Foreshadowing / Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Infinity Saga

Phase One

• Iron Man: A hydrogen-powered bus, complete with labeling on the side, is present during Tony's highway showdown with Iron Monger. Right after the passengers and driver evacuate, Iron Monger throws Tony into it. Cue hydrogen boom.
• ''The Incredible Hulk
  • Betty's new boyfriend is pretty obviously Doc Samson, while the doctor working with Bruce is Samuel Sterns, destined to be The Leader. During the climax, a bit of Bruce Banner's blood falls into a head wound that Sterns has. His head then starts pulsing and expanding as he gives a sinister smile...
  • When General Ross is speaking to Blonsky:
    Ross: Let me emphasize that what I'm about to share with you is tremendously sensitive, both to me personally and the Army. You're aware that we've got an Infantry Weapons Development program. Well, in WWII, they initiated a sub-program for Bio-Tech Force Enhancement.
  • Everything about the serum is foreshadowing for Cap, especially regarding Bruce and Blonsky's experiences with it. The gamma radiation magnified the effect of the serum described in Captain America: The First Avenger, which is to magnify a person's inner attributes as well as their physical attributes, i.e. Bruce's anger issues and Blonsky's love of a good fight.
• Iron Man 2
  • Before even the Thor stinger, we get a hint about the Tesseract. Note the 4D figures in the various archive notes from Tony's father that he pages through.
  • Before The Reveal about her identity as Natasha Romanoff (not that it was a surprise to comic readers or... well, anyone who just saw the freakin' trailer) "Natalie" is given an early allusion as to her true role. When Tony and Rhodey are fighting in the mansion and burst from the ceiling, Pepper screams and cringes in horror. "Natalie" takes an Ass Kicking Pose. She also very briefly has a Russian accent when Tony goes out to drive a racecar and tells Pepper "This is the first I am knowing of it."
  • Agent Coulson recognizes the Captain America shield in Tony's lab, showing his knowledge of the superhero (and him being a fanboy of Steve Rogers).
• Thor
  • Heimdall pointed out that, if he left the Bifröst open (instead of opening it to make a transport and then close it again), he would destroy Jötunheim. If you stop to think about that line, it shouldn't have been any surprise that later in the film someone would attempt to use the Bifröst as a weapon doing exactly that.
  • "Allfather, you look... weary."
  • Loki's hand and lower arm turn blue when a Frost Giant attempts to "freeze-burn" him.
  • Loki's first appearance on Earth. His powers aren't nerfed like Thor, but he can't lift Mjölnir either.
  • Also, according to Odin, both Thor and Loki "were meant to be king"; Loki is the son of the Jötunn King.
  • Blink-and-you'll-miss-it: The Infinity Gauntlet is stored in the Weapons Vault... and The Avengers showed us Thanos.
  • If you're unfamiliar with Loki's inferiority complex from the comics, just watch the first half-hour of the film set in Asgard and Jötunheim and watch his face every time someone talks over him or shuts him down (which happens a lot).
  • And all the way to Thor: The Dark World, this line:
    Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me?
  • And even all the way to Thor: Ragnarok, when Odin calls Thor "my firstborn" and his voice trembled a bit at the line. The third film reveals Thor is not Odin's firstborn, but he had to imprison and remove all memory of his actual firstborn child because her lust for power and conquest outstrips that shown by Thor in this film a hundred-fold.
  • It's established early on that the Asgardians can instantaneously travel across vast interstellar distances via the Bifrost, which is presented as an advanced wormhole gateway. In light of later films, this shouldn't be that surprising, considering they had an Infinity Stone in their possession for centuries — specifically, the one that gives its owner mastery over Space.
  • When Thor reminds Sif and the Warriors Three of all he's done for them, he asks Sif who proved that a woman could fight as well as a man. Sif pointedly says that it was she who did that. Thor cheerfully backpedals with a "true, but I supported you!", but this is an early hint of his Fatal Flaw — he tends to perceive himself as the main character of every story, even ones where he knows intellectually that he just played a supporting role.
  • When casting the worthiness enchantment on Mjölnir, Odin says "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." Not the power of Mjölnir; the power of Thor. Ragnarok confirms that Thor is the source of his own power, not Mjölnir.
• Captain America: The First Avenger
  • When the Red Skull acquires the Cube, the old monk warns him that if he tries to use the Cube's power, "It will burn him." In the climax, when the Skull tries to use the Cube himself, he is transported to Vormir, which has an effect akin to him disintegrating.
  • In the same scene, a group of Nazis is scrambling to get the lid off a tomb to no avail. Moments later, Schmidt walks over and effortlessly shoves the lid off all by himself. This clues the audience that he has taken the Super-Soldier serum himself. You can even see the seam of his mask if you're looking for it.
  • When the car carrying Peggy and Steve arrives at the lab, Steve takes notice of two of the plainclothes MPs who we will later see try to shoot at Kruger during his getaway, and the camera also does a lingering shot on Kruger's getaway driver.
  • HYDRA's motto: Every head that's cut off, two more will take its place.
  • Note the drop of red blood that covers the skull on Schmidt's HYDRA insignia when he kills the monk. Also, the guy who paints a portrait of Schmidt. He's using mostly red paint...
  • When Schmidt tells the Nazi officers, "Gentlemen, you have come to see the results of our work...let me show you," the seam of his mask is visible just in front of his right ear and going down to his neck.
  • A minor one at the beginning: Getting beaten up by a bully, Steve uses a round trash-can lid to defend himself. Made even more obvious near the end when a kid uses a similar trashcan lid as a shield painted just like Cap's shield.
  • When Doctor Zola is first introduced, we are treated to his face on some kind of screen. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Zola has uploaded his mind into a computer. It is also pretty similar to his appearance in that film.
  • A broken taxi cab door is used as a shield by Cap when he's fighting the HYDRA agent right after getting the serum injection.
  • When Steve asks where they're going, Bucky answers, "To the future." And they do.
  • The last thing Bucky does before he leaves Steve at the expo is saluting him affectionately. Next time he sees him, Steve's The Captain.
  • The USO scene has one during the New York City performance when we see the background behind Steve and the performers with the red-white-red-blue rings, no doubt evoking the design of Cap's future shield.
  • Bucky found strapped to an operating table, hinted at in the Director's Commentary to Bucky getting at least a partial Super-Soldier test done to him. Also, he at one point saves Steve by sniping a HYDRA soldier with his crosshairs lingering over Steve's head for an oddly long moment first, suggesting whatever formula they tried on him might have messed with his head somewhat....
  • As part of the recruitment drive, Steve is used in a propaganda movie showing him walking at the head of a mixed-race group of soldiers. The scene plays out for real when he liberates the prisoners held by HYDRA.
  • A very long-term, ironic example with Red Skull's final bit of dialogue with Steve. Johann claims he has seen the future and that "There are no flags", to which Steve replies "Not my future." Steve Roger's costume in Infinity War after the events of Civil War is almost entirely black, with the American flag motif gone completely since he is now a fugitive.
  • When Red Skull is seemingly disintegrated, we see a huge burst of white light blast through what appears to be a portal to a distant point in space, not unlike the Bifrost. Sure enough, Infinity War confirms that he's not dead, but was transported across the galaxy — specifically, to Vormir, where he is forced to guard the Soul Stone.
• The Avengers
  • Not long before The Reveal, Coulson makes an offhand comment to Thor that he "changed everything".
  • Very subtly done in the scene where Natasha and Banner meet for the first time when she has a child lure Banner to an isolated house to ask him to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. Pay close attention to the background when Banner is speaking. There are many green objects and green streaks of paint, all in sharp focus. When Natasha is shown, there are also green objects and green paint, but further in the background and out-of-focus. As the scene progresses, the green objects behind Banner get more obvious. This progression coincides with Natasha slowly realizing that the Hulk is very close and she starts treading very lightly.
  • Cap telling Tony that he's not the kind to sacrifice himself for a greater cause.
  • A very subtle one in the beginning: Barton shoots Fury on the chest, even though he would have normally been able to hit him on the head. It shows that Loki's Mind Control is not 100% perfect. Later it turns out that the brainwashed Selvig was able to install a backdoor to turn off the Tesseract and the portal.
  • Loki's new staff that was given to him by the Chitauri's leader. Its mind control powers hint that it is the Mind Gem from the Infinity Gauntlet and that the leader is Thanos.
  • Very early in the battle with the Chitauri, one of the air speeders chasing Iron Man smashes into a building because it couldn't turn fast enough. Barton later points out their poor maneuverability to Tony, who immediately puts the knowledge to deliberate use.
  • One for Iron Man 3 with Tony testing out a new device that'll allow him to call his suit to him in case of long-distance emergency. He expands upon it in the third film.
  • Watch carefully when Nick Fury brings out Coulson's blood-stained trading cards and says he got them from Coulson's jacket. Agent Hill gives Fury a "What the hell?" expression. Later she calls Fury out on this saying that the trading cards were actually in his locker.
  • Another subtle one for Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Before Banner suggests other methods, S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to find Loki by tapping into pretty much every camera or digital device on the planet. This is also how HYDRA will pinpoint targets for its scheme to eliminate all potential challengers before they even suspect danger.
  • When Selvig asks Barton "where did you find all these people?" Barton's response is simply, "S.H.I.E.L.D. has many enemies." As Captain America: The Winter Soldier will reveal, it's likely these are just S.H.I.E.L.D. staffers who know how to subvert and destroy their organization.
  • Also, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier has a cargo hold full of HYDRA weapons and crates stamped with the HYDRA logo. One can wonder how many HYDRA items were present on board during the operation.
  • When Tony arrives on the bridge and starts dumping exposition, he pauses to shout "That man is playing Galaga!" The primary objective of Galaga is to shoot aliens descending from the top of the screen, which is exactly how the final battle plays out.
  • A very subtle one. In Natasha's Establishing Character Moment, she's appeared to be at someone's mercy, feeling threatened and vulnerable, only for her to reveal that this was exactly the position she wanted to be into con information from the one who thinks he's in control. This is exactly the method she uses on Loki to find out what he wanted on the Helicarrier.
  • In her first meeting with Bruce, Natasha is established to be rather afraid of the Hulk, shown when Bruce faking an angry outburst badly rattles her into immediately drawing her gun and needing him to speak calmly and non-threateningly to her to get her to regain her composure. Later in the film, she's quick to assume that Loki's plan is centered around unleashing the Hulk and leaves the interrogation with no inkling of his true plan, having Barton and a squad of mercenaries track his scepter to find and attack the helicarrier.

Phase Two

• Iron Man 3
  • Tony and Pepper are squabbling about leaving town after he gave out his address to the Mandarin, while Maya Hansen nervously watches the TV.
    Maya Hansen: Do we need to worry about that?!
