1. Tom Holland has credited Marty McFly from Back to the Future as his main inspiration for Peter Parker's character.
2. We were unknowingly given the title of Endgame way back in Age of Ultron, when Tony Stark gave this speech:
3. Early on in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we see a list of cultural events that Cap intends to catch up on after being on ice, and depending on which country you watch the movie, you'll see different things on the list.
(On the left, you see the German version, and on the right, the US version.)
Here's what a few other international versions of that list looked like:
4. There is a scene in Ant-Man and the Wasp where Cassie Lang tells her father, Scott, how she would love to be his superhero partner...
Which serves as a nice allusion to the fact that in the comics, Cassie later becomes a superhero, too!
5. And we might see Cassie Lang as a superhero on the movie screen soon — because apparently, the 18-year-old actress Emma Fuhrmann was cast to play Cassie in Endgame. 😱
6. Captain Marvel's best friend is her fellow pilot, Maria Rambeau. Her callsign in the film is "Photon"...
And in the comic books, that is the name Maria's daughter Monica adopts when she takes over command as Captain Marvel years later.
7. Agent Phil Coulson was never supposed to be a recurring character in the Marvel Universe.
8. To be fair, Jackson/Nick Fury could have been too busy since the events of Thor, Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk all take place within ONE week.
9. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the inscription on Nick Fury's tombstone is a direct reference to Samuel L. Jackson's role in Pulp Fiction, where he keeps quoting this Bible verse.
10. And speaking of Pulp Fiction...there's this great reference to the film in Captain Marvel:
11. As can be expected, the Avengers' headquarters keep growing with every film. Here, you can see how more and more annexes keep being added.
12. This scene where Tony threatens Drax is a reference to an iconic scene...
From the 1979 movie Alien!
13. People sometimes forget that Edward Norton's Hulk is also a part of Marvel's Cinematic Universe — and it's in this movie where we hear about the idea for the Avengers first.
Oh, and FYI: Ed Norton didn't return to his role probably because he kept rewriting the script.
14. More tea: The director of The Incredible Hulk originally wanted Mark Ruffalo as main actor to begin with, but Marvel insisted on casting Norton.
15. And there are details added to keep both Hulks consistent. For example, in The Incredible Hulk, Hulk (played by Norton) receives a blow on the left side of his chest...
And nine years later in Thor: Ragnarok, Hulk (played by Ruffalo) still bears the scar.
16. By the way, the intro to The Incredible Hulk is a tribute to the intro of the Hulk TV show from the '70s.
17. Doctor Strange has two end credit scenes: the one with Thor and the beer that we later saw in Thor: Ragnarok, but the second one, where we find that Mordo is evil now, hasn't come up again...
18. In Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch plays the hero AND the villain Dormammu.
19. It was Tom Holland's Instagram account that inspired the vlog-like beginning of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
See? Spidey's a natural!
20. The Russo brothers have directed four Marvel films so far. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. Prior to that, they were busy producing shows like Community and Arrested Development.
As a result, they LOVE hiding Easter eggs in their work from old projects. In Civil War, for example, they smuggled this vehicle from Arrested Development into the background of the battle for the airport:
21. And Arrested Development is even listed in the end credits of Infinity War. Why?
Because of this guy: Tobias Fünke from the show...
...who became a part of The Collector on Knowhere's collection in Infinity War.
22. The cat in Captain Marvel is named Goose...
Which is a reference to Goose, the copilot in Top Gun (1986).
23. And if you can't keep all of the Infinity Stones straight, here's a handy dandy guide.
24. The best paid actor in the first Iron Man movie was not Robert Downey, Jr.! It was Terence Howard, who played James Rhodes and got paid almost twice as much as RDJ.
25. The issue of the pay was also one of the reasons why Howard was replaced by Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2.
26. The end credit scene in The Avengers where, after the battle in New York, the team just sits there silently eating shawarma was shot only AFTER the premiere of the movie because everyone enjoyed the joke so much.
27. ...which was actually an issue for Thor and Captain America...
Because Chris Evans just had grown a beard for another movie! So they hid it with a prothesis and his hand.
And Chris Hemsworth had already lost some bulk and was too thin for his costume.
28. More facts about those end credit scenes: The woman in the kissing scene at the end of Thor: The Dark World is played NOT Natalie Portman but Chris Hemsworth's wife.
29. We also get multiple references to the Star Wars scene where Luke Skywalker loses his hand in battle...
You may have noticed that someone has lost their hand in each of the six movies of Phase 2.
30. Okay, so now we really have to talk about Iron Man's left arm. It has been through some SERIOUS stuff:
It all started in 2008 in Iron Man, where we see Tony crashing into the desert wearing the very first suit he had built.
Later, you see how Tony has to ice his left arm.
Later, in the same movie, a tank hits his left shoulder.
In Iron Man 2, the same arm is hit again badly during the fight against Whiplash.
And in Civil War, where the Avengers break up and Tony has to confront the murder of his parents, he addresses the issue with his arm for the first time directly.
Shortly afterwards, during the fight at the airport, a car just falls on the arm.
And he has to wear a sling for the rest of the movie.
Then, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, the trauma his left arm has endured starts to manifest in a psychological way — i.e., Tony's arm starts hurting when he is mad at Peter.
Oh, and in that great fight with Thanos in Infinity War, it is Tony's left side, of course, that gets pummeled the hardest.
These arm injuries have been building up over all these Marvel movies for the past 11 years now, and listen...I'm kind of scared it symbolizes the price Tony has to pay to be Iron Man.
31. Switching gears now: Have you noticed that between Age of Ultron and Ragnarok, Thor is strangely not present? He didn't even participate in the big fight in Civil War. Why? Because nobody called him:
View this video on YouTube
32. In Iron Man 2, there's a scene where we see a very telling world map of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Which means we were sort of told about the existence of Wakanda almost 8 years before the release of Black Panther.
33. How's this for a great cameo in Captain Marvel? Kelly Sue DeConnick is the author behind the comic books that the movie is mainly based on.
And in the movie, DeConnick walks past Carol Danvers/Brie Larson after her fight on the train.
34. Yellowjacket's lasers in Ant-Man make the same sound as the AT-ATs in Star Wars.
35. Meanwhile, the casting of Tom Holland as Spider-Man will make total sense after you watch this video, which reveals how he trained for musicals as a kid.
36. In Infinity War, Thanos questions the Collector (Benicio del Toro) about the Reality Stone. While doing so, he has a strange singsong tone in his voice. That is a reference to the film Snatch (2000), where Benicio del Toro asks about a diamond after a burglary in the exact same way.
37. How well do you know the X-Men movies? Did you know that the X-Men actually belong to the Marvel Universe, but Fox holds the rights to turn the comic books into a movie?
But Fox/Marvel drama aside...did you aware that this guy from X-Men...
…and this one from the Marvel universe...
…are the same superhero? (Quicksilver!)
38. By the way, the first X-Men movie from the year 2000 was also the first movie for Kevin Feige, who in the meantime has become the boss of the Marvel Studios.
39. And finally, if you're trying to watch all the Marvel movies in chronological order before Endgame is released this weekend...here's how!
Have fun!
This post was translated from German.