9 Genuinely Subtle Ways Movies Planned For The Sequel In Advance

2. Bucky "Dies" - Captain America: The First Avenger

If you weren't much of a comic book fan before watching Captain America: The First Avenger - as, let's be honest, the vast majority of audiences weren't - the relevance of Bucky Barnes' (Sebastian Stan) climactic "death" would've been totally lost on you.

Steve Rogers' (Chris Evans) pal is of course ejected from a train to his apparent demise near the end of the movie, and to the casual observer, it simply seems like a typical attempt to ratchet up the stakes and emotion ahead of Cap's final showdown with Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).

But as comic fans will have known, this was a very deliberate attempt at setting up a potential sequel if the film proved commercially successful, to have Bucky return as his famed supervillain alter ego the Winter Soldier.

And that's precisely what happened, retroactively imbuing The First Avenger with more import than anyone would've initially expected, especially considering that Bucky remains a current MCU fixture while Rogers said his well-earned farewell in Avengers: Endgame.

Again, comic fans saw it coming a mile away, but to a solid 90% of people watching, they had no idea they just witnessed the sequel groundwork being laid before their very eyes.