    [Tony and Pepper look up at the TV and see a missile heading for the house, which hits five seconds later]
  • As Pepper goes to answer a knock on their hotel room door, Maya looks nervous and almost guilty. She alerted Killian to their location in a bid to capture Pepper and lure out Tony.
  • Aldrich Killian wears an abnormally large number of rings for a non-married man.
  • When Tony starts analyzing The Mandarin's methods, he notes that the terrorist has a thing for theatrics. He has no idea that it's all theatrics.
  • Killian being the founder of A.I.M., a prominent group of villains in the comics.
  • After the Mandarin seemingly executes a hostage in cold blood, his voice becomes wavery and he seems visibly shaken, cluing in the audience early that he isn't quite the terrorist he appears to be (the credits do show that the shooting was staged).
  • If you look very closely, the Vice-President cringes and closes his eyes an instant before everyone else in the room reacts to the actual gunshot, and then underreacts compared to everyone else. Because he's in on it.
  • Earlier in the same scene, when the President does call the Mandarin, he stares blankly forward for a few seconds like he doesn't know what to do. He's working off a script which presumes the President would not call, and now he is uncertain what to do.
  • The fortune cookie rant after the theatre bombing: "Look Chinese, sound Chinese, but they're actually an American creation, hollow, and full of lies." Trevor resembles that remark. Also, as noted in the above point, even acting as though he just killed someone in cold blood appears to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Plus, the first thing we hear him say when out-of-character is essentially the same thing, about fortune cookies not being Chinese — only this time, it's way different.
  • When we see the studio where the Mandarin records his speeches, there's an obvious teleprompter with part of the Mandarin's next speech displayed. Why would the leader of a terrorist cell with a cult-like philosophy need to read a speech off a teleprompter to communicate to his people? Is it because he's just a face that reads off the scripts that someone else (Killian) writes for him? A careful observer will notice that the guns next to the Mandarin's throne are plastic replica weapons.
  • Killian explicitly tells everyone before the Mandarin starts recording not to make eye contact with him. Because doing so might induce Trevor into breaking character, which Killian cannot afford to have to happen.
  • Pepper, in the Mark 42 Armor, saves Tony during the mansion attack. In the climax, Pepper, empowered by Extremis, saves Tony, finishing up by using the repulsor from one of the Legion suits.
  • The President wonders how the Mandarin got a number onto his smartphone. Given that the Vice-President was working with Killian, he probably did it.
  • On the merchandise side, one of the roleplay toys is a hand-mounted repulsor without a glove. Tony uses one of these during his Homeless Hero phase.
  • Similarly, the Marvel Legends figures released to tie in with this movie has Iron Man and Iron Patriot as they appear in the movie, past versions of them both, War Machine, all the parts to build a comic-version Iron Monger, and Ultron.
  • When Maya shows up, Tony hopes there isn't a 12-year-old kid in her car. Maya snarks that he's 13. Which foreshadows Harley Keener... a young boy who Tony doesn't let tag along with him when things get dangerous, or get in the car.
  • Tony also asks Maya if she's the Mandarin. He's kidding, but... she doesn't answer. Because she's working with him.
  • Right before Savin (in the hijacked Iron Patriot suit) commences the attack on Air Force One, JARVIS makes mention of "cranes arriving" and "cellar doors being cleared up." A few minutes after saving the crew of AF1, Tony finally tells JARVIS to initiate the "House Party Protocol".
  • The climactic final battle, where Tony uses an army of fully automated Iron Man suits to defeat Killian, seems to foreshadow him creating an army of fully automated Sentries called the Iron Legion.
• Thor: The Dark World
  • After the attack on Asgard, Thor talks with Heimdall in a bar about how Odin's inactivity endangers Asgard and that they have to do something themselves. For a few seconds, Thor stares intensely at Heimdall's horned helmet. Cut to Thor revealing his plan to everyone to leave Asgard with the help of Loki (whose infamous helmet has big, bendy horns).
  • While escaping Asgard, Loki points out how stupid it was to use a giant, obvious ship for this mission — right before Thor throws him out the door and onto the actual ship that they are escaping with.
  • Loki briefly impersonates an Einherjar warrior during his and Thor's escape from prison. Loki later impersonates the same warrior after his apparent "death" to sneak back into Asgard. There's also a telltale green glow during the second instance.
  • In the same instance, the transformation of Thor into Sif shows that he's able to project illusions/shapes onto other people, thus making the Batman Gambit possible.
  • When giving him the Kursed stone, Malekith tells Algrim that no power of their enemies shall be able to stop him. Loki kills him by setting off the black hole grenade on his belt.
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  • A brief one with the line "I'm multitasking!" What starts as a joke about Black Widow being The Matchmaker turns out to tie in with Black Widow's real mission aboard that ship.
  • "You saved the world. We rather mucked it up." Peggy, you're not wrong.
  • Steve's first conversation with his neighbor has her mention her aunt, who can't sleep (Steve's Old Flame Peggy Carter) and she lets him know that he left his stereo on (the best hint she can give that someone broke into his apartment without cluing him in that she's S.H.I.E.L.D.).
  • "To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down." This is exactly what happens to S.H.I.E.L.D. by the end of the movie. Also, Peggy tells Steve, "Sometimes the best that you can do is to start over."
  • Hydra's destruction at the end of the first film and its subsequent covert rebirth is mirrored by S.H.I.E.L.D's downfall and the organization going underground to hunt down Hydra.
  • On the merchandise side, one of the additional figures filling out both the Marvel Legends Winter Soldier line and the smaller Super-Soldier ones (second wave) is WW2-era Cap as he appears in First Avenger. Technically, that version of Cap does appear in this movie.
  • Natasha's very first line is a crack about the Smithsonian and "picking up a fossil". foreshadowing Steve using his suit from The First Avenger.
  • invokedZola's Wham Episode speech has an example that overlaps with Freeze-Frame Bonus and Rewatch Bonus in light of the events of Captain America: Civil War. A newspaper reporting the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark is dated December 16th, 1991.
  • Dr. Stephen Strange is named at one point as one of the targets of Project Insight.
• Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Peter's mother implies Peter's alien parentage (and Yondu's reason for taking Peter) early in the movie. She describes his father as "an angel that came down from the stars/composed of pure light", and that he'll be coming to get Peter when she's gone.
  • When young Peter runs out of the hospital, you can see lights behind him fading at very slow but erratic intervals. Moments later, a Ravager ship appears and teleports Peter onboard.
  • One for the sequel. Yondu and his right hand discuss how they were hired by Quill's father to take him and they didn't hand him over to him, stating he is a "jackass". To say Ego didn't have the best intentions for Quill in mind is putting it very, very mildly.
  • Peter alludes to the importance of dancing to fight against people who have sticks up their asses. It is important as a distraction in the end against Ronan.
  • In the appearance of the Infinity Stones as explained by the Collector to Quill, Gamora, Rocket, and Groot, there's even more foreshadowing; the Collector says that the Stones were temporarily all gathered and held by a group, foreshadowing the other Guardians saving Quill from succumbing to the Infinity Stone's power and letting them all use it to kill Ronan.
  • The Collector requesting consent from Groot to "donate" his remains to his collection in the event of his death.
  • Drax manning the Hadron Enforcer.
  • While discussing what the Orb is, Peter suggests it might be a weapon a la the Ark of the Covenant or Maltese Falcon, whereupon Drax immediately states that they should use it against Ronan. As it turns out, it is a very powerful weapon and they do end up using it to kill Ronan.
  • A hilarious variant: When Rocket asks for the prosthetic leg he seems to chuckle while asking for it. Turns out he didn't need it and simply thought it would be funny.
  • Only beings of immense power can wield an Infinity Stone for any length of time without being destroyed. Ronan can hold it long enough to transfer it to his hammer and use it as a weapon indirectly. The climax of the movie shows us that Quill is also able to hold it. Five minutes later we learn that he's half-human, half Celestial. As in, half of his genetics is made up of one of the incomprehensibly powerful god-beings that are bigger than planets and power the goddamn universe.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron: Go Here.
• AntMan:
  • When Maggie tells Scott that he's a hero to Cassie and asks him to "be the person she thinks he is." He not only becomes a superhero after donning the Pym suit, he also solidifies himself as a hero to Cassie by saving her from Cross.
  • The apparent fight scene in the prison at the beginning is a minimalist version of every battle in the movie: first Scott tries a direct attack, which doesn't get him anywhere, then he does something sneaky, which does.
  • When Hank tells Scott about the regulator on his belt and what will happen if he disengages it, you know exactly what will happen in the film's climax.
  • Scott beats the Falcon by shrinking down and sabotaging his flight pack from the inside and is later told about the dangers (and necessity) of going sub-atomic. To defeat Yellowjacket, Scott has to go sub-atomic and sabotage his suit from the inside.
  • The tank Hank uses to escape Pym Technologies in the climax can be seen at full size in the Ant-Man "propaganda" footage Cross shows potential buyers early in the film.
  • When Hank tells Hope and Scott what happened to Janet, he says regular shrinking didn't work because the rocket he and Janet were trying to disable was made of titanium. Scott would face the same problem when fighting the Yellowjacket, whose suit is also made of titanium.
  • An unintentional one^note The line was written before the announcement that Spider-Man would have a place in the MCU: In the ending, a journalist mentions "We got a guy who jumps. We got a guy who swings. We got a guy who crawls up the walls. You gotta be more specific!", referencing the appearance of Marvel's resident wall-crawler in Captain America: Civil War.
    • Spider-Man's appearance is also foreshadowed in a Freeze-Frame Bonus of a subheading in the news reading "Stark Industries announces new scholarship for promising students from urban city schools" foreshadowing Tony Stark becoming Peter's mentor.
  • Similarly, a San Francisco Chronicle front page is seen headlined, "Who Is Responsible For Sokovia?" foreshadows the premise of Civil War.
  • Early in the movie, Luis reminds Scott that of all the guys to go through the "goodbye punch" ritual with Peaches, he alone was the only one to knock Peach out cold. Seems like mere boasting, until the final heist when we see how much ass Luis can whoop when he has to.

Phase Three

• Captain America: Civil War
  • After Steve and Sharon realize that Bucky has been framed by someone who wanted to flush him out of hiding, the scene cuts to a low-angle shot of Bucky's cell, showing that the doctor's shoes are badly worn and scuffed. The camera then pans up, showing that the "doctor" is actually Zemo.
  • Captain America, Bucky and Iron Man go inside the room where Zemo is with the five dormant Winter Soldiers. Iron Man searches for heat signatures to detect people: he reads only one. Then, it is revealed that Zemo did not wake up the Winter Soldiers, but rather killed them while they were sleeping.
  • Early on, Tony is confronted by a grieving mother whose son was killed during the Avengers' battle in Sokovia and is apprehensive through the whole encounter, thinking she wants to harm him out of revenge. She makes it clear that she blames him solely for her son's death. Zemo, who is a Sokovian soldier, blames his family's death on all of the Avengers... and wants to harm them out of revenge. He succeeds.
