Marvel Cinematic Universe / Tropes G to R

Tropes for Marvel Cinematic Universe
Tropes A | Tropes B to F | Tropes G To R | Tropes S to Z

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• Gender Flip:
  • Jeryn Hogarth, a male lawyer in the comics, is played by Carrie-Anne Moss in Jessica Jones, with the character becoming "Jeri Hogarth" instead. Still attracted to women, though.
  • Hawkeye's youngest child is changed from a girl named Nicole in Ultimate Marvel to a boy named Nathaniel. Lampshaded in-universe, as the Bartons mention that they were expecting a girl.
  • The Ancient One is portrayed as a female character as opposed to the old male version in the comics.^note However, Word of God states that while the character uses feminine pronouns, it is really up for interpretation on what her true gender is.
  • In the Guardians of The Galaxy films, Mainframe is a female android voiced by Miley Cyrus in Vol. 2 and Tara Strong in Vol. 3, despite being a male, futuristic counterpart of the Vision in the comics. The Guardians Holiday Special and Vol. 3 also reveal that Cosmo the Spacedog is female.
  • In Ant-Man and The Wasp, Ghost goes from being a white man to a biracial woman.
  • Captain Marvel:
    • Captain Mar-Vell is a woman, played by Annette Bening. The character's human alter ego is consequently changed from "Walter Lawson" to "Wendy Lawson".
    • Complicated example with the Kree Supreme Intelligence. In the comics, the Supreme Intelligence is basically a giant floating head, but has nonetheless often been referred to with male pronouns (or none at all), and has always been voiced by male actors whenever it showed up in TV shows and video games. In the film, however, the Supreme Intelligence takes on a form unique to whoever it is talking to, meaning that when it appears onscreen to commune with Carol Danvers, it looks like the aforementioned Mar-Vell and is once again played by Bening.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Morgan Stark is a female child as opposed to a male in the comics. This is a case of Decomposite Character, as Tony mentioned Pepper having an eccentric uncle named Morgan, who was his first cousin in the comics.
  • In The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the Flag-Smasher is a woman named Karli Morgenthau rather than a man named Karl Morgenthau.
  • In Black Widow, Taskmaster is Dreykov's daughter, Antonia instead of man named Tony Masters.
  • In The Eternals, the characters Makkari, Ajak and Sprite, all of whom are men in the the original comics, are played by women. Also, Ben Stoss, Phastos' spouse, was a female in the comics known only as Mrs. Stoss.
  • In Moon Knight, Layla becomes the MCU version of the comics superhero the Scarlet Scarab (partly due to being a Decomposite Character, splitting the comics Scarab's traits with her father).
• Genre-Busting: The franchise changed what movie-goers and movie-makers alike thought was possible with crossover films and established genres, and along with The Dark Knight Trilogy redefined what the superhero genre could do, by mixing elements from science fiction, fantasy, thrillers and whatnot. The MCU in particular is very liberal with it's use of this trope, to the point that it's possible to have grounded, gritty and semi-realistic films such as Iron Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and zany Space Western comedies like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Thor: Ragnarok take place in the same universe without anybody questioning it.
• Genre Roulette: Though collectively under the "superhero" and Science Fiction genres, each hero's movies skew towards their own genre. The film-by-film list of genres involved can be found on its own page.
• Good All Along: Often, villains will turn out to be not as dark as they were initially perceived:
  • The Winter Soldier is an innocent man — specifically, Bucky Barnes — who was kidnapped, modified, and brainwashed into a HYDRA assassin.
  • Yondu genuinely cares about Peter Quill and raised him as a Ravager specifically to protect the boy from his far worse biological father. His threats of cannibalism are just failed attempts at joking. Quill eventually realizes this and Yondu dies a hero protecting Quill; at the funeral, Quill identifies Yondu as his true parent.
  • Ava Starr / Ghost's powers cause her daily pain and are slowly killing her; everything she does comes from sheer desperation to keep herself alive.
  • In Captain Marvel, the Skrulls are a relatively small group of refugees at the receiving end of an attempted Final Solution. Carol is rightly horrified when she learns the whole truth.
• Government Agency of Fiction: S.H.I.E.L.D. in the earlier movies, and before their time during WWII, there was the Strategic Scientific Reserve, which is essentially the OSS to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s CIA. They're defunct by the time the Infinity Saga ends, but a new government agency S.W.O.R.D. is then introduced.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Thanos is ultimately responsible for the conflicts of the first Avengers and Guardians (Loki and Ronan, respectively) but he does not take direct action until Infinity War and Endgame. By extension, he is this for the entire Infinity Saga given the scale of his villainy (galaxy wide).
  • The Ten Rings in the Iron Man films are present in 1 and 3 (though the Ten Rings from 3 are revealed to be impostors). A deleted scene from 2 shows the Ten Rings helping Whiplash get to Monaco. They are a big threat and provide support to the Big Bads (Iron Monger and Whiplash) but they are not directly involved. They finally become the main villains in Shang-Chi.
  • Although HYDRA serve as the direct antagonists of the first two Captain America films and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., their influence can be felt in other films. They are supposedly wiped out by the time of Civil War, but the film's conflict is heavily dependent on many of their actions, and in a sense it could be argued that they helped create Iron Man since they're revealed to be the ones who killed Tony's parents. They also appear in Ant-Man, primarily to establish Darren Cross' villainy by his association with them.
  • From the Netflix shows, Madame Gao. Never the main villain of any show, but often comes off as more cunning and menacing than the ones who are. They also have a tendency to make clean getaways where other villains get killed.
• Happy Ending Override: Has its own page.
• Hate Sink: Has its own page.
• Hero of Another Story: Many of the movies tease that there are other superheroes out there. Tony Stark pops up in The Incredible Hulk, Nick Fury has appeared at least by name in every Phase One film, Hawkeye appears as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Thor, etc.
  • Rhodey as War Machine is doing his own heroing separate from Tony and the Avengers. He has stories that are loved by civilians, but the Avengers don't find them impressive.
  • Hank Pym and his wife Janet (née Van Dyne) spent up to twenty years fighting Soviets during the Cold War as Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the audience only sees brief snippets of these missions.
  • In Guardians Vol. 2, we find that the '70s comic incarnation of the Guardians were active as a Ravager crew in the actual '70s, and the team reunites to start going adventuring again at the end.
  • Captain Marvel hasn't been on Earth since 1995 because she's protecting planets which aren't lucky enough to have their own superheroes, let alone entire teams of them.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home brings in the previous movie Spider-Men and alludes to some of the adventures they've had.
