7 Things Marvel Fans Didn’t Know About Deadpool

There’s little doubt that Deadpool is one of Marvel’s biggest names. The Merc With a Mouth has done everything from paint the silver screen red to shatter a twenty-year-long hiatus on crossovers between Marvel and DC. Deadpool is one of those loud, raucous characters that demands to be put in the spotlight, and once he is, it’s impossible to get him out of your head. His twisted sense of humor, bloody violence, and tortured soul endeared countless fans to him, and make him the perfect type of character to dig into for wild and entertaining facts. Everything Deadpool does is meme-worthy, or at least TikTok-with-a-robot-voice-over-worthy, it would seem.

Deadpool is certainly rife with insane facts that grab your attention. Like how he’s immortal because Thanos cursed him so he could never be with Death, who is in love with him. However, the Merc With a Mouth has a whole lot more strange things going on than just the surface-level viral facts, and today we’re going to look at seven things that Marvel fans might not know about Deadpool. We’ll start with the basic and close in on the truly obscure as we go. Without further ado, let’s get started.

7) He Once Fused With Madcap

Madcap was a villain who, in many ways, was similar to Deadpool. He possessed a healing factor nearly as strong as Wade’s, only it also prevented him from feeling any pain, alongside mind control. Once, while the two psychotic men were in a fight, they were both disintegrated by Thor’s lightning. Their healing factors brought them both back, but since Deadpool’s was stronger and their ashes were mixed together, only his body regenerated. Madcap was left trapped in Deadpool’s mind, an experience which left him leagues insane than before. The two were eventually separated, but Madcap served as one of Deadpool’s special text boxes for the duration, which was a great visual gag. 

6) Once (Illegally) Held a Comic Book Cover Record

Given that he regularly breaks the fourth wall and boomed in popularity, it’s only natural that Deadpool references his fellow superheroes a lot. He’s teamed up with practically everyone, as comedy-based characters do like nobody else. That presence in the superhero community definitely rewarded him in 2014, when he set a Guinness World Record in Deadpool (2012) #27 for the comic book with the most recognizable characters on it. The entire Marvel community showed up for Deadpool’s wedding, settling at a grand total of 232 established characters. This insane feat put Deadpool in the history and record-holding books. 

Unfortunately, this record was wrongfully given, since the real comic with the most at the time was G.I. Joe: America’s Elite #25, which featured 236 characters and was released in 2007. It has since been corrected and surpassed again by G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #300, which features 300 characters. Still, being awarded a Guissness World Record, only for it to be taken away because someone else had already done it, is the most Deadpool thing of all time.

5) He’s Obsessed With Bea Arthur 

Wade Wilson is known for his pop culture references and running gags. Everyone knows about his obsession with chimichangas and continuous references to Ryan Reynolds, but one of the most enduring of all of these bits is his obsession with the late actress Bea Arthur. This bit became so synonymous with Deadpool that Ryan Reynolds actually wore a Bea Arthur shirt in the first Deadpool movie. According to Joe Kelly, who wrote what is considered to be the foundational run for Deadpool, this was actually an in-joke from him and some friends that he decided to put in. This bit might have started as not making sense for the reader, but it’s Deadpoo, which means it makes absolutely perfect sense because of that.

4) His Name Came From His Experiments

Everyone knows that Deadpool underwent the experiments that gave him his powers because he was dying from cancer, but what many don’t know is that this experience also inspired his anti-heroic name. Sure, Deadpool was clearly taken to parody Deathstroke, but in-universe, the Weapons-X facility where Deadpool was being experimented on was called the deadpool. People who flunked out of the actual superhero training program were sent to the horrific Dead-Pool, named so because nobody ever lasted more than two weeks after joining. Wade Wilson was the first and last to survive longer than that, and made it his name to prove that he beat it.

3) Deadpool Can Grow Evil Clones

Deadpool’s healing factor is one of the strongest ones around. He loses limbs and his entire body as often as most people lose socks. That’s total socks lost by the entire planet, by the way. Regardless, Deadpool loses bits of himself all the time, but due to his healing factor, it’s not uncommon that these lost body parts grow into a whole new Deadpool on their own. The most famous example of this is Evil Deadpool, an even more insane and ruthless clone grown from old limbs that Wade discarded in the dumpster. 

This patchwork version of the character is just as unkillable as the original, but his limbs reattached themselves at wrong angles, leaving him somehow even more horribly disfigured than Wade. And much like the original, this Deadpool hated himself with a burning passion and set about ruining the original’s life at any cost. This shows that if this rule were consistent across all comics, we should have about ten thousand Deadpools running around right about now, each one worse than the last. We should all be grateful that this is a rare occurrence. 

2) His Name Isn’t Wade Wilson (Maybe)

Knowledge of Deadpool’s past is spotty at best. The Merc With a Mouth is a notoriously unreliable narrator, and his description of who he was and where he came from has often conflicted with the evidence at hand. This was never more true than when the villain T-Ray revealed that Deadpool wasn’t the real Wade Wilson; he was. Deadpool was an injured man named Jack, who was on the run from his employers after a job gone wrong, and stumbled upon the happy couple of Wade and Mercedes Wilson. Jack recovered while he stayed with the Wilsons, and decided to repay their kindness by attempting to murder Wade and steal his identity for a fresh start.

Unfortunately for the identity thief, Mercedes intervened and died, leading to Jack snapping from the guilt. He convinced himself that he really was Wade Wilson, and the rest of Deadpool’s typical origin played out from there. This change to Deadpool’s past is utterly insane and very contentious, considering that it was never confirmed whether T-Ray was correct or not. The villain was just as unhinged as Deadpool, so it’s truly unknowable whether he was being truthful, telling what he thought was the truth, or straight-up lying. We may never know for sure, and honestly, an uncertain origin actually perfectly fits with Deadpool’s utter lack of mental stability.

1) Blind Al Was Supposed to Give Deadpool Cancer (And Be Black Widow)

Blind Al is one of Deadpool’s best-known side characters, being his unwilling roommate and confidant. She’s a blind woman who was once involved with British Intelligence, and Deadpool took an assignment to assassinate her. Instead of killing her, he let her go, only to kidnap her and force her to hang around him years later. Their relationship was never any deeper than that, but Deadpool legend Joe Kelly revealed that it was supposed to be. As discussed in Comic Book Legends Revealed, Blind Al was originally planned to have been the one who gave Deadpool his cancer. 

The idea was ultimately scrapped by Marvel Editorial, but it did make an appearance in Deadpool: The End as one of Wade’s endings that was never supposed to happen. Alongside that, it was revealed that another scrapped storyline was going to reveal that Blind Al used to be a Black Widow. Blind Al doesn’t contribute much to the Deadpool mythos beyond being an interesting character he can bounce off of, but she easily could have been much, much more important. Whether it’d be better or not, the fact that this almost happened is still very interesting to look into and think about.

So there we have seven Deadpool facts. Hopefully, at least one of these was a surprise to even Deadpool’s most dedicated fans. Which of these facts was your favorite, and which obscure Deadpool fact would you want to see up on this list?

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