With
Captain America: The First Avenger finally hitting theaters this past Friday, containing more plot threads and easter eggs, we are on the final course towards the assembly of
Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (and one Asgardian God of Thunder) on the big screen. While there are many easter eggs focusing on the mythos of each character in each movie, I will single out those that may have ties to
The Avengers.
The simplest way to do this is to look at the chronology. Chronologically the bulk of
TFA comes first in the Marvel Cinematic Universe second is
Iron Man and that is where it gets confusing. It seems that the beginning of
Iron Man 2 is third, with the events of both
The Incredible Hulk and
Thor beginning during
IM2. As for the bookends for
TFA some may assume that they are the final events before The Avengers. Although using the map from the end of
IM2 it clearly has a blimp in the Arctic, leading to the finding of Cap being up in the air.
With this the Easter Eggs and plot threads from
Captain America: TFA that seem fit for crossover. Seen at the Stark Expo is Jim Hammond, the Original Human Torch. This could be picked up in either The Avengers or more appropriately Ant-Man as the Vision could be based off of the original designs of the Synthezoid Jim Hammond. They reference the Thor mythos a few times, but the next major thread seems to be Bucky falling off of the train to his death.
Now they never actually pinpoint where the train scene is located, all we know is it is mountainous and snowy, I believe this to be Western-Russia, a very easy transition into the Winter Soldier saga, although I could be wrong. The next big thread is the Red Skull being sucked into another realm via the Cosmic Cube. With rumors of the Skrulls being in
The Avengers this act only helps solidify the possibility of Loki bringing the Skrulls to Earth via the Cube. Now that the Skull is gone the question remains, will he come back? More on that later. ;)
Finally in
Captain America: TFA we see Howard Stark find the Cube at the bottom of the ocean while searching for Cap. Earlier in the movie we see Stark studying a confiscated piece of energy from the Cube (go see the movie for a better explanation of the substance) realizing it could do wonders for the future of energy, before inadvertently blowing it up. From the SHIELD Vault on the
IM2 Blu-ray and dvd, it references Project Pegasus, which stands for Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/ United States, Tony Stark built a Prismatic Accelerator to create his new metal in
IM2 the plans were from Project Pegasus originally. The Accelerator looks very similar to that of energy cells in the Hydra base in
TFA, while the core of the energy cells are very reminiscent to the Arc Reactor from the Iron Man movies. Could Howard Stark have created Project Pegasus to seek resolutions for better American Energy based off of the Cosmic Cube? Perhaps, although I believe he designed the Arc Reactor to output the same amount of energy as the Cube without actually using the dangerous object (Fury states as much, though vaguely, in
IM2). This could also be why Howard made a video (left in the custody of Shield) to Tony leading him to find out how to make the new element during
IM2.
In Part 2 we will explore Iron Man, and his infinite Easter Eggs.