Wolverine Publicity/Trope Namer

The Marvel Comics character Wolverine (who is of course the Trope Namer for Wolverine Publicity) is the worst offender, hands down. So he gets his own section. He's been so over-used that his more recent appearances are prone to parody and Lampshade Hanging. By the end of the 1990s, Wolverine had been paired up with practically every other Marvel hero in existence, all the way down to five-year-old Katie Power of Power Pack. Twice. Why? Well, beyond his general popularity, he has a number of traits that make him the perfect storm for this:

His long life-span means he can appear in all flash-back stories with his modern personality. He can appear in flash-forward stories for the same reason.
He has connections world-wide meaning he can easily drop into any setting: America? Japan? Canada? Germany? France? Russia? Hong Kong? Space? Yep.
He's both a Rated "M" for Manly Badass and a Woobie, depending on the story you want to tell.
It's almost impossible to write him out of character: Is he in helpful teammate good-guy mode? Or berserker evil loner animal mode? A blow to the head can make the difference.
He seems to know every hot babe in the Marvel Universe, making for an easy cover design.

A few examples:

The image on the trope page is from a month when Marvel published every single one of their comics with a Wolverine variant cover (it was the 30th anniversary of his first appearance so they did something special for him), even if they didn't actually take place in the Marvel Universe. This includes their adaptation of the Anita Blake Urban Fantasy books. For extra humor value, if you look closely, there's a note at the top-left corner of the page reading "Wolverine does not appear in this issue."
One of the earliest examples of Wolverine Publicity is Alpha Flight #13, released in 1984. On the cover of this issue we see a badass-looking Wolverine pointing his claws at some unseen menace, defending Heather Hudson from it, and saying: "Okay, sucker, the only way to get to the lady is through me!". Something like this does happen in the comic, but then we learn it was all just a nightmare by Heather (and even in the nightmare Wolverine only appears in a handful of panels), and the real Wolverine is not in this issue at all.
Marvel had already recognized how absurd it was getting by the late 1980s. Their humor/parody comic What The?! showed Wolverine just trying to have a quiet day of fishing and going insane because of all the other characters popping up to get him to guest-star.
A cover of the first "What The?!" featured Wolverine saying he had to appear on first cover was in his contract.
- And Wolverine was appalled when he discovered how the editors were going to squeeze even more out of him when he's introduced to Wolverina. Then came X-23...
In another What The?! story, various characters tried to increase their popularity by wearing eyepatches... which Wolverine sported at the time. Said story ends with Wolvie "cutting" their plans short.
In an issue of New X-Men, a character mentions that Wolverine is the only mutant who finds time to be on all three X-Men teams at once.
Lampshaded in New Avengers. After discovering that Elektra had at some point been replaced by a Skrull, they discuss who else might have been substituted. Wolverine himself pointed out that his ability to be on so many teams at once seemed ridiculous... unless he was trying to infiltrate as many as possible.
Lampshaded again on this She Hulk cover.

Wolverine: I'm an X-man and on TWO Avengers teams. Multitasking is my mutant power (Don't tell anyone).

Wolverine even shows up in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game, as one of the boss battles for Venom.
And from Runaways:

Iron Man: "How novel. A Wolverine appearance. Seriously, this is the third time I've run into you this week..."

In Deadpool, Wolverine's appearance in issue #27 was declared "his most gratuitous guest appearance ever!" right on the cover.
Also lampshaded in the Weapon X: First Class mini-series Deadpool gives a laundry list of Wolverine's powers ending with "the ability to appear in twenty books every month".
- This House of M parody cartoon takes a shot at it, too.

Cyclops: Since when are you in the Avengers anyway, Wolverine?
Wolverine: I was getting bored only being on three teams while having my own solo adventures. A guy's got to live a little.

- Also from the same flash artist, Cyclops assigning teams to deal with the latest return of the Dark Phoenix. Team A is sent, with Wolverine, to track down Phoenix. Team B, with Wolverine, ( "Uh..." ) is sent to defend from an inevitable attack by the Brotherhood of Evil, and Team C, with Wolverine, to have adventures in Europe, or something.

Wolverine: Now wait just a--!

