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

During the final battle in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the citizens of Sokovia - along with the Avengers themselves - are stranded high up in the air, atop a floating city that's about to plummet to the ground. It's quite a pickle.

Then, out of nowhere, Nick Fury arrives to save the day, piloting a gigantic helicarrier which is used to ferry the citizens to safety.

This was an incredibly odd development. SHIELD had just fallen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so Fury really shouldn't have had access to any tech this advanced. Plus, a bunch of helicarriers were destroyed at the end of that same film, so how did Fury get hold of this one?

This issue was addressed by Agents Of SHIELD, where we learned that Helicarrier No. 64 - the original ship from The Avengers - survived all that Winter Soldier commotion, and was being repaired and maintained by Agent Sam Koenig under the Theta Protocol. When the Battle of Sokovia began, the protocol was activated and Fury came to the rescue.

Theta Protocol was kept a secret from just about everyone - only Coulson and a handful of others knew it existed - in order to prevent the helicarrier from falling into Hydra's hands. As a result, Fury had access to it whenever he needed it, and a floating city was as good a time as any.