Hilarious In Hindsight / Marvel Cinematic Universe

---

• Iron Man:
  • Terrence Howard's line as James Rhodes foreshadowing the character's transition to War Machine consists of saying "Next time, baby" when considering suiting up with one of Tony Stark's armors. While Rhodes had his next time, Terrence Howard didn't, because he was replaced by Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2.
  • The jets chasing Iron Man are called "Whiplash One and Two." The villain in Iron Man 2? Whiplash. Director Jon Favreau later confirmed that this was an intentional reference in an interview, though Whiplash was not intended to be the sequel's villain yet.
  • Fury asks Tony if he thinks he's the only superhero in the universe. Captain Marvel (2019) reveals that, not only Fury knew about Carol Danvers' existence the whole time, she's actually the one who inspired him to create the Avengers.
• Captain America: The First Avenger: "HYDRA's not going to attack you with a pocket knife." Only for The Winter Soldier, HYDRA and the Flag-Smashers to do just that.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron:
  • When the team discovers the existence of Clint's family, Tony half-joked that Laura, Clint's wife, is probably a SHIELD agent. Hawkeye (2021) eventually revealed that Tony was right, with Laura herself being heavily implied to be the former Mockingbird.
  • Clint and Laura having a daughter named Lila. Not only is this the name of Linda Cardellini’s real life daughter, it becomes a variant of that of her second MCU role.
• Ant-Man:
  • Cross's mooks shooting at Ant-Man while he is running through Cross' miniature model of the building feels like a Zoolander reference. The title for this section of the score? "Center For Ants." And then, the first trailer for Zoolander 2 played in front of some US screenings of Ant-Man
  • At one point while being tossed around while shrunken down for the first time, Scott ends up encountering a rat that nearly ends him seconds after falling through the floorboards. A rodent would later end up saving Scott's life in Avengers: Endgame, as he only makes it out of the Quantum Realm because a different rat ends up hitting the right buttons to reactivate the Quantum Tunnel in his van where he was stuck.
  • Luis' Establishing Character Moment has him tell Scott that despite the break-up with his girlfriend, the death of his mother, and the deportation of his father, he still had his van. Cue Avengers: Endgame, where the Final Battle has Thanos throws a double-edged sword at the Quantum Realm teleporter housed inside that van, blowing the vehicle up.
  • In the climax, Darren Cross asks Scott "Did you think you could stop the future WITH A HEIST?!". In Avengers: Endgame, Scott (and the other Avengers) actually perform a "Time Heist" to get enough Infinity Stones to save the Bad Future caused by Thanos from remaining a literal World Half Empty.
  • After Scott's encounter with Falcon, Sam says, "It's really important to me that Cap never finds out about this." Give it about eight years in-universe, and Scott will be able to brag that he defeated Captain America once.
• Captain America: Civil War:
  • When the movie was released on theaters, wwwdotchargesdotcomdotbr character Tobby theorizes that the Green Goblin will be the Avengers' greatest foe. Spider-Man's debut in this film makes it more likely that Norman Osborn will appear in later movies, and he does.
  • The whole Empire Strikes Back gag got even funnier when Tom Holland revealed a year later that he'd actually never seen the original Star Wars trilogy.
• In late 2016, Bob Chipman released a video where he recommended five different genres that the MCU could branch off into to help prevent themselves from going stale. Two of these genres — a martial arts film and horror film — would both be eventually paid off in the MCU, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for the former and both Wandavision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for the latter. However, none of them were executed in the ways Chipman was actually expecting; Shang Chi ended up being more of a silly yet grim fantasy thriller a la Big Trouble in Little China while Chipman was expecting more of an epic Tournament Arc movie a la Mortal Kombat, and Chipman's idea for a Marvel horror film was more along the lines of a Friday the 13th-esque Slasher Movie while Wandavision was a deeply unsettling Psychological Horror miniseries strongly inspired by the works of David Lynch and the aforementioned Doctor Strange sequel was a goofier yet insanely creepy Black Comedy in the spiritual vein of the Evil Dead franchise.
• Avengers: Infinity War: Drax says that Thor's "a man" based on his impressive physique while Quill's less impressive build makes him "a dude". Come Avengers: Endgame and Thor now looks like the Dude. Also, Rocket tells Quill "You're one sandwich away from fat!" And then in Avengers: Endgame, Thor is the fat one, while Quill remains the fit one! Though being snapped for 5 years helped Quill.

---