  • Multiverse of Madness features an Alternate Universe that includes not just different versions of Avengers, but the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Only the barest hints of the universe's history were dropped, leaving their exploits open to speculation.
  • The Marvels reveals another Alternate Universe with its own heroes in The Stinger, which includes the X-Men and a Captain Marvel-equivalent named Binary.
• Hidden Elf Village:
  • Vibranium created two. Wakanda, which prior to the events of Black Panther was believed to be a third world country, but is secretly the most technologically advanced country in the world, hidden behind a holographic illusion, and the underwater nation of Talokan, which remains hidden from the surface.
  • There are two secret Inhuman hideouts. Attilan, which is located on the moon, and Afterlife, which is located in an isolated mountain region in Nepal.
  • Kamar-Taj, where the masters of the mystic arts live and train.
  • Ta Lo, which exists in its own dimension filled with magical creatures and humans who practice a magical fighting style.
  • K’un Lun, home of the Order of the crane Mother which exists in a dimension only accessible every fifteen years.
• Hollywood Law: Has its own page.
• Humans Are Special: Indicated several times in the franchise.
  • Thanos tells Steve that none of his previous genocides had been personal, but he plans on enjoying the destruction of Earth, implying that humanity and its allies put up a far more dogged defense than other civilizations which Thanos encountered.
  • The High Evolutionary mentions to Peter Quill that Earth had the finest and most diverse culture of any planet he visited.
• Hypocrite: Has its own page.
• Hyperlink Story: Most of the sub-franchises are relatively standalone, occasionally crossing over, but only fully come together for Infinity War and Endgame. This has been much less the case for the Multiverse Saga so far, but some links are still there.
• I Believe I Can Fly: An increasing number of heroes have flight in their powersets. Iron Man and War Machine have repulsor jets, Hulk can jump high enough that it's essentially flight, Thor could be pulled off the ground by Mjolnir (and might be able to do the same with Stormbreaker), Captain Marvel can fly when she goes binary, Falcon and the Wasp have wings on their suits, Vision can fly unaided, Scarlet Witch can use her magic to propel herself upwards, Doctor Strange has the Cloak of Levitation, and Star-Lord has rocket boots.
• Idealist vs. Pragmatist:
  • Most conflicts involving this trope are centered around Steve Rogers/Captain America and Tony Stark/Iron Man. Steve retains a moral code in addition to his ideals, such as not lying to people nor pointing guns at others in the name of protection. Stark completely privatizes his arc reactor and Iron Man suit technology, additionally hogging all other kinds of technology into the hands of the few people he trusts (Damage Control, Avengers, SHIELD, etc.), to personally enforce world peace and security.
  • The last two films of the Avengers Infinity Saga favor the Pragmatist side. Avengers: Infinity War has the team stick by the "we do not trade lives" mindset, which results in Thanos obtaining the Stones anyway and wiping out half of all life in the universe. Avengers: Endgame changes their mindset to "whatever it takes" to stop Thanos, resulting in them winning with the loss of only two named characters.
  • It appears again in Spider-Man: No Way Home, with Spider-Man as the Idealist trying to save everyone and Dr. Strange as the Pragmatist willing to let people die to preserve the Multiverse.
• I Have Many Names: The planet Earth is known by many designations across the universe: "Midgard" by the Asgardians, "Planet C-53" by the Kree, and "Terra" by everyone else.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum:
  • The Infinity Stones manage to qualify as "imported" even in settings that are alien to begin with. Besides the movies where they directly appear, it's also implied that Iron Man's Arc Reactor was reverse-engineered from the Tesseract by Howard Stark.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has ongoing plots related to the alien Kree civilization; most notably the Inhumans, which are Imported Alien Genetic Engineering. Ms. Marvel also features a strange artifact that's revealed as alien (Kree, in fact) in The Marvels. Asgardian and Chitauri objects have also popped up on Earth occasionally.
  • The Vulture and Shocker use advanced technology, though not all of it is alien in origin.
  • Black Panther has the extra-durable and versatile vibranium, which is said to have come from space.
  • Wenwu's Ten Rings are notable by the fact that not even the Avengers can figure out just where they were imported from.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Present in "Marvel's The Avengers", plus spinoffs like "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and "Marvel's Agent Carter". Sometimes it can get awkward, for instance the comic book tie-in collection "Road to Marvel's The Avengers", or when ABC does the same thing and advertises "ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: While Earth is the main setting of the franchise, it is mostly known as a backwater planet of weak humans and the galaxy at large has a more advanced technology than Earth, or has more powerful aliens. Nicky Fury and Tony Stark are perhaps the most aware about this, hence their efforts to secure the world by multiple means such as creating the Avengers for Fury, or creating Ultron for Tony (the latter backfired on him though).
• Ivy League for Everyone: Any time someone's education is mentioned, it's going to be a prestigious school. MIT is the most common, with its alumni or current students including Tony Stark and James Rhodes, the cast of Spider-Man, Riri Williams, and even Killmonger.
• Job Title: Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Doctor Strange, Captain America: First Avenger, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Black Panther. Technically, any film/show that has their superhero/team name in the title counts since being a hero is their job, but the ones listed above have the eponymous characters' actual profession(s) in the title.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Certain twists are so major that it becomes difficult to talk about the works they are in without bringing them up. A full list can be found on its own page, but the ones that this page has stopped trying to hide are:
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by HYDRA since its inception, and the organization was dismantled in The Winter Soldier.
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye is actually the MCU version of Daisy Johnson.
  • Phases One through Three have an ongoing subplot involving the Infinity Stones, leading into an adaptation of The Infinity Gauntlet.
  • In the Netflix shows, the Hand is involved in Season Two of Daredevil, Season One of Iron Fist, and The Defenders.
• Legacy Character: Several superheroes have predecessors and take up their names. For instance, Scott Lang is the second Ant-Man after Hank Pym, who is downgraded to a side character. Hank's daughter, Hope van Dyne, also took the mantle of the Wasp after her mother Janet. Meanwhile, Wakanda has the Black Panthers, a lineage of warrior kings and the latest of whom are T'Challa and Shuri.
  • Phase Four in particular features a number of new heroes who take after the major names from the Infinity Saga; including Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Mighty Thor, She-Hulk, the latest Black Panther, and Ironheart.
