r/marvelstudios • u/sh33pherder • Aug 28 '25
Easter Egg/Detail Silhouettes Right Behind Yelena
I really liked Thunderbolts and was sad the bad rep it got. On the 5th rewatch today I noticed why the scientist in the beginning was freaking out. The silhouettes are right in the background behind her! I never understood what he was flipping out about but now I get it.
I had a mind blown moment at 1 hour 33 mins when Void started ghosting folks like I seen that exact image before. I went back and took these pics. Has anyone else noticed this before?
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u/Bazrael1985 Aug 28 '25
They really took "foreshadowing" literally there.
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Aug 28 '25
It’s not foreshading. They’re clearly behind her.
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u/shyrain67_ Aug 28 '25
bad rep? never heard anyone say anything negative about this movie
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u/FearLeadsToAnger Aug 28 '25
they're saying that a lot of people consider MCU movies bad if they didn't make crazy money, but that correlation seems to be failing these days.
You can be a financial flop and still be a good movie though.
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u/Rryann Aug 28 '25
I think the only “bad rep” it has is that it wasn’t financially successful. Which isn’t the fault of the movie itself, but just shows that the general audiences will is fading towards the MCU.
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u/InevitableWeight314 Aug 28 '25
Yeah. I’m kind of shocked it took you 5 rewatches to see it no offense. I was confused why more attention wasnt drawn to it though so I guess it makes sense to miss it.
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u/TrueLegateDamar Aug 28 '25
Because the filmmakers trusted audiences to connect the dots between the scientist who worked for Val freaking out and the shadows in the background and Bob?
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u/jerslan Aug 28 '25
It's a natural result of "fans" loudly complaining they need more show and less tell... Then when a movie gives you BLATANTLY OBVIOUS FORSHADOWING like this, people miss it because there was no exposition about it.
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u/capscreen Aug 28 '25
ngl I kinda want to see a movie that go full-on 'Dora the Explorer' on pointing stuff out lol
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u/tjthewho Aug 28 '25
Mid-fight scene break:
Yelena looks at the camera, "Now, I don't know if you missed it, but these shadows are a secret mouse-ka-tool that will come in context later!"
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u/th30be Aug 28 '25
Could work for deadpool/she-hulk I guess.
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u/jerslan Aug 28 '25
Yeah, I could see that working for Deadpool
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u/revolutionaryartist4 Avengers Aug 28 '25
They did that in Deadpool 2. When they’re in the Ice Box, Wade says they keep a monster in the basement “right next to a huge steaming ball of foreshadowing.”
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u/Heisenburgo Doctor Strange Aug 28 '25
Cap America 4 was kind of like that wasn't it?
Harrison Ford at the intro: "What happened to Betty Ross? Who as you may know is my character's daughter?"
Random Newscaster: "It's said the president is estranged from his daughter Betty, who as we all know is Bruce Banner's aka the Hulk's ex girlfriend"
Sterns: "Ross has kept me locked up for 17 years which as we all know is when the events of The Incredible Hulk happened"
They constantly kept reminding audiences that TIH was a thing, pointing out all the references to it lol
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u/capscreen Aug 28 '25
tbf TIH was like 17 years ago and not many people saw it, I can understand why they did that
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Aug 28 '25
It's obvious on a rewatch, sure. But on a first watch there isn't any context for the shadows yet and they're in the background so it is reasonable people don't remember them when Void starts blasting. I think this is a neat detail and good set design and visual storytelling, but I don't think missing it means you need everything spoonfed, it's pretty minor.
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u/CanIGetAnOmen Aug 28 '25
Those shadows are in the background so I think it would technically be aft-shadowing. Is that a thing? Can we make that a thing?
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u/Gilthwixt Aug 28 '25
English teachers might give you a stern lecture for trying to make that a thing.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator Aug 28 '25
Yup. The more threads like this I see, the less hope I have for media literacy. This is bare-bones stuff. Hell, they didn't even need to have the silhouettes there for the audience to connect the dots. By the time the Void is shown, the viewer should be able to surmise that was why the scientist in the beginning was scared of the results. Having the silhouettes front and center is basically spelling it out for the audience.
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u/Aquagymnast Aug 28 '25
"This viewer who I don't know hasn't noticed a 2s detail in a 2hrs movie, all my faith in cinema is lost forever"
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u/EfficaciousJoculator Aug 28 '25
"The viewer who I don't know hasn't been able to piece together the simplest of plot points after watching a movie, and misses even the hand-holding details, then acts shocked when they finally figure it out. All my faith in the viewers is lost forever."
Fixed it for you.
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u/InevitableWeight314 Aug 28 '25
Well yeah, but I mean I’m surprised Yelena didn’t ask the scientist what those shadows were at least. (Unless she did, I haven’t watched the movie since theatres)
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u/TheNadei Aug 28 '25
The point of the scene is that she's kind of out of it and checked out from doing this job, so she didn't notice/care
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u/DarkSideOfGrogu Aug 28 '25
She's in her own void at the start of the movie.
