Trivia / Onslaught

• Executive Meddling:
  • Initially it was supposed to be simply an X-Men Family Crossover. But when Marvel needed a way to write off their properties into the Heroes Reborn universe, it was decided to use Onslaught as a device to get them there.
  • It's been suggested by interviews in Life of Reilly that Marvel didn't want the finale of "The Clone Saga" to compete with the story, thus the reason for the final delay to the end of "The Clone Saga" was to accommodate "Onslaught".
  • Mark Waid originally intended for Onslaught to be solely Xavier's dark side, but the editors overruled him on it and added the bit about Magneto's dark side influencing him.
• The Merch:
  • Toy Biz did a line of figures including Wolverine in his devolved state, Jean Grey with Juggernaut imprisoned in the gem of Cyttorak, Apocalypse (based on when he first appears, rising from his tomb) with Ozymandias, and Onslaught himself with armor to evoke his evolved form.
  • Toy Biz would later do a Build-A-Figure based on Onslaught's evolved form. Hasbro's turn on the Marvel Legends line would feature a Build-A-Figure based on Red Onslaught from AXIS, though with an optional head for classic Onslaught.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If 101 Ways to End The Clone Saga is true, then Ben Reilly could have died during this time.
  • As mentioned above, Onslaught was originally intended to only be an X-Men Family Crossover and Onslaught himself solely​ Xavier's dark side.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: It's pretty clear from behind-the-scenes reports that early on, no one had a clue about who Onslaught was. Almost fittingly, so was one of the things that got Arc Welded into the story, as the X-Traitor tape was itself an example of this, as Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio eventually confirmed that they had no set suspect themselves when they set it up, with fan speculation leading to either Gambit (as a man called the Witness, who was the last person to see the X-Men alive, resembled and behaved like him) or Bishop himself as part of a Stable Time Loop, before this story revealed it was in fact Xavier himself via the Onslaught personality.