20 Times The MCU Referred To Pop Culture

[Music] superheroes exist in a world a lot like ours while places like Wakanda or mad robe or might only exist on the big screen or the pages of the Marvel Comics the center of the Marvel Universe is the very real New York one of the ways to establish familiarity is when the characters refer to the shared pop culture which can also lighten the mood here are some of the times at the MCU has made us laugh or relate to characters through pop-culture references Tony Stark has fostered a reputation for being hard to impress that's easy when you're a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist but it can backfire and cause someone to create an advanced idea mechanics and a fake Mandarin while at other times he just gets to call out someone slacking a little on the job when Tony takes to his first tour of shield's massive flying Helicarrier and meets the newly assembled Avengers Stark strides in and takes a quick assessment of the situation including calling out a console jockey who had taken an unauthorized break to get in some Galaga the line improvised by downing and later punched up with a visual punchline by director Joss Whedon isn't just a reference to a classic video game but a fitting one Galaga comes from a time before video game endings where you held off a seemingly endless wave of invaders something the Avengers were literally just about to experience the blockbuster franchise in its modern form really got its start when a couple of USC grads started turning out big production genre films that reshape the culture this hasn't only given us decades of Harrison Ford pointing intensely but some great franchises that eventually led to the Marvel Cinematic Universe Indiana Jones gets to shout outs in the MCU the first comes from the swashbuckling Captain America the First Avenger when Johann Schmidt better known as Red Skull busts into a temple in Norway to grab the tesseract the thing has caused so much trouble while quipping about the Fuhrer digging in the desert for trinkets a sly reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark where Jones raced Nazis to the Ark of the Covenant there's another reference to that movie when star-lord steals the orb containing the Power Stone in the opening of guardians of the galaxy imitating the stealing of the idol some people make a few passing references to popular culture as part of their character like Abed from community cuckoo cool while others use it as their primary source of problem solving for the MCU those problems are how to stop a 65-foot tall man hitting people with an airplane or how to get rid of a chatty space alien who's captured the Earth's foremost wizard as the youngest Avenger Peter Parker's spider-man has brought his unique approach to problem solving to the old-timers making up most of the squad mostly with movies that were from their childhood when ant-man went all giant man in Civil War he used the reference from Empire Strikes Back as a way to take down the oversized Scott Lang when ebony mom made off with dr. strange the stowaway Peter Parker came up with a plan from the movie alien blowing them onto space monologue now squidward hot speaking of Squidward comic book adaptations have always struggled with how to deal with the aliases the characters have what looks cool splashed across the page and a color forward bubble might be a little bit more awkward when spoken like watching a real person called themselves ant-man unless they're talking to Tony Stark Stark has been a one-man naming machine for everyone he encounters which is so steeped in pop culture he might owe Peter Parker an apology he referenced Paul Peru Flash Gordon when meeting star-lord spongebob squarepants when he called ebony maw Squidward and the underwear that was fun to wear underoos and during Captain America Civil War the last one was a bit of a deep and convoluted cut but what made underoos the underwear that was fun to wear well that's fun to say was there comic book tie-ins where a young spider-man fan could wear Spiderman thermal underwear I'm wearing my Spiderman underwear right now Parker isn't the only Peter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who relies on pop culture for problem solving even though quill was abducted by yondu and the Ravagers as a kid he still made the best of his time on earth while most people from the time of cassettes deployed a collection of tools to maintain their precious playlists with everything from head cleaners to the trusty number-two pencil quill managed to keep the music playing with his mom's awesome mix for much longer than that love mix you sent your junior high crush when quill is crushing on Gamora he tells her a legend about how people didn't dance until a great hero named Kevin Bacon removed the sticks from their butts which of course is the movie Footloose the Kevin Bacon one no one remembers the other one Footloose comes around again when quill needs to distract a ronin with a dance-off Footloose wasn't the only thing in quills bag of 80s references meant to melt the heart of the green skinned warrior assassin Gamora earth captain's got a thing for the green ain't that right Kirk yeah anyway in guardians of the galaxy vol 2 cool tried to introduce Gamora to the concept of sexual tension the best way he knew how through the granddaddy of will they won't they stories Sam and Diane Sam was a retired baseball player who owned a bar Diane was a graduate student left by her fiance they couldn't be more different so of course they were meant to get together well until Shelley long left for a film career regardless Sam and Diane are an example of people who were meant to be together one that Kimura doesn't get because of course she doesn't know what Cheers is do they have space it comes will should watch some space sitcoms for sure l'amour isn't the only one in guardians that gets a lesson in earthly pop culture from Peter quill after saving the galaxy twice the team has a patchwork understanding of the earth and its culture thanks to quill when Thor tells the guardians of the Avengers mantis assumes that Earth's Mightiest hero Kevin Bacon is on the team sorry mantis he's in the