EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and most of them will be unmarked. You have been warned!
Films
- Thanos from his two cameos in The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. That is, until he finally becomes the Big Bad in Avengers: Infinity War.
- The Mandarin and Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3, the former actually being a drugged up alcoholic actor named Trevor Slattery and the latter being the actual Big Bad.
- Then there's Xu Wenwu, the real Mandarin (although he doesn't go by this name), whose very presence in-universe is so spoilery his entry tab on the character page was originally literally listed under "Spoiler Character" instead of his name. Although while at first he was so secret that for most of a decade he had only been confirmed by Word of God and the short All Hail the King, the lead-up for his actual debut in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings just treated the Mandarin as a Late-Arrival Spoiler for those who didn't know the one in Iron Man 3 was a fake. And that movie again features Trevor Slattery as a Walking Spoiler (the trailer and the cast list in the poster certainly treat him as such), if only for being an unexpected return, specially for those who didn't watch All Hail the King.
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
- The only thing that was known was the heroes would be fighting the Winter Soldier... who already qualifies for this, given readers of comics will have a Foregone Conclusion that Bucky Barnes survived his plunge to death in the first movie.
- Arnim Zola, whose mere presence spoils the influence of HYDRA on the story.
- Alexander Pierce, who was marketed as only "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s representative in The Omniscient Council of Vagueness", but turns out to be a HYDRA higher-up.
- Baron von Strucker doesn't appear until a mid-credits scene and, like Zola, is tied to the twist that HYDRA is involved.
- Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Him being Peter's father was known, and him being a Celestial wasn't TOO big a twist, but everything else is a major spoiler.
- Red Skull's appearance in Avengers: Infinity War. Not only is his re-appearance after seven years and fourteen movies after his last appearance hugely out of left field, but his role is tied directly to the Soul Stone, the only Infinity Stone not to appear in a prior film.
- Captain Marvel: Talos's wife Soren and their daughter, whose existence serves as proof that Talos and the Skrulls really were war refugees being persecuted by the Kree.
- Practically everyone in Avengers: Endgame. This is due to the fact that the first big twist (Thanos's death and the five-year Time Skip) happens in the first ten minutes of the film. Discussing anyone's role in the film spoils the twist. More specific examples include:
- Thanos dies not five minutes after the film’s title card, but comes back in the third act through his alternate past self.
- Thor has become an alcoholic, overweight slob harboring PTSD for his failure to defeat Thanos.
- Bruce Banner and the Hulk have merged to become one during the Time Skip and the resulting Professor Hulk is now a respected superhero as opposed to his usual status quo.
- Tony Stark has married Pepper Potts and the two have a little girl, Morgan.
- The many, many time travel-induced examples of The Bus Came Back, including the Ancient One, Frigga, Jane Foster, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, and Edwin Jarvis.
- Spider-Man: Far From Home:
- Quentin Beck, a.k.a. Mysterio, turns out to be the Big Bad, although that verges on The Un-Twist to comic-savvy viewers. However, he isn't working alone; he has an entire special effects team with him, and The Reveal of their existence comes immediately after their boss's Traitor Shot. And then there's the matter of his Thanatos Gambit in the mid-credits scene...
- Said Thanatos Gambit consists of exposing Peter's secret identity to the world and framing Peter for his (Beck's) own murder. And the person who delivers this news? J. Jonah Jameson, who is once again played by J. K. Simmons.
- Talos and Soren, who are revealed in the post-credits scene to have been impersonating Nick Fury and Maria Hill for the entire film. By extension, the real Fury is also this, as that scene reveals that he's with the Skrulls for an unknown task.
- Black Widow has Taskmaster, who didn't even have the portrayer revealed before release (just see how it was done in the last character posters
). And indeed, it's not even Tony Masters, but Antonia Dreykov, the daughter of the Red Room's leader who Natasha thought she killed, only for his father to turn her into an Empty Shell of a super-assassin. - Whilst the villains of Spider-Man: No Way Home had been revealed in advance to be portrayed by the same actors as in the prior series, the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as their respective Spider-Men was saved for the film, although the twist had been leaked before release.
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has Clea, who shows up in the mid-credits scene as an indicator to where Strange's journey will go next.
TV Shows
- Agent Carter:
- Dottie Underwood is introduced as just Peggy's new neighbor, but turns out to be a Dark Action Girl and a prototype Black Widow to boot.
- In a similar vein, Dr. Ivchenko, who is actually the Big Bad and the MCU counterpart of Dr. Faustus.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
- Grant Ward was introduced as The Big Guy and a Replacement Flat Character for the team, but turns out to have some serious Hidden Depths. And that's only the beginning — in fact, trying to describe him at any point after the first two-thirds of Season 1 will give something away.
- Agent Garret, who turns out not only to be The Clairvoyant, but is also responsible for Ward becoming a member of HYDRA and is also the first Deathlok.
- Skye's mother Jiaying, who serves as the Final Boss of Season Two after she is revealed to be Not Quite Dead.
- Skye herself qualifies as well, since she's actually the MCU version of Daisy Johnson, a.k.a. Quake.
- A large part of Glenn Talbot's entry is spoilered out due to a twist late in Season 5, where he becomes Graviton.
- Nathaniel Malick has very little characterization in his first appearance. Pretty much everything else about him ties in to the Mid-Season Twist in the seventh season, where he cheats death via Cosmic Retcon, acquires superpowers through Playing with Syringes, and generally goes from a bit part in his brother's story to one-half of the Big Bad Duumvirate.
- Elektra in The Defenders. Just the fact that she's alive following her apparent death in Daredevil says something, and there are more twists along the way.
- The IGH assassin in season 2 of Jessica Jones, who turns out to be Jessica's mother Alisa.
- WandaVision:
- Wanda's nosy neighbor Agnes, who is actually a villainous Agatha Harkness.
- Quicksilver appears at the end of Episode Five... only it's seemingly the one from the X-Men Film Series... and then, that he was part of Agatha's scheme, and he wasn't even Quicksilver in the first place. Instead, he is just some guy named Ralph Bohner pretending to be him.
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier reveals that the Power Broker is none other than Captain America's former ally Sharon Carter, who fled to Madripoor to evade arrest by the U.S. government.
- Loki:
- The end of episode 4 reveals that there are numerous other Variants of Loki, including Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Boastful Loki and Alligator Loki. Not to mention that their very existence reveals the fact that pruned Variants don't actually die but are simply transported into another dimension.
- The fifth episode reveals the existence of a powerful entity in the Void known as Alioth. It also gives out hints about the true leader of the Time Variance Authority.
- The biggest example is He Who Remains, the true founder of the TVA and a Variant of Kang the Conqueror. As such, it's hard to really talk about him without spoiling a major twist that has massive implications for what will eventually be known as The Multiverse Saga era MCU.
- What If…? (2021):
- The third episode reveals that most of the would-be Avengers were killed by Hank Pym, otherwise known as Yellowjacket.
- The fourth episode reveals that the Ancient One split the timeline at the point where Strange Supreme started his attempts to save Christine, creating a second, heroic version of Doctor Strange in that timeline. While the trailers had shown a fight between two versions of Strange, the exact cause was not revealed beforehand (indeed, many people thought that the other Doctor Strange was from an alternate universe relative to Strange Supreme).
