From Thanos’ chair to that inevitable Stan Lee nod, we break down all of Deadpool 3’s nerd nods

Every Marvel fan knows that most MCU movies are chock-full of Easter eggs, be it a nod to the comics, the previous movies, or wider pop culture – and Deadpool and Wolverine is no different. It might have more Easter eggs than most, even, given the titular character’s self-awareness and penchant for fourth wall breaking.

The meta moments come thick and fast in the new superhero flick, which you can read our review of here, and you’re likely to have missed a bunch of gags and references while you were trying to wrap your head around all the multiversal mayhem. Fear not, though, as we’ve put our heads together and rounded up all that we caught.

From a deep-cut diner reference to that inevitable Stan Lee “cameo”, we dive into all the Deadpool and Wolverine Easter eggs below. Be warned, though, this article contains major spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine so if you’ve yet to watch the movie, and don’t want to know anything that happens, best turn back now!

Still here? Well then, wipe that chimichanga grime off your fingers, and get scrolling…

Gossip Girl gag

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

In the movie’s opening sequence, Deadpool digs up a very decomposed Logan, before being accosted by a bunch of pruning stick-wielding Minutemen from the Time Variance Authority.

The agents ask him to put down his weapons and surrender himself but, obviously, Deadpool isn’t too keen on that idea. To stall, he tells the officers that, while he’s going to attempt to fight his way out of this, he promises to do so without using his weapons – then gives Logan’s adamantium skeleton a quick smirk.

“There are 206 bones in the human body, 207 if I’m watching Gossip Girl,” he says to the camera right before he starts beating the officers up with the corpse, which we can only assume is a… cheeky joke about how Blake Lively, Reynolds’ real-life wife, was in that show. And no, we won’t be elaborating on this one any further than that…

‘I Like Me’ mug

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
This one is pretty random, but an ‘I Like Me’ mug popping up multiple times in the movie seems worth mentioning. The drinking device is first seen propped up on a bunch of rocks, as Deadpool excavates Logan’s grave in North Dakota, then again as part of a flashback that takes place on the Sacred Timeline, at Avengers HQ in March 2018, where Wade is being interviewed by Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan about a potential position on the team.

It’s seen one more time when Deadpool calls out a TVA agent for making googly eyes at him at the Time Variance Authority office. Using a TemPad to transport himself to another timeline, Deadpool pinches the mug from the agent’s hands just as he passes through the portal, which is seemingly how he ends up with it at the site of Logan’s burial.

Earth-10005

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
We’ve known for a while that the Sacred Timeline and all of the Avengers’ adventures take place on (or around) Earth-616. Deadpool and Wolverine, however, confirms that Wade’s world is on Earth-10005.

Using Cable’s Time Travel device, he travels to Earth-616 to interview for the Avengers job. Most of the film, though, takes place in the untethered Void and Earth-10005.

Deadpool’s Adamantium katanas

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Before he figures out that Paradox is planning to erase his universe in 72 hours’ time, Wade gets kitted out with a new Deadpool suit, courtesy of the TVA’s… tailor?

He doesn’t just get a new outfit, though, he gets new weapons, too, including a pair of Adamantium katanas. You know, the metal that Wolverine’s skeleton and claws are made out of? Pretty swish!

Logan (2017)

(Image credit: Marvel)
Deadpool and Wolverine is set in early 2024. Though it was released in 2017, the events of James Mangold’s acclaimed X-Men movie Logan take place in 2029, so it’s a bit bizarre that they’re referenced so heavily in the threequel. They’re kind of the catalyst for everything that happens in Deadpool 3, in fact, with Wade setting out to save his universe after Logan, its ‘anchor being’, died and it started to fade away.

Towards the beginning of the movie, Paradox tells Wade of Logan’s “epic” sacrifice in saving X-23, before showing him footage of the Wolverine’s final moments, which is, of course, a clip from Mangold’s outing. “So this is what it feels like,” an injured Logan whispers – a line so powerful that a teary-eyed Paradox mouths along to it as the other TVA agents look at the screen in wonder.

(While they most certainly take place in the same universe, jury’s still out on whether Logan and Deadpool and Wolverine take place on the same timeline, which could explain the continuity issues stated above).

Wolverine variants

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
In his attempt to find another Wolverine to replace Logan as Earth-10005’s ‘anchor being’, Deadpool meets a whole line-up of clawed mutants, who were inspired by fan-favorite comic versions of the character, from Patch and Weapon X to Old Man Logan.

