History ComicBook / SecretInvasion2008

A live-action Creator/DisneyPlus series based on this storyline was announced for the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse in December 2020, with Creator/SamuelLJackson and Creator/BenMendelsohn set to reprise their roles as ComicBook/NickFury and Talos.

* EverythingsBettersWithDinosaurs: Since the Avengers wind up in the Savage Land, yes, there's dinosaurs. A T-Rex interrupts the brawling to scatter everyone, accidentally killing some of the Skrulls in their midst in the process. Good rex.

* HeroicSacrifice: Captain Britain, to stop the Skrulls, though he doesn't stay dead terribly long thanks to Merlin.

* TheAlledgedCar: Maria Hill's opinion of the SHIELD helicarriers, when they get knocked out of the sky, comparing them to the car she's had since she was nineteen.

* ActuallyADoombot: Played with. When they found out that there were Skrulls around, many superheroes thought that they were the puppet masters of the Civil War: the New Avengers thought that Iron Man was a Skrull, and Iron Man that Captain America was a Skrull. So then it would be just to defeat the self-evident bad guys, free the "real" Iron Man/Captain America, and everything would be right again. No! Neither Captain America, Iron Man nor the New Warriors, Maria Hill or the politicians that wrote and vote the Registration Act were Skrulls. When you saw Captain America and Iron Man fighting to the death for the liberty vs. security dichotomy, or Iron Man creating a Thor clone that killed Goliath, or Captain America leading a guerrilla group, it was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what you saw]].

* BigBadWannabe: Quite possibly Veranke. She planned big, manages to capture and impersonate a bunch of powerful heroes... only to have it culminate in an EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion. Then she gets stomped/popped/killed by Norman Osborn (being the ox), who uses the power he's handed as a result to cause much ''bigger'' problems.

* ButtMonkey: Hank Pym, ''even in captivity''. Why? Because the Skrull impersonating him complains that he got zero respect for impersonating Pym.

* CassandraTruth: Veranke warned the Skrull Emperor that their homeworld would be destroyed by Galactus, and then [[ComicBook/{{Annihilation}} the wave will come]], and was banished for it. The Skrulls were at least smart enough to bring her back to power after the first part of the prophecy happened.[[note]]Curiously, the first VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance gives you an optional mission of [[WhatCouldHaveBeen saving the Skrulls from Galactus, thus Veranke (only listed as 'Skrull Empress') would never initiate the Invasion and instead strikes an alliance with Earth]].[[/note]]

* DebateAndSwitch: Invoked. After the end of the Comicbook/CivilWar, Luke Cage thought that they should find the BigBad behind it and the other recent disasters (ComicBook/SecretWar, ComicBook/AvengersDisassembled, ComicBook/HouseOfM), and make things right again. And he was happy to discover the Skrull conspiracy, but no: the Skrulls were not behind any of those things. As pointed by Iron Fist, there was no big bad behind, things were screwed simply because they were screwed.

* DefectorFromDecadence: [[ComicBook/YoungAvengers Hulkling]], Crusader, [[Comicbook/{{Runaways}} Xavin]], John the Skrull, Jaz, Kl'rt the original Super Skrull, or really any Skrull that sides with the Earth heroes. Technically, they didn't defect from ''decadence'', as the Skrull Empire was in shambles and had been taken over by religious fundamentalists, but they still, for assorted reasons, decided they liked Earth enough as it was to not want it assimilated. Of course, Hulkling was raised human and Xavin was never part of this particular faction...

* EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion: Many people see the conclusion ([[spoiler:one battle in Central Park and Thor taking down the entire damn fleet by himself]]) as this.
** The fact that the Super-Skrulls were so easily killed to a point were every tie-in has a kill count in the hundreds didn't help.

* {{Flanderization}}: Under Bendis, the Skrulls go from your typical jerkass aliens to religious fundamentalists constantly muttering "he loves you", something not really in keeping with their prior depictions (wherein Skrulls had at least two gods, rather than the one). Several characters in the side-stories point out how utterly unlike them this is, with even the ''Super-Skrull'' telling Nova he finds the modern jihadism (his words) disturbing.