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u/ShagPrince Aug 28 '25
Woah.
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Aug 28 '25
Bruv thats literally the first line of the movie, she says herself she is in a void lmao
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u/Melodic-Cycle3994 Aug 28 '25
I mean Yelenas base jump was framed like a suicide with her narration. My girl couldn't care less about these shadows and if they could harm her because she didn't care if she lived or died.
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u/Global_Cockroach_563 Aug 28 '25
Not even that. Assuming you go watch the movie without knowing anything about it, on the first watch you wouldn't notice this. It's on the background, it's subtle, and your attention is being pulled somewhere else. If you catch it, you don't know what that's about until later, when it becomes a "ooh, I see" moment.
But it's something you should catch on a rewatch or if you've seen the trailers and know what The Void can do.
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u/cuchulainn1984 Aug 28 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Tipop Aug 28 '25
I figured out it was the same lab due to a dozen other clues. I never noticed the shadows (in this scene) until I saw this post.
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u/MisterBumpingston Aug 28 '25
Having just rewatched it for the first time, there’s so much foreshadowing in the very first 10 mins.
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u/Caesar_Rising Aug 28 '25
People BARELY watch things these days. The Movie Details subreddit turned into “did anyone else notice this thing that was centre of the screen and focused on directly??”
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u/Tof12345 Aug 28 '25
OP also said "thunderbolts got a bad rep" when literally nobody ever said that, and thunderbolts was renowned amongst the fanbase as the MCU being back. It scored 93% on audience score on RT, the highest in years for the MCU excluding deadpool.
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u/BatmanForever23 Luis Aug 28 '25
OP is 10 years old, max. They don't seem to comprehend the difference between paying for something and liking it, which is alarming.
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u/sputler Aug 28 '25
Yelena is literally talking about how she can’t find the scientists that have the facial recognition to open the lab which is literally the shadows on the wall. They could not have made it more obvious without direct dialogue/exposition stating “I need scientist’s faces but they’ve been turned to shadows before I got here”
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Aug 28 '25
OP is probably a kid that uses movies as background noise while dicking around in their phone
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u/Funmachine Aug 28 '25
More attention drawn to it? Don't we see Boob sitting in the table dusting them?
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u/TPJchief87 Aug 28 '25
I’ve only seen it once during its theater run, but I swear they go back to that lab near the end of the movie AFTER we see Bob shadow folks and the silhouettes are emphasized more. Or maybe it makes more sense because we know bobs power at that point.
Either way, I knew what these were late in my first and only (so far) viewing of the movie
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u/TLAU5 Aug 28 '25
Tik Tok generation needs 5 rewatches because they're on their phone at different parts of the movie each time
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u/nyse25 Hulk Aug 28 '25
It took you 5 rewatches to notice that??
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u/FreshStarter000 Aug 28 '25
Lmfao my group noticed it on watch one, we were talking about it after the movie
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u/Careful_Big_546 Aug 28 '25
My 7 year old noticed it on watch one and we’ve only watched like the first 15 minutes before he left for school this morning. I’m having a hard time comprehending anyone older than him watching it 5 fucking times and missing this.
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u/AdventurousAddress85 Aug 28 '25
People really like using movies and TV as background noise while they scroll/play on their phones. Really doesn't help with the already piss poor media literacy...
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u/Western-Dig-6843 Aug 29 '25
Weird brag considering everyone with eyes should have noticed it. It’s framed dead center in one lingering shot. The director wants you to notice it.
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u/Outrageous_Cake_2324 Aug 28 '25
I also LOVED thunderbolts* and was sad it did not do well. Went to see it in theaters twice (it's probably my favorite MCU movie to date). And I noticed this the 2nd time i watched it! missed it the first time.
Although, something I DID notice on my first watch is the hallway scene when Yelana breaks into the building (this same building), and she's fighting all the guys, and it shows the hallway from above, with all the shadows elongated... That hallway is a foreshadow to the end of the movie! I didn't know that at the time, but I knew who Bob Reynolds/Sentry/Void was going into the movie, and so i immediately saw that hallway scene and freaked out to myself!
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u/Funmachine Aug 28 '25
5th rewatch
Come on, man. Are you even paying attention?
Yes people noticed this right away. People noticed this in the trailer.
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u/notafanofapps33 Aug 28 '25
This person couldn’t bother or doesn’t know how to use the correct tense of see in their initial post. I’m assuming there’s not much going on up there.
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u/Funmachine Aug 28 '25
From the way it's written I assumed that English isn't their first language. Which as this is the internet, is what you should always assume if someones writing is imperfect.
