The untold truth of Wolverine

If you only know Wolverine from the movies or mainline X-Men comics, you really don't know him at all.

The character got his start from some extremely humble beginnings, but Logan (real name: James Howlett) has grown to be one of Marvel Comics' most popular characters—and a bankable star on the big screen to boot. But even though he's best known for his swagger, there are more than a few weird and embarrassing events scattered throughout his cigar-chomping history.

From bizarre factoids connected to the film universe to strange stories buried deep in the annals of Marvel Comics lore, there's a lot to know about Wolverine. So as Hugh Jackman prepares to say farewell to the live action version of the character after nearly two decades in the role with 2017's Logan, we decided to take a stroll down memory lane for the untold truth of Wolverine.

Let's dig in.

Once Wolverine became an extremely popular character in the Marvel Comics canon, he started popping up in a whole lot of team-up books and crossover stories. One often forgotten Marvel series is the excellent Runaways (which is currently in development as a TV series over at Hulu, interestingly enough), a comic that focused on a team of teenage kids who realize their parents are actually supervillains. The kids set off on their own, and get into all kinds of misadventures. One of those missions brought the team into the path of the Avengers (which Wolverine was a member of at the time), and it did not go well for Wolverine. At all.

The Runaways' youngest member, 12-year-old Molly Hayes, is also a mutant. Her power? Super-strength. A whole lot of super-strength. When Molly gets scared that the Avengers want to take her away from her friends, her fight-or-flight instinct kicks in—and she punches Wolverine completely out of the building, with Logan crashing face first into the snowy street outside. The lesson? Don't ever underestimate Molly Hayes.

When Hugh Jackman landed the gig of Wolverine in the first X-Men film back in 2000, he was woefully unprepared for the role. How bad was it? He didn't even realize a wolverine was a real animal (seriously), so he started studying up on wolves to bring an animalistic quality to his performance. Jackman wasn't very familiar with the comics character, so he just assumed Wolverine was a guy who acted like an animal. To that end, he brought a wolf-esque approach to his first few scenes, leaded director Bryan Singer to ask him to cut it out. Here's what he told Rolling Stone about the embarrassing ordeal: "[Singer] at one point said to me, 'It's a little weird physically. But it's interesting.' And I said, 'Yeah, man, I've been studying wolves and I think if we could bring that to the screen—' and he goes, 'What? You're not a wolf, man, you're a wolverine.'" Lucky for everyone, Jackman killed it anyway—animal confusion or not.

Going back to his first appearance in the comics, Wolverine was actually introduced as an adversary in 1974 as a bit player in The Incredible Hulk #180, with his first full appearance in issue #181. The creative team was looking for a new character to slug it out with the Hulk (he seemed to go through villains pretty quickly, being the Hulk and all), and Wolverine was just the latest challenger at the time. Not only was he not introduced in an X-Men story, he was essentially Canadian super-fodder.

To that end, Wolverine was never intended to be a team member of the X-Men. The X-Men already had a well-established team at this point, but when the character proved popular from his Incredible Hulk appearance, Marvel decided to bring him back for some new appearances and flesh him out—eventually incorporating him into the X-Men as part of a larger relaunch of that comic series that included several new characters. Following his stint on Incredible Hulk, Wolverine next popped up on 1975's Giant-Size X-Men #1, and the rest is history. Artist Herb Trimpe, who was the first to draw Wolverine for publication, told Film Journal that Wolverine was introduced as a "secondary or tertiary" character "with no particular notion of it going anywhere." Now he's a flagship character. Not bad for a guy who wasn't supposed to live for more than two issues, right?

The casting of Hugh Jackman proved to be the biggest coup for the upstart X-Men film franchise, but it almost didn't happen. The studio really wanted Russell Crowe for the gig, but he declined. After that, Dougray Scott signed on. Scott was all set to play Wolverine in 2000's X-Men, but had to drop out of the project at the last minute due to scheduling. Desperate to fill the role, they singed Jackman (who didn't have the biggest resume at the time) shortly before production was supposed to start. It obviously turned out to be the right move, and Jackman has proven to be the common denominator across the entire X-Men universe.