9 Genuinely Subtle Ways Movies Planned For The Sequel In Advance

7. General Zod Goes To The Phantom Zone - Superman

It's easy to take for granted nowadays, but back in the pre-Internet days of 1978 where superhero movies were still an untested commodity in Hollywood, few outside of comic book circles knew who General Zod was.

And so, when he appeared for a whole three minutes in the opening sequence of Richard Donner's Superman, as played with delicious vigour by Terence Stamp, audiences didn't think too much of it.

Zod's role in the first Superman amounts to being sentenced to imprisonment within the Phantom Zone along with his Kryptonian conspirators Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O'Halloran) and...that's it.

Though Zod does promise Jor-El (Marlon Brando) that he'll return, there wasn't really any reason to believe he'd actually be back, and it seemed like the scene existed more to showcase Krypton's political and justice system than anything else.

But of course, after sitting out the rest of the movie, Zod and his pals re-emerge from the Phantom Zone in Superman II, where Zod serves as Superman's (Christopher Reeve) primary antagonist.

Funnily enough, the first two Superman movies were initially intended to be one film, but once the producers realised the script was too long, it was halved, and so Zod ended up having just a single scene in the first movie.