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This has been bugging me ever since I saw it, probably back in 1993 or so.

There's a series of episodes of the old 90's cartoon centred around Cable. He has to do something in the past to correct the grim future, and every time he goes back unsuccessful he meets and chats with what looks like an old version of himself, who is usually standing in front of a cryo-tube with a suspended metal Wolverine skeleton-thing.

When they did these future story episodes, I remember there was a panning Gravestone sequence at the beginning, listing all the fallen X-Men, but I don't think Wolverine was among them. Cable and 'old Cable' never refer to the Cryo-tube Wolverine skeleton, its just there.

I don't know anything about X-Men other than the films, but this image always intrigued me and I wanted to know more, because it looked more like a Wolverine body crossed with Colossus rather than the actual skeleton Wolverine is supposed to have.

I just tried to search about it on-line, but there is a tidal wave of Wolverine related-info. Trying to search on this one instance didn't reveal anything other than a story where Magneto sucked all the adamantium out of Wolverine.

I remember that! Vaguely!

Yeah, I don't really know what that was about - they never make any reference to it, it's just there as part of the scenery, and with the show's editing you only had a good look of it at an angle for about two seconds.

If I were a betting man I'd guess that there's an explanation for it, but probably not in the show itself. A lot of the cartoon's plotlines were adaptations of iconic comic storylines, and if I had to guess I'd say that the future Wolverine skeleton was something that they tossed in as an easter egg for people who'd read the books.

It's been so long since I've seen the show that I have zero memory of these episodes, though.

The characters you're talking about are actually Bishop (the guy who time travels) and Forge (the old guy who keeps sending him back and hangs around the tank with the Wolverine skeleton).
Cable is a different time traveler from an even further future, though he does get all up in Bishop's time traveling business once.

I always assumed the skeleton was just set dressing, as it were, and a sign that Bishop's time jumping was indeed changing things, just not to the extent he would like.

EDIT: Did some quick searching, because I actually remember this crap. The skeleton shows up in at least the episodes Days of Future Past (which has basically nothing to do with the comic story of the same title, aside from time travel) and Time Fugitives. Apparently it was drawn like crap in the first one, hence your 'Wolverine crossed with Colossus' description.
It really does seem to just be a set piece, and not part of the story at all. It may have been deliberately included as a seed for a later episode that never came to fruition. Who knows.

BTW, this may possibly be of some use if you're interested in the 90s cartoon: http://comicsalliance.com/tags/x-men-episode-guide/

Oh, that's right!They're all Kyle Reese knock-offs of a sort. People get such butch, manly names in the future; Forge, Cable, Dongle, Miracast.

I remember really liking the cartoon when it first started, but when it went off into space on account of Jean Grey's Phoenix character, and that weird Krang-like Octopus guy on spider-leg stilts it really felt like it had jumped the shark.

Then the Batman: Animated series came along and made it seem like the po-faced kiddy fodder it was. I used to think Wolverine's mewling for Morph in the first few episodes was deep and edgy, but then I was used to the Transformers cartoon, where everyone was more or less a red-shirt apart from Prime, so it seemed like high art.

Its a shame that the one thing I liked about the show turned out to be nothing but set dressing. I was really hoping there'd be an episode that would have dealt with that.

I remember Dr. Moira thingy's voice actor doing a terrible rendition of a Scottish accent!

[Edit] Thanks for the link, so much stuff I didn't know I wanted to know! Just looking at the still shots reminds me that the animation was quite poor in certain episodes. There was a definite drop-off when a story was, I presume, farmed out to a different animation company. Who were the bargain basement animators at the time, AKOM? I remember reading that plenty of the third series of TF were done by them.

Also, that link reminded me how utterly boring Storm was/is. There was a two-part story about her saving an African kid who was a fast runner (or something), and I couldn't wait for the story to get back to the Mansion where even the radiators were more interesting. She was just as unappealing in the films, for my money.

I remember the 90's Spider-Man cartoon became even more confusing with its ongoing plots. It felt as if every week each episode on Live and Kicking would have an increasing percentage of the running time given over to flashbacks trying to explain the story so far. To the point my friend and I were joking about how they were going to start doing flashbacks to events earlier in the same episode of someone having a flashback.

inflatable dalek wrote:To the point my friend and I were joking about how they were going to start doing flashbacks to events earlier in the same episode of someone having a flashback.

If you've never seen it, track down episode 2 of Clerks: The Animated Series.