10 Obscure MCU Movie Secrets That Took Years To Discover

4. X-Men Easter Egg On Selvig's Chalkboard - Thor: The Dark World

Thor Ragnarok Korg Taika Waititi
Marvel Studios

Considering that Thor: The Dark World is arguably the very worst MCU movie, you can't really blame fans for failing to pick up on some of its sneakier hidden secrets, because beyond die-hard Marvel fans who among us has ever desired a rewatch?

To that end, this deep cut reference laid dormant for well over six years before it went viral in 2020, when a fan noticed that Dr. Selvig's chalkboard in the mental institution where he's incarcerated contains a distinct X-Men reference.

Among Selvig's various multiversal scrawlings on the chalkboard is the phrase "The Fault" on the right-hand side.

No, Selvig's not talking about fault lines, but rather referring to a concept from Marvel comics - a rift in the space-time continuum which subjected Earth to alternate universes.

Most famously this included the "Cancerverse," where death had been conquered albeit at the cost of life continuing to grow uninhibited in corrupted forms.

The Fault has played an important role in X-Men comics over the years, more recently serving as a breeding ground for the parasitic insectoid alien race known as the Brood.

It's easy to infer from this that The Dark World's Convergence event threatened to create just such a space-time rift in the MCU's prime universe, though the fact that Selvig is himself aware of the term at all is certainly interesting.

Yet almost a decade removed from The Dark World, where multiversal shenanigans are now commonplace, such Easter egg-y allusions actually seem kinda quaint. Still, a neat secret all the same.

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Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.