  • In Shang-Chi, both of Wenwu's children can be said to inherit the legacy of the Ten Rings from him: Shang-Chi gets the Ten Rings artifacts, while Xialing takes over the Ten Rings organization.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Most movies featuring two or more heroes will end up with at least one action scene where they end up fighting one another. It's not surprising, given that one of this trope's nicknames was the "Marvel Misunderstanding" even before the film adaptations started getting made. A list of the various battles can be found on the trope page.
• Lighter and Softer: Has its own page.
• Live-Action Adaptation: Of Marvel's super hero comics, with certain films focusing on specific stories (for example, Captain America: Civil War adapts the Civil War Crisis Crossover).
• MegaCorp: The Roxxon Corporation, a massive conglomerate with interests in multiple industries, just like in the comics. It is also deeply corrupt and has had its fingers in criminal and nefarious plots for decades, from helping engineer the Great Depression in the 1920s to being a front company for the Hand in the 2010s. Even with the general separation between the films and the different TV subdivisions, it's one of the few elements that's crept into every arm of the franchise; including the Iron Man films, Agent Carter, Daredevil, and Cloak and Dagger. If the events of Loki are to be taken into account, Roxxon will eventually grow big enough to become the mass-market retailer Roxxcart by the time of 2050.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: It's dangerous to be a mentor in this franchise. Once the student no longer needs you, something will kill you. Yinsen for Iron Man, Dr. Erskine for Captain America, The Ancient One for Doctor Strange, Yondu for Star-Lord, Odin for Thor, Zuri for Black Panther, Stick for Daredevil, Pop for Luke Cage, Mar-Vell/Dr. Wendy Lawson for Captain Marvel, both Iron Man and Aunt May for Spider-Man, and Queen Ramonda for Black Panther II definitely count; as do, arguably, Frigga (who taught at least Loki some of his powers) and Coulson (though he doesn't stay dead) for Skye/Daisy.
• Merchandise-Driven: While not nearly as much as the Saturday morning half-hour toy commercial TV shows, the movies do move a ton of merchandise and occasionally there will be something in the movies that plays to that. One of the most obvious is that characters' outfits will usually be redesigned in every new movie, which may or may not be justified in-story but can be turned into new action figures and collectibles.
  • Some of the more blatant toyetic costume changes include "Iron Patriot" and the various Iron Man variant armors in Iron Man 3, Hulkbuster Iron Man in Age of Ultron and Infinity War, "Iron Spider" in Infinity War, the white "team suits" in Endgame, and the white snow gear in Black Widow.
  • One of the most gratuitous costume changes was in Spider-Man: No Way Home; where merchandise promoted a black-and-gold spider-suit. So is it the MCU's take on the symbiote suit? A mystic suit for fighting with magic? No, some jerk threw paint on the normal suit, so until Peter could get it cleaned he turned it inside-out and exposed the technological inner layer.
• Merry in Minor Key: The Avengers theme is rousing and triumphant-sounding, but is in E minor.
• Meta Origin:
  • The films change the Hulk's origin so that the accident that created him was caused by an attempt to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum, similar to the "Ultimate" comic line.
  • The supplementary materials for Captain America: The Winter Soldier heavily suggest that Sam Wilson's EXO-7 Falcon suit was designed by Stark Industries, presumably incorporating similar technology to what is found in the Iron Man armors.
  • The ending of Thor: The Dark World reveals that the Aether and the Tesseract in fact each contain one of the Infinity Stones. In the comics, the Tesseract's counterpart the Cosmic Cube and the Infinity Gems are completely unconnected. Likewise, Loki's scepter in The Avengers, which was originally implied to have gotten its powers from the Tesseract, is also later revealed in Age of Ultron to actually be housing the Mind Stone.
  • In the comics, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's powers (prior to their Retcon) were the result of being Mutants. Ultron and the Vision were synthesized using the brain waves of Hank Pym and Simon Williams, respectively. And Carol Danvers was caught in the explosion of a Kree device that transferred superpowers onto her. In the films it's revealed that the first two received their powers from the scepter (though later suggested that Wanda already had some magic, the scepter just enhanced it), while Ultron and Vision were granted sentience by the Mind Stone contained within. Meanwhile, Carol absorbed a massive dose of Tesseract/Space Stone energy.
• Military Superhero: Captain America, the Falcon, War Machine, the Punisher, Captain Marvel, and Moon Knight all have military experience. The Black Widows, Hawkeye, and the original Ant-Man are variants as they are/were secret agents.
• Mirror Match: Many MCU movies involve a fight between people with similar powers, to the point that it's become considered a cliché. Examples include Iron Man and Iron Monger; Hulk and Abomination; Captain America and both Red Skull and Winter Soldier; Ant-Man and Yellowjacket; Doctor Strange and Kaecilius, Mordo (though mainly offscreen), and Scarlet Witch; Black Panther and Killmonger; Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness; Shang-Chi and Wenwu; She-Hulk and Titania (and she has a skirmish with the original Hulk as well); and Gravik and G'iah.
  • Subverted when WandaVision sets up another counterpart battle alongside Wanda's and pits Vision against another Vision, only to find after a bit of fighting that the second Vision isn't evil, just following programmed orders; both Visions are equally peaceful and they're able to talk things out.
  • Parodied in She-Hulk, which sets up a major brawl involving Hulk, She-Hulk, a knockoff Hulk, Abomination, and Titania; with some having very flimsy justification for being there. Jen, being a Fourth-Wall Observer, recognizes it as a gratuitous cliché and goes to Marvel Studios to have them call it off.
• Monochrome Casting:
  • White Male Leads are very abundant within the first three phases. By the time the Infinity Saga Myth Arc wrapped up, only three out of the twenty-three films thus released featured either a non-white (Black Panther) or a female (co-)lead (Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel). The Multiverse Saga aims to rectify this, with several projects with women as the lead or co-lead (WandaVision, Black Widow, She-Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Agatha) others that feature heroes of color (Falcon and Winter Soldier and Brave New World, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Wakanda Forever, Secret Invasion, Blade), and some starring women of color (Ms.Marvel and The Marvels, Echo, Ironheart).
  • In individual works, the cast and crew of the Black Panther and Shang-Chi franchises are almost entirely Black and Asian, respectively.
• More Diverse Sequel: The main films focusing on the founding members of The Avengers had mostly white casts led by men, with a Token Minority or lone woman occasionally present. The franchise has started to shift away from this in Phase Three, with Black Panther (2018) (starring a mostly-black cast) and Captain Marvel (2019) (the franchise's first female-led superhero film). Phases Four and Five take this a step further with Sam taking up the mantle of Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Captain America: Brave New World; while Eternals is exceptionally diverse with ten people across all races and both genders, plus one is deaf and another is gay.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Averted for the most part; the heroes that wear black are generally the ones that already did so in the comics to begin with: Black Widow, Black Panther, War Machine (barring his "Iron Patriot" paintjob in Iron Man 3), the Punisher, and Ghost Rider.
