10 Insane Rules Movies Weren't Allowed To Break
9. No Direct References To The MCU - Deadpool
Though Deadpool is of course a Marvel character, it's only recently that he's been included under the Marvel Studios banner, following Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox.
But when the first Deadpool movie was released back in 2016, it was a Fox property entirely unrelated to the MCU, and so couldn't in any direct way interact with aspects of the franchise.
As a result, director Tim Miller had to be extremely careful with how he staged the film's finale between Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Ajax (Ed Skrein), which appears to take place on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier.
But because a Fox Marvel movie couldn't legally include assets or designs owned by Marvel Studios, during production concept artist Emmanuel Shiu was ordered to ensure the totally-not-a-helicarrier wasn't an exact replica of the MCU's own version. He said:
"[I] was asked to redesign the helicarrier so it looked as different as possible from the one in The Avengers... And it had to look like it had been taken apart in some places."
For his part, director Tim Miller offered up his own denial that it was intended to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, albeit a blatantly sarcastic one:
"No, it's clearly not the Helicarrier. I just want to say for the record, there's a lot of groups in the Marvel universe who use flying combat platforms. It's not just the Helicarrier. A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) has some. It could have been anything but a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Because that would be outside of the purview of the Fox/Marvel arrangement."
Now that Disney owns Fox, though, somebody should definitely ask Miller about this again.