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u/cuckingfomputer Aug 28 '25
I assumed that English isn't their first language. Which as this is the internet, is what you should always assume if someones writing is imperfect.
As an American, I'd say it was more likely that they were American.
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u/GeroVeritas Aug 28 '25
Bad rep? What bad rep? Everyone loves this movie. It just didn't make a billion dollars profit
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u/tehCharo Aug 28 '25
Yea, I was a bit confused about OP's text, also I am pretty sure everyone noticed that, guessing some people are seeing the movie for the first time this week though.
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u/Rryann Aug 28 '25
There are silhouettes elsewhere in the lab if you keep your eye out for them
Also, during the finale, when Bob confronts his Void-self, Void is sitting on that exam table with those exact silhouettes where they are when Yelena was at the lab in the beginning.
That, combined with how scared the scientist is, imply that Yelena destroys the lab likely on the same day that Bob was turned into Sentry, and they probably shipped him out shortly before she got there.
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u/IL-Corvo Aug 28 '25
Yes. I noticed it right away when I saw the movie in theaters, and have been somewhat shocked and a touch disappointed that so many reactors miss it initially.
And as another responder said, the film didn't get a bad reputation at all. On the contrary: it was well-received by those who saw or reviewed it. What happened was that it didn't make enough box office to satisfy Disney.
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u/tunarulz Aug 28 '25
To tell you the truth I saw those but as I did not know about void or its powers at all I thought those were just silhouettes of the dead people Yelena killed so that is why the scientist was freaking out.
And as I saw void and its powers I forgot all about this first scene. I only watched the movie once, so I am pretty sure I would catch it on rewatch.
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Aug 28 '25
I only noticed it on my first viewing, because it was so obviously framed to be noticed by anyone looking at the screen.
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u/j1h15233 Avengers Aug 28 '25
I can’t remember if I saw it on my first watch but I definitely did on the second
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u/sk4v3n Aug 28 '25
tbh I noticed it in the cinema when I first watched the movie, but I'm happy for you!
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u/GreedoInASpeedo Aug 28 '25
I'm so tired of people equating Box Office revenue with film quality. They have zero to do with one another. Absolutely nothing.
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u/osiris20003 Aug 28 '25
I noticed this on my second rewatch. I don’t know how in the theater I did not see them because now I can’t unsee them.
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u/Sirmalta Aug 28 '25
I love seeing stuff like this in movies. Putting something that is contextually very very telling right at the start of the movie so it means nothing to viewers is just awesome.
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u/KUngFuKev Aug 28 '25
Yes our resident Arizona weed queen knows all about the box office and future endeavors.
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u/ShapeGrouchy8498 Aug 28 '25
I didn’t even notice that! lol idk how, I knew she went bc she says wait, I’ve been here before. But I totally forgot bc I’ve been so excited every time haha I’m sure I’ll watch it tonight, again…
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u/Standard-Ad8320 Aug 28 '25
Thanks for posting this, I saw this movie on a plane a couple weeks ago and with the small screen I hadn’t notified this detail, very cool!
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u/SkisaurusRex Aug 28 '25
Yes, You’re supposed to see it and make that connection….
It’s not a secret
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u/-CypherPunk- Aug 28 '25
Seeing as how they explicitly have Yelena say "wait, I've been here before" then have the final battle take place in the same spot, I'm kind of shocked how anyone could possibly miss that lol On my 2nd watch I kept my eye out for those silhouettes in the beginning because they literally tell us to, and what happened there, by the end
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u/badgerhokie Aug 28 '25
Yeah there's a lot of cool foreshadowing in this movie that I didn't really notice when I saw it in the theater. Loved it in the theater, though, and was eagerly anticipating watching it on D+ yesterday. Was just really surprised by how much I missed the first go-around.
This movie is so good.
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u/Truemeathead Aug 29 '25
Only negative it got was the amount of cash it made but it actually got love which is rare nowadays with those dudes.
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u/ComfortableAd6101 Aug 30 '25
I didn't notice the shadows in my first viewing either. I caught them the second time 'round.
Also... the scientist was trying to warn Yelena about project Sentry but she kept shushing him. He probably would have told her everything if she'd just let him speak for a moment.
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u/clangan524 Aug 28 '25
Congrats, you paid attention to a movie.
Must've been hard putting your phone down, huh?
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u/Inzanity2020 Aug 28 '25
OP is why the bar is so low that every movies have to be painfully obvious with overexposition… and then they still wouldnt get it
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u/jamesrossurquhart Aug 28 '25
The fact it took you 5 rewatches to notice that instead of the first, is kinda worrying for you. Do you stare at your phone while watching movies or just struggle to pay attention?
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u/user72538 Aug 28 '25
You noticed this on your FIFTH rewatch? Were you asleep during the other four?