  • The Falcon is one of the few heroes to play the trope relatively straight. His comics costume features red-and-white tights, but in The Winter Soldier he draws on his Ultimate version that has metal wings over civilian clothes. Later movies skew closer to the mainstream comics, but it's still red and white on a black bodysuit. Averted as of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as Sam's Captain America uniform is a faithful recreation of the red-white-and-blue comic outfit.
  • Daredevil splits the difference: his first homemade suit is based on Frank Miller's black redesign of his outfit, but at the end of the first season he gets a more professional-looking red one. He even calls the first one "A work in progress". In the second season, Elektra's red comics outfit is exchanged for black with red accents, but it's then averted when she gets the red outfit in The Defenders.
  • Spider-Man's outfits in Civil War, Homecoming, and Infinity War are pretty true to the source (being a mix of bright red and blue). The Infinity War outfit is decidedly darker than usual but still has the traditional color scheme intact. However in Far From Home, Spidey dons a red and black outfit, which is more evocative of the original design by Steve Ditko or Miles Morales' Spider Suit (though patterned in the more traditional layout with the red on the chest and the black replacing the blue highlights of his usual look), as well as briefly wearing an all-black suit during his mission in Germany.
• The Multiverse: Multiple dimensions have been seen in the MCU. Doctor Strange explains that magic involves manipulating energies from other worlds like these.
  • The Quantum Realm, reached by shrinking smaller than an atom.
  • The Mirror Dimension, which reflects the main universe but can't affect it. Sorcerers use it as both a training ground and a prison.
  • The Dark Dimension, a hellish realm without time under the control of Dormammu.
  • Sakaar is a Portal Crossroad World, surrounded by wormholes that pick up detritus from other realms. As with the Nine Realms, it may just be another planet.
  • The dimension where K'un-Lun is situated.
  • The Hell-dimension that Ghost Rider and the Darkhold originate from (which may or may not be the same as the Norse Hel, or a Hell-dimension referenced in a separate earlier episode of Agents).
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Seasons 5 and 6 involve a "fear dimension" that's seeping into Earth and causing worst fears to come to life.
  • Endgame establishes parallel timelines that can be traversed through the Quantum Realm, which become more thoroughly explored through the Multiverse Saga.
  • The home dimension of Mysterio and the Elementals, which he calls "Earth, Dimension-833". Subverted as he's lying about everything, and is just from the regular MCU Earth. He made it all up as part of giving himself a cool sci-fi backstory.
  • A dimension where creatures from Asian mythology exist; we see the small village of Ta Lo though it's stated that grand cities exist elsewhere in that world.
  • Loki establishes that the multiverse had been reduced to one timeline, named the Sacred Timeline, after a multiversal war. The first season ends with the multiverse being restored, with What If...? exploring all these alternate timelines.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home has Spider-Man encounter villains and versions of himself from the Spider-Man Trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man Series, which are established to be different universes in the multiverse. According to comics canon this would make them Earth-96283 and Earth-120703 respectively while the MCU is Earth-199999. Sony's Spider-Man Universe is also part of the multiverse with the appearance of Eddie Brock, later labeled Earth-688B.
  • The Team Thor shorts officially take place in a separate universe to the MCU, designated as Earth-16828.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduces America Chavez who can create portals to alternate universes, and while traveling across the multiverse several alternate universes are glimpsed including one where America and Strange are made out of paint and another where they are animated. Two other realities get focus, one being the home of Sinister Strange which has been destroyed and the other being Earth-838 which is home to the Illuminati. According to the Christine Palmer of Earth-838 they have designated the MCU as Earth-616, which is a Mythology Gag to the designation of the comic universe.
  • The Marvels teases a universe that features the X-Men.
• Myth Arc: The franchise has several, either by Adaptation Origin Connection or Cerebus Retcon:
  • The biggest myth-arc is the Infinity Stones and Thanos' quest to find them to form The Infinity Gauntlet. McGuffins such as the Tesseract (the Cosmic Cube from the comics), the Aether, the Orb, and the Eye of Agamotto are all revealed to be Infinity Stones, while the Mind Gem provides the origins for both Ultron and Vision.
  • Another is the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the resurrection of HYDRA inside S.H.I.E.L.D., which provides the background for Howard Stark's estrangement from his son Tony, as well as provide the cause for his and his wife's death at the hands of a brainwashed Bucky Barnes. HYDRA also provides the background in Ant-Man and Civil War and provides the origins for Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.
  • The invasion of New York by the Chitauri and the Destructive Saviour tendencies of The Avengers likewise forms the Myth Arc of Marvel's TV Shows, such as Daredevil (where the destructive of Manhattan allows Wilson Fisk to build a criminal empire in the rubble) and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
• Mythology Gag: It is very common for MCU works to have gags referencing the original comics. The franchise has its own page, and several works have their own exclusive subpages.
• A Mythology Is True: Used during the Infinity Saga. While the comic books take the stance that All Myths Are True (and Hercules is just as involved in superheroics as Thor is), in the early MCU films, only the Norse myths were known to have any validity to them. Other mythologies are mentioned from time to time, but there's no telling whether they actually exist: Skye pitched the idea of other pantheons being real in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Black Panther mentions Wakanda's god-myths. In an Age of Ultron deleted scene, Thor outright dismissed Greek mythology as completely false.
  • The TV side was a little looser when it comes to incorporating other mythologies, as the Light and Darkforces in Cloak & Dagger are tied to Voodoo deities, and Agents of SHIELD includes an inter-dimensional being who was mentioned to be worshiped by the Inca as one of their goddesses.
  • Phase Four finally repealed this trope in favor of All Myths Are True. While Eternals partially discredited various mythologies by stating they were based on the title characters, we also have Chinese mythological creatures featured in Shang-Chi, Khonshu and the Egyptian gods in Moon Knight, and several gods (most prominently Zeus of the Greek pantheon) in Thor: Love and Thunder.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Has its own page.
• Next Sunday A.D.: From Avengers: Endgame onward, all current and future MCU works are now set a few years ahead of the present day, with the Phase Four films/TV shows released between 2020 and 2022 but taking place around the 2023-2025 time period. Previously, most of the films took place in the year they released in, unless they were specific period pieces such as Captain Marvel or Captain America: The First Avenger.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Has its own page.
