Cable and Deadpool

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Cable & Deadpool was a Marvel Comics series that launched in 2004 and ran for 50 issues. The whole point of the series was the Odd Friendship between Cable and Deadpool that began after the first six issues, where they were somewhere between fighting and helping each other due to their indivual missions confilcting/collaborating during that arc. The series had been noted for its buddy movie overtones, the high-level of Genre Savvy possessed by all characters, and how it tied into major Marvel events (House of M, Civil War, and referencing One More Day) without the characters being derailed at all for the plot.

Please only list examples suited to the series itself here. Cable and Deadpool both have their own pages.

Tropes used in Cable and Deadpool include:
  • The Ace: Shan Kuei a.k.a. The Cat. How good is he? He doesn't accept mercenary jobs for money, he accepts them if the other people competing with him to complete the job would lead to good fights. Deadpool and Weasel both have fanboy moments over him and he beats up all three B.A.D. girls
  • Action Girl: The B.A.D. Girls (Black Mamba, Asp, and Diamondback) who end up in the first major arc of the second volume, Domino, from Rumekistan arc, and Outlaw and Sandi finally prove themselves as this in the final issue (they only hadn't before due to lack of screen-time).
  • All There in the Manual: While most of the basics about any characters were handled in the recap pages, some things like Outlaw being a mutant, Sandi being Taskmaster's girlfriend, and other more in-depth background facts were omitted.
    • To be fair, those facts weren't necessary to the story.
  • Anti-Hero: Cable is mostly a Type III (this being the series credited with saving him from his old type IV self who mostly just killed villains and was an archtype of Nineties Anti-Hero
  • Anti-Villain: Deadpool is a Type I.
  • Battle Royale With Cheese: How the series ended--Deadpool accidentally teleported dinosaurs to New York City, where they also became infected with symbiotes (somehow). This leads to every Hero, Anti-Hero, and mercenary int he city fighting them. Deadpool almost swoons when he realizes he's getting to fight with people like Ben Grimm, Spider-Man, and the Avengers.
  • Butt Monkey: Bob, agent of Hydra. You know you're in trouble when a psychotic mercenary declares you his pet and you seem okay with it. He's very popular with the fans, and is now something of an Ensemble Darkhorse.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Deadpool can do this all the time, other people are only allowed to on the recap page (except for T-Ray, who insists that it is further proof that he is the real Wade Wilson).
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Thanks to Cable fixing his mind in issue 16, Deadpool remembers a lot more of his life. He doesn't dwell on it never has, never will, but he is able to use it to prove that he's Wade Wilson, so T-Ray isn't. Word of God keeps flip-flopping as to whether it's right or not. Most fans still stick to this version, though.
  • Girl Friday: Outlaw and Sandi for Agent X. Lampshaded by Deadpool.
  • Heel Face Revolving Door: Even without depending on how you define "hero", Deadpool does this a lot. Mostly because he's a mercenary and does as he's paid to. He's more Face around Cable, but turned Heel against him twice.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: Cable and Deadpool. Despite frequently trying to kill/injure each other, Cable never telling Deadpool anything or trusting him much (admittedly justified at times), Deadpool doubled crossing Nate like crazy, and Nate having two female love interests, Cable and Deadpool become BLATANTLY entrenched in each other's lives and quite devoted to the relationship. They call any time they're not on good terms a "divorce" and Cable seems more at ease with Deadpool that either of his Love Interests (Domino and Irene Merryweather).
  • Ho Yay: So much that it needed its own page. It's mostly Played for Laughs.
  • Noodle Incident: The murder of Hajin Bin Barat. Subverted because everyone eventually realizes that only Deadpool could have killed him (especially since Deadpool demonstrated the only possible way for the crime to have happened with only 3 footprints in the room), but the reason Deadpool did so is unknown. He still has occasional memory black outs, after all. Deadpool thinks (and is worried) that it might have just been because he wanted to.
  • Odd Friendship: It's heavily lampshaded that Cable and Deadpool have no serious reason to be friends (outside of their mutal teleport system requring them both to use it for be temporarily fused together anyways). When Deadpool was first created way back when, he was Cable's enemy.
  • Shout-Out / Actor Allusion: In one issue Deadpool describes his face as looking like a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a shar-pei.
    • During his fight with Spider-Man, Deadpool talks about the Toby Maguire films and how they affected Spidey's public image. He also make quite a few Take That-ish references to One More Day and how Spidey doesn't remember it.
  • Speech Bubbles: Deadpool's are yellow, as are his thought boxes (which he can see).
    • When Cable uses telepathy, he gets blue font.
    • Agent X's are grey, and his thought boxes look like notebook paper.
  • Spotting the Thread: A memory version-when T-Ray showed Deadpool the moment when Deadpool "tried to kill him and then stole his identity" in an earlier series, and Deadpool was already in costume when he did the alleged act. When Cable fixed Deadpool's memories later, Deadpool remembered that he only got the costume after Weapon X, which he only joined because his cancer made him leave the army (which he signed up for as Wade Winston Wilson). This gets retconned in and out Depending on the Writer, though fans typically take it as proof that Deadpool is Wade and T-Ray is not. Deadpool himself admitted that it depends on who's writing him.
  • Take a Third Option: When fighting symbiote-dinosaurs (don't ask), Spider-Man tells Deadpool the best ways to beat them are high-powered sonics and fire. Deadpool shoots one in the brain.

Deadpool: Looks lobotomizing them works too!