Summary

• Deadpool's reputation as an airhead is misleading, as his seemingly foolish behavior is actually a tactic to trick opponents and gain the upper hand in conflicts.
• Deadpool's fluency in American Sign Language showcases his intelligence, as learning another language is a sign of intellectual prowess.
• Deadpool's ability to outmaneuver villains like Romulus and trick superheroes like Daredevil demonstrates his strategic planning skills and tactical genius.

Deadpool has a reputation for being a bit of an airhead. A skilled fighter, a nearly immortal mutate, and an antihero with a heart of gold to be sure… but an airhead. This idea of him comes from his overly joky manner and the fact that he can find humor even in decidedly serious issues like murder and mutilation (even if he’s the victim of either). Plus, Deadpool has been known to operate on ‘cartoon logic’ depending on the storyline, which automatically makes him less serious in the eyes of fans, which correlates to his aforementioned reputation as an airhead.

While Deadpool is guilty of everything that could make people think he’s not too bright - and, in fact, outwardly insane - this idea of him couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, Deadpool doesn’t take most aspects of life seriously, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. If anything, his airheadedness is a ploy to catch his opponents or targets off guard, tricking them into underestimating him, thereby granting him the upper hand in any given conflict. Though aside from tricking people with his false-stupidity, Deadpool is also a master tactician with a plethora of other skills that only further prove his wide spectrum of intelligence. In fact, there are 10 moments in particular within Marvel Comics that prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that Deadpool is actually way smarter than he pretends.

10 Deadpool Kills The Entire Marvel Universe, Outsmarting Everyone To Do So

Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe by Cullen Bunn and Dalibor Talajic

The Marvel Universe contains some of the smartest and most powerful people in the entirety of comic book fiction - and Deadpool once killed every last one of them. The likes of Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and even Doctor Doom all fell before Deadpool after he decided it was time for everyone to die. Obviously, people such as these weren’t going to just roll over and let Deadpool kill them, meaning Deadpool had to outsmart these super geniuses to claim his gruesome victory.

Granted, Deadpool has never had more indestructible plot armor than he did in Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, but he still accomplished a number of insane kills using his tactical intellect alone.

9 Deadpool Knows ASL

Hawkeye vs Deadpool #0 by Gerry Duggan and Matteo Lolli

American Sign Language is a complete and organized visual language using hand signs, facial expressions, and mouth movements, and Deadpool is fluent. This was revealed when Deadpool was on a mission with Hawkeye, who is partially deaf. In fact, Deadpool even lifted his mask to expose his mouth to use ASL properly and better communicate with Hawkeye.

Learning another language is an immediate sign of intelligence, and Deadpool proved it in that regard by being fluent in ASL.

8 Deadpool Outmaneuvers The Wolverine Villain Romulus

Wolverine: Origins #45 by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite

Romulus is Wolverine’s ultimate villain, as he schemed and maneuvered in such a way that he was able to control practically every aspect of Wolverine’s entire life, leading Logan towards some sinister grand plan. In fact, Romulus knows Wolverine so well that any plan Logan could possibly have come up with to fight him would have been countered easily. That’s why Wolverine had to go to the one person who could come up with a plan no one could crack in order to trick Romulus into a vulnerable spot. And the man Wolverine went to was none other than Deadpool.

Deadpool effectively outmaneuvered Romulus, a mastermind who’s been basically controlling Wolverine his entire life, proving his god-tier tactical skills.

7 Deadpool Drops A Piano On Wolverine After Tricking Him Into The Exact Spot

Wolverine: Origins #22 by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon

Before Wolverine went to Deadpool for help against Romulus, the two of them were at odds in that very same Wolverine storyline. Not only that, but Wolverine got first-hand evidence of how tactically brilliant Deadpool truly is. While the two were in the middle of a fleeting conflict, Deadpool led Wolverine to a specific spot where he planned to have a hoisted piano fall right on top of the X-Man.

While it could be argued that this is an example of Deadpool’s previously mentioned ‘cartoon logic’, Wolverine: Origins is notoriously gritty with a tone that wouldn’t fit that type of Deadpool story. This means that the act of luring Wolverine to a precise pre-planned location (hilariously marked with an ‘X’) to drop a piano on him was yet another perfect example of Deadpool’s unadulterated tactical genius.