• No Endor Holocaust: Generally zig-zagged across the franchise.
  • Averted with the Battle of New York from The Avengers. While no bodies or civilian deaths are seen and Captain America specifically tells the cops to get the civvies to safety, a news report afterwards shows a bunch of grieving people in front of wall covered in memorials for innocents killed by the Chitauri, and a senator demanding that the Avengers pay for the massive amount of damage to the city. The Netflix shows, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Spider-Man: Homecoming all in part focus on how the Battle of New York has affected everyday life in NYC, and casualties from this and other incidents are a plot point in Civil War.
  • Played with in Avengers: Endgame. On the one hand, it's averted in the sense that even five years after the Decimation, Earth is still a Just Before the End Crapsack World only barely holding itself together through the efforts of the Avengers. However, it's also played straight in that the numerous mass-extinctions that would've resulted due to Thanos snapping half of all life out of existence have either not happened or were minor enough that they weren't worth mentioning in the film. Hell, if anything the Decimation apparently improved things for nature, with Captain America mentioning to Black Widow seeing pods of whales in the East River, and how San Francisco is shown to have entire neighborhoods swallowed up by encroaching trees.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • While all four of the main heroes made big splashes, the coming of Thor made Earth aware of intelligent life on other worlds and made S.H.I.E.L.D. and the WSC realize how technologically outmatched Earth is.
    Aldrich Killian: Ever since the big dude with the hammer fell out of the sky, subtlety's had its day.
  • As of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, S.H.I.E.L.D. was corrupted by HYDRA from its conception. HYDRA is still out there in some fashion, and Phil Coulson is tasked with rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • As of Captain America: Civil War, only Iron Man and the Vision remain at the Avengers compound, with War Machine also there but severely injured. Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, and Scarlet Witch are all fugitives from the United Nations; Hawkeye and Ant-Man are under house arrest; and Winter Soldier (also a fugitive, but that's long been the case) is in cryostasis in Wakanda, inviting a war on Black Panther's people if discovered.
  • As of Thor: Ragnarok, Asgard has been completely destroyed, leaving Thor as the de facto king of its refugees since the death of Odin, and they are all looking for a new home.
  • After Infinity War, the population of the universe is halved, and Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Guardians of the Galaxy (with the exception of Rocket), Bucky and Falcon all bit the dust. Endgame restores the missing half, but does not reverse other deaths (like Loki or Vision) or the five years lost. On top of that, the Avengers compound is wrecked, Black Widow and Iron Man sacrifice their own lives to save the universe, Thor leaves to travel with the Guardians of the Galaxy while Valkyrie stays to look after New Asgard on Earth, and Steve Rogers goes back in time to stay and live with Peggy to the point where when he's seen back in the present, he's a withered old man who passes along his shield to Sam Wilson.
  • As of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spider-Man's true identity is exposed and he has been framed for murder and various terrorist acts by the true culprit. As of No Way Home, he can't get a moment's peace and he and his friends have lost their chance at college due to the controversy; and his attempt to fix this just makes things worse — Aunt May dies, and he ends up Unpersoning himself and loses all his friends and career prospects.
• Official Cosplay Gear: The films of the MCU have this in spades. Hasbro has made toys of Iron Man and War Machine's repulsor gloves and helmets, Captain America's shield, Thor's hammer, Spider-Man's web-shooters, Black Panther's claws, Star-Lord's helmet and blasters, Black Widow's bracelets and batons, Hawkeye's bow, and even the Hulk's fists. And that's not even counting the more high end stuff aimed at adults...
• Official Couple:
  • Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, with them finally following through with the relationship after Spider-Man: Homecoming.
    Tony: (paraphrased) Do you still have that engagement ring [for Pepper]?
    Happy: I've been carrying this thing around since 2008!
  • Zigzagged by Thor and Jane Foster. Their romance is featured in the first two phases, but then they break up offscreen before Ragnarok and Jane is hardly mentioned during the fight with Thanos. But then she comes back for Love and Thunder and they rekindle their relationship.
  • Surprisingly, one of the healthiest and most stable romantic relationships out there belongs to Wilson Fisk and Vanessa Mariana in Daredevil.
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz and Simmons. They finally marry in Season Five.
  • Subverted with Doctor Strange. Both of his movies and a Strange-focused episode of What If?... focused on his relationship with Christine Palmer, but that relationship just never works out. Two alternate Stranges destroy their universes dwelling on it, and the main character arc in Multiverse of Madness is the MCU Strange learning to let go of her. (Just in time for his comics love interest, Clea, to show up.)
  • After considerable Ship Tease in Age of Ultron and Civil War, Wanda Maximoff and Vision are together in Infinity War; and get a whole spinoff series devoted to them in WandaVision.
  • While the circumstances of their lives meant they spent most of their lives apart and with other people, after Endgame, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter finally get their happy ending together.
  • By the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter and MJ are dating.
  • In Moon Knight, Marc and Layla work together as a husband-wife team.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Unfortunately, most of the above couples suffer through this. Steve and Peggy go through years where each is convinced the other is lost to them, and they both struggle with moving on. Tony and Pepper also break up for a while, as do Thor and Jane; though Tony and Pepper's separation is mostly offscreen. Vision, Gamora, and Jane die, and both of the former are replaced with versions that don't have connections to their beloveds. Spider-Man loses MJ when he Unpersons himself. Marc has been distancing himself from Layla and attempting to divorce her for her own safety. And don't even get us started on all the crap FitzSimmons have had to go through — the two are separated for a time, physically and/or emotionally, every season.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted more often than you might think — or not, considering the sheer number of characters involved across all the films and shows. The franchise has its own page dedicated to aversions.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: A frequent Running Gag across the franchise is that the main characters will often do the bare minimum to hide their identities, with the default "disguise" being a baseball cap and sunglasses. Most of the time this is played straight, but it's occasionally lampshaded.
  Scott Lang: These aren't disguises. We look like ourselves at a baseball game!
  Kamala Khan: What are you guys wearing?
• Portal Network: This is how FTL travel works in the MCU. Guardians Vol. 2 shows that there are jump points in space that allow to quickly travel via "jumps." According to Yondu, making too many of those in quick succession is inadvisable and hazardous to organic beings (which does not stop him and Rocket from doing 700 jumps in a row). In the beginning of Infinity War, the Asgardian who sends a distress signal mentions that they are "22 jump points out of Asgard". In Captain Marvel, the MacGuffin is an FTL engine capable of circumventing the portal system, and the network is also central to the plot of The Marvels.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Has its own page.
