Deadpool

Wade had conflicting memories of his childhood. He once recalled that his father abandoned his mother while she was pregnant with him and she took out her anger on him until, as an adult, he beat her instead. He later recalled that his mother died when he was five and that his father, an army officer, became abusive, causing Wade to grow up to be a thug and criminal. When his father got his act together and tried to rein in his son, one of Wade's friends shot and killed him. However, he told a writer that his father was a teller of bad jokes who abandoned him and his mother while he was a boy. His mother turned to humor, alcohol and home shopping networks as a coping mechanism. He believed that he ran away from home so that his mother wouldn't need to spend what little money she had left on him.

However, it was eventually revealed that his parents were still together, living in Canada and had kept Wade's room as he had left it but Wade himself did not recognize the house, his parents or his room when he returned there as an adult.

After leaving home, he appears to have joined the U.S. Army Special Forces but despite his superior skills, he was drummed out for not following orders that conflicted with his moral code. After a failed suicide attempt just before his nineteenth birthday, Wade was invited to join a clandestine group of CIA-sponsored mercenary assassins thanks to his military record, assured that his targets would all deserve death.

Little is known of Wilson's subsequent activities with this group. At one point he was active in Tangier, Morocco where he romanced a woman named Francie. When this relationship soured, he traveled throughout Asia, and was hired in Japan by a crime lord, the Boss, to infiltrate a sumo-wrestling ring owned by a rival criminal, the Oyakata. Wilson spent three years as a wrestler under the Oyakata's tutelage and became romantically involved with his mentor’s daughter, Sazae. When the Boss finally ordered the Oyakata's murder, Wilson refused to complete his assignment, allegedly the first time he had ever done so, and relocated to the United States.

In America, Wade met and fell in love with mutant teenage prostitute Vanessa Carlysle, with whom he shared dreams of a better life. Wilson was subsequently hired by Middle Eastern interests to assassinate a blind British Government operative named Althea, also known as Blind Al. Upon arrival to the Zaire base where she was stationed, he killed everyone except for Al who had fled.

Those who put the contract out on Al sought vengeance for his failure by targeting Vanessa, who was rescued by Zoe Culloden, an employee of the inter-dimensional firm Landau, Luckman, Lake, and LeQuare. Culloden was keeping Wilson under surveillance, believing he was destined to play a vital part in a potential threat to the world. Learning that he had developed 34 inoperable cancerous tumors, Wilson broke up with his girlfriend Vanessa rather than force her to remain with a terminally ill man. He even gave up his chemo treatments, not wishing to prolong things.