Kevin Feige talks the origins of the Marvel post-credits scenes

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Going to see the Marvel movies has become a culture all its own, with fans showing up in droves during the opening weekend to watch their favorite heroes in action. A firmly-adhered-to part of that culture is the staying for the credits for the sake of seeing whatever funny/revealing teaser comes with them (and, of course, to acknowledge all the hardworking crew members). In a new interview Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige explains the origins of the scenes, and how certain memorable tags came to life.

Feige gave the interview to EW as INFINITY WAR approaches its release, and recalled how amazing it was to be treated to an end-credits scene after the credits of the movie FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY off, which sees Matthew Broderick telling the audience to go home. “I thought it was hilarious,” he said. “It was like a little reward for me for sitting through the credits.”

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Years have since passed, and now we all get those rewards at the end of each Marvel movie, and even in the middle of the credits. It all started when Feige and his team began to realize that although they don’t own Spider-Man or X-Men they do have the rights to virtually every other Marvel character. If they were to put all these characters in movies together, the end scenes could act as the bond that links them together.

Even though everything else hadn’t been turned into a big film before, or had the name recognition among non-comic-book readers that others ones did, we had the opportunity to start putting certain heroes in other heroes’ movies, which hadn’t been done before. It’s a bonus of what’s to come.

As the scenes began to become a staple in the franchise their origins started to vary. For some, like IRON MAN, they’re discussed in production. For others, like IRON MAN 2, they came out of scenes written in a movie’s script that seemed destined for after-credits greatness.

The Iron Man 2 tag, which is Coulson going into the desert and finding the hammer, came about when I was reading drafts for Thor and read that little section where he pulls up and says, “Sir, we found it,” and I said, “Oh, that’s the tag! Let’s move it up in production of Thor early, so we can put it in the tag for Iron Man 2.”

Then there was the hilarious tag in AVENGERS, which finds the team eating shawarma after saving New York.

For Avengers, we were finishing up VFX shots and we put a little shawarma shop in the background of the scene where Iron Man gets smashed into the ground, because Robert Downey Jr. ran with an ad lib about shawarma, and so it was like, “Oh, he must have seen that sign and thought about shawarma.” We were sitting in the cutting room saying, “You know what would have been great? Them sitting around eating shawarma at the end credits.” And then we started thinking, “Wait a minute, that’s so great we actually have to do it. We have to figure out a way!”

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Others, like the many in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, were the result of a flurry of funny ideas from director James Gunn. In the case of the one in SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, which has Captain America (Chris Evans) coming out to poke fun at the whole concept, was a bit of a homage to FERRIS.

The one with Captain America in Spider-Man: Homecoming was our homage to John Hughes and going back to the first Ferris Bueller one. We had Chris ad-lib that conversation to the camera when we were filming his little cameos for Spider-Man.

The stingers in the movies a wonderful tradition that fans have come to love over the years, and work as a way of getting us all excited for whatever waits in the future. Word is AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR has a pretty amazing one, and possibly the best ever, so now we all have that to look forward to!

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is in theaters on Friday!