* ExecutiveMeddling:
** Cable was ''not'' originally meant to turn out to be Cyclops' son; that was a {{retcon}} done to tie up some loose plot ends.
** Related to the above: Nathan Summers was originally meant to be, along with Madelyne, Cyclops' happy ending. When it was decided to make Cyclops leader of X-Factor, Madelyne was turned evil, and because no one really wanted to deal with Nathan, it was decided to send him into the future.
* HypotheticalCasting: Watching ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' made Rob Liefeld wish on Twitter that Creator/StephenLang (Col. Quaritch) would play Cable in the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries''. Some of Cable's fans, and even Lang himself, wish the same.
* MarthDebutedInSmashBros: A downplayed example but it's fairly safe to say a large amount of people who know about Cable first learned about him in [[VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom2 MvC2]], with a lot of those people probably only knowing him for the longest time as "That top tier guy in Marvel 2 with the guns".
* ThrowItIn: Rob Liefeld was trying to come up with a big reveal for the villain Stryfe's identity when a friend suggested that Stryfe should remove his helmet to reveal... Cable's face. Thus Stryfe became Cable's clone, and the whole Summers Family got even ''more complex''.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** In early X-Force issues, it was strongly implied that Cable was an older version of ''Cannonball'', as confirmed by Rob Liefeld.
** Before Marvel formally revealed that Cable was Nathan Summers, Fabian Niceza proposed a twist - ''Stryfe'' would be Nathan and Cable would be his clone instead of the other way around. Nate actually thought this might have been the case for a time.
** There were discussions about including Cable in ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'', but they never went anywhere.
** He also almost made it into the first ''Film/{{Deadpool|2016}}'' movie.
* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: Cable's backstory was made up as the writers came up with it, because he initially had no real backstory in mind when he was created. When he was revealed to be an older Nathan Summers, more and more was added to his backstory as writers figured it out.
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