Check out our full breakdown of every Wolverine variant in the sequence here.

Thor’s classic helmet, Secret Wars, the Avengers’ Helicarrier, and the 20th Century Fox sign

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Thor’s comic-accurate, silver winged helmet can be seen half buried in the dusty dunes of The Void, along with the Helicarrier from The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, a Secret Wars comic, and the 20th Century Fox sign.

Mad Max

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
X-Men, MCU references, and F-bombs are all things we expected to see in Deadpool and Wolverine. We didn’t expect, however, to see visuals that look like they were lifted straight out of the Mad Max franchise… or Deadpool to reference that fact.

Almost immediately after the titular heroes find themselves in The Void, Deadpool remarks that the place looks awfully Mad Max-esque but cuts himself short, suggesting it’d “be IP infringement” if he carried on. That doesn’t stop him later, though, when Wolverine beheads his brother Sabretooth, and Deadpool picks it up and jokingly addresses Sabretooth’s gang as if they were apocalyptic road warriors, and his pal had just killed their leader… Furiosa.

Alioth

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Deadpool and Wolverine features a whole bunch of Loki-related stuff, from the TVA to The Void, which actually winds up being one of the movie’s primary settings. In the film, it’s established that Cassandra Nova rules over the wasteland, where its wanderers typically become one of two things: one of her minions or… food for Alioth.

The trans-temporal entity – or smoke monster, if you’re so inclined – that guarded the Citadel at the End of Time was first seen in Loki season 1, when Loki and Sylvie set out to confront He Who Remains.

The Greatest Showman and Grease

As you can imagine, Deadpool and Wolverine squabble a lot in the movie and on occasion, those bickering sessions turn into bloodsoaked brawls. One of their most violent physical fights takes place in Nicepool’s Honda Odyssey and it starts with them slamming each other’s heads into the car’s dashboard, prompting it to flip through radio stations.

The aurally gifted among us will catch a super short snippet of ‘The Greatest Show’ – a song partly performed by Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman at one point, before the music system gets stuck on Grease’s ‘You’re the One That I Want’.

Joe’s Diner

(Image credit: Marvel Comics)
During their trek across The Void’s barren landscape, Deadpool and Wolverine come across a run-down diner and pop in for a bite to eat. On its windows and inside, the establishment is branded ‘Joe’s Diner’, which could well be a deep-cut reference to the place in which Kingpin crony Janus Janeesh met with Fancy Dan and Man Mountain Marko in ‘Young Avengers Vol. 2 #1’.

In the comics, the diner went on to appear in ‘Young Avengers Vol. 2 #2’ and ‘Civil War 2: Kingpin Vol 11’.

RIP Magneto, Punisher, and Daredevil

(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)
After Deadpool and Wolverine stumble across Elektra, Blade, Gambit, and X-23 in The Void, the former tries to convince them all to team-up with him and attack Cassandra’s base, with the hope of forcing Xavier’s evil twin into sending them back to their respective timelines.

The ragtag team are reluctant at first, however, noting that no one who’s stepped foot in Cassandra’s base has ever made it out alive. Some of her most notable victims? Punisher, Daredevil, and Magneto.

In a predictably meta gag, Deadpool reacts with, “Oh no, Daredevil?!”, to which a nonchalant Elektra says “it’s fine”. Once upon a time, Ben Affleck, Garner’s ex-husband, once played The Man Without Fear…

Later, Blade uses Punisher’s bazooka rocket launcher to blast Cassandra’s base.

Ant-Man’s suit… and corpse?

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Speaking of Cassandra’s base, it’s made out of Giant Ant-Man’s suit. Her office, so to speak, is located inside the enormous skull inside the suit. We’d imagine it’s not Scott Lang’s, given the multiversal nature of the plot and how many variants feature, but either way, it’s dark…

Thanos’ chair

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Just before she wiggles her way into Wolverine’s mind, Cassandra gets up from a hard-angled chair, covered by a blanket of sorts, inside Ant-Man’s giant helmet. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s none other than Thanos’ – though we’d forgive you if you didn’t recognize it, as it’s had its imposing backboard broken off.

Charles Xavier’s wheelchair

Turns out, Cassandra likes pinching people’s seats, as there’s another scene that sees her using Charles Xavier’s wheelchair. The bald baddie explains that lots of versions of Professor X pass through The Void, and each one so far has deeply disappointed her when it’s revealed that they didn’t come looking for her.

