10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The '90s X-Men Cartoon
4. Most Of The Cameos Were Put In Against The Studio's Wishes Or Knowledge
Okay, X-Men's a comic book. If you're adapting the story for a cartoon, you need to have a little fan-service. A cameo here and there. Maybe a reference to other superheroes like Iron Man and Captain America.
However, it's not that simple. If you want a certain character to appear, you have to double-check with the studio head. Unless the character is going to be used for a main story, the studio is usually going to reject a character because they don't want to pay a licensing fee for a throwaway cameo.
The producers understood the studio's wishes... and completely ignored them. The show's creators shoved in as many cameos as possible without the studio's knowledge. When a scene cut to New York, Spider-Man can clearly be seen shooting a web. But in the script, Spider-Man was marked down with a generic name like "Web Mutant."
The producers, writers, and animators did this all the time right under the executives nose. Doctor Strange was labelled in the script as "A Magician." The Super-Adaptoid was "A Robot." Thunderbird was "Mutant #4." When Deadpool appeared for a few seconds, the executives assumed he was just a random character, oblivious that he was taken directly from the comics.