%%* HeroicSacrifice: Captain Britain.

%%* HowDidWeGetBackHome: In the planning stages of the Secret Invasion, the Illuminati [[note]](Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, Professor Xavier, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange)[[/note]] are sitting around a table as they discuss the events of their assault on the Skrull homeworld. Dr. Strange tries to cast a spell and they wonder how they got home... [[spoiler:Then a War Skrull bursts in and kills them all. It's all right, though, because [[ExpendableClone they're clones.]]]]
* HumanAlienDiscovery: PlayedWith. Although this is more a ChangelingTale for superheroes and villains having Skrull infiltrators as {{Manchurian Agent}}s, various of them have supressed their memories of being Skrulls and, even more, they ''do'' believe were HumanAllAlong until the ArcWords are pronounced and they discovered the truth ([[BodyHorror for their own horror]].)

** And the Skrull Kill Krew hates them.
** At the end of this story, Jessica Drew came to ''really'' hate Skrulls, as seen in her individual comics which happens after this story.
* KickTheDog: A lot of readers, and many of the Initiative students, view 3-D man's shooting of Crusader as this.

* LeeroyJenkins: ComicBook/{{Luke Cage|HeroForHire}} pulls this early on in the story. As the Savage Land copycats come off the ship, Ares notes to fight them is a calculated distraction on the Skrulls' part and that they should retreat back to New York. Cage however punches out Afro!Cage and the heroes bog themselves down in a pretty pointless fight. The battle scatters the heroes and leaves them wandering around for over half the series before Abigail Brand and Reed Richards come to rescue them.
** The Skrulls themselves suffer from this. Ms. Marvel points out how the super-skrulls were almost eager to die in battle. Their religious devotion made them overconfident in victory and to ignore basic military tactics as pointed out by the Skrull commander who invaded Wakanda and Kl'rt, the original Super-Skrull.
* LegacyCharacter: 3-D Man

** The way Ms. Marvel single-handly defeated dozens of Super Skrulls at once. Repeatedly.

* ShaggyDogStory: Crusader. He finally decides to side with his adopted home, fights with the humans, successfully hands Skrull!Yellowjacket his ass, thereby saving the entire Initiative camp and making the impostor Pym pay for everything he'd done to screw the human side over... Then 3D Man plugs him in the back of the head and dismissively shrugs it off when Crusader's fellow students are pissed. The only redeeming grace is that Crusader uses his AppliedPhlebotinum to teleport away from the scene before anyone actually sees him die, so he might have somehow made it.

* VillainEpisode: Crusader, being a Skrull, is supposed to be a villain, but a good portion of ''Avengers: The Initiative'' is actually told from his point of view as he struggles with whether to fight for his birth people or his adopted home.

* YouShallNotPass: A very brave case. The female superskrull wanted to attack Broxton, she had just defeated Beta Ray Bill, and someone stood in defiance. Not Thor, but Donald Blake, with the hammer laying between them. He has to take the hammer to turn into Thor, but can he do it before the alien simply kills him with some quicker attack? [[spoiler:Volstagg did not want to take any chances, attacked the alien, and gave Donald Blake the second he needed to take the hammer.]]

A live-action Creator/DisneyPlus sereis based on this storyline was announced for the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse in December 2020, with Creator/SamuelLJackson and Creator/BenMendelsohn set to reprise their roles as ComicBook/NickFury and Talos.

* DownerEnding: When the only person to get anything good out of an end of a story is ''Norman Osborn'', you know this is the case.

* DownerEnding: In spades. The only person to get anything good out of this in-story is ''Norman Osborn''.

