Major spoilers for Deadpool 2 below.
As anyone who reads superhero comics can tell you, cameos are a core component of the Deadpool franchise. The character is a proven sales-juicer, so he’ll often pop into other people’s books in order to give them an anarchic kick, and his own titles often play host to an array of Marvel heroes and villains. Though the cinematic version of DP has yet to appear in someone else’s movie, Deadpool 2 keeps the guest-star tradition alive on the silver screen by featuring not one, not two, but three brief roles for famous people. They’re all extremely easy to miss. Did you catch all of ’em? If not, here’s a rundown.
Even the most obvious cameo only lasts a few milliseconds. Midway through the movie, DP recruits combatants for his new super-team, X-Force. One of them is billed as the Vanisher, an invisible evil-fighter. Laughs are wrung from the fact that Deadpool and his buddy Weasel can’t totally tell whether or not Vanisher is in the audition room, but sign him up anyway. Then, when X-Force is deployed on their first mission, poor Vanisher runs into a high-voltage electrical wire and gets fried. For an instant, you can see his face while he’s being electrocuted, and it is the face of none other than … Brad Pitt.
While Vulture was confirming with screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick that Pitt was, indeed, the one playing the Vanisher, the pair volunteered information about another cameo, one totally lost on this reporter during his viewing of the film. “You’ll have to put ‘spoiler alert’ on this,†said Wernick, “but that was Matt Damon as the redneck in the Cable introduction scene.†What? Yes, folks, it’s true — there’s a sequence early on that features history-traversing warrior Cable (Josh Brolin) arriving in our native time period and briefly accosting two rural gentlemen who are having a conversation about, er, bathroom personal-cleaning techniques. One of them is Minnie Driver’s ex-boyfriend. When Vulture expressed mild disbelief at this fact — he’s so heavily made-up that he’s virtually unrecognizable — Reese replied, “Nobody’s figured it out. Literally nobody’s figured it out. You’re not the only one. Not a single person has spotted him.†But now you can!
Speaking of being unrecognizable: The third cameo isn’t even a visual one; it exists purely in the realm of audio. Throughout the film, DP is trying to protect a young mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison), who prefers to go by the moniker “Firefist.†The two of them get thrown in a metahuman jail at one point, and later are put on a prison convoy truck. During an ensuing chase / fight sequence, Russell becomes acquainted with another mutant, the massive Juggernaut. A gravel-voiced bruiser, he appears a few times before the film’s conclusion, at which point the credits roll and merely list Juggie as having been played by “Himself.†When questioned by Vulture as to the character’s true vocal identity, Reese and Wernick were surprisingly up-front. “It’s Ryan Reynolds,†Reese says. “They modulated his voice a little bit lower.â€
Okay, so maybe that only half-counts as a cameo, given that Reynolds is also, y’know, the star of the movie. But we’ll still count it. Maybe Vinnie Jones will get a pity-cameo next time around.