What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 5
By Mike McNulty
The fifth episode of What If…? departs from the norm as the zombies invade…but leave behind plenty of juicy MCU references to feast upon.
Well, that certainly was a departure from the normal Marvel Cinematic Universe, even for a show called What If…? What we got in the Disney+ animated series’ fifth outing can be summed up as “What if your favorite superheroes would up in the same world as The Walking Dead?” In other words, this episode, simply titled “What If… Zombies?!”, was equal parts scary and fun… and surprisingly gory at times.
Of course, we’re here to look at all the potential Easter Eggs and Marvel related callbacks wandering amidst the through the hordes of shambling undead. We’re also taking a look as to how this particular episode of What If…? could’ve matched up with what we know from our previous knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and try to make sense out of it. Well… as much sense as one can from a world overrun by zombies. Which leads me to our first topic:
What are the Marvel Zombies?
As you might have already guessed, the fifth episode of What If…? took direct inspiration from an actual Marvel comic book, Marvel Zombies. What you may not know is that Marvel Zombies started off as a bait-and-switch by Marvel, promoting the “first ever” crossover between the mainstream Marvel Universe (a.k.a. Marvel 616) and their most popular imprint, Ultimate Marvel.
First appearing in 2005 Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23 and written by Mark Millar, the Ultimate Marvel version of Reed Richards received a distress signal from what was assumed to be the Marvel 616 version of Reed Richards. This turned out to be ruse, as the signal actually came from an alternate universe in which Earth is overrun by a zombie plague. With living humans all but extinct, and with no “fresh meat” left, the zombies sent out a phony distress signal designed to lure unsuspecting humans to their world.
As the zombie apocalypse genre was also experiencing a resurgence in popularity around this same time, Marvel decided to capitalize on the trend by greenlighting the first of several spin-off miniseries entitled Marvel Zombies. And the person Marvel hired to write the first series was the same guy responsible for kicking off the zombie Renaissance in the first place, Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead.
Yet while the zombies in Walking Dead are of the more traditional variety, the zombies of Marvel Zombies, while still having a hunger for human flesh, still retain their powers, abilities, intellect, and even personalities. They could also speak in constructive sentences instead of groans, moans, and hisses. Some of these aspects of the Marvel Zombies are present in “What If… Zombies?!” except for their original personalities and ability to speak. Likewise, the origin for the outbreak is different in What If…?. In the comics, patient zero is an infected version of a Superman-expy known as the Sentry, and it’s unknown where he contracted the plague from.
There’s even a couple of references to certain plot developments from the Marvel Zombies comics, particularly Scott Lang’s (Paul Rudd) head being kept alive in a jar. In the comics, it was Janet Van Dyne’s head which was (somewhat) preserved in this fashion. Also, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) has one of his legs amputated in the Marvel Zombies comic as well, and also done so as the zombies could have “food.”
And speaking of said outbreak…