{"slug":"thunderbolts","type":"movie","title":"Thunderbolts*","year":2025,"releaseDate":"2025-05-02","franchise":"mcu","genres":["Action","Science Fiction","Adventure"],"creators":["Jake Schreier"],"url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts","hook":"A Marvel logo eaten alive by shadow, a real 678-metre base jump, and a Wheaties box gag that Marvel turned into an actual cereal box.","intro":"The first easter egg lands about thirty seconds in, before a single character speaks. Imaginary Forces rebuilt the Marvel Studios logo out of thousands of comic pages drawn from Sentry and Thunderbolts runs, projected onto a slowly turning 3D wordmark — and then let a shadow crawl across the whole thing so the logo never fully resolves, dissolving into an inky, barely-lit smear while a haunting drone bends Michael Giacchino's fanfare out of shape. Creative director Tosh Kodama has described it as a deliberate departure from the warm hues of every previous Marvel opener. It is also, quietly, the plot: a man made of comic-book heroism being swallowed by the void inside him.\n\nWhat makes *Thunderbolts\\** (2025) reward a second pass is that Jake Schreier built almost all of it by hand. Kevin Feige's brief was to make it feel different and do it in camera where possible, so production designer Grace Yun's shame rooms are real sets with breakable walls, deliberately designed — her words — to feel boxed in, and even the mirror moments were shot practically. The Void's signature effect, people flashing into scorched silhouettes, came from photographs of the shadows left on stone at Hiroshima; Schreier told Collider that anything longer than a frame and a half of animation between the disappearance and the shadow started to feel like CG. Florence Pugh really did step off Merdeka 118, the second-tallest building on Earth. Under all that sits a thick comics layer: the O.X.E. Group, Avengers Tower renamed the Watchtower, Project Sentry files quoting Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's 2000 run almost verbatim, and a costume vault with an S on the chest.\n\nThen there is the asterisk — which Schreier pitched in his final job interview as a gag that could live on a single billboard, and which Marvel escalated until the film's biggest hidden detail broke out of the film entirely. The title card is torn away on screen. Real posters and a Los Angeles billboard were repainted after opening weekend. The official Avengers social accounts sprouted a copyright symbol, because a scene after the credits says they should. Everything below is sorted by what we can actually stand behind: **confirmed** entries are backed by the director, the cast, the composers or the studio's own vendors; **community** entries are widely documented finds with no official word; **theory** entries are labelled as guesses, including one the actor himself politely denies.","identifiers":{"tmdbId":986056,"tmdbUrl":"https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/986056","imdbId":"tt20969586","imdbUrl":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20969586/"},"game":null,"counts":{"eggs":20,"confirmed":7,"community":12,"theory":1,"sources":28},"postCredits":{"status":"yes","verdict":"Yes — Thunderbolts* has 2 post-credit scenes.","scenes":2,"description":"Two. A mid-credits gag with Red Guardian pushing a Wheaties box on a stranger in a supermarket, then a full post-credits scene set fourteen months later in which the New Avengers — mid-lawsuit with Sam Wilson over the Avengers name — detect an extradimensional ship bearing the Fantastic Four's emblem.","detail":"Yes. *Thunderbolts\\** has two scenes attached to its credits, and both are worth staying for, though only one of them moves the MCU forward.\n\nThe first arrives early, right after a short montage of newspaper front pages arguing about whether this new team is legitimate. It is pure comedy: Alexei Shostakov, now trimmed down from full Cold War beard to a moustache and goatee, corners a woman in a supermarket aisle and tries to sell her on a box of Wheaties with the team's faces on the front. She has no idea who he is, and walks off leaving the cereal behind. The beat pays off a running line about how you know you have really made it — a line Marvel had already planted in the film's Super Bowl trailer — and it did not stop at the screen: Marvel Studios and General Mills produced a genuine collector's Wheaties box after release.\n\nThe second scene is the one people actually mean. It jumps forward fourteen months. Bucky, Yelena, Ava and Walker are living and working out of the tower Valentina rebranded, still unloved by a public that mostly makes memes about them, and legally outgunned: Sam Wilson's Captain America has filed over the Avengers name, and the meeting about it, Bucky reports, went poorly. Alexei's proposed fix is to become the Avengerz, in sponsor-covered racing jumpsuits. Then the alarms go. Something has entered the atmosphere and been flagged as extradimensional. Yelena pulls up its hull, there is a stylised 4 on it, and Michael Giacchino's *Fantastic Four: First Steps* theme swells.