10 MORE Incredibly Clever Moments Of MCU Movie Foreshadowing

This one wasn’t missed by some obsessive fans (especially given the number of memes it spawned online after the release of Civil War), but nonetheless it deserves a spot on this list for the effective foreshadowing the detail gave us years before the franchise followed through. Much has been written about the innovative structure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose closely connected instalments allow the writers to set up conflicts a long while before another film will follow through with their resolution.

Almost like episodic television - if one episode was released every six months and cost north of a hundred million, that is.

And what a conflict this one was - Audiences paying close attention to the visuals during supervillain supercomputer Zola’s speech would have noticed the headline dated December 17, 1991, which but for everyone else the reveal that the Winter Soldier’s titular brainwashing victim was responsible for the deaths of Tony Stark’s beloved parents was an unforeseen gut punch. Worse still was the wait between the reveal and Tony’s discovery of the truth in Civil War years later - talk about dragging out the dramatic irony.