  • Tony's very first scene involves him recreating the last time he saw his parents alive, mentioning his Parting-Words Regret and showing how he never dealt with their deaths well. Zemo's plan is to exploit exactly that by revealing how they really died in order to turn Tony against Bucky. Extra foreshadowing from this scene comes for those viewers who remember Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where it is briefly mentioned that the Starks were killed by Hydra, and that the Winter Soldier is Hydra's primary means of assassinations. Adding these two facts with the fact that the movie goes out of its way to remind you early that Tony's parents died when he was relatively young makes it apparent what The Reveal is building towards...
  • The movie calls attention to the fact that grief over losing loved ones is Tony's Berserk Button. When Rhodey is almost killed, Tony immediately lashes at Falcon, blasting him mid-sentence (as the latter is apologizing, no less). Fittingly, Zemo's plan hinges on hitting that particular button.
  • When Bucky flashbacks to the creation of the other Winter Soldiers, we see the crash from the beginning of the movie again. The shot briefly changes from a normal view to a diegetic camera shot, foreshadowing that there exists footage of whoever Bucky killed and its later importance.
  • The full-blown "Spidey Sense" (Otherwise known as the Peter Tingle) that wouldn't be discussed until Peter's second movie makes a brief cameo when Peter senses the sign Bucky threw at him from behind and instinctively ducks.
• Doctor Strange
  • In the prologue, the Ancient One easily manipulates the environment in the Mirror Dimension to attack Kaecilius and his followers, causing Kaecilius to declare her a "hypocrite". Later, during a conflict with Kaecilius, Strange takes the fight into the Mirror Dimension, where Mordo warns that Kaecilius and his followers can weaponize the environment. Revealing that the Ancient One was using magic she had trained Mordo and the others to fight against.
  • When Mordo says he has defeated his demons, the Ancient One says "We never lose our demons, Mordo. We only learn to live above them". Hinting towards Mordo's eventual Face–Heel Turn.
  • Mordo, upon finding Strange toying around with the Eye of Agomotto, asks, "You wanna get stuck reliving the same moment over and over forever... or never having existed at all?"
  • Strange's last memento of his old life is a watch, and he's willing to risk bodily harm to protect it. It ends up broken anyway. Christine gave to him when they were dating. It shows that he can care about someone other than himself, and foreshadows that he'll end up breaking time over it and the fact that they don't get back together.
  • When The Ancient One meets Strange, she touches the chakra/chi point in his forehead, and tells him "Open your eye", referencing the "Third Eye" spiritual concept. Of course, he ends up using the Eye of Agamotto, which opens when it's in use.
  • When Kaecilius meets Strange, he acts like he doesn't understand his name, in a bit of "Who's on First?"-style banter. The Ancient One also keeps calling Strange "Mr" instead of "Dr", and it turns out they're not so different.
  • Strange wakes up after surgery to see the results of the operation on his hands, and says "I could have done better". He later uses astral projection, which lets him assist Christine in the medical procedure that will save his life.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  • invoked The film opens with "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" playing while Ego and Meredith ride in a car. The song is about a woman in love with someone who refuses to give up on the path they set for themselves despite their feelings for her: "My life, my love, my lady is the sea." Additionally, the song is a major case of Lyrical Dissonance, with it actually being about Brandy and how the sailor she falls in love with is a royal Jerkass who breaks her heart by putting the sea over her. The fact that Ego hangs a Lampshade on it by using it as part of his We Can Rule Together speech to Peter along with his clear In-Universe Misaimed Fandom towards the song serves as a subtle hint that he's actually a real piece of work.
  • When camping with Ego, Drax reveals that he always thought Yondu was Peter's father since he "looks just like him" (despite Peter not having blue skin). After Ego's true colors are revealed, Peter accepts Yondu as his true father figure.
  • One for Infinity War: When Nebula requests to be freed from her cuffs to help the Guardians fight off a potential hostile force Gamora claims she'd just attack her as soon as she was released, leading to Nebula giving a very unconvincing reply that she wouldn't. One of the Guardians quips that, being the daughter of a genocidal monster, you would think she'd know how to lie better. Infinity War reveals that, of all the horrible things Thanos has ever done, he never lies and has never taught his daughters to lie, making them both exceptionally bad at it.
  • When Peter and Gamora have a private conversation after meeting Ego for the first time, Peter feels Ego is a little too good to be true, while Gamora insists they go along and see if he really is Peter's birth father. Besides if he turns out to be evil, they'll just kill him. Ego truly is Peter's birth father, he is too good to be true, he turns out to be evil, and the Guardians have to kill him.
  • After arriving on Ego's planet body, Gamora asks why there are no other people living on it. Mantis answers that it would be akin to a dog inviting fleas to live on itself. This is later revealed to be a big hint to how Ego views all mortal life as ultimately beneath him to justify annihilating them.
  • Kraglin shuts down Taserface's initial discussion of mutiny ("If [Yondu's] so soft, why are you whispering?") and he backs down. In the end, Taserface only really moves forward with mutinying when he thinks he has Kraglin's support.
  • Peter's Walkman is knocked around during the opening battle scene, cutting the music short. In the film's climax, Ego distorts the music coming from the Walkman before crushing it entirely.
  • Why would the form Ego created just happen to resemble a human man from the '80s? It doesn't. He's a shapeshifter. He can look however he wants. Which foreshadows that all the little dioramas he shows Peter are just as customizable, and he's doubtless shown them to his other kids.
    "If the guy I just met had an entire room dedicated to explaining his backstory with PS2 visuals, I might question, #1, to have such a detailed and thorough setup, how many times has he done this? Which leads me to #2, why is he all alone? And that's all answered shortly."
  • At one point Mantis mentions Ego's preoccupation with his "progeny". Unlike the word "child" or even "offspring", "progeny" almost always implies multiple children, which indeed turns out to have been the case.
  • As mentioned in Flower Motifs, river lilies are used in funerals, and the fact that Ego calls Meredith Quill his "river lily" subtly emphasizes how he is directly responsible for her death.
  • Kraglin and Yondu mentioned in the previous film that Peter's father was a jackass. Since Yondu knew by then what Ego was doing to his offspring, this is a severe understatement of the truth.
  • Because Yondu broke the Ravager code by trafficking in children (repeatedly stealing Ego's offspring from their mothers and home worlds on commission for him), Stakar angrily informs Yondu that when he dies, the other Ravagers will not be there to ceremonially honor his life. In the end, because Rocket sent them word of Yondu's Heroic Sacrifice, Stakar and the others do come to pay their respects. It is only from Stakar's earlier detailed condemnation that we realize just how much their attendance would have meant to Yondu (and does mean to Kraglin).
  • When he begins to bond with his son, Ego states that he has made "many mistakes", but Peter was not one of them. Many of those "mistakes" he's referring to are the thousands of other children that he killed because they did not share his power.
  • Ego tells Meredith that the alien plant he stashed in Missouri will be "all across the universe." As he's already repeated the process on other planets as part of his "Expansion", he means the statement literally.
  • Another one for Infinity War. When Peter discovers that Ego killed his mother, he unleashes his blasters on him in an uncontrollable rage, not caring that this is ultimately pointless as Ego is far too powerful to be killed by this. In Infinity War, he similarly attacks Thanos after finding out that he killed Gamora, screwing up the heroes' carefully laid plan to separate him from the Infinity Gauntlet in the process.
  • In a Freeze-Frame Bonus one of Ego's previous spouses looks to be the same species as Mantis, with The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special confirming her to be Mantis' mother, in turn revealing that Mants and Peter are half-siblings
• Spider-Man: Homecoming
  • The opening scene establishes that Brice is habitually late, hinting at the disrespectful attitude towards his boss that he shows later.
  • One of the first things we see about the Vulture is his admiring his daughter's drawing of the Avengers in New York, to which the Tinkerer comments, "kid's got a future." Liz Allen is shown to be organizing the homecoming committee and hanging up several beautifully drawn posters for the dance, confirming that she's just as successful as the Tinkerer predicted.
  • When Herman shows up at Peter's school searching for the weapon Peter stole, he comments on their location and what Toomes might say if he knew they were there. No doubt Toomes would be upset if they endangered his daughter in any way.
  • When Toomes sees news footage of the academic club from Peter's school being saved by Spider-Man, he stops what he's doing to seriously focus on the report. The Reveal, of course, is that he is the father of one of the students Spider-Man saved.
  • It's mentioned several times that Toomes has a kid. Naturally, it's Liz.
  • Liz Allen lives in an extremely posh Big Fancy House, which was presumably paid for with the money from all of the technology her father stole and resold.
  • Throughout the movie, Tony drops hints that he's been paying attention to Happy Hogan's status reports such as referencing the lady with the churro or pointing out he knows that Peter had quit band class. This explains why Tony is offended when Peter accuses him of not caring during their later argument.
  • When finally meeting Peter for the first time, Toomes shakes hands and notices Peter's "grip". The first of many details that Toomes takes in and then figures out for himself that Peter is Spider-Man.
• Thor: Ragnarok
  • The use of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" is no coincidence, given that the Asgardians are searching for a new home at the end of the movie.
  • When Doctor Strange asks Thor for a lock of hair, Thor refuses and says his hair is not to be meddled with. Later on, Thor loses much more than one lock.
  • When Thor introduces himself to Valkyrie (whom he at that point only knows as "Scrapper 142") for the first time, he declares that he is "Thor, son of Odin." While other people outside of Asgard have no idea what this means or why it's significant, Valkyrie replies in an indifferent tone, "Many apologies, Your Majesty," hinting at the fact that she is actually Asgardian.
  • Hela is able to catch Mjölnir without being slammed down to earth, hinting at the later reveal that she was the hammer's original wielder.
  • While en route to the Grandmaster's garage, Thor gives Loki a firm pat on the back. In the garage, after Loki tries to double-cross him again, it's revealed that this was how he planted his containment disk on Loki's back.
  • In the opening scene, Surtur refers both himself and Thor as "Asgard's Doom". It may seem like a mistake at first, but come the climax Thor has Surtur reborn with the Eternal Flame to cause Ragnarok.
• BlackPanther
  • In the intro, apparently ordinary street gangsters, planning an incredibly detailed heist, using language cleaner than any ganger in '92 Oakland would, turn out to be non-American Wakandan spies.
  • During the basketball game, one of the kids shouts, "Got you, E!" as he passes the ball to his teammate. That teammate is a young Erik.
  • In the same scene, James noticeably hesitates when he sees the Dora Milaje outside the door. It seems like he's stunned by their out-of-place appearance, but in reality, he knows exactly who they are, and what they entail.
  • When he realizes someone's coming, N'Jobu looks out the window, while a bunch of kids are playing basketball in the street below. That's exactly what he's looking at — one of those kids is his son.