\n\nSo stay through both — the mid-credits one is a two-minute joke, the final one is a direct hand-off to *The Fantastic Four: First Steps* and, past that, toward *Avengers: Doomsday*. It establishes that Marvel's First Family arrive in this universe from somewhere else, and that the welcoming committee is a squabbling, unlicensed team that cannot legally call itself the Avengers.","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts/post-credits"},"endings":null,"eggs":[{"id":"marvel-logo-swallowed-by-the-void","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-marvel-logo-swallowed-by-the-void","title":"The Marvel Studios Logo Is Built From Sentry Comics — Then Eaten by Shadow","description":"Imaginary Forces, Marvel's title house since 2002's *Spider-Man*, rebuilt the studio fanfare for this film alone. Under creative director Tosh Kodama, thousands of comic-book images pulled from Sentry and Thunderbolts issues are projected onto a three-dimensional Marvel wordmark as the camera drifts through the letters. The sequence deliberately never completes: a shadow spreads across the panels and the logo collapses into near-total blackness, while a low, haunting sound effect is layered over Michael Giacchino's familiar fanfare. Kodama has called the black palette a pointed break from the warm tones of past logo animations, chosen to signal a grittier, morally compromised world. It is a thirty-second spoiler for the villain, hidden in the one part of a Marvel film nobody watches closely.","scene":"The opening Marvel Studios logo animation, before the first frame of the film","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["visual","foreshadowing","meta"],"difficulty":2,"difficultyName":"Second Watch","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Post Magazine — Imaginary Forces creates the Marvel Studios logo featured in Thunderbolts","url":"https://www.postmagazine.com/Press-Center/Daily-News/2025/Imaginary-Forces-creates-Marvel-Studios-logo-fea.aspx"},{"label":"ComicBook.com — Thunderbolts*: obscure Marvel easter eggs you probably missed","url":"https://comicbook.com/movies/news/thunderbolts-new-avengers-mcu-marvel-studios-obscure-easter-eggs-missed/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"merdeka-118-jump-is-real","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-merdeka-118-jump-is-real","title":"Florence Pugh Actually Stepped Off the World's Second-Tallest Building","description":"Yelena's opening plunge is not a stunt double, a green screen or a rig cheat. Pugh jumped from the ledge of Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur — 678.9 metres, the second-tallest building on the planet — freefalling before deploying a parachute over the city, filmed in August 2024. She lobbied Kevin Feige personally for permission after Marvel balked at the insurance exposure, and Schreier has said she pulled it off perfectly with no cuts. Marvel released the behind-the-scenes footage as an official featurette, in which Pugh, waiting on the ledge with the safety team counting down, says: \"Of any stunt in any movie, this is amazing. How many times do you see someone throwing themselves off a building? It's strange how zen I feel.\"","scene":"The Kuala Lumpur cold open — the tower jump that ends Yelena's O.X.E. infiltration","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["trivia","meta"],"difficulty":2,"difficultyName":"Second Watch","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"The Star — Marvel shares first look at Florence Pugh's stunt at Merdeka 118","url":"https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/entertainment/2025/04/04/watch-marvel-shares-first-look-at-florence-pugh039s-skydiving-stunt-at-merdeka-118-for-039thunderbolts039"},{"label":"Marvel Studios — \"The Jump\" official featurette, Merdeka 118","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPU9UQJai7c"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"void-hiroshima-shadows","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-void-hiroshima-shadows","title":"The Void's Kill Effect Came From Photographs of Hiroshima","description":"When the Void touches someone they do not explode or dissolve — they flash out and leave a scorched human silhouette burned onto the wall or pavement behind them. Schreier told Collider the reference was specific and grim: \"It definitely came from images from Hiroshima and those kinds of shadows,\" a starting point that came out of production designer Grace Yun's research boards. He pushed ILM relentlessly toward simplicity, saying that whenever they delivered a range of options \"the simple one isn't simple enough,\" and set a hard technical rule for the transition: anything longer than a frame and a half of animation between the person vanishing and the shadow appearing \"starts to feel like you're getting into CG vapor territory.