Between alien invasions, massive terrorist sleeper cells within the government, and ancient religions being proven true, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is built on Earth-shattering revelations. The people in these films don't merely live in a world exactly like ours where five people have superpowers; they live in a world where Christians and Muslims can wait in line to get Thor's autograph.
Yet, despite its films and TV shows now encompassing a total runtime of over five days, the MCU has still avoided dealing with some of the inevitable life-changing implications of its stories. Like how ...
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Hydra Has Obliterated Our Entire Understanding Of U.S. History
Marvel Studios
We are already terrible at questioning our own history. Most of us either accept what we were taught at face value, or go the opposite direction and assume it's secret lizard people all the way down. History is messy, incomplete, and open to interpretation ... yet our entire cultural identity depends on us having some kind of shared agreement about what it looked like. Now imagine a world in which we find out that a secret organization called Hydra has, in fact, been manipulating everything for decades.
Marvel Studios
"The financial crash? Us. Crack epidemic? Us. Star Wars prequels? You better believe it."
There are seriously Hydra agents everywhere in the Marvel Universe. What happens to American history when it's proven that an offshoot of Nazi Germany has been embedded in every major governmental organization for the last 80 years? Suddenly, no conspiracy theory is too stupid to discredit, no institution above reproach, no living American's faith in the system left even remotely intact.
Was Nixon a highly trained Hydra agent? There are ways it could make sense. Is Donald Trump a trainee Hydra agent, bumbling through a plan he found in Red Skull's notes? It's the only thing that makes sense. And speaking of Trump, he and every other idiot would accuse their enemies of being Hydra members after any disagreement. ("A lot of smart people are saying this -- tremendous people. You see how she whispers in Obama's ear? You see that?") It'd be like the Red Scare, only if had turned out Joe McCarthy was badly underestimating the conspiracy and/or was totally in on it.
Marvel Studios
The Red Scare / Red Skull thing is so on the no-- uh, you know what we mean.
Did Hydra have anything to do with the Manhattan Project? Vietnam? The assassinations of JFK and MLK? Every significant American moment would now be suspect. Any history book that didn't blame everything on Hydra would probably only indicate that it was printed by a publisher controlled by Hydra.
Marvel Studios