  • When T'Chaka tells N'Jobu that he will be taken back to Wakanda to stand trial, N'Jobu gets a noticeable Oh, Crap! reaction. He's not concerned for himself as much as the fact that his son is going to be left behind with no-one to care for him.
  • One of the kids playing basketball is quick to notice the Wakandan airship, and looks stunned as he watches it fly away. This is Erik, who heard all about Wakanda from his father and thought they would be coming for him one day.
  • When T'Challa brings Ross back to Wakanda, Shuri snarks about T'Challa bringing another white boy for her to heal, which sets up the second stinger involving Bucky Barnes.
  • When W'Kabi gives T'Challa a rather needless What the Hell, Hero? remark about how T'Challa failed to bring back Klaue, it hints the former's Start of Darkness of switching loyalties with Killmonger.
  • In the scene introducing Erik Killmonger as a bespectacled young man browsing a museum, the tour guide showing him around coughs a little. Turns out, she wasn't coughing just because: Erik poisoned her coffee.
  • In the same scene, after he monologues to the dying curator about Western invaders stealing African relics just because they liked the look of them, Killmonger steals the mask from an unrelated African nation simply because he thinks it looks good. It perfectly foreshadows that Killmonger doesn't truly care about the ideals he spouts, and just wants to cause death and destruction.
  • When T'Challa, stripped of his superhuman abilities, and M'Baku fight in a ritual challenge for the throne, T'Challa noticeably struggles when fighting on even footing with a non-powered opponent, even getting stabbed, before he ultimately prevails. His next challenge fight with Killmonger follows the same pattern, down to the stabbing, but this time, T'Challa doesn't come out on top.
  • Just before this, M'Baku is genuinely insulted by Shuri's irreverence during T'Challa's coronation, calling her out for disrespecting Wakandan traditions. This foreshadows him ultimately joining T'Challa against Killmonger, who uses Wakandan tradition when it suits him but discards it the second it becomes inconvenient.
  • In the car chase in Busan, none of the guns so much as scratch the special vibranium-coated car that Nakia and Okoye are in, but one shot from Klaue's Arm Cannon blasts it apart. It's because his cannon is a re-purposed Wakandan mining tool, designed to break apart vibranium.
  • Visiting T'Chaka in the ancestral plane, T'Challa confesses that he is not ready to live without his father. A young Erik "Killmonger" Stevens had to go through this at a much earlier age than the adult T'Challa.
• Avengers: Infinity War
  • After Scarlet Witch destroys Vision's Mind Stone, preventing Thanos from completing at last his Infinity Gauntlet, the Mad Titan tries to bond with her loss. After Wanda rebukes him, Thanos then uses the Time Stone to reverse time and undo Vision's sacrifice, taking the Mind Stone anyway.
    Thanos: Today I've lost more than you could know. But now is no time to mourn. Now, is no time at all.
  • The arrival of the Guardians on Maw's hijacked ship is revealed through the gas grenade Star-Lord was discussing with Gamora earlier.
  • This exchange foreshadows Avengers: Endgame:
    Tony Stark: last night, I dreamt, we had a kid. So real. We named him after your eccentric uncle. Uh, what was his name?
    Pepper Potts: [nodding in understanding] Right.
    Tony Stark: Morgan! Morgan.
    Pepper Potts: So you woke up, and thought that we were...
    Tony Stark: Expecting.
    Pepper Potts: Yeah.
    Tony Stark: [becoming excited] Yes?
    Pepper Potts: [shaking her head] No.
    Tony Stark: I had a dream about it. It was so real.
    Pepper Potts: If you wanted to have a kid, you wouldn't have done that.
  • Gamora outright states that, with the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos can wipe out half the universe with the snap of his fingers. He does exactly that at the very end.
  • In Thor: Ragnarok, Thor points out Loki's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and how predictable his acts of betrayals have become. Playing the traitor card and attempting to kill Thanos while offering him the Space Stone is what costs him his life.
  • In the credits of Thor: Ragnarok, Odin does not Disappear Into Light but is rather Reduced to Dust against the blazing sun that shines on Thor and Loki. Loki saying that "the sun will shine on them again" before his death and half of the heroes turning into ashes after Thanos's Snap put this frame into a completely different light.
  • When Thor mentions the Soul Stone's whereabouts are unknown to the Guardians, the camera focuses on Gamora for a few seconds. This hints to Gamora knowing where the stone is.
  • When Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, and Mantis arrive at Knowhere to secure the Reality Stone from the Collector, the place is completely deserted. Thanos has already arrived there, killed the Collector, and taken the Reality Stone for himself.
  • When Thor is telling Rocket about his past and how everyone he cares about is dead, he wonders out loud what more he could lose at this point. Rocket says to himself "...I could lose a lot. Me personally, I could lose a lot." Aside from being a small comedy moment by an insensitive Rocket, it shows that he has grown and now has people he cares about and doesn't want to lose. By the time the credits roll, he is the only Guardian still alive, although he has no idea about the fate of anyone else on the team besides Groot.
  • Combined with Exact Words. Strange tells Tony before their battle that if it comes down to saving their lives or the Time Stone, he would always pick the Time Stone. He later uses the Stone to look into the future, noting that in the 14+ million possible futures he saw there was only one scenario where they win. Later during the battle he sacrifices the Time Stone to save Tony, and right before he's disintegrated by Thanos he says "There was no other way." If he's telling the truth in all these instances, it all points to a long game of that one possible future being one where he sacrifices the Time Stone first so that it will ultimately be saved later.
  • One of Drax's first scenes in the movie is a gag where he thinks he can make himself disappear.
  • Ned Leeds' one and only line in the movie is the [[spoiler:entirely accurate "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!".
  • T'Challa warns Proxima Midnight that "Thanos will have nothing but dust and blood" before the battle. Tony Stark provides the blood on Titan, Thanos himself provides the dust.
  • Right before eating it in The Stinger, Nick Fury attempts to summon someone using a small transponder device (with the only thing it doing being flashing the image of a star superimposed over a red and blue field). That pays off in Endgame, heralding the arrival of Captain Marvel (although we have to get through an entire film for the full context, which actually has the payoff of Fury's action during its mid-credits scene).
• Ant-Man and the Wasp
  • Luis's fits over the guys at the firm spending on everything from expensive donuts to the "deluxe undercarriage treatment" at a car wash seems to be just him being cheap. When under truth serum, he's forced to confess that the company is basically broke and just days away from shutting down and he's been trying to cut any costs, no matter how petty.
  • While infiltrating the lab, Scott is startled when he comes face-to-face with the Ghost, which turns out to be just her empty suit. Later, he uses his empty Ant-Man suit propped up against a building to distract the FBI.
  • Bill's college lecture is fundamentally an explanation of Ghost's condition and phasing. Small wonder that he's involved with her, as her Parental Substitute.
  • Bill Foster at one point persuades Ava to bring Janet back instead of absorbing her like they initially planned as Janet (being one of the greatest scientists in the quantum field) could be able to help Ava's condition. After Janet is rescued, she indeed helps Ava, by stabilizing her molecules and later by sending Scott to the Quantum Realm to gain some energy in treating her.
  • Scott is very protective of the little toy trophy because it's the present that Cassie gave him, so he doesn't really want her to bring it with her to school. This is also because Scott hid the old, miniaturized Ant-Man suit inside the trophy.
  • Scott learned close-up magic to kill time and entertain Cassie. He uses misdirection in the climax to distract Ghost for a few vital minutes.
  • Scott and Bill have a conversation about how growing in size is extremely tiring. This comes back in the Fisherman's Wharf scenes, where Scott over-exerts himself by growing, and collapses into the bay.
  • Scott worries aloud that Ghost will reach into his chest and crush his heart. She doesn't, but appears to use this method on the corrupt FBI agent later.
• CaptainMarvel
  • When Fury encounters Carol and Carol explains what Skrulls are, one can see Coulson smirking in response to that description, since he's one of them.
  • At the Rambeaus' house, Carol reveals her powers by heating up Maria's teakettle. In previous cases, she would blast a hole through objects. This is the first hint that she recognizes Maria as a friend, and the house was once her home.
  • In the last vision that reveals Carol's true past, the unknown spacecraft that is pursuing Carol and Dr. Lawson's plane is a Kree fighter, which is a clear giveaway to the identity of the mysterious gunman that appears in Carol's previous dreams and flashbacks before it's shortly revealed later that it was Yon-Rogg.
  • On board Mar-Vell's lab, Maria asks why there is so much human memorabilia and why so much of it is for kids, such as the Fonzie lunchbox. Carol and Maria then notice a still-warm mug on the table and realize that the place isn't deserted. Seconds later, Talos calls the Skrull refugees out of hiding, including children.
  • Goose snuggles with Talos, freaking him out. Cats only do that, however, if they like someone. She was telling Nick and Carol that Talos wasn't the real villain.
  • Goose appearing to switch sides and show affection to one of the Kree soldiers is a momentary hint that the Kree she's rubbing herself against is Talos.
  • Nick Fury stating to Goose that he's trusting her not to eat him after seeing her true nature as a Flerken pretty much guarantees that he'll lose his eye to her in light of Fury's story about losing an eye to someone he trusted in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That story plays out immediately after the battle is over.
  • The movie starts with Carol's, who has been adopted by the Kree, viewpoint. If you've watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll know that the Kree are the antagonistic faction, thus hinting who the real bad guys are.
  • One that's easy to miss: when Carol first lands inside the Blockbuster, she takes a moment to examine a copy of The Right Stuff, which is a film about test pilots and astronauts. Carol herself is a test pilot turned astronaut.
  • Another very subtle one: Carol calling Fury a "full-bird colonel", a bit of purely American military slang which a Kree wouldn't know.
  • There are a number of hints that the Tesseract is the artifact the Kree and the Skrulls are looking for:
    • It holds the secret for a new form of faster-than-light engine that provides access to places that regular FTL can't reach. The Tesseract contains the Space Stone, the Infinity Stone that grants access to anywhere in the universe.
    • The flashbacks show that the energy involved is a bright blue. This is the signature color of the Tesseract and the Space Stone.
    • Dr. Lawson was involved with Project Pegasus, the very same project that was studying the Tesseract in The Avengers.
  • Minn-Erva offhandedly remarks that she's been to Earth once before, and that it's "a real shithole". Turns out she was with Yon-Rogg when he killed Mar-Vell and captured Carol.
  • The Skrull whom Carol chases to the train actually gives a polite smile to the old lady (whom he later impersonates) when she gets off the train. While it might be that he's just being pragmatic by blending in with the humans, it's a nice clue that the Skrulls aren't as bad as they seemed to be.
  • While not unprecedented for a bad guy, a disguised Talos almost blowing his cover to pay his last respects to one of his fallen soldiers is a good hint that he's not as bad as he appears. In fact, he's not a bad guy at all.
