Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

Talking about an extra in a movie wouldn't normally be interesting, especially when the character doesn't even have a name but when the character's description is "New Yorker 616" that raises an eyebrow.

https://www.spotlight.com/9735-8949-2118

The MCU is Earth-199999, it's actually the comics universe that is Earth-616.

 

Maybe there's a comic book sequence as Dr. Strange travels through the multiverse?

 

There's no such thing as "actually" here; it's all just fiction. The comics company assigned the MCU that designation in a book, but the makers of the movies are under no obligation to follow that. Both Thor: The Dark World and Spider-Man: Far from Home had Easter eggs referring to the MCU as Earth-616. Into the Spider-Verse designated Peter B. Parker's world (which was more like the Raimi movies than the comics) as "E-616." And I'm pretty sure at least one animated TV adaptation has referred to its own world as 616 despite the "official" Marvel scheme. It's the same way that every distinct DC adaptation with a multiverse refers to its home universe as Earth-One, including the Arrowverse (pre-Crisis) and Smallville (which the Arrowverse calls Earth-167 instead).

It's not like these multiverses have any objective existence, after all. They're just story devices, and when different adaptations refer to them, it's just an allusion. Since Earth-1 or Earth-616 is the "home" universe in the comics, so it's the "home" universe in various adaptations as well. The consistency is more conceptual than literal.

 

Yeah, and if they want to continue using universe numbers onscreen Earth-616 is a lot easier to say that Earth-199999.

 

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking when they designated the MCU Earth-199999. They should have given it a much easier number, like maybe Earth-2008 since it started with Iron Man in 2008.

I can also rather easily imagine the movies eventually confirming that the MCU is, in fact, Earth-616 since that number's iconic at this point, and the comics division then retconning what used to be E-616 was actually a different universe all along.

 

The comics don't have to retcon anything. Pretending that these different interpretations of an imaginary set of characters and ideas represent a shared multiverse is easy enough to do, but it's not actually real. Each version is still a separate construct, and if one of them uses the multiverse idea, it's using it in its own way for its own purposes, and that take doesn't have to agree with a different interpretation, even if they pretend to share a multiverse.

For instance, the comics tie-in to the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths includes a scene where the Arrowverse "Earth-One" characters briefly visit the events of the original comics CoIE, even though those comics' definition of "Earth-One" was completely different. They were under no obligation to reconcile the two, because it was just one story making a literary allusion to another story, using it to serve its own narrative needs and conceits, rather than an actual objective reality.

Of course, at least one Arrowverse production asserted that every Earth considers itself Earth-One, which is a handy enough way of reconciling the inconsistencies. (Although the Crisis on Earth-X crossover implied the opposite, that "Earth-One" was universally recognized as the designation for the Arrowverse home dimension -- but then, it also claimed there were only 53 Earths, which later Arrowverse productions ignored.) The same principle could apply in the Marvel multiverse, with different multiversal observers using different catalog schemes in which various different Earths happen to be Earth-616.

 

I don't think anyone actually thinks any of this is real, so you can stop pointing that out. Thanks.

 

No, not actually real, but still, people keep talking as if they expect fiction to work like reality, with a single consistent "truth" that every different storyteller is required to follow. The MCU isn't "actually" Earth-1999...etc, it's just arbitrarily called that by a book. It doesn't have force of law.

 

Where did the whole earth 199999 thing come from any way? I always thought that it was a fan designation that gained a life of its own.

 

Is there any canonical reference for that? I find that the 616 designation seems to be used as referring to the primary universe in the product being watched-- Into the Multiverse, the MCU, the main comics universe....

EDIT: OOPs didn't read the rest of the thread to see that there are multiple posts about this.

 

Apparently the universe numbering comes from the 2008 edition of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The MCU was brand-new then, which might be why they numbered it so far down the list.

 

So if MCU is earth #199999 does that mean Old Man Steve's redo earth is #200000?

 

Why not?

 

Is there a specific system they use for the Earth numbers, or do they just randomly throw numbers together? Oh, and to be clear I'm talking about in the real world, when they're actually putting the guide books or encyclopedias or wherever they introduce the numbers together.

 

On Earth 1999 Captain America is Prince Rogers Nelson

 

What number Universe are we living in?

 

42.

 

8675309
It's Jenny's Universe, we just live in it.

 

Plot twist: every Marvel universe thinks it's 616.

 

Earth-1218. And yes, we also got destroyed during Secret Wars