\"","scene":"Every Void encounter, most legibly the New York streets during the third-act blackout","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["visual","trivia"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"Collider — Jake Schreier explains the look of the Void","url":"https://collider.com/thunderbolts-the-void-explained-director-jake-schreier/"},{"label":"SuperHeroHype — Thunderbolts* director says the Void's powers are inspired by Hiroshima images","url":"https://www.superherohype.com/news/598937-thunderbolts-void-powers-hiroshima-images"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"shame-rooms-built-in-camera","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-shame-rooms-built-in-camera","title":"The Shame Rooms Are Real Sets, Because Feige Asked For It In Camera","description":"The Void's interior — what Lewis Pullman describes as \"endless rooms of places where you've experienced the most shame, or grief, in your life\" — is a practical build, not a digital environment. Schreier's mandate from Kevin Feige was to make the film feel different and shoot it in camera wherever possible, so Grace Yun (his production designer on *Beef*) constructed the memory spaces with breakable walls and mismatched gravity, calling the claustrophobia \"a deliberate design to make it feel boxed in.\" Even shots that look like obvious compositing, such as Yelena finding Bob in a mirror, were captured practically. Yun's other trick was making each room mundane enough that you cannot immediately tell whether you are watching a flashback or something far worse.","scene":"The Void sequence — the alley, the kitchen, the classroom and every doorway between them","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["trivia"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"ScreenRant — How the wildest Void scenes in Thunderbolts* were made","url":"https://screenrant.com/thunderbolts-void-scenes-wildest-how-made-explained-op-ed/"},{"label":"Collider — Jake Schreier on marrying practical and visual effects","url":"https://collider.com/thunderbolts-the-void-explained-director-jake-schreier/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"mel-songbird-necklace","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-mel-songbird-necklace","title":"Mel's Necklace Is a Tiny Gold Songbird — and Her Name Is Melissa","description":"Valentina's put-upon assistant Mel wears a delicate necklace with a songbird pendant, visible in close-ups throughout. In the comics, **Melissa Gold** starts as the Masters of Evil's Screaming Mimi and becomes **Songbird**, one of the original Thunderbolts and arguably the team's moral centre. Geraldine Viswanathan has described the pendant as a deliberate choice rather than a costuming accident, telling CBR the necklace search was \"such a fun back and forth with the costume designer\" and adding: \"nothing is by accident in the Marvel universe.\" She stops short of confirming the identity — \"I would love to see her go down that path\" — which is exactly how Marvel plants a character it has not cast yet.","scene":"Mel's scenes alongside Valentina — the necklace reads best in the Watchtower office beats","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["foreshadowing","reference","visual"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CBR — Geraldine Viswanathan teases Songbird's MCU debut: 'Nothing is by accident'","url":"https://www.cbr.com/thunderbolts-geraldine-viswanathan-teases-songbird-mcu-debut/"},{"label":"Collider — Is Mel actually Songbird in Thunderbolts*?","url":"https://collider.com/thunderbolts-mel-songbird-theory-explained-geraldine-viswanathan/"}],"motifs":["character-name-homage"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"avengers-theme-son-lux","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-avengers-theme-son-lux","title":"Son Lux Smuggle Alan Silvestri's Avengers Motif Into the Reveal","description":"The score is by Son Lux — the experimental trio behind *Everything Everywhere All at Once* — recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra, and their most audacious move is a quotation. At the moment Valentina rebrands the team on live television, the rhythmic figure from Alan Silvestri's Avengers theme surfaces under their own material. \"Weaving in the iconic rhythmic motif from Alan Silvestri's 'Avengers' theme at the top of *Thunderbolts\\** with our thematic material was such a fun way to musically convey the ah hah New Avengers reveal,\" Ian Chang told The DisInsider. It is the first substantial return of that fanfare since *Endgame*, and it is deployed on a team that has not earned it.","scene":"Valentina's press conference and the final title card; listen for the four-note rhythm under the strings","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["music","callback"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"The DisInsider — Son Lux on scoring Marvel's New Avengers (interview)","url":"https://thedisinsider.com/2025/05/08/exclusive-son-lux-on-jumping-genres-to-score-marvels-new-avengers-interview-3/"},{"label":"Wikipedia — Thunderbolts* (soundtrack)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolts*_(soundtrack)"}],"motifs":["music-cue-callback"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"asterisk-resolves-on-screen","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-asterisk-resolves-on-screen","title":"The Asterisk Was Pitched in a Job Interview — and It Pays Off On Screen","description":"The punctuation everyone spent a year arguing about is a footnote to a third-act reveal: Valentina hijacks the team's win and presents them to the press as **the New Avengers**, and the on-screen title card is physically torn away to show the film's real name. Schreier has said the ending was locked from the start — \"from the moment I pitched on the movie, that was the ending\" — and that the punctuation itself came out of his final pitch meeting, where he suggested doing \"one ad somewhere where we put an asterisk on the title, and we say until we come up with something better.\" Marvel's marketing department took the idea far further than one ad.","scene":"The rooftop press conference and the closing title card","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["meta","foreshadowing"],"difficulty":1,"difficultyName":"Plain Sight","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"ScreenRant — The Thunderbolts* asterisk's real meaning, addressed by the director","url":"https://screenrant.com/thunderbolts-title-asterisk-director-explained/"},{"label":"SuperHeroHype — Thunderbolts* asterisk meaning finally explained by the ending","url":"https://www.superherohype.com/guides/599077-thunderbolts-asterisk-meaning-new-avengers-mcu"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":"avengers-doomsday","referencesWork":null},{"id":"marvel-changed-the-real-posters","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-marvel-changed-the-real-posters","title":"Marvel Repainted Real Billboards and Put a © on the Avengers' Instagram","description":"The film's largest easter egg is not in the film. At the end of opening weekend Marvel repainted a Los Angeles billboard so that *Thunderbolts\\** became *\\*The New Avengers*, updated poster artwork across its channels, and released a video of the cast literally ripping the old title off a one-sheet. Then it went further: the official Avengers accounts on X and Instagram quietly added a **copyright symbol** to their names — an in-universe legal move, because the scene after the credits establishes that Sam Wilson has filed over the Avengers trademark. The joke inside the movie and the joke outside it are the same joke, executed in the real world with a straight face.","scene":"Not in the film — check Marvel's posters, billboards and the @Avengers social accounts from May 2025 onward","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["meta","trivia"],"difficulty":2,"difficultyName":"Second Watch","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"Variety — Thunderbolts poster gets 'The New Avengers' title change from Marvel","url":"https://variety.com/2025/film/news/thunderbolts-poster-the-new-avengers-title-change-1236386731/"},{"label":"ComicBook.com — Marvel changes Avengers social media accounts in wake of Thunderbolts*","url":"https://comicbook.com/movies/news/avengers-social-media-accounts-trademark-thunderbolts/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"wheaties-box-became-real","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-wheaties-box-became-real","title":"The Wheaties Box Was Promised in the Super Bowl Trailer — Then Actually Made","description":"Alexei's whole theory of heroism is that you have made it when your face is on a box of Wheaties, a line Marvel put in the Super Bowl trailer months before release. The mid-credits scene cashes it: a newly moustachioed Red Guardian ambushes a stranger in a supermarket aisle holding a Wheaties box with the team on the front, she has no idea what he is talking about, and she walks off leaving the cereal behind. The tail on this one runs into the real world — Marvel Studios and General Mills produced an actual collector's Thunderbolts* Wheaties box after the film opened, which sold out despite containing no cereal.","scene":"Mid-credits, immediately after the newspaper-headline montage","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["callback","meta","trivia"],"difficulty":2,"difficultyName":"Second Watch","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"Nerdist — Thunderbolts* post-credits scenes, explained","url":"https://nerdist.com/article/thunderbolts-post-credits-scenes-explained/"},{"label":"Nerdist — The Thunderbolts* got their very own Wheaties box","url":"https://nerdist.com/article/thunderbolts-limited-edition-collector-wheaties-box/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"project-sentry-golden-guardian","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-project-sentry-golden-guardian","title":"Project Sentry's Files Quote Paul Jenkins' 2000 Comic Almost Verbatim","description":"The paperwork Yelena digs out of the O.X.E. vault reads like transcription. \"Golden Guardian