  • There's a very curiously significant closeup of Goose carefully watching Nick Fury long before we learn that she's more than just a cat.
  • When Fury asks if Talos is scared of cats, the Skrull asks what a cat is. Meaning there is an alien species that looks exactly like an Earth cat that is extremely deadly. A species that Goose is a part of.
  • Upon finding the Tesseract, Goose paws at it, directly touching it with no ill effect, showing she’s more than just a cat.
  • When the Kree put a muzzle on Goose, Fury incredulously says, "It's a cat, not Hannibal Lecter!" True, but both of them do eat people.
  • The nature of the climax is foreshadowed by the prominence of the Space Invaders arcade game. Much like that game, the battle between Carol in her Binary form and Ronan's world-killers involves a single small figure (Carol) rising up from the ground to fire at wide, alien crafts firing downward that always fall to a One-Hit Kill from the lone fighter.
• Avengers: Endgame
  • 22 days after half the universe's population vanished, the remaining Avengers plus Carol discuss how to get to Thanos and undo what happened. Thor is the only one not contributing to the conversation; he's quietly sitting and eating bread and drinking beer. Five years later, he's more openly bitter and depressed, having gained weight due to being a shut-in who eats junk food, doesn't do exercise and drinks beer.
  • When the Avengers confront Thanos on his retirement planet, they discover that Thanos destroyed the Stones and that doing so nearly killed him. Five years later, Tony snaps his gauntlet to destroy Thanos and his army, but since Tony is not as strong as Thanos, he is killed by the power of the Stones. Tony's knowledge of this reinforces his Heroic Sacrifice since he was aware of the cost but did it anyways.
  • Scott only has thin stubble exactly the same as his last appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp despite being supposedly trapped in Quantum Realm for five years without any tool to shave. It turns out that from his perspective, he was only trapped there for five hours.
  • Right after the Time Skip, Natasha all but said to Steve that she's Married to the Job for the past five years because she has nothing else in her life. Guess what she did when she reached Vormir with Clint.
  • Tony and Pepper's daughter Morgan has a lot of scenes with her father. In fact, she never even shares a scene with her mother until the eventual funeral. This pretty much indicates that she won't be with her father for any longer than this.
  • When Tony finds Morgan playing with the helmet of the suit he got for Pepper, he complains that Pepper never wears anything he gets her. Guess what happens during the battle against Thanos...
  • A subtle example is Professor Hulk; who has "the brains and the brawn together" (brains = Banner, brawn = Hulk). Eventually, those traits allowed him to perform the reverse-snap, since one requires both physical strength and brainpower to snap with the gauntlet.
  • When Tony finally decides to join the Time Heist, he lays his priorities out for Steve: Get back those lost if possible, protect what Tony's gained as a necessity, and "maybe not die in the process." Tony places the least priority on that last one, and will end the fight with a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Steve tells his support group that they need to move on after the Snap, and make something of what they have left. Otherwise, Thanos might as well have killed all of them. When the Avengers demonstrate to him their complete inability to do just that, Thanos comes to this exact conclusion, changing his plans from "50%" to "100%".
  • In 2012, a handcuffed Loki briefly shapeshifts into Captain America to annoy Thor. Some time later, when present-day Steve is about to walk out of the compound with the Mind Stone in the scepter, his 2012 self sees him and immediately thinks he's a disguised Loki.
  • During Thor's breakdown of the Aether (which is nothing more than a long-winded ramble), he brings up his mother, which grinds his stream-of-consciousness speech to a halt as he thinks about her. Later on he manages to get that last moment with her and set things right in his head.
  • Thor joyously saying "I knew it." when Cap lifts Mjölnir is a sign that Thor no longer bases his identity around being Thor, heir to Asgard and wielder of the Hammer of Thunder. It's consequently unsurprising when he has the humility to realize he's not the ruler New Asgard needs, and consequently abdicates the throne so Valkyrie can become queen.
  • During the Final Battle, Tony asks Strange if this was the one scenario where the Avengers prevail that he foresaw back on Titan. Strange replies, "If I told you what happens, it won't happen". Ever since Strange used the Time Stone to foresee the winning outcome, he knew that Tony would have to make the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Thanos and his army for good. Not only did Strange not want to risk anything that might compromise their already slim chances of victory, he didn’t want to tell Tony he wasn’t going to survive the fight with Thanos.
  • As Steve is preparing to go back in time to return all the stones to their respective times and locations, Bucky says "I'm going to miss you". This is despite the fact that Steve is only going to be gone for about 5 seconds on their end. And after Steve doesn't return as he is expected to, Bucky doesn't seem surprised. Moments later, he sees an elderly Steve sitting a distance away. It seems Bucky knew Steve's plan to stay in the past and be with Peggy after returning all the stones.
  • One of the things that the remaining team detects is sonic disturbances underwater. At the time, Okoye told Natasha Romanoff that it's "just an underwater earthquake." In [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever we are introduced to the underwater race of the Talokanil.
• Spider-Man: Far From Home: Go here.

The Multiverse Saga

Phase Four

• WandaVision
  • In Episode 3, Wanda straight up rewrites one of Vision's lines when he goes off-script, a telltale sign that he's not the real Vision.
  • In Episode 5, as Monica is describing her feeling Wanda's grief, someone watching frame by frame will notice a brief flash of the outburst Wanda had when she created the Hex, as will be seen in detail in Episode 8.
  • In Episode 5, when Wanda comes out of the Hex to confront the S.W.O.R.D. agents after Hayward fires a missile at her, she not only already knows who Hayward is (as she addresses him as "Director") but clearly harbors a lot of personal hatred for him. She sneers at him when she speaks to him, and the whole exchange ends with her possessing his tactical unit to all point their guns at him as she reenters the Hex. This is because Hayward is experimenting on the real Vision's remains and refused to let Wanda take them so she could give him a proper burial.
  • In Episode 5, Vision chides Wanda for using her magic in front of Agnes by creating a dog tag for Sparky, and Wanda counters that Agnes didn't notice when Billy and Tommy aged themselves up to five year olds.
  • In Episode 6, Monica, Darcy and Jimmy discover files for Project Cataract. Anyone who knows what cataracts are will quickly understand what Hayward is doing with White Vision.
  • The "Yo-Magic" ad in Episode 6 has a shark telling a starving castaway that he used to be hungry like him until he got a snack of Yo-Magic, which sounds suspiciously similar to "your magic". The kid is also wearing a red T-shirt. This foreshadows Agatha Harkness's Power Parasite nature and her intentions of seizing Wanda's magic for herself.
  • In Episode 4, Darcy Lewis says "We got the full clown car" while heading to the S.W.O.R.D. base. At the end of Episode 6, Wanda expands the Hex, turning the base into a circus and the agents into literal clowns.
  • There's a ton of subtle foreshadowing regarding Agnes' true identity as Agatha Harkness:
    • First off, there's the obvious one — "Agnes" is a shortened version of her real name.
    • Agnes's behavior before The Reveal is stilted and often skirts what would've been considered morally proper for that period in time. She snarkily mutters to Wanda "How could anyone do this sober?" while at the second episode's planning committee, and blatant references to stuff like alcohol during The '60s (the decade of sitcoms that the second episode was Homaging) would've been frowned upon by the Moral Guardians of the time. This also subtly indicates that she's at least semi-immune to Wanda's sorcery puppeteering everyone else in Westview.
    • She wears a distinctively round pendant in every episode, just like the one that her comic book self wears on the collar of her dress. It is immune to Westview's alterations, as it never changes to better reflect the time period.
    • In Episode 2's opening, an advertisement for "Auntie A's" cat litter (which pictures a black cat) can be spotted in the background. This is a nod to Agatha's familiar in the comics, a black cat named Ebony.
    • Out of all the "supporting characters" in Westview, she seems to be the most aware that they're living in a TV show, as exemplified when she briefly breaks character and asks to redo her line in the third episode. This is because unlike the other characters, she's out of Wanda's control and is playing her role on her own accord.
    • She dresses as a witch in the Halloween Episode, and lets out an eerily witch-like cackle when she declares that all hope is lost. It's also quite suspicious that she isn't completely frozen when Vision finds her at the town's outer limits, unlike the other residents living around that area. Her jealous ranting about "magic on autopilot" seems to imply she was checking out that area herself, if for different reasons than Vision.
    • She claims that her and Ralph's wedding was on June 2nd — the same day that the Salem Witch Trials commenced.
    • In Episode 7, Billy tells her that she's "quiet on the inside", as in he can't sense any of her inner thoughts. This implies that she's immune to both Wanda and Billy's mind powers.
    • She also notes in one of her confessions during the aforementioned episode that she's bitten children before. Witches being cannibals is a common trait in many fairy tales (i.e., the Wicked Witch from "Hansel and Gretel").
  • Hayward's angry speech to Monica in Episode 6 — "You people who left, still have the luxury of optimism. You have no idea what it was like. What it took to keep the lights on!" — hints at a growing rift between the Blipped and the un-Blipped, the greater ramifications of which will be shown in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Granted, it's worth noting that this wasn't intended as foreshadowing, as TFATWS was originally meant to be released before WandaVision, but that's how it turned out thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • On a Phase 4-wide story-telling note, the hilarious idea of Jimmy Woo and Darcy slowly but surely becoming invested in Wanda and Vision's idyllic happiness via watching the Hex broadcast gains greater significance and weight later when another character goes through virtually the same process—the character being Uatu the Watcher, the omniscient Narrator of What If…? (2021). Like Jimmy and Darcy, Uatu (despite his own Alien Non-Interference Clause) would eventually grow to care more directly for the people of The Multiverse, even eventually guiding events and the actions of people to prevent a great threat.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
  • The end of episode 3. Bucky is the first one to spot Kimoyo beads scattered around the heroes' latest refuge. Not only does Wakanda already know about Zemo, but they've also sent Ayo.
  • When Bucky suggests breaking Zemo out of prison, among the many reasons why not, Sam mentions how Wakandans would not approve that, given King T'Chaka's death. Guess who shows up later after Zemo?
  • Episode 3's title is "Power Broker," a person who's mentioned to rule over Madripoor but never actually appears in the episode...until Episode 6 reveals that they were there the whole time. In hindsight, it makes sense that Sharon Carter first appeared in the episode named for her.
    • Also in the episode, it's mentioned in passing that Karli was an art history major and ended up in Madripoor when she got a job there. Sharon's front business is as a dealer in works of art.
• Loki (Season One)
  • When Hunter B-15 and the Minutemen arrest Loki in Mongolia, she casually picks up the Tesseract without any of the awe or caution that others have shown when handling an Infinity Stone. When they arrive at the TVA, B-15 simply leaves it on Casey's desk and tells him to log it as evidence without a second thought, completely ignoring Loki's warnings. Later, when Loki retrieves the cube, he sees a drawer full of duplicates of at least four of the Infinity Stones, and is told that within the TVA the stones are not only powerless, but so commonplace that they are used as paperweights.
