Fact Check: Is Deadpool a Disney princess? Viral speculation debunked

Deadpool is not a Disney princess. He is a character from Marvel Comics known for his humor and fourth-wall-breaking antics and is often the subject of jokes and memes, including the humorous suggestion that he might be a "Disney princess."

This joke stems from Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which included the rights to this anti-heroic character. Since Disney is famous for its iconic princesses, the joke plays on the contrast between Deadpool's irreverence and the typical characteristics of Disney princesses.

This humorous idea is more about playing with the notion of unlikely character combinations and the wide range of characters under the Disney umbrella following the acquisition.

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Why is Deadpool likened to be a Disney princess?

The meme about Deadpool being a Disney princess began two years before Disney acquired the character's rights after the acquisition from 20th Century Fox. In 2017, Butch Hartman, who created properties like Danny Phantom and The Fairly Oddparents, was dabbling on YouTube. During this time, he uploaded a video titled "Deadpool invades Disney."

This video was borne of the recurrent meme in the community regarding the character's tendency to break the fourth wall and interact with other franchises and universes. In a similar vein, Hartman's video edited the Marvel superhero into popular Disney properties, replacing characters like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast and Elsa from Frozen with the Marvel anti-hero.

However, Hartman was not the only one who had made use of the character's fourth-wall-breaking potential. Another website called IsitCanon used a similar trope to depict the anti-hero from Marvel enacting the roles of Snow White, Belle, and many other Disney princesses. Around the same time, a video called Deadpool The Musical 2 placed the character in Disney's musical settings.

In 2017, the Ryan Reynolds-starrer brought the wisecracking character to the big screen, ensuring that a greater audience beyond comic book fans could indulge in his whacky adventures and create more memes. The greatest and most enduring example of the meme comes in the form of the Wreck-it-Ralph scene, which has been making the rounds on the Internet for a long time.

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The famous scene from Wreck-It Ralph photoshops Deadpool as a Disney princess

The Disney Princess meme from Wreck-It Ralph was an intentional parody by the creators, where Disney self-reflexively looked at the cliched and overused tropes with the iconic princesses. In it, a group of them, including Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, and the other princesses, were trying to figure out whether the character Penelope was a princess.

To do so, they have been asking questions about whether the character had been poisoned or enslaved, had magical powers, and acted as a damsel in distress whose "problems got solved because a big, strong man showed up." Since then, people on the Internet have been photoshopping a host of characters from different properties in Penelope's place.

After Disney's acquisition of Fox, the mutant had essentially become a Disney character. All the aforementioned questions were applicable to the Marvel anti-hero, at least through the means of parody and satire, thereby ironically cementing him as a Disney princess in the meme-making corner of the Internet.

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Fans can watch the character's shenanigans on the big screen later this year with the release of Deadpool 3, where he is supposedly set to encounter the Wolverine.