of Good\" and \"the power of a thousand exploding suns\" are lifted from the character's introduction in *The Sentry* #1 (2000) by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, where the figure is credited with the power of *a million* exploding suns — the film scales him down by three orders of magnitude and still has Bob note he outguns the entire Avengers roster, gods included. Valentina's preferred branding, \"Earth's Mightiest Hero,\" is a singular theft of the Avengers' own collective title. The vault also holds his costume, complete with the comic-accurate S emblem, and the golden hair to match.","scene":"The O.X.E. vault — the Project Sentry dossier and the costume case beside it","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["reference","visual"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"ComicBookMovie — Thunderbolts*: 10 easter eggs, references and cameos","url":"https://comicbookmovie.com/thunderbolts/thunderbolts-10-easter-eggs-references-and-cameos-you-need-to-see---spoilers-a219293"},{"label":"Marvel.com — Meet the Sentry, a golden guardian with a dark twist","url":"https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/sentry-robert-bob-reynolds-history-explained"}],"motifs":["book-accurate-detail"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":"The Sentry #1 (2000) by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee"},{"id":"watchtower-rename","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-watchtower-rename","title":"Avengers Tower Becomes the Watchtower — the Sentry's Comic HQ, Inverted","description":"Valentina has bought Tony Stark's old tower and renamed it the **Watchtower**, which in the comics is the Sentry's fortress — a structure that sat hidden in midtown Manhattan, erased from public memory by Robert Reynolds' own reality-editing powers, with Stark later building on the same site without knowing what was underneath. The film flips the chronology: here the Avengers building comes first and the Watchtower name is bolted on afterwards by a woman staging a comeback. Fans clocked the name from the trailers. The comics version also comes with an all-seeing AI called CLOC, which the film conspicuously does not mention — a loose thread left dangling.","scene":"Exterior shots of the rebranded tower and Valentina's gala inside it","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["reference","foreshadowing"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CBR — The Sentry's Watchtower in Thunderbolts*, explained","url":"https://www.cbr.com/thunderbolts-the-sentry-watchtower-adaptation-comic-history/"},{"label":"SlashFilm — The Thunderbolts trailer has a Sentry easter egg only hardcore fans noticed","url":"https://www.slashfilm.com/1671328/thunderbolts-trailer-marvel-sentry-easter-egg-watchtower/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"battle-of-new-york-gala-artifacts","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-battle-of-new-york-gala-artifacts","title":"Valentina's Gala Is a Museum of the 2012 Battle of New York","description":"The fundraiser Valentina throws for New York's elite doubles as a display case for MCU history. Scattered around the room are the buckled **\"A\"** salvaged from the STARK sign on the tower's facade, Chitauri handcuffs, a Loki's scepter replica and Captain America's suit — and the party is held in Tony's old bar, the one Loki threw him out of a window from. It is the same 2012 invasion the Avengers went back and re-fought during the *Endgame* time heist. The staging is the point: Valentina is selling nostalgia for a team that, as one line puts it, is not walking through those doors, four years after Thanos.","scene":"The gala at the rebranded tower — pan across the display plinths behind the guests","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["callback","visual"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"ComicBook.com — Thunderbolts*: obscure Marvel easter eggs you probably missed","url":"https://comicbook.com/movies/news/thunderbolts-new-avengers-mcu-marvel-studios-obscure-easter-eggs-missed/"},{"label":"Dexerto — Best Thunderbolts easter eggs and Marvel references you missed","url":"https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/thunderbolts-easter-eggs-marvel-references-3189455/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":"avengers-endgame","referencesWork":null},{"id":"oxe-group-comics-origin","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-oxe-group-comics-origin","title":"O.X.E. Group Is a Real Comics Conglomerate, Not Studio Filler","description":"The faceless holding company whose black-site lab opens the film is not invented for the screen. **O.X.E. Group** comes out of Marvel's Ultimate line — it first turns up in *Ultimate Fallout* #3 (2011) — and resurfaces in the 2023 *Thunderbolts* relaunch as one of the largest holding companies in the world, with ties back to Valentina herself. Using it here quietly explains how a disgraced CIA director keeps funding wet work through an impeachment: the