10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The MCU

by Danny Meegan

1. A Single Shot In The Incredible Hulk Took Over A Year To Complete

The Incredible Hulk blood drop
Universal Pictures

Special effects in movies have grown increasingly more complex over the years, and despite the associated technology advancing at rapid rate, VFX shots still take a long, long time to complete.

"Well yeah, a couple of weeks" you might be thinking. "A few months at most". This is often true for complex VFX work - some of which is passed between multiple companies before completion - but a single shot in 2008’s MCU black sheep The Incredible Hulk absolutely blew those estimates out of the water.

Early in the movie there’s a nifty shot that follows a drop of Bruce Banner’s blood as it falls through several floors of the drink-bottling factory he works at. This is an important moment in the story because it’s the catalyst that brings Thunderbolt Ross sniffing around Banner’s whereabouts, so it needed to be given a lot of attention to ensure it was perfect.

And a lot of attention it received. One of the companies responsible for the effect, Image Engine, reportedly worked on this one shot for “more than a year”.

For just a few seconds of film that’s an insane time commitment, but in the end, it paid off; the effect looked great, and Image Engine can now say they contributed to one of the most taxing shots in the biggest movie franchise ever.

Any other mind-blowing MCU facts that we missed? Leave yours in the comments below!

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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!