• Prime Timeline: The MCU takes place in... an uncertain realm. A coffee-table Official Handbook, released in 2008, designated it Earth-199999; but since then, both Quentin Beck of Spider-Man: Far From Home and America Chavez of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have called it Earth-616. This creates an old-fashioned Continuity Snarl in that there already is an Earth-616: the one that the treeware Marvel Universe takes place in. How (and if) Marvel plans to reconcile this conflict has yet to be determined.
• Product Placement:
  • Most of the films that Tony Stark appears in contain plugs for Audi cars. The first movie also has a very blatant scene where Tony munches on a sandwich from Burger King, though to be fair, there's a story behind the latter.
  • Iron Man 3 has some very blatant plugs for Sun Oracle, Verizon FiOS, and the Chinese electronics brand TCL. The special Chinese cut contains some additional shilling for Yili milk and the Zoomlion corporation.
  • The first Thor movie has some lingering shots of the local 7-Eleven during the Destroyer's rampage. Darcy also bemoans how the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents confiscated her iPod.
  • The Avengers is littered with plugs for Acura, and a Bank of America sign can clearly be seen during the Battle of New York. Tony Stark uses special limited edition of Colantotte magnetic bracelet to activate his new Iron Man armor in the climax.
  • A lot of Thor: The Dark World, takes place place in London, features real products from the United Kingdom such as Shreddies, and a child throws a discarded Vimto can into a portal.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier has Cap riding a new Harley-Davidson and Black Widow driving a 2014 C7 Corvette. Both vehicles received some pretty heavy Winter Soldier-themed promotion in the lead-up to the film's release.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has had some product placement for Lexus.
  • Age of Ultron continues to place some of the above (Beats, Audi) while adding some more. The tractor in Hawkeye's barn is a vintage John Deere; several Korean Air advertisements appear in the South Korea scenes; Under Armor provides custom "off duty" clothing for most of the Avengers; Quicksilver wears primarily Adidas clothing and shoes with a Hummel jacket.
  • Ant-Man features Scott trying to get a job at Baskin-Robbins and a Thomas the Tank Engine toy features heavily in the climax. Additionally, every major character sports a Samsung smartphone, of which there are many lingering shots. (Except for the villain, who carries an iPhone in his briefcase. Natch.)
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home promotes Audis (complete with Mythology Gag license plates), Synchrony, United Airlines, and the Salvation Army.
• Promoted to Love Interest:
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron makes Bruce Banner, who has little interaction with Black Widow in the comics, into her love interest. This is partially because Bucky Barnes and Daredevil, Widow's two major love interests in the comics, have no real connection to her in this continuity. It doesn't last, though.
  • Pepper Potts is usually married to Happy Hogan but in the MCU she's Iron Man's love interest and future wife.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Inverted. In the comics, Winter Soldier and Black Widow were in a relationship while they were both working for the Soviets. In the MCU, Widow was born decades after the Soldier became active, so her only encounters with him have been while fighting for her life when he's been ordered to assassinate her. She also gets promoted to a Not Love Interest for Steve himself.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy has Gamora be Peter Quill's love interest, in the comics Gamora's actual love interest was Nova (Richard Rider) with her relationship Peter being platonic. Since the massive success of the films, Marvel soon had Quill and Gamora sleep together and have a relationship starting in issue 7# of the 2019 series.
  • Ant-Man makes Hope Van Dyne into Scott Lang's love interest. In the comics, Hope originally only existed in the Marvel Comics 2 continuity, which was set in the future.
  • In Black Panther, Nakia is T'Challa's ex-girlfriend and primary love interest. This is in contrast to the comics, where Nakia was significantly younger than T'Challa and simply had an (extremely unhealthy) unrequited crush on him.
  • Black Widow: Inverted again. Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian in the comics is Natasha's ex-husband, in the film Alexei is her father figure instead. This due to making Melina Vostokoff, who is Alexei's ex wife and Nat's surrogate mother a Composite Character of Natasha and herself.
  • Iron Fist: According to one of the writers, the reason why a romance was written in between Danny Rand and Colleen Wing was because the writers looked at what they'd done thus far and noticed that there wasn't much sex in the show. Furthermore, in the comics, Danny's canonical love interest is Misty Knight. However, the characterization of Misty that was introduced in Luke Cage made the idea of romance between her and Danny a Crack Pairing at best.
  • Nico and Karolina in Runaways. In the comics, Karolina crushes on Nico for a long time, but Nico doesn't realize she might feel something in return until Karolina leaves and comes back with Xavin. Here, Nico kisses Karolina back with no hesitation and the first season ends with them getting together.
• Protagonist Title: Majority of the films and shows. The Iron Man film series, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Agent Carter, Daredevil, Ant-Man, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Black Panther.
• Puny Earthlings: Subverted. The Kree assess Nick Fury's (by extension all humans) threat level as "low to none". Thanos, the Confederacy, the Chronicoms, the Gibborim, Izel, and Dormammu all paid the price for underestimating humans.
• Putting the Band Back Together:
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: The Avengers at some point before the movie's start, with the team's previous appearance together having ended with them going separate ways.
  • Thor: Ragnarok: Thor lampshades the fact he ends up doing this over the course of the movie when putting his team together to defeat Hela and save the Asgardians. The team consists of the Hulk/Bruce Banner (who disappeared at the end of Age of Ultron), Loki (who faked the dead at the end of Thor: The Dark World and has maintained the masquerade until the movie's plot kicks off), and Valkyrie (who's been in exile from Asgard for centuries).
  • Avengers: Endgame: The Avengers have split five years after failing to stop the Snap: Cap, Black Widow, War Machine and several allies are still in contact trying to put what's left of the world back together, but Tony is now living in seclusion with Pepper and their daughter, Thor has secluded himself with the surviving Asgardians in Northern Europe, and Clint has become a solitary vigilante. It's only Scott escaping his five-year entrapment in the Quantum Realm that makes the other Avengers aware there's a way to reverse Thanos' genocide, and though some of them need more convincing than others, the Avengers slowly reunite to achieve this goal.
• Race Lift:
  • Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, who was originally white in the comics. However, this is largely based on Fury's Ultimate Marvel incarnation, who was based on Jackson in the first place.
  • In Thor, the Norse God Heimdall is played by Idris Elba, an Afro-British actor.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell (who is a blonde white guy in the comics) is played by bald Latino actor Maximiliano Hernández.