other Marvel franchise as a bad guy Sebastian Shaw yondu may have been Peter Quill's abductor but over the years he became fond of the unearthed wing and became not his father but perhaps his Pappy that fondness eventually alienated yondu from his crew and left him with no one else but the guardians of the galaxy as they gather in the bowels of ego the Living Planet yondu rides down on his Yakka arrow like a certain magical nanny the ion do Mary Poppins is cool super cool we'll miss you big guy Captain America may have started life as a Nazi bunching secret weapon from World War two but it's that decision by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to put cap on ice and bring him back into the modern world that set the hero apart Captain America was an ideal brought out of time as a propaganda and rallying point for the US war effort in World War two he represented the American ideal against the Axis powers but revived in the turmoil 60s Captain America was forced to reconcile those ideals with the idea that America didn't always live up to them or people who had lost track of right and wrong being a hero out of time has been a defining element of Captain America one of the ways that the Winter Soldier caps first post Avengers adventure in the modern world showed this was a list of pop-culture references for him to catch up with can we have a movie of captchas doing all of those things I'd watch it the MCS Captain America's first real conflict with the modern world was in Captain America the Winter Soldier in this film where Kap finds out that not only is Nick Fury and Hydra building a giant Network to take out threats before they manifest something not very Captain America II but that the real engine behind it is the enemy he thought he defeated decades ago Hydra unfortunately you can't keep a bad Hydra down cap and black widow found that part when they went to a cold war-era bunker housing a complex if dated computer when trying to get at the computer secrets widow asked if it would like to play a game and on to the Cold War hacker classic wargames in that movie a teenage hacker ends up hacking an AI in charge of America's nuclear arsenal by accessing its game menu which asks do you want to play a game we already know that not all pop-culture references come from the computers of the screenwriters and that sometimes it's the equally pop culture obsessed actors that slide in references Tom Holland has proven so enthusiastic about the movies he's in that the filmmakers have to take measures to make sure he doesn't know too much lets his excitement get the better of them and let something slip just a bit too soon his passion isn't limited to just the MCU though but for many things geek that includes Doctor Who one of the more popular people to play the role of the doctor was David Tennant who played the purple man in the Netflix series Jessica Jones when it came time for Tennant to regenerate his last line was I don't want to go when Peter started to feel the effects of Thanos his snap those are the words he chose before turning to dust sometimes there's more to pop culture references than just remembering what a thing happened and mentioning it sometimes the references give a glimpse into how our world would react to the world that has gods of thunder rage machines and alien invasions one of the ways to do that is to take a piece of pop culture that itself references pop culture Ben and Jerry's ice cream is known not only for making really addictive ice cream but also for its inventive flavors based on pop culture when Bruce Banner returns to Earth after two years of exile he's caught up on the world and finds out that Ben & Jerry's has flavors named after the Avengers that includes alcohol governing fudge and stark-raving hazelnut it turns out that the Wizards who watch over the sanctum in New York prefer honka-honka fudge we don't know what burning fudge means but we're willing to try it quills walkman wasn't the only thing that made it with him into space he was lucky enough to have a few distractions on hand like a proper child of the 80s would on top of that picking up quill isn't the only time space people have made their way to earth we get confirmation of the latter when Craig Glenn Dolf and dairy slides quill is soon after Eagle busted his Walkman up containing a whopping 300 songs as you can tell they come to earth just not very often besides after 2012 visiting earth got a lot trickier with the Avengers on the job defending a planet with everything they got will also manage to modify an old handheld football game into a tracking receiver so that's pretty neat team Groot was introduced to the futility of early 90s games with his addiction to the handheld offender no matter how many people you rescue the invaders win Groot they always win sometimes the pop-culture references aren't a part of the narrative but instead a nod from the creator's to either something they've enjoyed or to something they themselves were a part of the latter becomes the case when a pair of TV directors got the call for the big job of directing Captain America's second solo film they did such a good job with it and civil war that when Joss Whedon bowed out of directing Avengers movies the Russos took his place before becoming MCU powerhouses they had another gig with a popular property with a dedicated fan base as the directors for Arrested Development as a nod to the show about a family who had everything and fell apart in the collectors collection there's a certain blue never-nude in cutoff shorts there are dozens of us and during the climactic airport battle in Germany the Bluth family stair car can be seen in the background the MCU has created some stars and it has attracted people who were already stars one of the people who was a star long before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe is samuel l.jackson he's the kind of actor who makes any role he takes iconic he's been a hit man a bounty hunter a Jedi and of course the head of shield what type of character hasn't he portrayed he's in pretty much every movie but as the head of shield the fury has managed to have plans hidden in plans on top of other plans when things