    • In 1549 Aix-en-Provence, Agent U-92 notes that the victims have died of stab wounds, just like all the previous ones. Daggers are Loki's preferred type of weapon. The boy Mobius talks to about the incident also points to a stained-glass portrait of a horned devil when asked who did it, hinting at Loki's horned helmet.
    • In Miss Minutes's briefing to the Variants being newly processed by the TVA, she mentions that the renewed existence of multiverses would result in "madness", hinting at Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Additionally, when Loki is being processed, one of the machines is said to disintegrate anyone who's a robot. Episode 4 reveals that the Time Keepers are robots.
  • In Episode 2, Mobius reveals that he loves jet skis, though he's never ridden one. Loki is also seen reading one of Mobius' magazines on jet skis. Episode 3 reveals that all the TVA employees are brainwashed Variants, hinting that Mobius's jet ski dreams are likely to be memories from his pre-TVA life, which Mobius himself brings on in Episode 4.
    • Also, during a mission briefing at the beginning of this episode, it's stated that there are many Loki variants that the TVA has dealt with across time, and that each time they were different. Loki also refers to the Variant as they, not he. The Loki that "our" Loki is looking for is revealed to be female at the end of the episode.
  • In Episode 3, Loki says that getting rid of the TVA will only create a vacuum of power and implies that nothing good will come of it. This is precisely what happens in the finale when Sylvie kills the true leader of the TVA, He Who Remains and allows his more evil Variant(s) to start his/their multiversal conquering.
    • Furthermore, at the start of this episode, Hunter C-20 is trapped in an illusion of being at a bar with Sylvie. She then claims to remember the bar but not Sylvie. Even though she isn't sure why she remembers the bar, this still seems an odd thing to say for someone who's apparently known no other life than the TVA. As Sylvie reveals later, C-20 and all the rest of the TVA's agents were not actually created by the Time-Keepers, but are instead repurposed Variants.
    • There's a clever bit of metatextual foreshadowing regarding Loki and Sylvie's Immortality Bisexuality being revealed is that the opening song is from Hayley Kiyoko, an LGBT artist.
    • Furthermore, the previous episode had Loki theorize that nothing you do during an apocalypse matters, since everything and everyone within the vicinity tends to die or get destroyed before any meaningful changes take place. Here, Sylvie and Loki's attempts to escape from Lamentis-1 results in just that — their attempt to change history fails, because they can't reach the Ark fast enough to launch it before it gets destroyed.
  • In Episode 4, even though Loki and Sylvie are fighting the TVA agents right in front of them, the Time-Keepers remain seated and don't even attempt to either interfere with the fight or run for their lives. Ravonna even shouts an order to keep them protected, foreshadowing that they're not as powerful as everybody believes, since they're actually just mindless androids.
    • On the note of the Time-Keepers needing protection, their movement is... weird; they move and talk like cheap Disneyland animatronics, which is in direct contrast to the MCU's typically high-quality animation and make-up of non-human characters. As it turns out, they're just that: robots that act as a decoy for who's really in charge.
    • On a much grander scale, vampires are confirmed to exist when Mobius offhandly lists them among the types of beings that the TVA have taken in. Marvel's Vampire Hunter, Blade, is set to make his debut in the MCU, played by Mahershala Ali.
  • In Episode 5, when trying to brainstorm a way out of the Void, Loki suggests using a TemPad. The other Loki Variants laugh and point out that TemPads don't exactly grow on trees. When Sylvie arrives in the Void, she's carrying Renslayer's TemPad, which Mobius later uses to return to the TVA.
    • Additionally, Classic Loki explains that despite how cool they look, blades are a crutch compared to a Loki's magic potential. When trying to distract Alioth, Loki unsuccessfully waves a flaming sword, whereas Classic Loki succeeds with a massive projection of Asgard.
• Black Widow
  • After Taskmaster crashes Natasha's car, causing it to teeter at the edge of a bridge, Natasha gets out of the car through the back window looking around for her assailant. The vehicle stops leaning over the bridge despite Natasha not being in it. Seconds later, it's shown that Taskmaster had landed atop it and was the weight keeping it down.
  • ​When we see Melina's room, there are wigs and some Photostatic Veils. When Dreykov's forces arrive to take everyone, shots of the room show those wigs and veils have disappeared.
• What If..? (Season One)
  • What If…? S1E1 "What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?"
    • As Red Skull talks about his new champion for HYDRA before betraying the Nazis, he looks at an inscription of what appears to be a tentacled beast with a single eye.
    • Red Skull's hideout is known as Castle de krake. Krake as in kraken...
  • What If…? S1E2 "What If… T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?": When T’Challa looks back at Korath who he had just taken down and gently put down his offer of defecting; he states that he had taken in worse. We later see who that worse person was...
  • What If…? S1E3 "What If… The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?":
    • When Natasha opens the file on the Avengers Initiative, one of the people listed is Janet van Dyne. Immediately after that, Natasha suffers an Ant-Man-style attack. Sure enough, the killer is Hank Pym.
    • During Fury's conversation with Hank Pym, he reacts with genuine surprise upon learning that Hope Van Dyne's mother was also a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, even though he should already know that (Hank even tells him to stop playing dumb). This is the first sign that it's actually Loki pretending to be Fury, something that becomes increasingly obvious once the pair actually start fighting.
  • What If…? S1E4 "What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?"
    • While gathering his power, Strange Supreme actually notices Uatu, a first for the series. Later in the episode, they converse directly. Additionally, at that point Uatu appears to the audience rendered in 3D for the first time, rather than the Celestial Body form he had taken up until then. If he can, then anyone of sufficient power can do the same.
    • In the opening scene, Strange is able to swerve out of the way of one car only to be hit by another, killing Christine. He later learns that Christine's death is a Absolute Point in time, and she can't be saved no matter what he tries.
  • What If…? S1E5 "What If… Zombies?!"
    • In Grand Central Station, Happy is startled by a flock of birds. Moments later, the party is ambushed by Hawkeye and Falcon.
    • A couple of items foreshadow what Vision has been doing at Camp Lehigh:
    • Right before entering, Kurt is spooked because he senses the presence of "Baba Yaga", described in some Russian legends as a flesh-eating witch. Zombie Wanda certainly fits the bill.
    • Looking through the records, Peter and Bruce find that this isn't the first time survivors have arrived at Camp Lehigh. Cut to Bucky discovering T'Challa missing a leg and zombie Wanda waking up.
    • As lampshaded early on, Okoye isn't Genre Savvy to Zombie Apocalypse tropes. With the survivors on their way to Wakanda to broadcast the Mind Stone's signal, we see the country wasn't as untouchable as Okoye thought it was.
  • What If…? S1E8 "What If… Ultron Won?"
    • In the opening battle, Hawkeye performs a number of truly ridiculous archery maneuvers before it's revealed he now has a cybernetic arm allowing him to pull off such feats. To be fair, in Age of Ultron, Hawkeye's arrows are already sharp enough to pierce Ultron's bots.
    • When Ultron is standing over the universe after his genocide, we get an up-close view of his face as he closes his eyes and contemplates to himself. As soon as the Watcher starts narrating, Ultron opens his eyes and begins to look around. Sure enough, as soon as Uatu finishes talking...
    • Ultron is shown brooding at Avengers Tower right before Thanos shows up, implying that he's become contemplative about his purpose now that he's achieved "peace in our time" as he knows it, until Thanos appears and indirectly makes Ultron aware that there's a whole universe of people awaiting his genocide. Later resuming this same contemplation with the omniscience granted by wielding all six Infinity Stones ends up having drastic consequences for the multiverse.
    • When Uatu narrates the events of Infinity Ultron's Earth, when describing how Ultron found there was only one solution to bring peace on Earth, Ultron immediately follows with his line, "The elimination of all life!", essentially explaining his own plan and almost as if he's interrupting Uatu to explain it himself and joining Uatu in narrating. While this could have been done for narrative flow, this is the first time in the series this has happened. Also, if you watch closely, Ultron's head turns slowly towards the audience. Come the middle of the episode, Ultron communicates directly with the narrator himself.
  • What If…? S1E9 "What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?"
    • Killmonger is mostly quiet after being recruited and starts tinkering around with an Ultron Sentry head (at one point Gamora even questions whether or not he can be trusted). After Ultron is taken over by Zola, Killmonger reveals his true colors by using the Sentry's head to steal Ultron's armor and the Infinity Stones for himself.
    • Killmonger is notably the only member of the Guardians where we see what happens after The Watcher whisks him away, with the Dora Milaje barging into the now-empty throne room. This turns out to be intentional, as The Watcher tells the heroes that they will be returned to their universes at the exact points in time from which they were taken. Killmonger being absent after being taken indicates that he doesn't return to his universe.
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
  • In their fight Ying Li is able to control some of the Ten Rings when Wenwu attacks her with them. Shang-Chi also does this later in the film.
  • The song A Whole New World sung by Katy and Shang-Chi in a karaoke clearly foreshadows their journey in Ta Lo.
  • Shang-Chi is shown to be willing to kill Death Dealer, with quick-time flashbacks indicating he does so out of vengeance for Death Dealer's part in his Training from Hell, and even before that he has no compunctions about throwing Ten Rings operatives out of the bus in San Francisco or off of a building in Macau to their likely deaths. This is a hint at him having killed before - despite what he told Katy, he did assassinate the leader of the Iron Gang ten years prior.
• Eternals
  • When the Eternals awaken in their spaceship, newly from Olympia, none of them know each other and they have to introduce themselves. All of them except Ajak are fresh off a memory wipe with new constructed memories.
  • Dane asks Sersi about Ikaris's name in connection to the Greek myth, and Sersi tells him that Sprite made up the story, much as she made Thena (Athena) and Gilgamesh into myths as well. Ikaris is Driven to Suicide, unable to reconcile his Undying Loyalty to Arishem and his love for Sersi, and does so by flying into the sun.
  • During Ikaris and Sersi's wedding, the other Eternals stand nearby, all looking happy for the couple except Sprite, who is scowling. Sprite would later tell Sersi that she resents the other Eternals for being able to live relatively normal lives, while she cannot because she looks like a kid. According to Kingo, Sprite also has an unrequited crush on Ikaris, so the feeling she has watching Ikaris and Sersi marry could be jealousy.
  • When the Eternals first arrive to Earth, Phastos is shown designing to help humanity progress a little quicker. However, Ajak warns him that humanity has to learn how to create things on their own, much to the detriment of Phastos. Unfortunately, her words prove correct when the U.S uses technology that Phastos had helped derive to construct the first atomic bomb that destroys Hiroshima in 1945. Phastos blames himself for this, believing humanity would never have been able to cause so much destruction were it not for him.