  • Zigzagged by the Mandarin, who was Chinese in the comics. In Iron Man 3, he was Ambiguously Brown (portrayed by British-Indian Ben Kingsley) and the real villain was white, but Shang-Chi introduced a new version of the character who was Chinese and matched the comics.
  • Daisy Johnson/Quake was originally presented as Anglo in the comics, but is half-Chinese in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The comics have since adopted this aspect from the show.
  • Ben Urich from Daredevil is Caucasian in the comics but African-American in the series, as is Malcolm Ducasse from Jessica Jones.
  • Mordo from Doctor Strange is another character that went from Caucasian (specifically Transylvanian) to Black, though it's not clear what part of the world he comes from now so he may not be African-American.
  • Most of Spider-Man's classmates were revised to be various ethnicities other than Caucasian.
  • In Thor: Ragnarok, Valkyrie (who is white and blonde in the comics) is played by Tessa Thompson, who is African-American. In the film, she's the sole survivor of the Valkyrie Corps, and another Valkyrie shown appears almost identical to the comic Valkyrie.
  • The Eternals are far more racially diverse than they were in the comics.
  • Namor now has a Hispanic appearance, as Atlantis is done in the style of Myincatec in the MCU (including a corresponding name change to Talokan, an Aztec mythical city).
  • Kang the Conqueror and his multiversal counterparts have gone from white to black. So has the High Evolutionary.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: This is the cinematic version of the "heroes with issues". What do you expect?
  • The Avengers: The founding members are a time lost living legend, a billionaire playboy who doesn't work well with others, a brilliant scientist who could level a city if he ever lost control, a Physical God alien with family issues, a former assassin with guilt over her past actions, and a surprisingly well grounded secret agent who uses a bow and arrow. Later members include a pair of severely traumatized twins with super powers, a robot, an uptight career soldier whole stole a power armor, and a wisecracking counselor with a flight suit, with allies including a reforming criminal, a high school student with a guilt complex, a former brainwashed assassin, a brilliant but smug wizard, the royal family of the richest country on Earth, and a strong-willed soldier from outer space. You would think this is a recipe for disaster, but they have managed to save the world on their own, and together they are virtually unstoppable.
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy: a human abducted as a child and raised by Space Pirates, a former assassin of an intergalactic warlord, a Literal-Minded warrior seeking revenge, a science experiment with a penchant for blowing things up, and a talking plant. Later members include the space pirate who raised the human, the sister of the former assassin, and an empath who was used as a pet her whole life. Yet they managed to do what the Nova Corps could not: stop Ronan the Accuser, when he had an Infinity Stone.
  • Team Coulson: The founding members are a major Captain America/S.H.I.E.L.D. fanboy, a Broken Ace who quit being a field agent to go to a desk job, an anti-social field agent from an abusive home, a civilian hacker who was moved around foster care her whole life, a biochemist who considers dissecting people while they're standing right beside her, and an engineer who is awkward outside the lab and cannot admit his feelings for the aforementioned biochemist. Later members include a major Howling Commandoes fanboy, an ace field agent who is too skilled at lying for her own good, a mercenary who believes Violence is the Only Option, an engineer with serious mistrust of non humans, a doctor with serious anger management issues, a construction Forman who is not cut out for the spy life, and a woman whose life growing up under a corrupt government has left her distrustful of authority. Yet they almost singlehandedly save S.H.I.E.L.D. from being destroyed after HYDRA's infiltration was revealed, even when one of their very own was a member of HYDRA.
  • The Defenders: A blind lawyer with a strong Blood Knight tendencies and amassive guilt complex, a severely traumatized alcoholic, a man who was experimented on in prison who still mourns his dead wife, and an orphaned heir to a massive fortune who was raised in an alternate dimension with serious emotional self-control issues. Major allies include a Back Alley Nurse who tries to keep them on the straight-and-narrow with varying success, an ex-Marine who shoots first and asks questions never, a sword maiden with strong Blood Knight tendencies who was recruiting for a Cult without realizing it, a ruthless Knight Templar who espouses The Spartan Way, a secretary who obsessively searches for the truth no matter who gets hurt, a lawyer who can't quite reconcile breaking the law to fight crime, a Cowboy Cop who has lost faith in the system, and a former child star who is too eager to jump into the hero life. Yet this group managed to succeed where no else had in centuries: stop the Hand from destroying a city in pursuit of dragon bones, even confirmed killing three of their founders.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Has its own page.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • S.H.I.E.L.D., especially its director Nick Fury, stands above regional politics and screen the World Security Council's extremism. Until we find out that they've been infiltrated by HYDRA, anyway.
  • At the galactic level, the Nova Corps. When they get a message that a madman with a superweapon is on his way and an Army of Thieves and Whores intends to help stop him, they're willing to listen.
  • The Ancient One is willing to bend the rules occasionally as well, though this disillusions some of her followers.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: While the trope naming family isn't in this Marvel continuity yet, the trope is played with a bit:
  • Tony invokes this in regards to the Iron Man armor since he doesn't want that readily available, but he averts with his arc reactor technology and wants it widespread.
  • Hank also invokes this trope, as he doesn't trust anyone but himself and those he works with in regards to handling the Pym Particle, having been left bitter after S.H.I.E.L..D. tries to duplicate it without his permission.
  • In Black Panther, Wakanda has historically kept its advanced technology to itself in order to avoid being a target of rival nations. Killmonger gives them a What the Hell, Hero? for this. T'Challa takes this to heart and defies the trope at the end, exposing Wakanda's secrets and sharing their discoveries with the world.
• Reformed Criminal: Quite a few.
  • Most of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter Quill was a former Space Pirate and a notorious outlaw and scavenger when introduced, Gamora and Nebula were originally Co-Dragons of Thanos, Drax is introduced as an inmate, Mantis is technically an accomplice to a genocidal living planet, and Yondu Udonta was The Leader of the Space Pirates Peter was a member of.
  • Bucky Barnes spent most of his reawakened life as an amnesiac assassin for H.Y.D.R.A.
  • Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were heavily implied to be lapdogs of H.Y.D.R.A. prior to their alliance with Ultron.
  • Scott Lang and his friends were thieves.
  • Loki eventually reforms in Thor: Ragnarok and became a genuine ally to his adoptive brother.
  • Carol Danvers was an amnesiac member of the elite special force of a Galactic Conqueror alien race.
  • Played with by Shang-Chi, who was raised in his father's criminal organization but ran away after being given his first assassination assignment. He later admits that he ran after completing the assignment and has blood on his hands, making it a straight example.