money never has her name on it. Watch the signage and lanyards in the cold open, where the acronym appears long before anyone says it aloud.","scene":"The O.X.E. black-site laboratory in the cold open — badges, door plates and lab signage","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["reference","visual"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Dexerto — Best Thunderbolts easter eggs and Marvel references you missed","url":"https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/thunderbolts-easter-eggs-marvel-references-3189455/"},{"label":"ComicBookMovie — Thunderbolts*: 10 easter eggs, references and cameos","url":"https://comicbookmovie.com/thunderbolts/thunderbolts-10-easter-eggs-references-and-cameos-you-need-to-see---spoilers-a219293"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"bucky-terminator-entrance","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-bucky-terminator-entrance","title":"Bucky's Entrance Is a Straight Terminator Lift — With a Winter Soldier Weapon","description":"Sebastian Stan rides in on a motorcycle in dark glasses and a leather jacket, framed and lit exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger's arrival in *Terminator 2*, then wrangles the team using a wrist-mounted disc launcher. That weapon is not new: it is the same magnetic disc grenade Bucky slapped onto Nick Fury's SUV during the ambush in *Captain America: The Winter Soldier*, repurposed here for capture rather than assassination. The film keeps doing this with him — old Hydra tooling used for policing — which is the entire argument of a character who is now a sitting congressman for Brooklyn, the borough he and Steve Rogers grew up in.","scene":"Bucky's introduction, arriving to round up the team","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["reference","callback"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"ComicBookMovie — Thunderbolts*: 10 easter eggs, references and cameos","url":"https://comicbookmovie.com/thunderbolts/thunderbolts-10-easter-eggs-references-and-cameos-you-need-to-see---spoilers-a219293"},{"label":"ComicBook.com — Thunderbolts*: obscure Marvel easter eggs you probably missed","url":"https://comicbook.com/movies/news/thunderbolts-new-avengers-mcu-marvel-studios-obscure-easter-eggs-missed/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":"The Terminator / Terminator 2: Judgment Day"},{"id":"red-hulk-impeachment-callback","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-red-hulk-impeachment-callback","title":"The Impeachment Hearing Quietly Recaps Three Other MCU Projects","description":"The congressional proceedings against Valentina do heavy continuity lifting in about ninety seconds of dialogue. She refers to the sitting president turning into \"a giant red superhuman rage monster\" — Thaddeus Ross's Red Hulk transformation from *Captain America: Brave New World*, treated here as a recent, publicly known embarrassment. She also justifies her black budget by pointing at rogue nations sitting on advanced technology, naming the vibranium stockpiles of **Wakanda** and **Talokan**. And the hearing's framing establishes the film's baseline: it has been four years and the Avengers, in the film's flattest line, are not walking through those doors.","scene":"The congressional impeachment hearing intercut through the first act","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["callback","reference"],"difficulty":2,"difficultyName":"Second Watch","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"ScreenRant — Thunderbolts*: 60 Marvel easter eggs & references explained","url":"https://screenrant.com/thunderbolts-movie-easter-eggs-marvel-references/"},{"label":"Dexerto — Best Thunderbolts easter eggs and Marvel references you missed","url":"https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/thunderbolts-easter-eggs-marvel-references-3189455/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"thunderbolts-name-soccer-team","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-thunderbolts-name-soccer-team","title":"The Team Is Named After a Youth Soccer Side That Never Won a Game","description":"In the comics the name is Baron Zemo's — a Nazi war criminal's private joke, publicly attributed to a line of 17th-century poetry. The film gives it to Yelena instead: the **West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts** were the American youth soccer team she played goalkeeper for during the Ohio deep-cover years, coached by Alexei, and they lost every single match. Walker proposes it precisely because it marks them as losers; Alexei, who cannot hear an insult, adopts it instantly and shouts it at every opportunity. Yelena's stated reason for playing in goal — she wanted to be the one everybody could rely on when they made a mistake — is the film's thesis in one childhood anecdote.","scene":"The team's naming argument, and Alexei's flashback footage of the soccer years","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["reference","callback","meta"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"ComicBook.com — How did the Thunderbolts get their name in the comics?","url":"https://comicbook.com/comics/news/marvel-thunderbolts-name-explained-comics-team/"},{"label":"ScreenRant — The devastatingly sad other meaning behind the Thunderbolts name","url":"https://screenrant.com/thunderbolts-mcu-name-meaning-sad-yelena-red-guardian-op-ed/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"red-guardian-soviet-memorabilia","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-red-guardian-soviet-memorabilia","title":"Alexei's Apartment Is a Shrine to a Career That Barely Happened","description":"When Yelena visits her adoptive father he is watching grainy Soviet parade footage of himself standing beside Stalin, in a flat papered with his own propaganda posters — the Cyrillic on one translating to roughly \"we are indomitable as the Red Guardian.\" David Harbour posted one of the posters himself when he wrapped shooting. The gag has teeth: *Black Widow* already established that Alexei's heroic career was mostly Soviet fiction, so the apartment is a man living inside his own press clippings. By the mid-credits scene he has traded the Cold War beard for a moustache and goatee, and moved on to selling strangers cereal.","scene":"Yelena's visit to Alexei's apartment — the television, and the posters on every wall","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["visual","callback"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"ScreenRant — Thunderbolts*: 60 Marvel easter eggs & references explained","url":"https://screenrant.com/thunderbolts-movie-easter-eggs-marvel-references/"},{"label":"IMDb News — David Harbour confirms he's wrapped with a Red Guardian propaganda poster","url":"https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64667731/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"avengerz-nascar-sponsors","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-avengerz-nascar-sponsors","title":"The 'Avengerz' Racing Suits Are Covered in Real Sponsors","description":"Alexei's proposed workaround for the trademark problem is to rebrand as the **Avengerz** with a Z, modelled in NASCAR-style jumpsuits plastered with logos. Pause it: the sponsors are not invented brands but real ones — Barbasol, Xbox, Tide, Heineken 0.0 and ampm all appear on the fabric. It is a two-second sight gag doing three jobs at once: it tells you Valentina has already monetised the team, it makes the copyright suit look even more deserved, and it quietly acknowledges the product-placement economy every modern blockbuster runs on. Freeze-frame territory; the shot does not linger.","scene":"The post-credits scene at the Watchtower, when Alexei presents his rebrand","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["visual","meta"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"community","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"ComicBook.com — Thunderbolts*: obscure Marvel easter eggs you probably missed","url":"https://comicbook.com/movies/news/thunderbolts-new-avengers-mcu-marvel-studios-obscure-easter-eggs-missed/"}],"motifs":["blink-and-miss-signage"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"fantastic-four-ship-stinger","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-fantastic-four-ship-stinger","title":"The Ship in the Final Stinger Wears a 4 — and Giacchino's Theme","description":"Fourteen months on from the film's events, an alarm at the Watchtower flags something entering the atmosphere and tagged as extradimensional. Yelena pulls up the hull and there is a stylised **4** on it, while Michael Giacchino's theme for *The Fantastic Four: First Steps* comes up on the soundtrack — the audio cue being the real giveaway, since it is lifted from a film that had not yet opened. It is the MCU's cleanest hand-off in years: Marvel's First Family arriving in this reality from somewhere else, straight into the lap of a team that is currently losing a trademark dispute.","scene":"The final post-credits scene, after the last credit card","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["foreshadowing","music","visual"],"difficulty":1,"difficultyName":"Plain Sight","verification":"community","spoiler":true,"sources":[{"label":"Nerdist — Thunderbolts* post-credits scenes, explained","url":"https://nerdist.com/article/thunderbolts-post-credits-scenes-explained/"},{"label":"Variety — Thunderbolts credits scene: Fantastic Four, New Avengers explained","url":"https://variety.com/2025/film/news/thunderbolts-credits-scene-fantastic-four-new-avengers-1236384926/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":"the-fantastic-four-first-steps","referencesWork":null},{"id":"old-santa-violent-night","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts#egg-old-santa-violent-night","title":"'Who's This Old Santa?' — a Violent Night Joke the Actor Doesn't Buy","description":"Valentina's dismissal of the bearded, shambling Alexei as \"this old Santa\" set off immediate speculation that it was a wink at David Harbour's other beard-and-mayhem role, the sledgehammer-wielding Father Christmas of *Violent Night* (2022). Harbour has been asked directly and declined to claim it: \"I do not believe it was [a reference to *Violent Night*]... Julia said it might have been improv, but I think it was in an early script.