Deadpool & Wolverine Pays Tribute To A Mission: Impossible Meme With Its Best Cameo

This post contains spoilers for "Deadpool & Wolverine."

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is one of those movies that leaves much to discuss, particularly for those who are hardcore Marvel fans. We're not just dealing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe here, but we're also running up against various heroes from the Fox era of Marvel, with this movie essentially serving as a big goodbye to that era. Not only that, but the film even plays with variant versions of certain "X-Men" characters from throughout the multiverse. One of the biggest, most impactful examples was bringing "Man of Steel" star Henry Cavill over from the DC Universe to have him play a version of Wolverine. But the movie also winds up paying a bit of an homage to one of Cavill's most infamous on-screen moments to date.

During Deadpool's trip through the multiverse to find a new version of Wolverine to replace the anchor being from his universe, he encounters Cavill's version of Wolverine, fulfilling something of a popular online fan casting choice. It's a funny moment and one that happens somewhat quickly in and amongst a bunch of other encounters with different Wolverines played by Hugh Jackman. So it's easy to miss the nuances of the scene in the moment. But when Cavill beats the tar out of Deadpool, he brings back a move audiences first saw — and marveled at — in 2018's "Mission: Impossible – Fallout." That's right! Cavill once again reloaded his arms for our collective amusement.

For those who may need a brief refresher, the moment in question takes place during the now-infamous bathroom fight in "Fallout" as both Cavill and Tom Cruise are getting beaten up by Liang Yang. Cavill at one point gets up, shakes off his beating, and does what can only be described as reloading his arms before getting down to unloading a can of whoop ass. The internet (rightfully) went nuts for it at the time. It became a much-used gif and was memeified after the fact. 

When Cavill's Wolverine loads up to show Deadpool what he's made of, he does a very similar move with his arms. Whether this was an intentional homage to "Fallout" remains a bit of a question mark but it's hard to imagine such a deliberate move was an accident. This is partly because Yang, interestingly enough, also served as the stunt coordinator on "Deadpool & Wolverine." So he was surely involved in the execution of this scene.

That particular moment from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise really took on a life of its own. For a guy who spent so much of his career playing Superman, this is still arguably his defining on-screen moment. As for how it came to be? Cavill explained in a 2022 interview why he had to reload his arms in "Fallout," and it had more to do with being worn out than it did with trying to look cool.

"It was a rather intense fight scene, and we'd been shooting it for about three weeks at that stage, which is a long time in comparison to things like 'The Witcher,' where you get a day. Everything starts to get quite sore after a while, because it's a lot of repetitive motion. And the connected tendons in my biceps were getting sore, so I had to warm them up before I threw punches."

Happy accident or not, it's now a part of some of the biggest movies of 2018 and 2024, respectively. There were so many rumored cameos and storylines that didn't come to pass in "Deadpool & Wolverine." Cavill's brief moment in the MCU was one of the ones that did come to fruition and director Shawn Levy certainly made the most of it. Whether or not it's the last time we see Cavill in the MCU — or the last time we see him reloading those big arms — remains to be seen.

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is in theaters now.