I got to thinking about that claw mechanism John drew for the DoFP Wolverine in that issue.  Basically, we have a mutant who was partially transformed into a cyborg.  How we went from that to the claws "always being there", I think was part of that lazy writing/artist syndrome setting in during the 1990s.

   I still scratch my head when I think about that issue of Wolverine's comic that closed out the whole "Fatal Attractions" crossover in the mid-1990s.  It followed closely on the "Weapon X" story that Barry Winsor-Smith drew in the Marvel Comics Presents anthology that ran a few years earlier, in which we were first introduced to the idea that he wasn't exactly a cyborg (the claws formed on their own while the adamantium-infusion process was being done, as if the body was trying to reject the metal).  The bionic claw mechanism makes more sense to me.

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Chris had it in mind that the claws were part of the mutation long before that.

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And there, in a nutshell, you capture my problem with Nightcrawler! Blue fur, AND glowing eyes, AND fangs, AND a prehensile tail, AND three digit hands and feet, AND he teleports (with a puff of smoke and brimstone!), AND he's invisible in shadow...

Well, at least they got rid of the last one!