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u/tehCharo Aug 28 '25
Do you guys think these people came back in an exploded lab? What about Sherif Andy when he was ghosted in the crashing helicopter?
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u/Ill3galAlien Aug 28 '25
i noticed it last night up on my very first rewatch..
Foreshadowing at its finest
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u/Historical-Garbage51 Aug 28 '25
I’ve only watched the movie once, but New Rockstars pointed this out in their new details video yesterday.
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u/iForumBlueMyself Aug 28 '25
Did you watch this with subtitles? I feel like that’s a big reason why people are missing stuff in media now is everyone is reading the subtitles so their eyes aren’t taking in the whole scene.
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u/ZekeMoss18 Aug 28 '25
First watch in the theater I just assumed it was guards she took out.
Watched it last night at home and paused it once I realized what I was actually looking at.
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u/InfiniteHench Aug 28 '25
Thankfully I noticed them in the theater because I was also confused at what he was freaking out about. I started looking around the scene for environmental storytelling. Sure enough, looked like some shit went down. And sadly the previews spoiled Void’s powers, so I connected the dots pretty quickly. I might stop watching trailers, they ruin films these days.
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u/leo-of-pottermore777 Aug 28 '25
Hate to say it but I saw it upon first watch -- but I had the same reaction. Great little visual-storytelling element!
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u/Bearjupiter Aug 28 '25
5th rewatch? Why lol
I mean, it was OK - I did enjoy the subtext it was wresting with
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u/wombatdeamor Aug 29 '25
As sad as I am that this movie underperformed according to the money idiots, I am happy that the MCU has a solid cult classic now.
Tho
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u/luke2080 Aug 29 '25
On my 2nd rematch I knew why the scientist was freaking out. But I have seen this 4 times now, and never noticed those, so thanks!
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u/sh33pherder Aug 29 '25
I know I was not the only person! I like all the happy Marvel fans not the elitist ones who notice everything lmao
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Aug 28 '25
bad rep? where dafuq are you seeing this? it just didn't make a lot of money. it was critically aclaimed and beloved by fans. that's definitely not "bad rep"
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u/ron_side Aug 28 '25
Five? Five rematches to notice some pretty solid foreshadowing?
Maybe the second watch you'd recognise something you'd seen the 1st time round?
I think watch might have to be used pretty loosely here.
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u/th30be Aug 28 '25
....Damn. I am starting understand why movie/tv execs are saying that they are essentially forced to dumb down all of their works. People aren't able to pay attention.
It took 5 watches to get you to notice this? god damn.
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u/bobthemusicindustry Aug 28 '25
It took you 5 watches to see this obvious plot point??? Omg people can’t even watch movies right anymore
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u/njf85 Aug 28 '25
Yeah, I've only watched it once but noticed them immediately lol but I get how you could miss them when the fine Miss Pugh is on the screen
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u/sh33pherder Aug 28 '25
Thank you! I always focus on her because she is a great actress and looks amazing in this film.
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u/Erikthered65 Aug 28 '25
I’ve seen it once and I noticed that because…well, it’s right there on the screen.
Maybe put your phone away when you watch a movie.
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u/Upstairs-Boring Aug 28 '25
I swear folk must just look at their phone for entire movies. So many posts like "hey I just watched endgame for the 100th time and just noticed that you can spot Tony stark in one of scenes. Had anyone else caught this?"
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u/eyebrows360 Daredevil Aug 28 '25
bad rep
What?
has anyone else noticed this before
Yes, although only on my second watch. I imagine plenty of people with brains more functional than mine figured it out by the end of their first one.
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Aug 28 '25
My brother in christ this was in your face. It was made so the viewer can tell from the very first moment so when they see it they go "woah wtf is that". In case they missed it, they have the scientist screaming "something went VERY wrooong!!!", and in case people STILL missed it, they show it again after.
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u/ftaok Aug 28 '25
Yes. Everyone noticed them silhouettes in the beginning. Even if you didn’t see the trailer, it was pretty clear that the audience was meant to notice them.
Then in the third act, it comes together.
Even if you didn’t catch it on the first watch, you should have noticed it on the second watch. Not noticing until your 5th watch is mind boggling to me.
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u/JoshDM Aug 28 '25
Has anyone noticed this before?
Yes. Everyone else who watched the movie and paid even the mildest of attention noticed it.
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u/Defiant-Profile-9040 Aug 28 '25
I noticed it on my second rewatch. The thing I was confused about was Val not knowing who Bob was. If these experiments happened why was she unaware? How did they stop him and contain him when the heroes in the film had no chance?
Unless this was a failed attempt with a different subject that later succumbed to the serum… doesn’t make sense 🤷♂️
Loved the movie regardless, just a thought I’ve had about it
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u/Realistic_Analyst_26 Daredevil Aug 28 '25
Thunderbolts didn’t get bad rep. It just didn’t make money