  • Ikaris demonstrates that he knows that Phastos has armored his house by firing an Eye Beam at a glass door, showing a surprising lack of regard for the fact that his laser beam could have endangered Jack who is just down the hall presumably through property damage and the fact that his beams are highly destructive and shouldn't be fired indoors as such. While this could be explained that Ikaris tested his theory in secret offscreen, this does show an odd amount of callousness and manipulativeness from Ikaris, foreshadowing that Ikaris is a villain and has no regard for human lives.
  • Three scenes foreshadow the second post-credits scene:
    • After returning to their old ship and finding all the things there, Sprite asks Thena if she's picked up the Ebony Blade. She clarifies she's holding Excalibur. Later, we learn that Dane has discovered his family's history and their use of the Ebony Blade, and when Sersi is abducted by Arishem, he decides to seek it out so he can use it to rescue her.
    • During her facetime call to Dane, Sersi tells him he should reconcile with his uncle, and Dane protests they haven't even spoken in years. Later, Dane tells her that his "family history is... complicated". In the comics, Dane's bloodline is tied to the Ebony Blade in a succession of Black Knights, with his precursor being his uncle — who used the Black Knight identity as a villain. In the stinger, Dane decides to take up the Ebony Blade, and is about to become the Black Knight when interrupted.
    • Kingo mentions that Karun initially thought the former was a vampire and tried to stake him. Who should show up in the Stinger but Marvel's most famous vampire hunter?
• Hawkeye
  • One of the fronts for the Tracksuit Mafia is a repair shop called Fat Man Auto Repair. "Fat Man" is a common nickname for Wilson Fisk, AKA the Kingpin, who's revealed to be in charge of the whole operation.
  • In episode 4, Kate laughs at Jack’s botched life is a box of chocolates quote. This foreshadows that Jack is a genuinely charming man and not a bad guy and that Kate will eventually accept him.
• Spider-Man: No Way Home
  • Before Matt Murdock is revealed to be Peter's lawyer, we see a white walking stick.
  • Stephen Strange is explicitly not the Sorcerer Supreme, with Wong instead getting the position (Strange attributes that to him having been Blipped for five years). However skilled he may be, he still doesn't know everything. Indeed, upon being distracted by Peter's constant second-guessing, he botches a very dangerous spell that Wong warned him about.
  • When Peter thinks he is tracking Green Goblin (but actually finds Electro) the dirt is seen moving around in odd ways as if something is burrowing in it. Peter even asks if MJ and Ned saw it. When Electro shows up, Sandman defends him soon after.
  • When Octavius, with a newly replaced inhibitor chip, tells Osborn that his darker half is about to be erased, the latter responds, "Just me?" in a much darker, gravelly tone than before. Soon, Peter's Spider-Sense kicks in, indicating to him that the evil Green Goblin persona has taken over Osborn.
  • During the aforementioned Spider-Sense scene, the Goblin's laughter can quietly be heard as Peter is trying to figure out where the threat is, indicating that it's him causing the sense to go off.
  • May delivers Uncle Ben's classic power-and-responsibility line about thirty seconds before Peter realizes she's bleeding out.
  • The Spider-Man Ned and MJ see through a portal that Ned opened looks a little too giddy for a guy who saw his aunt die less than an hour ago, along with having noticeable differences to his costume. He's also taller then the Peter we know, we even have a nearby dumpster for reference. It turns out this Spider-Man is from another universe. And considering who this Spider-Man is, everyone in the audience knows who's coming next the moment Michelle tells Ned to keep searching for Peter.
  • When Strange takes back the box from Green Goblin, we get a shot for each Spider-Man. The reason? Their Spider-Sense going off to reveal Goblin slid a Pumpkin Bomb into the box.
  • Anyone who knows about college admissions can immediately tell Ned, Peter, and MJ were all rejected from MIT because they all have small envelopes. Students who have been accepted to college usually receive a big packet including brochures about the school and enrollment paperwork, leading to a "big envelope."
  • After Matt Murdock informs Peter that the charges against him won't be pursued, he goes on to tell Happy that he's under investigation due to some Stark Tech going missing. Peter winds up finding a Stark Industries fabricator hidden in a back room in Happy's condo.
  • When Peter first proposes to the supervillains that they let him fix what happened with them to make sure they don't get killed when they return home, Norman momentarily adopts a narrow-eyed squint with an oddly disapproving look on his face. Anyone who has seen the first film of the Raimi trilogy knows that expression is a Character Tic meaning the Goblin is currently in control, and an early notice that he knows what they're up to, and he's not going to let it happen uncontested.
  • Strange scolds Peter for ruining his spell six times, but only results in five villains. Later, when comparing rogues galleries, the Raimi-verse Spider-Man tells the MCU Spider-Man about his universe's iteration of the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man 3. The Sony's Spider-Man Universe iteration of Venom had been warped to the MCU at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and while he returns home before he can do much of anything, a piece of the SSU Venom symbiote is conspicuously left behind.
  • When Ned meets Strange, he asks him about his magic, saying his grandmother always told him that magic ran in their family and that he always had "these tinglings in his hands", before Strange dismisses him. Later in the film, while Ned and MJ are lamenting being unable to see Peter after Aunt May dies, he realizes that he can open sling rings when he waves his hands. By doing that and saying "I wish I could see Peter," he is able to summon the Webb-verse and Raimi-verse incarnations of Peter Parker. Moreover, when he and Peter do their Secret Handshake — while Ned has a Sling Ring in his hand — there are magic sparks.
  • In Spider-Man 2, when Otto gets hit with electricity to the extent that his inhibitor chip is destroyed, we get a close-up shot of it happening. That was the very moment Otto became a villain. But in this movie, after Electro shoots lightning at him in Happy's apartment, none of the bolts are seen hitting his new inhibitor chip, nor do we get a repeat of that close-up shot. This observation actually foreshadows Otto's confirmation of his Heel–Face Turn in the final battle.
  • It's subtle, but one of the first things Doc Ock says to Peter when he first shows up is "I should've killed your little girlfriend when I had the chance." When Peter gets up, he says "What'd you just say?" in a tone eerily similar to the one he uses later when he tells the Goblin he wants to kill him himself for killing Aunt May. Foreshadowing that killing or threatening to kill one of his loved ones is enough to push him over the edge.
• Moon Knight (2022)
  • In Episode 1, Steven is shown stocking Taweret plushies in the museum and briefly discussing them with his boss Donna. In Episode 4, Taweret herself shows up, looking remarkably close to the plushie design.
  • In the very same episode, Steven explains the Field of Reeds to a little girl who snarkily replies that he must've died to which he says he hasn't. Cue Episode 4 and Harrow killing him/Marc and then the following episode revealing he doesn't even make it to the Field of Reeds.
  • When Steven wakes up in the Alps, Khonshu tells him to return the body to Marc three times before realizing that "the idiot is in control", meaning that Khonshu thought someone other than Steven or Marc was in control.
  • While preparing for a date, Steven dresses up in front of three side-by-side mirrors, alluding to how the Moon Knight DID system actually consists of three personalities and not just two. Moreover, before he gets chased by a jackal monster in the museum, one can see two reflections on the display case.
  • Arthur Harrow spends most of the series wearing a set of red robes. In Egyptian Mythology, the color red was associated with violence, disorder, and suffering. While it seems to be befitting on the surface in regards to his status as the season's Big Bad, in actuality it subtly indicates that his own scales lack balance (as confirmed by Ammit in the Season 1 finale).
  • For all of Marc's fears of Khonshu eyeing Layla to be his new Moon Knight, the matter is rather swiftly resolved in the Season Finale when Khonshu makes her the offer and she very steadfastly refuses. This hints at how Marc wasn't exactly on point about Khonshu's goals, since The Stinger reveals that the candidate he was looking at was actually none other than Jake Lockley.
    • In addition Jake's presence is foreshadowed a few moments before The Reveal, when the person who takes Harrow into the limo has a flat cap… one of Jake Lockley's signature items.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
  • One of the promotional posters◊ foreshadows the number of (living) variants of each of the two main characters that appear in the movie.
  • Wanda twisting the mirror dimension to her advantage establishes how much her knowledge of all things magic has grown since WandaVision, setting up the moment when she uses the Darkhold to dream walk.
  • The Darkhold turns out to be surprisingly easy to destroy, when a sorcerer of Kamar Taj simply stabs it with her knife. Unfortunately the same is also true for its counterpart, the Book of the Vishanti, which is similarly destroyed in seconds with a basic magic attack.
    • The ease with which the Darkhold can be destroyed also sets up Wanda being able to target and destroy every version of the Darkhold across the Multiverse in one fell swoop.
  • 838 Christine mentions that her employer is the Baxter Foundation mere scenes before Reed Richards is revealed as a member of the Illuminati.
• Ms. Marvel: The show drops multiple hints about Kamala's hidden family history that the show's creator promised would be the focus of the series.
  • In the first episode, it's the box of bangles that Muneeba's mother sends to Kamala, one of which clearly upsets Muneeba, and which turns out to be Kamala's power-unlocking bracelet.
  • In the second, it's the fact that her grandmother made it back onto the train, despite her injured father being unable to keep up with her, having "followed a trail of stars".
  • Also in the second, Kamran's mother says she's wanted to meet Kamala for a long time, despite her powers only having awakened a few days previous, suggesting he really is a distant cousin, like in the comics.
  • In the first episode, Aamir and Yusuf both make offhand references to the Djinn, which at first glance looks like a reference to Islamic mythology. In the third episode, we learn that Kamala is a Djinn-human hybrid through her mother's side of the family, and her great-grandmother was one of the Clandestine, a group of exiled Djinn seeking a way to return home.
  • Agent Deever's egregious racism when tracking down the "enhanced individual", while sadly Truth in Television for a law enforcement officer when dealing with a case involving a person of color, is very similar to the government's racism in the comics towards mutants. Bruno reveals after looking at Kamala's genes that she has "a mutation".
• Thor: Love and Thunder
  • When first bringing up Omnipotence City, Thor mentions Hercules as one of its famous residents, who shows up in The Stinger.
  • It is shown during Thor and Jane's relationship montage that he wishes to be a father, and looks longingly at a baby with its parents. At the end he adopts Gorr's daughter. Korg lampshades it, saying that he went from "sad god to dad god".
  • Jane ruins the pages of her own book to make sure her co-patient understands wormholes, foreshadowing her willingness to ruin her body and health in order to help others, ultimately sacrificing her life to save Thor and rescue the New Asgardian children.
  • Gorr grabs at Stormbreaker while fighting Thor in New Asgard. The axe is the crux of his master plan, to use the Bifrost to reach Eternity and use the omnipotent entity to destroy all gods in one fell swoop.
  • Idris Elba's credited for his appearance as Heimdall in the credits, ahead of his appearance in The Stinger.
• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: In the first episode, Bruce destroys Jennifer's blood samples so that nobody else can use them. In the finale, K.E.V.I.N. and the Marvel Studios staff retcon out the elements tied to Jen's blood getting stolen so that Todd-Hulk can't exist.
• Werewolf by Night: There are several hints before the reveal that Jack is not "that kind of hunter", but someone who infiltrated the meeting.
  • The narration mentions "woe to the monster who finds himself among them" just as Jack makes his first appearance.
  • During his initial meeting, he seems the one that is most out of place, scoping out the surroundings with cautious awe, with an awkward body language to the more reserved hunters. This despite being the hunter with the supposed "most" kills.
  • When asked if any of the monsters whose heads hang on the wall as trophies are his own kills, Jack says no, but claims to have had a few run-ins with one of them, a bat-like creature. He refers to that monster as "him", rather than "it".
  • When drawing slots for the hunt, Jack is visibly confused as to what his tile means until someone points out to him that it means he goes first.
  • When Jack enters the maze, he does so casually and not guarded in any way. When we see the other hunters, they are more cautious and deliberately stealthy, showing that while they are experienced hunters, they are nonetheless fearful of the monster that they have to kill, while Jack is a friend of the monster and therefore has no reason to fear him.
  • When Jack meets Elsa in the maze, he doesn't try to attack her and instead offers to just walk on by. This shocks Elsa, since part of the conditions of the hunt is that the hunters are after each other in addition to trying to hunt down the monster.
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever:
  • During Ramonda and Shuri's private grieving ritual:
    • Ramonda tells Shuri there's something she needs to know about T'Challa but is cut off by Namor's arrival. During the mid-credits scene it's revealed that Nakia and T'Challa had a son, and Ramonda was the only other person that knew.
    • Ramonda burns her clothes that she used to mourn her son. Ramonda states that it signifies the end of her grieving. Shuri does not burn her clothes... Sure enough, Ramonda doesn't need them anymore because she's the next to die in the film, and Shuri again wears the same outfit at Ramonda's funeral.
    • Shuri refuses to burn her robe, saying that if she were to think too much about her brother, she would burn the whole world. The phrasing is reminiscent of her cousin Erik Killmonger/N'Jadaka's rage and desire to take on the world and "burn it all". Later, Shuri enters the Ancestral Plane, and Killmonger is the person she encounters. She's wearing the same white clothes, and as they talk, the room catches fire, surrounding the two in flames.
  • Okoye and Shuri snark that if Riri (who's threatening to throw a space heater at them) doesn't come with them, she'll have to deal with Namor herself "with [her] heater". In the climax Riri equips a Wakandan fighter plane with heating to help entrap and dehydrate Namor.

Phase Five

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:
  • The sign for the Guardians of the Galaxy's office is broken during the fight with Adam. The team itself breaks up in the finale.
  • In the opening scene, when Quill is roused out of his drunken stupor by seeing Rocket with his Zune, Rocket is also wearing his signature outfit (resized, of course). At the end of the movie Rocket ends up the new Captain of the Guardians, taking Peter's role and place for real, and is given the Zune as a parting gift.
  • The High Evolutionary threatens to destroy the Sovereign civilization if Adam and Ayesha fail him again, and Ayesha confirms he can do so easily. Counter-Earth, having failed to meet the Evolutionary's standards, is summarily destroyed.
  • Adam Warlock is implied early on to be a fundamentally good person, as he shows remorse to even accidental killings and compassion towards orphaned animals, in stark contrast to his intellectually potent but emotionally stunted creator The High Evolutionary, who casually disregards all life as broken toys, justifying his Heel–Face Turn when shown genuine kindness by The Guardians of the Galaxy.
  • Counter-Earth is meant to be a peaceful utopia, but when the Guardians arrive it takes little provocation for a crowd to begin stoning them, and the car they borrow is visibly dirty. Not long after we see that Counter-Earth has fallen prey to urban and societal decay.
  • Shortly before the Guardians arrive on Counter-Earth, we are shown the High Evolutionary's latest project and his subordinate suggests "moving to the new colony", implying that the High Evolutionary has decided to move on from Counter-Earth. When it happens, this is not nearly as innocuous and harmless to Counter-Earth as it sounds.
  • Peter Hilariously calls The High Revolutionary "You Skeletor with RoboCop's face!" while insulting him over the radio, and just like Alex Murphy The High Revolutionary's "face" is nothing more than rubbery skin stretched across a bare skull.
  • While heading into what is clearly a trap set by the High Evolutionary, Quill insists on referring to the encounter as a "face-off". After the High Evolutionary is defeated by the Guardians, Gamora quite literally peels the villain's face off.
    • The actual face-off in space also includes Knowhere arriving to attack the High Evolutionary, another literal face-off.
  • In Infinity War, Thor assumes Rocket is the leader of the Guardians and Rocket plays along with it despite Quill pointing out that he's the captain, and Lylla tells Rocket in his near-death vision that Rocket has always been the main character. By the end of this film, Quill officially makes Rocket the new "captain" of the Guardians.
  • In Rocket's flashbacks, The High Evolutionary's Signature Move is putting his hand or hands around Rocket's relatively tiny head, and the first thing we see of him is his hand reaching for baby Rocket. It's not violence, but it does threaten violence and work as a show of dominance. In The High Evolutionary's first full scene, he examines Ayesha by inspecting her mouth, like she's livestock. The last thing young Rocket does to The High Evolutionary on his way out the door is put his hands on The High Evolutionary's head. And it is certainly violent.
• Secret Invasion (2023)
  • In the first episode, Talos says he's considered handsome for a Skrull, and Fury ribs him saying he knows some good-looking Skrulls and Talos isn't one of them, implying that he's able to find Skrulls attractive. In the next episode, he greets a Skrull woman with a Headbutt of Love in a flashback and she's his wife in the present day.
  • A patron at the bar Fury visits notes how rusty he's gotten since the last time he was on Earth. Said patron is revealed to have been Gravik tailing Fury in disguise.
  • While Fury is taking a walk in Moscow earlier in the episode, he encounters a little girl playing with a ball that stares at him intently before being escorted away by a woman who appears to be her mother. Except it's not; it was once again Gravik watching him in another form.
  • A news broadcast shows the responses of the UK Prime Minister, NATO Secretary-General, and an American news anchor to the Moscow bombing. The very next scene reveals that they're all members of the Skrull council, showing just how deeply the Skrulls have infiltrated Earth.
  • When G'iah is driving Gravik to the rendezvous with Talos, he gets a call and audibly verifies some details about an impending attack. He's barely out of the car before G'iah pulls out a burner phone and relays what she heard to a third party.
  • After the aforementioned hand stabbing, Gravik initially doesn't react, then makes an exaggerated expression of pain (Talos is so angry he doesn't notice). No sooner does Talos leave the room than Gravik pulls his hand free from the knife blade; it heals, demonstrating that he's already undergone the super-Skrull process.
  • As G'iah is riding her bike out of the compound, she notices that the guard booth at the entrance isn't occupied. Moments later, while riding through the woods, she's caught by Gravik.
  • When Sonya and Dalton are watching the lab be torched, the barrel of Sonya's pistol can be seen under her left bicep a few seconds before she uses it to kill the Skrull holding Dalton.
• Loki (2021) (Season 2)
  • In "Ouroboros", Mobius determines that Loki needs to get his time-slipping under control, stating that the TVA needs a "Loki Who Remains". In "Glorious Purpose (Season 2)", that's exactly what Loki ends up becoming, replacing He Who Remains and the Loom to personally oversee every branch of the Multiverse.
  • Also in the first episode, Loki realises he was in the past rather than an alternate timeline when he sees the crack in the floor and Casey tells him it's been there as long as he can remember. Except past-Casey saw the crack being made, which leads Loki to subsequently conclude the TVA have been subjected to memory wipes.
  • It doesn't make much sense for a jail cell to have a lock that can't be opened from the outside, so Mobius getting locked out in Episode 2 is an early hint that he and Loki are doing a bit.
  • During his presentation of "Temporal Marvels", Victor talks about the difference between science and fiction, and the stage behind the Loom prototype is decorated with an image of big trees.
  • During Episode 4 Mobius mentions that the Time Loom is putting out far more radiation than when we went out in his venture and expresses doubt that Victor will make it all the way across the lamp. Sure enough, Victor immediately dies when he steps outside.
  • As the TVA becomes spaghettified, the last monitor to remain says that a failsafe has been activated. It's not until the next episode that the meaning behind this is fully understood.
  • Shortly before Loki appears to talk to her, Sylvie's meal from McDonald’s dissolves just like everything in the TVA. This foreshadows that the branched timeline she set up a life in will soon fall apart, and the other timelines will suffer the same fate.
  • At one point while trying to stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains in the final episode, an exasperated Loki asks why the latter doesn't even try to fight back or stop her from doing the deed. Almost as if on cue, He Who Remains freezes Sylvie in her place, utterly stunning him.
  He Who Remains: Soooo... how long have you been going at this?
• The Marvels (2023)
  • Kamala's mother takes notice of the fact that Goose seems to have gained a lot of weight since we last saw her, and is worried that Fury may have been overfeeding her. As it turns out, there's a very good reason why Goose has gotten so fat, but it's not because of her diet... it's because she's pregnant.
  • In a flashback, Carol tells Maria that it should've been her who got the superpowers, and if the "stupid race" to the hangar had gone the other way, it would've been. In the alternate universe that Monica goes to, Maria does have powers, but there's no indication of Carol.
  • The hints that Monica landed in an X-Men world after the Final Battle come from when her "mother" repeats "Mom?" and "Missed me?" with confusion. Then the audience gets a glimpse of someone with blue furry hands in a white labcoat.
• What If…? (2021) (Season 2)
  • What If…? S2E2 "What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?"
    • Howard Stark notes that they don't have anyone on Earth to deal with Peter. Cue Thor, from Asgard, arriving to kick ass at the Coney Island fight.
    • While Peter is on Coney Island, despite destroying the stall where he got a stuffed raccoon, he is mostly enjoying himself and having fun. He only starts creating more destruction after the Avengers start attacking him. This is a sign he really means no harm and it's Ego who controlling him.
  • What If…? S2E8 "What If… The Avengers Assembled in 1602?"
    • The Watcher's reference to seeing universes die portends the arrival of Strange Supreme, the sole survivor of one such universe.
    • The royal scepter, despite resembling Loki's Chitauri weapon, has a green stone instead of a blue one, implying that it's the Time Stone.
    • Despite everyone seeming to live in 17th century Britain, no one (other than Thor and Loki, who already had them) has a British accent, hinting that none of them are native to the era or location.
  • What If…? S2E9 "What If… Strange Supreme Intervened?": Among Strange Supreme's captives is a young Peter Quill; that Strange is willing to imprison a child alongside monsters like Infinity Ultron is an early hint that he's not one of the good guys any more.