- - Even funnier because it happened. In one issue, Cyclops had pretty much the whole team in his face complaining about their assignments. Wolverine was among them, saying "Look, I appreciate the confidence, but I can't be on every team!" In the end, Cyclops told them nobody was having their assignments changed.
  - He wasn't even on all three teams at once beyond the first story arcs. Once things settled, he pretty much only appeared in Astonishing, basically proving that he was only thrown on the other two teams to boost sales.
One X-Force cover actually has Wolverine baring his claws for the camera and say "I'm only doin' this to increase sales." Amazingly, this was revealed to be the first panel of the story, in which he legitimately was appearing in the issue.
Wolverine and Power Pack is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. One episode had the Power Pack (and Franklin Richards) accidentally travel back in time to the early 20th century and save a boy named James Howlett from kidnapping. A cynical reader might think they've been bilked out of their money, until The Reveal; James Howlett is Wolvie as a kid.
The Wolverine: First Class title is this taken to its logical extreme: The book is really about Kitty Pryde as a young X-Man, but because Logan is her mentor, he gets the title.
Wolverine #73 (July 2009) has a short story that covers a month or so in Wolverine's life that parodies/riffs on the idea of his many appearances in various Marvel titles.
Exiles is a comic where the members are drawn from different alternate universes. For one arc, the main characters are suddenly fired and a new team created, made up of Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine and... well, you get the idea. Why? Because an evil alternate Wolverine is causing trouble and everyone knows the only way to beat Wolverine is with two or more Wolverines. What's more, we discover there have been several teams of Wolverines before that, and the main villain is a Wolverine. You end up with two entire issues with every version of Wolverine imaginable; the main team is the Days of Future Past Wolverine, young James Howlett, Marvel Zombies Wolvie, Albert (a robot made in Wolvie's image) and Elsie Dee, and a fresh from Department H Wolvie.
And extending into animated adaptations, we have Wolverine and the X-Men.
- In fairness, this show was originally going to be simply a Wolverine solo series. The rest of the X-men were added later.
- And now there is going to be a comic called "Wolverine and The X-Men".
Wolverine even manages to pull this off in non-Marvel publications. Twisted ToyFare Theatre in particular enjoys pointing this out - one comic followed Wolverine through a day of his many crossovers. This included Wolvie plowing through a magazine stand, forcing his head through a copy of Wizard magazine, and a kid asking his mom to get the copy of Wizard with Wolverine on/through the cover.
- If you can't figure out for yourself, Wolverine has appeared on the cover of Wizard (the leading comics mag) more than any other character. In 2004, Wizard even released a supplement that was entirely about Wolverine, and proudly copped to the trend by displaying their favorite Wolvie covers - listing all of them would just take all day.
The Ultimate X-Men collection books have special covers depicting, in order, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Captain America, Wolverine...
Even his son Daken is following in his footsteps; he'll be a member of the Dark X-Men while still keeping his role as a Dark Avenger. That's only two teams, so he has some catching up to do.
Wolverine's popularity was parodied when he appeared in X-Force (with the team that would later become X-Statix). He does a TV spot saying he doesn't know what to think about the new X-Force but it's just a favor to his old pal Doop. However, when a super-donnybrook breaks out the villains deride Wolvie as "the housewife's choice", a mass-market approved badass not to be taken any more seriously than Mr. Clean or Toucan Sam.
He's on the cover of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (except for the Nintendo DS version; Nightcrawler is the only mutant to be found there). You fight him, he gives you all of two missions, he (involuntarily) becomes Venom-Wolverine much later so you fight him again and then he disappears from the game. Luke Cage does more in the game than he does.
- Yeah, well, if you take the evil path Mr. Luke Cage doesn't (voluntarily) get a Venom symbiote and comes after Spider-Man as freaking Venom-Wolverine in the epilogue now, does he?
- Oh, and said cover was voted by fans out of a choice of two. The other cover didn't feature Wolverine. Go figure.
New Avengers #35 is the perfect example of how Covers Always Lie.
- Well, not really; he may not have appeared in this issue, but the next one features a Venomised Wolverine quite prominently. For no reason at all, I might add.
And now Wolverine even appears in anime form!
- As a tie in to that, he also saves Tony Stark twice in the Iron Man anime.
- He's also in the Blade anime. And, for obvious reasons, the X-Men one. That's a year of constant Woverine anime-ness!
Lampshaded in a recent issue of the New Avengers, when Mockingbird ask him how he can be on the X-Men and two Avengers(regular Avengers and New Avengers) teams at the same time. He jokes that multitasking is his mutant power.
And don't forget the Marvel vs. Capcom series, where Wolverine is the only character to be in every single one of Capcom's games. He's even in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 twice (one with the adamantium claws and one with bone, since the metal had been removed from his skeleton at that time)
Due to his own prequel movie, he once used to hog every single ad spot in Quake Live during early May 2009.
- Also he is one of the only two characters (the other being Professor X) to be in all the five X-Men live action movies.
The Hulk Vs double feature was released in Scandinavia under the much catchier title, "Wolverine".
The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes might have retconned Wolverine into a member of the Howling Commandos. He fought alongside them in the episode "Meet Captain America (comics)", and later appeared with them before Cap during his stay in Niflheim. However, no one refers to Wolverine by his codename in either of those episodes, instead using his original surname, Howlett.
Spoofed in one cover of Great Comics That Never Happened, in which Wolverine converts to get his contractually-obligated spot on a Jewish superhero teamup.
There is a backup story that shows a few weeks in the life of Wolverine. Every day is a different team-up. Except for Saturday. Saturday, Logan Drinks.

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