went wrong in Winter Soldier one of those plans was to let the world think he died David Banner move Nick on his tombstone was aligned from perhaps his most iconic role prior to the MCU Jules from pulp fiction Jules was best known for quoting the Bible verse that began the path of the righteous man Fury's tombstone wasn't the only nod to the career of the actor who plays him Captain Marvel was introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as having met fury back in the 90s before his eye patch and before he was the head of shield he was more of an innocent time when Agent Coulson was a new trainee and not brought back from the dead or having a robot hand or temporarily hosting the spirit of vengeance as Ghost Rider Man Coulson has been through a lot this movie was full of 90s references and nods including Stan Lee practicing his lines for his cameo and Kevin Smith's Mallrats in there was another nod to Jackson's iconic role as the leader of the Skrulls confronts fury and Danvers while casually drinking soda from a straw it's reminiscent of the scene where Jules finishes his target soda in Pulp Fiction it's even the same kind of cup sometimes references or themes are thrown into a movie just because the people who make the movies are big fans themselves we're all just fans making stuff for other fans so we can all be fans together perhaps one of the biggest fandoms out there is Star Wars one of the original blockbusters that created the possibility for something like a shared cinematic universe for comic books while Kevin Feige is the head of Marvel Studios he's also a bit of a Star Wars fan as well one of the reoccurring elements is Star Wars is how much it hates hands Luke loses his hand to his dad and Empire and returns the favor and Jedi even samuel l.jackson mace windu lost a hand the only Star Wars movie where someone didn't lose a hand was Phantom Menace for phase 2 Feige and company decided to do a tribute by having someone lose a hand in every movie some references aren't even references at all but matters of convenience much of the sets from the original Twilight Zone were recycled sets from The Forbidden Planet and other sci-fi films of the time the original Battlestar Galactica and its starship fights end up not only in the Buck Rogers TV series but also in a cheesy sci-fi film sometimes props get reused Harrison Ford's 55 Chevy in a mare graffiti is used again in two lane blacktop the US military is willing to lend its toys to filmmakers but only if it's to depict the US military since shield only exists for Marvel Marvel Studios was on their own when they needed a Harrier jet to fight the Hulk they turned to the prop shed for true lies that just so happen to have a Harrier jet prop they could use lying around convenient just the thing to make the target angry target is angry samuel l.jackson isn't the only one with a whole catalogue of iconic roles to make references to once upon a time there was a Colonel Chester Phillips who is just waiting for the OSS and Abraham Erskine to deliver him an army of super soldiers unfortunately for Colonel Phillips Hydra saw to it that Steve Rogers was going to be the only one for some reason he sent his only super soldier on a USO war bond tour instead of to the front lines but that problem corrected itself eventually when Colonel Phillips found himself chasing down red skulls bomber in Schmidt's own hopped-up v16 he found an extra boost Fast and the Furious style behind a shiny red button not unlike the button that is in the car from men in black that turned his average sedan into a flying car the button was even marked with a K a nod to his character's name in men in black one of the running themes in Marvel movies dating all the way back to the trail of the Incredible Hulk television series is the Stan Lee cameo Stan the man Lee was more than just the comic book creator he was the consummate comic book enthusiast and his affection for his creations was infectious he loved comics and we loved him he'll be sorely missed he was in the only creator that made an appearance in the movies writer J michael Straczynski perhaps best known for creating Babylon 5 also did a run for the Mighty Thor and can be seen testing is worth trying to lift me linear in New Mexico legendary Thor scribe Walter Simonson who gave us frog Thor and better a bill as well as many other iconic Thor stories can also be seen laughing it up at a party with lady SIF if only we were also invited to that party most fans get most of the references in a Marvel movie and for the ones who don't and there's always another fan out there that'll let you in on what you missed maybe even a popular YouTube channel with charming narration huh yeah that's us that's us anyway sometimes with all the references and name drops coming in so fast it can get overwhelming especially for the casual fans who don't know who a Walter Simonson is never mind being able to pick them out in a party when you miss a bunch of those references it can get pretty exciting when you actually get one those people can relate to Captain America sitting with the Avengers as they toss around references to things like video games video games didn't even exist in caps time but when stark referred to the Chitauri as Loki's flying monkeys that was one cap actually God we understand how that feels Steve welcome to the present that's just some of the times that the MCU has referenced popular culture in their films what are your favorites what would you put on this list let us know in the comments and while you're there why not subscribe to CBR for all the latest content and of course thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: CBR

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Rating: 4.8855023 out of 5

Keywords: Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU references, pop culture, Captain America, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Iron Man, Spider Man, Peter Parker, Star Lord, Peter Quill, Avengers Endgame, Avengers Infinity War, Stan Lee, Superhero Movies, Mad Titan Thanos, Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, CBR

Id: F27JmaJn-8g

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019