10 Big MCU Revelations That Didn’t Come From The Movies

So... who fixed the Bifrost bridge again?

by Danny Meegan
The Incredible Hulk Emil Blonsky Abomination
Universal Pictures

Over the last ten years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gone from being a handful of connected films to become an unrivalled pop-culture phenomenon spanning many different mediums.

And though the movies are more than enough to keep you up-to-date with its biggest events, the MCU is even more rewarding for those who delve much deeper, due to the sheer amount of cool details revealed beyond the limits of the cinema screen.

There’s so much going on in this universe that it would be impossible for each movie to address everything without them being three hours long. Instead, a lot of the time, that dangling plot thread you noticed, that lingering question you have, or that apparent continuity or world-building error has been addressed in another form, be that a comic-book, a TV show or even a director interview.

In short, a lot of big MCU reveals happened outside the main movies, and if you’re a fan of the franchise but don’t have time to keep up-to-date with everything it has to offer, then you could be missing out on some crucial bits of information.

10. T'Challa Has Been Black Panther For A Decade

Black Panther Infinity War
Marvel Studios

The MCU isn't just movies and TV shows: it also contains a lot of comic-books. These mostly come in the form of "preludes" - short stories intended to be read before the latest movie drops, such as the Infinity War prelude or the Iron Man 3 prelude.

Black Panther also received one of these comics, set roughly ten years before the film itself. Early in the first issue, a scene from the first Iron Man movie is shown, with King T'Chaka watching Tony's "I am Iron Man" speech on a news feed.

The caption states that this was "hours ago", and on the next image, T'Chaka says that T'Challa has "held the mantle of the Black Panther for merely a week".

black panther prelude comic
Marvel Comics

To put that another way, T'Challa has been the Black Panther since 2008 - a week before Tony announced his superhero alter-ego to the world.

When we first meet T'Challa in the movies (Civil War is his first appearance) he just enters the fray with little explanation about his powers or his backstory. We got more information in his own movie, but it was never stated how long he's been dressing up like a cat and kicking ass.

Well, now we know: over ten years. Wonder how many of his nine lives he's used up in that time?

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!