I sort of had a Gambit clone, though that was just the original outfit (and even then, he wasn't so much Gambit as he was
Wraith, from Amalgam Comics). I was having trouble coming up with a costume for my Staff/Dark Brute, and so I googled for Staff and Darkness, and when he popped up as one of the results, I ran with it.
That was just his starting outfit, of course. I kept tweaking it until it didn't look like the comics character. And the background was my own silly creation. He was Magic-origin (not Mutant), and from memory, his bio was along the lines of "My friends told me not to pick up the Cursed Staff of Darkness. I said 'How can it be a staff of darkness? It's all golden and shiny!' Shows what I know...."