Deadpool in Marvel Tokon is packed with fighting game references spanning nearly 30 years

Marvel Tokon is out, and players are already cataloguing what might be the most reference-dense move list in the game — Deadpool's. Arc System Works has loaded the character with callbacks to fighting game history going back decades, and the community is still finding new ones.

X user Whisp90 put together a video compilation of the references spotted in trailers and the full release, highlighting nods to Marvel vs Capcom 3, Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 4, Street Fighter 6, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, and plenty more. Deadpool's win animation is a direct callback to the classic Street Fighter 2 victory screen. One of his supers is built around the structure of Skullomania's Skullo Dream super from Street Fighter EX2 Plus — a deep cut that will mean everything to a very specific kind of fighting game obsessive and nothing at all to everyone else. There are even references to Street Fighter The Movie: The Game, which tells you exactly how far down the rabbit hole Arc System Works was willing to go.

Deadpool has always been a natural fit for this kind of meta-referential treatment. The character's fourth-wall-breaking personality has been a playground for game developers since his earliest appearances, and Arc System Works — the studio behind Guilty Gear and BlazBlue — knows fighting game history better than almost anyone. Packing Deadpool's move list with nearly 30 years of genre callbacks is both a flex and a love letter to the community.

The Whisp90 compilation is already circulating widely, and players are flagging references that didn't make the cut. Expect the list to keep growing as more people dig into the full roster.