Early Bird Cameo / Live-Action Films

• Kong: Skull Island: Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah have early-bird cameos via cave painting in The Stinger, setting up their appearances in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).
• This can be seen in several super-hero movies wherein pre-transformed allies, sidekicks, or villains may make an appearance, whereas in the comics, their first appearance included said transformation.
  • Billy Dee Williams as pre-Two-Face Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's Batman (1989) (though the former was replaced by Tommy Lee Jones by the time he actually became Two-Face).
  • The producers of The Dark Knight Trilogy originally wanted the DA in the first movie to be Dent, but decided they couldn't give him time to properly develop so they came up with another character instead. This, unfortunately, led the filmmakers to stridently avoid this trope.
• Dylan Baker as the pre-Lizard Curt Connors in the Spider-Man Trilogy series. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled and rebooted before he ever got a chance to become the Lizard.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man: Rhodey looks at the MK II armor, and says "Next time, baby!" He gets the opportunity to become War Machine in Iron Man 2 and wears an upgraded version of that armor, and is a full-time Avenger by Avengers: Age of Ultron.
  • Similarly, Samuel Sterns appears as a supporting character in The Incredible Hulk. His final scene appears to be the start of his mutation into The Leader, though this initially became a dropped plot thread thanks to the lack of a sequel. Fastfoward to Phase 5, where Sterns will finally appear as The Leader in the upcoming Captain America: New World Order.
  • In the two Iron Man movies, Captain America's shield can be seen on Tony Stark's worktable along with Thor's hammer. The Captain shows up in a block of ice for the alternate opening of The Incredible Hulk and got his own movie in 2011.
  • In Iron Man 2, there's a very subtle reference to the Black Panther (or more likely, his father, the previous Black Panther). When Nick Fury shows Tony the map of superhuman activity across the globe, one of the markers can be seen over Africa. Tom Holland and Kevin Feige have also said the little boy that Tony saves in the climax is in fact a young Peter Parker.
  • Thor itself features a cameo by Hawkeye, who was featured in The Avengers, as well as the Cosmic Cube from Captain America: The First Avenger appearing in The Stinger.
  • The Avengers has a brief cameo from Thanos at the very end of the movie. He later makes a full appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy and is featured as the Big Bad in Avengers: Infinity War.
  • Thor: The Dark World features The Collector from Guardians of the Galaxy in the stinger. We also get a mention of at least two Infinity Stones.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier has Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear in the first stinger before their featured debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. There's also a mention of Stephen Strange, who in this film is one of the targets of Project Insight.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ulysses Klaue, a minor Fantastic Four and Black Panther villain has a small-but-important cameo to set him up for the Black Panther movie, as a vibranium dealer. He then appears as an antagonist in Black Panther that is key to Killmonger's plans for Wakanda.
  • In Ant-Man, they make mention of "a guy who jumps around, who swings and climbs up walls." He would later be seen in Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. The Stinger also mentions "the accords" - specifically, The Sokovia Accords that are the catalyst for Civil War. Justified in that the whole stinger is a scene from the latter film plopped at the end of Ant-Man.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has the Grandmaster show up in the Dance Party Ending Creative Closing Credits several months before he would go on to be the main antagonist of the second act of Thor: Ragnarok.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Aaron Davis (aka the Prowler) mentions a young nephew whose neighborhood he wants to protect from the Vulture's high-tech weaponry. This nephew is Miles Morales, another Spider-Man. Whether this cameo comes to fruition is yet to be seen.
  • Surtur's Fire Dragon (or, at least, one of the same species) from Thor: Ragnarok makes an appearance in the Monsters After Dark Halloween overlay for Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! in Disney California Adventure, of all places. The ride overlay opened almost two months before the film did.
  • An unintentional case happened with Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who was supposed to debut in Black Widow, only for COVID-related delays to make the character first appear in the show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
  • A close one: Episode 5 of Hawkeye (2021) has Yelena mentioning wanting to see the "new and improved" Statue of Liberty, setting up its appearance (which includes a new Captain America shield) in the climax of Spider-Man: No Way Home, released two days later.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness features the first MCU appearances a member of the X-Men and Fantastic Four, respectively, with alternate universe Variants of Professor X and Mister Fantastic showing up as members of Earth-838's Illuminati.
  • Similarly, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, along with that year's Ms. Marvel TV series, officially introduces the concept of mutants into the MCU ahead of the X-Men's eventual debut.
• Star Wars:
  • The updated version of A New Hope has Boba Fett showing up in an added scene, though he's not significant until the next movie. Interestingly, he also made a similar appearance in the manga adaptation of A New Hope, which came out before the Special Editions.
  • The Special Edition's Mos Eisley intro has a cameo appearance of Dash Rendar's Outrider ship from Shadows of the Empire.
  • The planet Coruscant from the prequel trilogy is shown during the celebration sequence in the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi. The DVD version also adds buildings seen during the prequels.
• In the film version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, at the end we hear Aunt Alberta calling up to Eustace that "Jill Pole's stopped by for a visit." Jill becomes an important character in the next story, The Silver Chair. Subverted after the fact, however; since that film ended up being the last in the series, Jill never made an appearance.
• X-Men:
  • Colossus can briefly be seen in X-Men sitting near the basketball court. He gets much more screen time and a few lines in the next two movies, and plays a supporting role in Deadpool.
