50 Marvelous Facts About the Marvel Universe – Part 5

Just 12 Issues after his debut appearance, Spider-Man’s secret identity was revealed to the public by Doctor Octopus. However, no one could accept that a wimp like Peter Parker could be a superhero, dismissing him as an imposter.

27. The original Guardians of the Galaxy cameo planned for Stan lee involved Groot stumbling across the former Marvel Comics president in one of the Collector’s display cases, who would then flip off our heroes.

28. Magneto does not have control over just metal, but overall electromagnetic forces. Thus, he can generate heat, sense heat signatures, manipulate/generate radio signals, manipulate the human body’s nervous system, manipulate light to make himself invisible and even control water on an atomic level.

29. On very rare occasions, Spider-Man has been known to use his wall-clinging abilities offensively, sticking to and then ripping off of characters like Norman Osborn and Sasha Kravinoff.

30. Stan Lee considered the premise of the X-Men’s abilities, i.e., people born with superpowers, “the cowardly way out” of an origin story. He only used the concept after he exhausted all his other ideas (like irradiated spiders and cosmic forces).

Multiple alternate opening scenes were shot for ‘Iron Man 3,’ including a scene of Tony Stark as a child trying to cheer up his mother after she got into a fight with his father, and one of Tony cleaning up Stark Industry landmines, an allusion to the many explosive elements from his past waiting to detonate.

32. Hugh Jackman walked around the show floor of the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con dressed as Wolverine, who he plays in the ‘X-Men’ film series, yet was almost completely unrecognized. One member of the crowd even complained that he was too tall to cosplay the character.

33. A 1965 Esquire poll revealed that college students ranked the Hulk and Spider-Man alongside Bob Dylan and Che Guevara as the top revolutionary icons of their time.

34. Hugh Jackman prepared for 30 days in advance, including 36 hours of dehydration, for the shirtless "Wolverine" scenes.

35. Wolverine was supposed to have a cameo in Spider-Man (2002). Hugh Jackman even flew to New York, but the scene had to be scrapped because his costume was nowhere to be found.

Bruce Banner's name was changed to David Banner in The Incredible Hulk because Bruce was considered a stereotypically gay name.

37. Although Stan Lee gave the Hulk's alter ego the alliterative name "Bruce Banner", Lee misremembered it and referred to him as "Bob Banner" in some later stories, an error which readers quickly picked up on. To resolve this discrepancy he decided to officially him “Robert Bruce Banner.”

38. Groot from the Guardian of the Galaxy was one of Stan Lee's first creations at Marvel (and originally a villain), predating Spider-Man and most of the Avengers, including the Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor.

39. Batman beat the Hulk in a special cross-over comic book, by throwing a can of knock-out-gas at the Hulk’s head, then hitting him in the solar plexus which caused him to breathe in the gas.

40. Stan Lee once commented that he liked to work "science" into all of his stories and that Hulk's pants were the only time he never had a clue how the exact science behind it worked.

Hulk is basically indestructible and stacked with superpowers such as breathing underwater, surviving in space, resistant to solar temperatures, and extreme regenerability.

42. Robert Downey Jr. was paid 100x for Iron Man 3, than he was for Iron Man 1. He was paid $500,000 for Iron Man 1 vs. $50 Million for Iron Man 3.

43. Jeff Bridges said of working on Iron Man, “They had no script, man. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn't know what we were going to say. We would go into our trailer and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?’”

44. Terrence Howard was paid more than Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man. He also believes the movie killed his career.

45. At the beginning of Iron Man, Tony Stark's captors are revealing the plot of the entire movie in Urdu, the third most commonly spoken language in the world.

Ant-Man made his Marvel comic debut before Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, and Iron-Man.

47. When Patrick Stewart was first asked to consider playing Professor X on film, the actor had no idea who the character was. So when one of the producers handed him an 'X-Men' comic from her desk he responded, "What am I doing on the front of a comic book?"

48. ForgetMeNot is a character in the X-men comics who has been on the team for years but, due to his power, everyone except Professor X would forget about him.

49. Santa Claus is a Marvel character. He has powers that include teleportation and the ability to shape-shift, and he once saved the X-Men on Christmas Eve.

50. X-Men's Cyclops is a disabled mutant and that his early origin explains that he can't control his eye beams because he fell out of a plane as a child and suffered brain damage.