• Reimagining the Artifact: A number of updates are made to the comics mythos to ground the characters in present day sensibilities. The MCU's examples can be found on their own page.
• Remember the New Guy?: Pops up now and then with superpowered characters who were around before the "main" story arc of the MCU began in the mid-2000s, but didn't show up until much larger in the saga. The typical explanations are that these characters were engaged in covert missions and their existence wasn't known to the public at large (Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Mandarin), they weren't doing anything of particular relevance yet that would demand mention of them (Vulture, Killmonger, the Masters of the Mystic Arts), or they weren't on Earth and not involved in events occurring there so the Earth-based heroes didn't know about them (the Guardians of the Galaxy, Valkyrie, Captain Marvel).
• Restricted Expanded Universe: During the Infinity Saga, the TV shows and other tie-ins had no major impact on the movie continuity — the closest things have come is that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. filled in some non-essential gaps for Age of Ultron. While Marvel eventually strengthened the connections in the Multiverse Saga thanks to Disney+ streaming projects, they've given a couple explanations as to why it hadn't really happened before then:
  • Movie audiences haven't necessarily watched the shows and will need to be brought up to speed, which could necessitate an Info Dump that may disrupt the story.
  • TV production is much faster than movie production; either a movie has to make a guess at where the shows' plots will be when it releases, or the TV writers could be constrained by what a movie script has already established. Some examples of these continuity issues:
    • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was considered to have been in a rut and stalling for time while waiting for the Winter Soldier plot twist to hit. Years later, Season 5 had wrapped up, complete with its plot tying into Infinity War, when it received a surprise renewal; and the showrunners had no idea when the next season would air. Since they couldn't risk the possibility of spoiling Endgame should the series air first, they had to ignore the Infinity War references and claim that Season 6 was still set prior to Thanos' attack.
    • Any series not featuring movie characters is plagued with questions of "how does this tie in with the latest movie events?" For the Defenders shows, the answer always ended up being "this is a little ways into the past, and the movie hasn't happened yet"; and they ended before they caught up with the unavoidable impact of Infinity War. Runaways and Cloak and Dagger were never given answers as to why the events of Infinity War weren't seen, though in the former's case an Extremely Short Timespan can account for not yet catching up to that point.
  • The TV side of the universe finally gets recognized in Endgame, as Edwin Jarvis from Agent Carter makes a cameo. It helps that his show was already over, and a period piece set in the late 1940s to begin with, so nobody has to worry about the appearance affecting TV continuity. Other series have also been given nods in the Multiverse Saga, with Daredevil receiving a full Revival and its leads (Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk) making appearances in various other projects.
• Ret-Canon: The films have become popular enough to influence the comics that inspired them. Examples include:
  • The Hulk's prominence in the Avengers movie got him added to the roster of the Avengers comic that was being published at the time. Originally, the Hulk quit the Avengers way back in the second issue during the 1960's, and had at best been an infrequent guest star in the ensuing years.
  • Hawkeye was given a black tactical outfit inspired by the one he wore in the Avengers movie, which ironically enough, was already based on his Ultimate Marvel design.
  • For a brief period, the Secret Avengers comic had Rhodey adopt the Iron Patriot identity in order to match up with Iron Man 3.
  • Daisy Johnson/Quake was white in the original comics, and her powers came from her father. After Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made her half-Chinese and established that she got her powers from her Inhuman mother, the comics imported both of those aspects to her backstory.
  • Tony Stark's friendship with Bruce Banner was made canon in the comics as well, even though the characters were originally bitter rivals. This seems to be a case of Depending on the Writer, though.
  • Ever since Guardians of the Galaxy came out, the comics and every adaptation has featured the five Guardians used in the film near-exclusively.
  • When Sam Wilson became the new Captain America, he was given a new costume that incorporated a pair of red goggles, similar to the ones he wears in the movies.
  • Darren Cross was a minor Starter Villain in the comics, and instead of having the power to change size, he was basically a very ugly, pink version of the Hulk. The Ant-Man movie got him resurrected, and Nick Spencer eventually gave him shrinking abilities and a suit of Yellowjacket armor, just like he has in the film.
  • Jessica Jones and Trish Walker formed such a duo that the next Patsy Walker series had to include them teaming up. However, the comics did not incorporate the show's revelation that Jessica is Trish's adopted sister.
  • Black Mariah's real name, Mariah Dillard, was created for the Luke Cage TV show, before being made canon in David F. Walker's Power Man and Iron Fist series.
• The Reveal: Being a long-running franchise of interconnected movies there are a number of questions raised in certain entries that get answered later down the road. See individual film pages for reveals pertinent to those movies' plots.
  • Thor: The Dark World: The Aether is an Infinity Stone, as is the Tesseract, which was stored on Asgard at the end of The Avengers (2012).
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: HYDRA has been a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. since its formation, shaping history to suit its needs since WWII. On a smaller note, Howard and Maria Stark were assassinated by HYDRA instead of dying in a car crash as originally believed.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Loki's scepter was an Infinity Stone all along, the Mind Stone to be exact.
  • Captain America: Civil War: Following up on a Winter Soldier revelation, the Starks' assassin was Bucky as the Winter Soldier.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: Gamora knew where the Soul Stone was all along, and its protector is the long-thought-dead Red Skull, having been punished for tampering with the Space Stone.
  • Captain Marvel: A more humorous example than others, but the truth behind Nick Fury's scarred eye is revealed - it was clawed by Goose, the Badass Adorable Flerken.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Several heroes in the movie get villains that aren't supposed to be theirs in the comics. A full list can be found on its own page.
• Running Gag:
  • As with all Marvel productions until his death, Marvel Comics co-creator Stan Lee being featured in the Infinity Saga films in a Creator Cameo. And Tony Stark never gets his name right (and in Civil War, vice-versa).
  • Every Phase Two movie involves someone losing an arm or hand at some point. Kevin Feige considers it a The Empire Strikes Back reference. This is rarely played for humor though.
  • Noodle Incidents occurring in Budapest. Black Widow and Hawkeye had an assignment there that they remember very differently (which eventually gets explored in Black Widow), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had a minor character named Isabelle and her team there on merc duty once, Edwin Jarvis met his wife there during the Second World War, and Nick Fury spent time there before transitioning over to S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • The baseball caps and sunglasses characters used to disguise themselves.
  • Every season of the Netflix shows feature at least one Hallway Fight, sometimes two. As well as car doors being misused in a variety of ways.

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