Deadpool has a metric ton of references, easter eggs, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them jokes. But which one almost couldn’t happen due to legal reasons?
Spoilers for Deadpool ahead. Obviously. Like, why are you even on this page if you haven’t seen the movie yet?
At the climax of the movie, Deadpool savagely kills most of the mercenaries working for Ajax, but at the last second, he stops from killing one of them that he worked with on an assignment (the one in Jacksonville, which apparently involved a TGI Friday’s somehow). That guy he saved was named Bob, who is an obvious reference to none other than Bob, Agent of Hydra, who is a recurring character in the Deadpool comics.
Since Hydra is owned by Marvel Studios, Fox couldn’t use the character in a very direct way for the reference. But since bob is a generic name and the characters are different enough that they aren’t explicitly the same, Fox was able to get away with it.
Did you catch the reference when you saw the movie? Did you think it was clever, and do you want the character to reappear in future movies despite the legally-gray situation? (I do.)