\" He suspects screenwriter Eric Pearson, who enjoys needling him, but says he never checked. Filed as a theory precisely because the person best placed to confirm it politely won't.","scene":"Valentina's first face-to-face with Alexei","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"chapter":null,"trigger":null,"version":null,"types":["meta","reference"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"theory","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"SlashFilm — The Violent Night easter egg you missed in Marvel's Thunderbolts","url":"https://www.slashfilm.com/1851568/marvel-thunderbolts-movie-violent-night-easter-egg/"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":"Violent Night (2022)"}],"faq":[{"question":"How many easter eggs are in Thunderbolts*?","answer":"We catalogue 20 easter eggs and hidden details in Thunderbolts* (2025), seven of them confirmed on the record by the director, cast, composers or Marvel's own vendors. The standouts: the Marvel Studios logo built from Sentry comic pages and then swallowed by shadow, the Void's kill effect drawn from photographs of the shadows burned into stone at Hiroshima, and Mel's tiny gold songbird necklace, which Geraldine Viswanathan says was chosen deliberately because \"nothing is by accident in the Marvel universe.\" Wider trawls like ScreenRant's have logged 60-plus references; ours is the curated list worth your rewatch."},{"question":"Does Thunderbolts* have a post-credit scene?","answer":"Two of them. The mid-credits scene is a gag: a moustachioed Red Guardian tries to sell a stranger in a supermarket a box of Wheaties with the team on it, paying off a line seeded in the Super Bowl trailer. The post-credits scene, set fourteen months later, matters more — the New Avengers are being sued by Sam Wilson over the Avengers name when an extradimensional ship carrying the Fantastic Four's emblem enters the atmosphere, scored with Michael Giacchino's theme from The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Stay for both."},{"question":"What does the asterisk in Thunderbolts* actually mean?","answer":"It is a footnote to the third act. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine steals credit for the team's win and presents them to the world as the New Avengers, and the on-screen title card is torn away to reveal that name. Director Jake Schreier pitched the punctuation in his final job interview, suggesting Marvel run \"one ad somewhere\" with an asterisk meaning \"until we come up with something better.\" Marvel went much further, repainting billboards and posters after opening weekend so the marketing itself resolved the joke."},{"question":"What is the Void, and how do the Thunderbolts beat it?","answer":"The Void is the dark half of Bob Reynolds, the Sentry — the byproduct of the serum that made him Earth's most powerful being, and in this telling a literalised depression that spreads by touch, leaving scorched human shadows where people stood and trapping them in rooms built from their worst memories. Nobody punches it out. The team walks into Bob's own shame room, refuses to leave him there, and Yelena holds onto him until the darkness recedes. It is the rare MCU climax resolved by staying rather than winning."},{"question":"Is Mel actually Songbird in Thunderbolts*?","answer":"Unconfirmed, but the film is clearly pointing at it. Valentina's assistant Mel wears a small gold songbird pendant, and in the comics Melissa Gold — first the Masters of Evil's Screaming Mimi, later Songbird — is a founding member of the original Thunderbolts. Geraldine Viswanathan has confirmed the necklace was a deliberate costuming choice, calling the search for the right piece \"such a fun back and forth with the costume designer\" and adding that nothing is accidental at Marvel. She has not confirmed the identity itself."},{"question":"How does Thunderbolts* set up Avengers: Doomsday?","answer":"Through ownership and arrival. By the end, Valentina has installed a team of former assets in Tony Stark's old tower and branded them the New Avengers, giving the MCU a functioning Avengers roster again for the first time since Endgame — one with no legal right to the name, since Sam Wilson is building his own. Then the post-credits scene drops the Fantastic Four into the same sky. Doomsday inherits both threads: two rival Avengers teams and a First Family who came from another universe."}],"publishedAt":"2026-08-05","updatedAt":"2026-08-10","source":{"name":"The Things You Missed","page":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/thunderbolts","api":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/api/titles/thunderbolts","methodology":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/about"}}