* ActuallyADoombot: Played with. When they found out that there were Skrulls around, many superheroes thought that they were the puppet masters of the Civil War: the New Avengers thought that Iron Man was a Skrull, and Iron Man that Captain America was a Skrull. So then it would be just to defeat the self-evident bad guys, free the "real" Iron Man/Captain America, and everything would be right again. No! Neither Captain America, Iron Man nor the New Warriors, María Hill or the politicians that wrote and vote the Registration Act were Skrulls. When you saw Captain America and Iron Man fighting to the death for the liberty vs. security dichotomy, or Iron Man creating a Thor clone that killed Goliath, or Captain America leading a guerrilla group, it was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what you saw]].

* HowDidWeGetBackHome: In the planning stages if the Secret Invasion the illuminati are sitting around a table discussing the events of their assault on the skrull homeworld. Then Stephen trys to cast a spell and then they wonder how they got home...
** [[spoiler:Then a war skrull bursts in and kills them all. It's all right because, [[ExpendableClone of course, they're clones.]] ]]

* BackFromTheDead: Originally subverted, with the realization that the "resurrected" Elektra was a Skrull. [[spoiler: Played straight with the ending, which revealed ''dozens'' (and probably more) of characters who'd been kept alive by the Skrulls after being replaced by infiltration agents.]]
** Elektra ''was'' resurrected; she was replaced shortly after that and held on one of the Skrull ships. It would have made no sense if it was otherwise, unless the Skrulls either fooled the Hand or the Hand were working with the Skrulls all along, neither of which was likely.
** Also worth noting is Mockingbird. Turns out she's caught way before that time and the one who's dead is actually a Skrull.

** Another big problem was that one tie-in featured Deadpool discovering the means to kill the Skrull Queen and passing the information on to Norman Osborn (he was supposed to pass that information on to ''Nick Fury'', but Osborn intercepted it). If you read that tie-in, you realized that Osborn had a gun made to those specifications and used it during the final fight to kill the otherwise-invulnerable queen, making himself the hero of the day. If you didn't read the tie-in, it looked like Osborn beat the queen by ... shooting her with a gun. And was lauded as the savior of Earth for happening to be the person who fired the lucky shot. It was ''never even mentioned'' during the battle that if anyone other than Osborn had shot her, it wouldn't have killed her.

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: The way Ms. Marvel single-handly defeated dozens of Super Skrulls at once. Repeatedly.

* AssimilationPlot: All Gods worshiped by races conquered by Skrulls become assimilated in their pantheon and turn into mindless slaves of Skrull god Kly'bn. A ''What If'' story in which the Skrulls win also reveals this would be the eventual fate of humanity

** Elektra ''was'' resurrected; she was replaced shortly after that. She was held on one of the Skrull ships. It would have made no sense if it was otherwise, unless the Skrulls either fooled the Hand or the Hand were working with the Skrulls all along, neither of which was likely.

* BigBadWannabe: Quite possibly Veranke. She planned big, manages to capture and impersonate a bunch of powerful heroes... only to have it culminate in an EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion. Then she got stomped/popped/killed by Norman Osborn (being the ox), who uses the power he's handed as a result to cause much ''bigger'' problems.

* CassandraTruth: Veranke was warning Skrull Emperor that their homeworld will be destroyed by Galactus, and then [[ComicBook/{{Annihilation}} the wave will come]], and was banished for that. Skrulls were at last smart enough to bring her back, after first part of the prophecy happened.[[note]]Curiously, the first VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance gives you an optional mission of [[WhatCouldHaveBeen saving the Skrulls from the first part, thus Veranke (only listed as 'Skrull Empress') would never initiate the Invasion and instead strikes an alliance with Earth]].[[/note]]

* ComputerVirus: After Ultron's actions give the Skrulls crucial information they need, namely that Iron Man's armor is techno-organic via the Extremis nanite system, they use it to infect ''every piece of digital hardware Stark's company ever made'', effectively shutting down a ton of hero-used computer systems and nearly all of S.H.I.E.L.D., and nearly putting Stark himself in a coma.

