Deadpool 2 is finally here, and with it comes more Easter eggs than an industrial hatchery.
It's no surprise that Wade Wilson would keep the pop culture references coming fast and
furious, but Deadpool 2 also came with a pretty wide assortment of secrets that you'd have
to dig pretty far into your comic archives to find.
Gird your loins and prepare yourself for spoilers: like a stolen prison pen, we're going deep.
X-Stuff
Deadpool's connection to the X-Men movie universe isn't a secret… it's just a thing that the
serious X-Men films don't really acknowledge.
Deadpool himself is the world's biggest critic of Ryan Reynolds' performance in X-Men Origins:
Wolverine, which he makes explicitly obvious during the movie's mid-credits scene by pumping
a dozen bullets into the other, original Deadpool.
Deadpool 2 does everything it can to try to weasel itself into the core X-Men movie world.
Deadpool wears Professor Xavier's Cerebro helmet and says that it smells like the original
X-trilogy's professor Patrick Stewart.
He also zips around the X-Mansion in the Professor's iconic wheelchair, and most notably, Deadpool
briefly stands in front of a room filled with actual, real-life X-Men, including nu-Professor
X, James McAvoy.
It's the stuff X-Fan dreams are made of.
Essex stuff
Even though longtime X-Men foe Mr. Sinister, aka Nathaniel Essex, hasn't actually appeared
on the big screen yet, his presence in the X-Movie Universe looms large.
So far, he's only appeared in name.
By the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, his name is seen on a briefcase and is connected to
the Weapon X facility that created Wolverine.
Logan's Transigen corporation, which created Laura, aka X-23, has been confirmed to be
related to Essex Corp as well.
In Deadpool 2, Essex is the name of the school that tortures young mutants, including Russell,
out of using their natural powers.
The bizarro X Mansion seems to be pretty anti-mutant, so while their ideals don't really align with
the overall Essex ethos of mutant experimentation, the name remains a common thread throughout
all arms of the X-Universe.
Goonies never say die!
Before he was Thanos, or Cable, or anything else for that matter, Josh Brolin first appeared
on the big screen as Brand Walsh in The Goonies, a fact that Deadpool will not let him forget.
Deadpool mockingly calling him One-Eyed Willy isn't just a dig at his one peeper; One-Eyed
Willy was the pirate that the Goonies were searching for in their own iconic film.
Want to double down on the Goon-love?
After Deadpool is torn in two by Juggernaut and is recovering on the couch, he's wearing
the exact same shirt that Chunk did in The Goonies.
It's all done out of love, of course: Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin have a rare kinship.
Both starred in absolutely terrible DC movie flops, Green Lantern and Jonah Hex, respectively.
Callback attack
Deadpool 2's many commercials revealed a whole family-sized omelette's worth of Easter eggs,
but a few super clever ones were hidden in plain sight.
When an exhausted Deadpool attempts to take out a barrage of bullets with nothing but
his swords, that's actually a callback to when he did the exact same thing, with much
more unbelievable success, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
And yes, Deadpool finding a whole lot of cocaine and the cure for blindness stashed under some
floorboards in Al's apartment is an unexpected callback to the first Deadpool film…
"There's about 116 kilos of coca cola buried somewhere in the apartment, right next to
the cure for blindness .. good luck."
He wasn't kidding.
Cameo city
Notably absent from Deadpool 2's many crazy cameos was Marvel patriarch Stan Lee, who
only appeared as a mural on the side of a building, and Deadpool 2's teaser trailer.
"Wow, nice suit!"
"Zip it, Stan Lee!"
One might have also expected Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld to appear again after showing
up in the first film, but he's nowhere to be seen.
"Buck.
Liefeld."
Instead, he's called out in a much more creative way: as the creator of Domino, who Deadpool
proclaims to have a very stupid set of powers, and was probably created by a guy who can't
draw feet.
Comic art historians will note that Mr. Liefeld's grasp of the human anatomy is creative at
its best, hilarious at its worst, and more often than not, includes large clouds of smoke
usually focused somewhere below each character's knees.
"We have a minute and a half left I want to tighten those feet guys.
