laundromat, but when a younger Wade Wilson is paid to kill her, allowing her to escape instead—before capturing her once he becomes Deadpool. Despite being set free later on, Al remains with Deadpool, hoping that she can continue to guide him towards a heroic path. And for what it's worth, she's also Captain America's ex-girlfriend, so there's your MCU connection, nerds.

During the film's climactic battle, Deadpool kills all of Ajax's grunts except for one, who he recognizes as Bob. It seems like a quick throwaway joke, but the comics' Bob is a former agent of HYDRA, an organization familiar to anyone who's seen any Avengers film. While this movie's Bob history is unknown, it's clear that he's a family man, and not completely cut out for evildoing. In the comics, the inept Bob is caught up in Deadpool's ongoing adventures, often only succeeding by accident, and hindering Deadpool just as much as he helps, but adding to the morbid chaos that feeds Deadpool's character. If he doesn't appear in the sequel, all hope is lost.

Deadpool agrees that Negasonic Teenage Warhead is the coolest name in all of comics. She borrows her own name from a song by Monster Magnet, who themselves borrowed their name from a toy made by Wham-O. Warhead first appeared in 2001 as a minor student of Professor X, but her comic version doesn't have any of the awesome nuclear powers of her on-screen character. Instead, the relatively tame comic Warhead just has some pretty nasty dreams and is close friends with the occasionally-evil Emma Frost. At last check, she was killed by a mass mutant extermination, but she's been known to come back before.

As Wade Wilson is being wheeled to the Weapon X lab where deranged experimentation will eventually turn him into Deadpool, we catch a glimpse of a girl with giant, bony thorns sticking out of her back. '90s comic readers recognized the girl as Marrow, a mutant member of the Morlocks, and later, the official X-Men. Her main power is to grow extra bones through her skin with which she can poke and hit things, and surprisingly true to comic canon, Marrow also turns to the Weapon X program to get her powers under control, which explains her momentary, and completely appropriate, appearance in Deadpool.

Though never named specifically, Deadpool's red-eyed pal during his ongoing torture was named David Cunningham, also known as Worm. There are huge chunks of the film taken and rearranged from Deadpool's interactions with Worm, including the origins of Deadpool's name. Comic Worm has cybernetic implants which allow him to access and process large quantities of information, which he subsequently used to run a "dead pool" among the Weapon X experiments to calculate who would die first. Neither comic or movie Worm ever make it out of the facility, but in both worlds, he's Deadpool's closest friend for a while.

Comic nerds are already familiar with the significance of one of the mercenaries at Weasel's bar being named Liefeld, but let's spell it out anyhow. Rob Liefeld is the oft-maligned co-creator of Deadpool himself, and quite possibly one of the most enduring names in comics for the most unlikely reasons. That's actually Rob Liefeld himself sitting at the bar, and while the cameo comes as a surprise to no one, not even Liefeld himself knew that he'd be showing up on film when he stopped by to check out the set. Say what you will about the man, he expressed the deranged id of every kid who read comics in the '90s, and he can take a punch.

Consider this one totally unconfirmed, but the giant, bearded mercenary named Buck at Weasel's bar is quite possibly a reference to Marvel's Bullet, who is a giant, bearded mercenary named Buck Cashman. He's a relatively minor character, but he tangles with Daredevil, and at another point, fights the X-Force, which is another team that has a whole lot of Deadpool ties. No one has really nailed down if this association is official, but given the ways that Deadpool has dug into obscure Marvel history and pulled at strings from other Marvel properties, it's not at all unlikely.

Deadpool's after-credits scene left a lot of casual superhero fans perplexed, but the big reveal is that the next movie will feature a prominent role for an as-yet-uncast Cable, who is another Rob Liefeld character, and who plays a huge role in Deadpool's storyline. Cable tangles with the world of the X-Men in a dozen confusing ways, which is sure to excite both Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds equally. Cable is a grim guy with a cybernetic arm and a "technovirus" who travels through time trying to save mutants from all kinds of threats, but he's the old-man future-son of Cyclops and Jean Grey. These things alone make him a completely ridiculous character, which also makes him a perfect foil for the ever-sassy Deadpool.