* CreepyCrossdresser: Seems kind of a no-brainer, since it's common knowledge that the Skrulls are {{Voluntary Shapeshift|ing}}ers and can turn into male or female independent of their original gender, but the Skrull that posed as Elektra is a notable example since it was his death that kicked off the story.

* MercyKill: Thor kills Wasp, partially to put her out of her misery, and partially to keep her from going critical and taking nearly everyone in Times Square with her.

* RefusalOfTheCall: Hulkling. He is the Messiah of the Skrulls, a race in its darkest hour and on the verge of extinction, which fell under the command of religious zealots as a last HopeSpot, and they lost, they are now pariahs in the universe, without a homeworld, and their last ones being traced and killed... and he chooses to stay on Earth.

[[quoteright:245:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/marvel_secret_invasion_5831.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:245:The shapeshifting, superpowered alien race has been posing as our friends. Uh oh.]]

* DeadpanSnarker: Possibly overused, but among a cast full of snark, John the Skrull managed to stand out.

A Creator/MarvelComics CrisisCrossover for the year 2008, about an invasion of the Skrulls on Earth. It's the conclusion of plot elements introduced by Creator/BrianMichaelBendis in [[ComicBook/TheAvengers multiple Avengers titles]] since the end of the ''ComicBook/CivilWar'' crossover. The possibility that anyone in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse could be a shapeshifting impostor woke big interest in fans, who were hoping for the comics equivalent of Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}. No surprise then that when the event itself came to a more [[DecompressedComic drawn out]] and anticlimactic end than expected, fans found it rather...[[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot disappointing]]. [[BrokenBase Fandom is divided]] about whether this story was good or not. It was followed by the ''ComicBook/DarkReign'' and ''ComicBook/WarOfKings'' events.

** The Red Hood gets one as well, when he sees the news reports of the Skrulls attacking everywhere and knows what needs to be done. He wastes no time assembling his forces.
-->'''Red Hood:''' Get everybody.

-->'''Red Hood:''' A Skrull takeover would bad for business. ''Get. Everybody.''

* BecomingTheMask: Captain Marvel.

* AnimatedAdaptation: The first half of the second season of ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' received inspiration from these comics, with a bit of {{foreshadowing}} throughout the latter half of the first season for good measure. Four episodes make up the main plot: "Who Do You Trust?", "Prisoner of War", "Infiltration" and "[[TitleDrop Secret Invasion]]".

* AssimilationPlot: All Gods worshiped by races conquered by Skrulls become assimilated in their pantheon and turn into mindless slaves of Skrull god Kly'bn.

---> '''Attacking Skrulls:''' He loves you.
---> '''John:''' [[Music/TheBeatles Yeah, yeah, yeah.]] Look at you, the fundamentalists. Who do you lot have the powers of, then? Anyone I could take on? Music/{{ABBA}}? Music/FrankieGoesToHollywood? No? Well, that's what makes me laugh, lads. Everything about us Skrulls says we're meant to ''fit in''.

* TheMole: Several characters are actually Skrulls. [[spoiler: In fact, most of the registered superhero teams have at least one, courtesy of the three biggest Moles, the Skrulls impersonating Hank Pym, Dum Dum Dugan, and Jessica Drew.]]

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Clint Barton/Hawkeye/Ronin had an epic exclamation of this after the revelation of Skrull Mockingbird...
-->'''Clint''': ''THIS IS NOT OVER UNTIL ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD!!! '''EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!!!!'''''

* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: In-universe, Nova managed to overcome the extreme stigma of being a former New Warrior in the eyes of the general public due to how instrumental the Nova Corps was in aiding Earth with the recovery and peacekeeping efforts in the Earth-Skrull War's aftermath.

* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: In-universe, Nova managed to overcome the extreme stigma of being a former New Warrior in the eyes of the general public due to how instrumental the Nova Corps was in aiding Earth with the recovery in the Earth-Skrull War's aftermath.

* ItsPersonal: Skrulls hate Reed Richards for turning few of them into cows.