As the old saying goes, nobody's perfect. That includes superheroes, who have a tendency to do silly things like accidentally get caught in the Quantum Realm during a near-apocalyptic cosmic incident, or inadvertently construct robots that go rouge and try to exterminate humanity. But it also includes the filmmakers behind all your favorite installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who also aren't above making a mistake or two from time to time. So with that in mind, here's a rundown of some of the most interesting Marvel movie mistakes we could find.
Captain America’s Duplicate Shield - Iron Man (2008)
Many of the most infamous Marvel movie mistakes date from before the MCU project really took off. Back then, it wasn’t known exactly how characters like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man would link together, or where precisely they were supposed to be while the others’ adventures were going on. Take Iron Man and Iron Man 2, both of which feature cameos from what appears to be Captain America’s shield in a half-completed form. That doesn’t track with Marvel continuity, since as we all know, Cap and his shield were both frozen in the deep sea during the time these movies were taking place.
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Just When Is This, Anyway? - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
As with their comic book counterparts, the superhero movies of the MCU operate on a timeline that doesn’t really make sense. One of the most glaring examples of this is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which was supposed to take place about eight years after the alien attack on New York City that comprises the ending of 2012’s The Avengers. But in an official timeline arranging all the films chronologically, Homecoming was placed in 2016, just four years after The Avengers. With Infinity War placing The Avengers definitively in 2012, the eight-year gap is simply a dangling thread that was retconned out by future movies - just like what happens in the comics all the time!
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Time-Traveling Stan Lee - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (2017)
Speaking of timeline discrepancies, there’s the small matter of Stan Lee’s post-credits cameo at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. The scene shows Stan holding court with the race of inter-dimensional beings known as the Watchers, glorying in all of his previous appearances at pivotal moments in the overall Marvel plot. One of the cameos referenced in the scene is his stint as a FedEx delivery driver from Captain America: Civil War, which came out before Guardians 2, but is actually set after it on the Marvel timeline. One could argue that this simply means that the Watchers are able to look forward and backward in time, or that Stan simply worked as a FedEx guy on more than one occasion. But it could also be classified as a continuity goof. Either way, I doubt Stan Lee would lose too much sleep over it if he were still with us today.
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Too Many Infinity Gauntlets - Thor (2011)
Similar to Captain America’s shield, the Infinity Gauntlet made some early appearances in the MCU that don’t gel with what later became canon. You can spot it, or something that looks like it, in the background of Thor. But that doesn’t track with what we learned about the Gauntlet in later movies, a glitch that was never really addressed satisfactorily. Thor: Ragnarok attempted to do so by alluding to a fake Infinity Gauntlet. But it just raised more questions, like how a duplicate of an object that didn’t yet exist came to be on Asgard. As always, it’s probably best not to think too much about it.
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The Vanishing Cocoon of Adam Warlock - Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
If you ever want to test someone’s Marvel knowledge to determine whether they are a comic book reader, mention Adam Warlock and see if they know who you’re talking about. He’s a huge part of the Marvel Comics universe, having saved it from Thanos and inherited the mantle of omnipotent deity from the Mad Titan. But he hasn’t made it into any of the movies, yet. Unless, of course, you count the object seen among The Collector’s possessions in Guardians of the Galaxy, which many fans took to be a reference to Warlock’s impending introduction to the MCU. Instead, it was just a meaningless Easter egg inserted by director James Gunn himself. But perhaps the film version of Adam Warlock is still to come, which would also be a good way to turn this mistake into a clever piece of foreshadowing.
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