  • Kitty Pryde also has brief cameos in the first and second films (each time portrayed by a different actress). The third film finally gives her much more screen time (and a "big name" actor to boot), and she reappears in a supporting role in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
  • In X2: X-Men United, Dr. Henry McCoy a.k.a. Beast appears briefly on TV in the bar.
  • A young version of Apocalypse is featured in The Stinger of X-Men: Days of Future Past to set him up as the Big Bad of X-Men: Apocalypse.
  • Caliban appears in X-Men: Apocalypse in a minor role before going on to have a supporting role in Logan. According to the creators of both films, this was entirely unintentional; both scripts called for Caliban, and rather than resolve the issue, Fox allowed both appearances, conflicting characterization be damned.
• The songs Pink is singing while hiding in the bathroom stall in the movie version of Pink Floyd's 1982 film adaptation of The Wall, besides the album track, "Stop", are lyrics to "Your Possible Pasts", a track left off the album but finally released on the 1983 follow-up The Final Cut, and "5:11 AM (The Moment of Clarity)", a track from former bandleader Roger Waters' 1984 solo album, The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking. Both songs were written at around the same time as the finished Wall album.
• In the DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce sends Diana footage that Lex Luthor has been collecting of metahumans, giving Early Bird Cameos of Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg, while the Kryptonian ship gives Lex a glimpse of Steppenwolf, before these characters are fully introduced in Justice League.
  • Flash and Aquaman also make Early Bird Cameos in Suicide Squad. Flash appears in flashback, apprehending Captain Boomerang, and both of them appear on files belonging to Amanda Waller.
• Kamen Rider Double aided in a fairly important battle in Kamen Rider Decade's first movie before his series premiered.
  • Double's movie, Double Forever: A to Z: The Gaia Memories of Fate, featured the debut of his successor, Kamen Rider OOO.
  • Kamen Rider Fourze does the same in OOO's summer movie, crash-landing in the middle of a fight.
    • Kengo and Yuki also make a cameo in OOO's final episode.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard appears in Fourze's summer movie, and his human identity Haruto Soma appears at the end of Fourze's finale.
  • Instead of appearing in the summer movie, Kamen Rider Gaim appears in the Post-Script Episodes of Kamen Rider Wizard...along with all the other Heisei-era riders.
  • The Movie Wars series features the Second Riders in various degrees of importance before debuting in their respective series. Both Accel and Meteor appear in The Stinger (Accel does nothing - in fact, we don't even see his Rider Form; we only learn that he's a Rider because he said that "Double isn't the only Rider in Futo anymore" while holding a Gaia Memory- but at least Meteor was dealing with a bunch of escaping Foundation X goons). On the other hand, Birth takes part in the final battle.
    • Beast appears in The Stinger of Wizard's Movie Wars installment...and just jumps off a building while giving his Catchphrase.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Emu's level 10 Mighty Brothers Double X gashat makes an appearance in Kamen Rider Heisei Generations: Dr. Pac-Man vs. Ex-Aid & Ghost with Legendary Riders prior to its official debut in #13/14.
• The Matrix:
  • In The Matrix, dozens of monitors are seen. The man who owns the monitors later appears in The Matrix Reloaded.
  • In The Matrix Revolutions, some of the Machines are those that appeared in The Animatrix.
• Super Sentai has been doing the same thing as Kamen Rider in recent years as well. Both Tensou Sentai Goseiger and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger showed up for a quick battle cameo in the teamup movies of the two teams before them (both of which involve Samurai Sentai Shinkenger as one of the teams), a month or so before each of their shows started.
  • The next team, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, make their early-bird cameo in the crossover between Gokaiger and Space Sheriff Gavan.
  • And now, Gavan Type-G, the new Gavan from the revival movie, will make his first appearance in Go-Busters.
  • The trend was broken with Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger, albeit unlike the other examples, this was largely due to the fact that it's two predecessors didn't have a crossover.
• A variant ends up as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in TRON. During the scene where Gibbs and Lora are digitizing the orange, the lower right hand of the computer readout reads "ROM Yori, LOAD Yori," which refers to a character that comes into the film at the 2/3 point.
• As Doc and Marty check a map on the wall of the train station in Back to the Future Part III, Clara Clayton can be seen standing behind them. You won't know who she is later till Doc rescues her from that buckboard ride gone berserk.
• The director's cut of Monty Python and the Holy Grail gives both Tim the Enchanter and The Old Man from Scene 24 cameos during the Castle Anthrax scene, long before their "official" first appearances.
• In Titanic (1997), when Jack and Fabrizio are walking to their cabin, they walk past the Irish couple, the Dahl family, Fang Lang, James Cameron and the Irish mother with her children. Earlier, Cora and her father are seen boarding the Titanic in Southhampton. Benjamin Guggenheim, his mistress and valet are seen walking in Molly's introduction scene.
  • The steerage characters mentioned above can also be seen waving at the crowd when the ship leaves Southhampton next to Jack and Fabrizio.
• Early in Mr. Bean's Holiday, Sabine briefly appears in the montage of footage right after Mr. Bean arrives in Paris, and again a couple of minutes later with Carson Clay when Bean walks to the Gare de Lyon, long before both characters are properly introduced halfway through the movie. The former becomes a Chekhov's Gun when Bean includes that footage alongside other footage he took of Sabine when he hijacks Clay's film.