There's a 'Star Wars' Easter egg in a lot of Marvel movies

Ian Phillips

Apr 24, 2015, 22:22 IST

Marvel and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars" franchise are both owned by Disney. Now, they share even more than just a common owner.

Have you caught the "Star Wars" Easter egg that pops up in a lot of Marvel movies?

In almost every single "Star Wars" movie, somebody loses an arm or a hand.

Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) famously loses his hand to Darth Vader, in an iconic scene from "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back."

LucasFilm via YouTube

If you've been watching the latest Phase Two Marvel movies closely, you'll notice a character has been losing an arm - or hand - in each film, too.

Phase Two refers to the second of the three phases of Marvel's Cinematic Universe. Phase Two kicked off in 2013 with "Iron Man 3" and it will end with this summer's "Ant-Man."

President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige, a self-proclaimed "Star Wars" fan, confirmed the gag is a homage to a galaxy far, far away during the recent press tour for "Avengers: Age of Ultron." But it didn't start that way.

"So I'm obsessed with 'Star Wars' - and it didn't start out as intentional, but it became intentional," Feige told Cinemablend. "It sort of happens in every 'Star Wars' movie, but I was sort of looking at it, 'Okay, is Phase Two our 'Empire Strikes Back'?' Not really, but tonally things are a little different. Somebody gets their arm cut off in every Phase Two movie. Every single one."

With two more films to go in Phase Two - "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Ant-Man" - Feige gave away a bit of a spoiler. Since we've seen "Age of Ultron," we can confirm it definitely happens in that film.

Here are all the severed arms as they appear in the Marvel Universe so far:

"Iron Man 3" (2013)

Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) loses his arm during his final battle with Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.).

LucasFilm via YouTube