While we don’t get a great look at it, its upright, metallic design looks to resemble the one from X-Men: Days of Future Past the most.

Infinity Stone-encrusted sling ring

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
When Ryan Reynolds shared an image of it on his Instagram story, Marvel fans rushed to the internet earlier in the week to speculate as to who the Infinity Stone-encrusted sling ring would belong to in the movie. Most settled on it being Cassandra Nova’s, though, as you might expect, she wasn’t its original owner.

As she pulls it out of her pocket, she explains to Deadpool and Wolverine that “an amateur magician” passed through The Void fairly recently and that she killed him for his powerful jewelry.

There are a bunch of characters who use sling rings in the MCU, from Benedict Wong’s Wong to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange. Most of those who have mastered the mystic arts have one, so it’s hard to tell at this stage whose it was exactly.

Deadpool variants

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
In Deadpool and Wolverine’s third act, the unlikely duo faces off against a bunch of Deadpool variants. Like the Wolverines mentioned above, most of them come from the source material, from Lady Deadpool and King Deadpool to Roninpool and Deadpool 2099.

One version, however, dubbed Nicepool, seems to be a creation of the movie’s writers Shawn Levy, Zeb Wells, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds himself. He’s different from the others, you see, in that he’s kind, never wears a mask, and he doesn’t regenerate. Something Wade learns the hard way after he uses him as a shield…

Liefeld’s Just Feet

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld gets a toe-tally hilarious shoutout in the aforementioned scene. The Deadpool Corps, as they’re more accurately known, blast our heroes into a storefront during the confrontation: a podiatry place called “Liefeld’s”. It’s undoubtedly a joke about how illustrator Liefeld would frequently botch his characters’ feet in his Marvel Comics.

This isn’t the first time the franchise has taken aim at Liefeld’s terrible tootsies, either. In Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson teases Domino’s luck-based superpower by asking aloud, “What coked-out, glass pipe-sucking freakshow comic book artist came up with that little chestnut?! Probably a guy who can’t draw feet!”

“Ryan calls me and says, ‘Rob, we have this joke, I wanna run it by you. Please share me your thoughts,'” Liefeld told Inverse back in May 2018 . “I said ‘Ryan, I absolutely love it.'”

The Wolverine cowl

(Image credit: Adam Kubert (Marvel Comics))
Seeing as he spends 99% of the movie in it, it would’ve been hard for Marvel to hide the fact that Hugh Jackman wears Wolverine’s classic yellow and blue suit. While it’s still been shown in some trailers and spotted on other promotional material, the character’s iconic eared cowl has been much less exposed in the marketing – and makes for an awesome moment when the Australian actor finally puts it on in the third act.

“It’s intimidating, isn’t it? It’s like Batman, if Batman could move his neck,” Deadpool jokes. So cool!

Stan Lee

(Image credit: Getty)
Now it wouldn’t be an MCU movie without a nod to Stan Lee now, would it? The late comic book writer “cameos” on an ad on the side of a bus, during the scene where Deadpool and Wolverine take on the Deadpool Corps. Admittedly, we didn’t catch just what the poster was advertising but given that it read “Stanless Steelers”, we’d take a guess at it being the marketing for some sort of metal wholesaler?

Shawarma

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Remember at the end of The Avengers, when Iron Man regains consciousness after flying a nuclear missile through a wormhole and plummeting back to Earth, and immediately asks the team whether they want to go get shawarma? Well, Deadpool riffs on that moment at the end of Deadpool and Wolverine, when he suggests to Logan that they go get the same grub after saving the day.

“You know the Avengers invented shawarma”, he jokes, as they chow down on their food.

Feige’s Famous Pizza

(Image credit: Jesse Grant / Stringer / Getty)
In the film’s final scene, Wade can be seen enjoying a casual get-together with his nearest and dearest, from Shatterstar and Colossus to Blind Al, Peter, and Vanessa. As the group chat and laugh away, the camera pans out, and the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed the recognizable name on the numerous pizza boxes lying around: ‘Feige’s Famous’. It is, of course, a nod to Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige.

Deadpool and Wolverine is in UK cinemas now, and releases in the US on July 26. For more, check out our breakdown of the Marvel timeline or our roundup of everything Marvel Phase 5.