6 Deadpool Beat Daredevil By Tricking Him With A Fake Baby

Contest of Champions II #4 by Chris Claremont and Óscar Jiménez

The five-issue Marvel Comics event Contest of Champions II pitted a number of iconic heroes/antiheroes against each other, including Deadpool and Daredevil. In this issue, the two were fighting on a rooftop, and Daredevil was soundly kicking Deadpool’s butt. So, Deadpool had to resort to trickery, and flex his intellectual muscles. Faster than Daredevil could , Deadpool had what looked and sounded like a baby in his arms, and he promptly ‘trips’ and flings the supposed infant off the roof. Convinced that the baby is real, Daredevil saves them, only to learn that it's a Deadpool doll with a tape recorder.

By the time Daredevil figured out he’d been bested, Deadpool had his gun to Matt’s head, claiming victory in this particular Contest of Champions matchup.

5 Deadpool Has Weapons & Ammo Stashed Around The World

Deadpool Nerdy 30 #1 by Daniel Way and Paco Medina

It seems that no matter where Deadpool is in the world, he’s always fully stocked with the deadliest weapons imaginable. It’s almost like another superpower, like he can pull weapons out of nowhere. However, the real reason he’s literally always armed has much more to do with his intellect than any imaginary superpower. It’s revealed in this issue that Deadpool stashes weapons all over the world, especially places he finds himself traveling to fairly often.

This is the perfect example of Deadpool’s foresight and strategic planning skills. Plus, it just makes him all the more deadly, as stashing weapons wherever he may need them makes him a true army of one.

4 Deadpool Takes His Responsibility In The Superhuman Community Seriously

Cable & Deadpool #30 by Fabian Nicieza and Staz Johnson

Not only is Deadpool a masterful tactician and an expert killer in every regard, but he’s also thoughtful and present when it comes to the superhuman community, and his place within that community. This was put on full display during the Civil War event, when he really considered which side he would fight for based on his own personal beliefs, as well as the larger climate surrounding the issue.

In the end, Deadpool was pro-registration, not because that’s the side who asked him to fight for them, and he just absentmindedly said yes, but because he really considered the argument, and he felt like people needed the day to day safety the Registration Act promised to provide.

3 Deadpool Masterfully Disguises Bombs To Obliterate His Unsuspecting Foes

Deadpool #63 by Daniel Way and Dave Johnson

When someone Deadpool accidentally paralyzed in the past comes back to kill him after years of plotting, Wade proves that he’s more than capable of dealing with a vengeance-crazed foe. In the grand finale of this decades-long conflict, Deadpool has been abducted onto the villain’s aircraft, though he’s not making it easy for her, or her superpowered henchmen to kill him. In fact, one of the henchmen grabs a parachute to make a quick exit, only to find out that Deadpool rigged the parachute to blow up when the chute is pulled. Then, when another henchman is about to detonate a bomb strapped to Deadpool, he comes to find out (albeit briefly) that the detonator itself was rigged to detonate, killing him the very moment he meant to kill Deadpool.

Deadpool was able to disguise bombs on an enemy aircraft to take out his enemies if they either tried to escape or tried to kill him, ensuring that all his enemies unwittingly destroyed themselves.

2 Deadpool Infiltrated The X-Mansion Upon His Debut

New Mutants #98 by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

Before Deadpool was the goofy mercenary fans know and love today, he was first a heartless mercenary who not only infiltrated the X-Mansion upon his debut, but also nearly took out the entire New Mutants team - including Cable and Domino. X-Men fans are well aware of how heavily guarded the X-Mansion is, and that only a few supervillains have been able to infiltrate it (despite its reputation for getting destroyed all the time) - and Deadpool was one of those villains.

Deadpool had the brainpower to locate Cable within the X-Mansion, find the best entry point, incapacitate every mutant who attacked him moments after his arrival, and then pursue his target. With this debut, Deadpool proved right away that he’s as smart as he is deadly.

1 Deadpool Became An Undead Hive Mind To Survive The Apocalypse

Night of the Living Deadpool by Cullen Bunn and Ramón Rosanas

When Deadpool woke up from a coma and found that he was the last person alive on Earth that wasn’t a zombie, he came up with a way to defeat the legions of the undead - and it was pretty ambitious. Rather than just running into a horde of zombies, guns blazing, counting on his healing factor to get him out alive, Deadpool actually uses his healing factor to create a unique kind of serum. This serum did more than keep him from being infected by zombies once bitten, it actually infects any zombie that bites him with a piece of his essence.

When Deadpool’s body was fully consumed, his consciousness became something of a hive mind that existed within the countless corpses of the undead, meaning Deadpool literally outsmarted the zombie apocalypse by becoming the zombie apocalypse.