3. The World Security Council Orders A Nuclear Strike On Manhattan (Avengers: Assemble)
As the Chitauri invasion is underway - their troops running rampant and their giant leviathan-like creatures smashing buildings like cardboard boxes - Nick Fury's superiors at the World Security Council decide to end the invasion by launching a nuclear strike directed at Manhattan. Despite Fury's best efforts to prevent this, an F-35 released a nuclear warhead that was headed directly for the city, which would have destroyed most of New York and killed even more innocents than were already being killed or hurt. Thankfully, Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit intercepted the missile and redirected it in to the portal from which the aliens were entering Earth. But this begs the question; why didn't the World Security Council direct it through there in the first place? They knew about the portal, they knew that the Avengers (particularly the big-hitters like Hulk and Thor) were taking down the Chitauri with relative ease, so it would have been in their best interests to just direct it at the Chitauri mother-ship as an opening gambit.