Okay"
"alright guys?"
Noted Deadpool writer Gerry Duggan also gets a shoutout: the parkway on which part of the
epic convoy battle sequence takes place is named after him.
And yes, your eyes were not deceiving you: that indeed was Brad Pitt - playing the ill-fated
Vanisher.
At one point scheduled to play Cable himself, Pitt's cameo appearance and immediate death
were added in post-production, but are nonetheless pretty unexpected.
Also unexpected is the surprise appearance of Alan Tudyk, a toilet-paper obsessed good-ole
boy, appearing alongside Matt Damon, buried under so many prosthetics that he's unrecognizable.
This, of course, is his second Marvel cameo over the past year.
X-Farce
The sudden gory departure of almost the entirety of the newly-formed X-Force is something of
a surprise… but it really shouldn't be.
Pretty much the exact same thing happens in X-Force #116 when a newly formed group of
mutants calling themselves X-Force are immediately, explosively dispatched, during their very
first appearance.
Among them is Zeitgeist, the same tattooed, acid-puking mutant that's welcomed into Deadpool's
X-Force.
That tattoo of 116 on his arm wasn't just an interstate, it's the issue where he died.
And we can't mention highly-specific numerical references without Deadpool's prisoner number:
24601.
"Now prisoner 24601…"
Most significantly, it's the number of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, a role played by
Hugh Jackman on the big screen.
Bad taste
Deadpool co-star TJ Miller has been embroiled in multiple controversies since December of
2016, including, but not limited to, calling in a fake a bomb threat on a train, assaulting
an Uber driver during a political argument, and allegedly committing violence and sexual
assault against a woman in 2001.
When the latter accusations surfaced after Miller's prominent role in Deadpool 2 was
already in production, the film's producers made the difficult and controversial decision
to keep the Emoji Movie star in the picture, but axe him from Deadpool 3.
Still, the film couldn't resist taking a jab at the situation.
During the news report about Firefists' explosive meltdown, the crawl at the bottom of the screen
mentions that Christopher Plummer had turned down a role in Deadpool 2.
Famously, Plummer reshot all of Kevin Spacey's scenes in All the Money in the World after
Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct.
It's not like anything in Deadpool 2 was in good taste anyhow.
"Noooo!"
Good taste
It's hard to tell exactly where Deadpool ends and Ryan Reynolds begins, and it's a line
that's blurred constantly: Deadpool signs a Wolverine cereal box with Reynolds' name,
and later shoots Reynolds through the head as he considers ever even thinking about appearing
in Green Lantern.
But despite all of the movie's leaps from different realities and tasteless jokes, one
throwaway line has more heart than the whole film combined.
When Wade Wilson considers the name Connor for his kid, it's not meaningless.
Prior to the original Deadpool coming out, Ryan Reynolds enjoyed a special screening
of the film with a Make-a-Wish kid named Connor McGrath.
While Connor passed in 2016, Reynolds made sure that his love of Deadpool and his legacy
lived on in Deadpool 2 in the most heartwarming and heartbreaking way possible.
Costume connection
While Deadpool is mostly known for his red-and-black duds, he's fought crime in a wide variety
of colors.
While seeking membership in the X-Men during Deadpool #16, he actually makes his own X-Men
uniform, with a giant, obvious X on the front.
Whoever designed the X-Men's trainee uniforms in Deadpool 2 had pretty much the same idea.
Deadpool, during his darker X-Force days, has also been seen sporting a black and grey
version of his familiar costume.
His charred costume near the end of the movie is a dead ringer for his X-Force comics counterpart.
It's no coincidence: this is when the real X-Force finally comes together.
Sorry, Shatterstar.
You suck.
O Canada
Because you just can't have Ryan Reynolds in the room without making a few jokes about
his home and native land up north, Deadpool 2 has a few quips about America's friendly
hat, Canada.
Much more subtle, however, is a reference, in name only, to Canada's number one crime-fighting
team, the never-mentioned Alpha Flight.
In this case, Alpha Flight is little more than the name of an airline or travel agency
posted as a taxi ad, but the sentiment is there.
And it's covered in maple syrup and hockey.
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