If there's one thing that sets Mark Ruffalo apart from Bruce Banner, it is his propensity
for spoilers.
Dude means well, but in his enthusiasm for the MCU, he tends to give the game away.
And we're not talking about a one or two-time thing it's a bona fide pattern.
Let's start with the undisputable king of this list: the time Mark Ruffalo spoiled the
shocking ending of Avengers: Infinity War.
We're not talking about something so minor as, "Oh, Red Skull comes back," or even, "Hey
guys, Thor crafts a new hammer in an awesome space forge run by Game of Thrones' Peter
Dinklage."
No, Ruffalo did not spoil by halves.
He gave away the astonishing fact of Thanos' slaughter of half of all life in the universe.
He let loose, in fact, the spoiler equivalent of the infamous snap itself.
It happened during a Good Morning America interview alongside Don Cheadle.
At first, he merely approached the spoiler, teasing, when asked if Thor and the Hulk save
Asgard in Thor: Ragnarok, that…
"let me just say this..."
" … like every other Marvel movie, it doesn't end well for the superheroes."
He could have stopped there and still done damage.
But instead, he followed it up with an absolute firecracker of a sentence:
"Wait until you see the next one.
Ha — everybody dies!"
"Dude!
Dude… dude…."
Ruffalo went on to ask for a rewind, but the internet never forgets.
Every other moment on this list happened within the context of an interview, and came from
Ruffalo's own lips.
It's the easiest way to spoil something, after all you talk to someone, you're excited to
promote your work, the whole world is waiting to see what happens next.
Sometimes you say more than you should.
The stakes are higher when you play one of the most iconic characters of an already legendary
film franchise, of course, but the general principle remains.
From war to friendships, loose talk is so dangerous because it's so easy.
That's what makes this spoiler so remarkable it wasn't a slip of the tongue, but a slip
of technology.
"Look at how beautiful Cate is."
"How big are they gonna cheer for you, Mark?"
"The camera — the camera loves you."
"Oh, yeah it does… haha."
In October 2017, Ruffalo turned on Instagram's livestream function during the Thor: Ragnarok
premiere to include fans in the real-time excitement.
What a cool way to appreciate those fans so committed to the franchise that they tune
in for premieres, right?
Unfortunately, he then put his phone in his pocket and forgot to close the app, ultimately
streaming the audio of a good portion of the movie's early scenes.
Happily, Ragnarok's spectacular visuals still enticed anyone who might have caught the broadcast
to come see the real thing, but it remains one heck of a blunder.
Let's be real, though haven't we all left an app or two running before?
This is one spoiler that's hard not to forgive.
The entire world held its breath as Avengers: Endgame approached.
Billboards heralded its arrival in every major city.
Everyone has a friend or two who spent the previous month revisiting the decade-spanning
slate of Marvel movies.
Fans congregated online to discuss the odds of Thanos' defeat, the return of beloved characters,
and whether or not Cap would finally call the Avengers to assemble.
As it racked up millions by the second during its stay in theaters, one thing was made very
clear: every single thing that happens in Endgame matters to someone.
There is no such thing as a small spoiler within the context of this kind of culture-defining
phenomenon.
So Ruffalo revealing the endpoint of a long-developed relationship at the core of the series is
kind of a big deal.
On April 8th, Ruffalo jokingly referred to the fact that he shot multiple different endings
to avoid being able to spoil any one aspect of the film during an interview with E! News.
But he didn't stop there.
He proceeded to point to Chris Evans and say …
"He gets married in this!"
As we all know now though Ruffalo apparently did not at the time that is, in fact, Cap's
ultimate fate and the final scene of the film.
Evans put it best in his response to this bombshell:
"You, like, leak like a bodily function."
Compared to those weapons-grade spoilers, this one is rather tame.
Or rather, it would be if the MCU weren't the most emotionally loaded, financially huge,
and imagination-consuming game in town.
Luckily, this little moment of indiscretion ended up obscured by time and the split nature
of the final two Thanos-centric movies.
In October 2017, Ruffalo mentioned filming scenes with Rocket Raccoon in an interview
with USA Today.
He said:
"It's a very funny relationship that the two of them have.
First of all, it's the biggest superhero and the smallest.
Just keeping them in a frame together is a feat and hilarious in itself."
True.
But after Infinity War dawned and no scenes between the Hulk and Rocket took place, this
detail became a spoiler.
Suddenly, we knew that Hulk and Rocket were going to team up in an effort to take Thanos
down, and moreover, that Banner would be able to access the dormant giant within himself
anew after struggling to do so during Infinity War.
A retroactive spoiler, but a spoiler regardless.
OK, so this next one isn't really a spoiler it's just silly dudes doing silly things.
Ruffalo's let the flerken out of the bag so many times now that one can only guess at
the seriousness of the tongue-lashings he's probably gotten at Marvel's hands.
One moment, however, just might have been coordinated by the studio itself as a way
to poke fun at Ruffalo's affinity for spoilage.
Ruffalo appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in October 2018, where he and
Fallon riffed on his well-established nature as a blabbermouth.
"I've been sort of put under surveillance by Marvel."
"Marvel, yeah, they don't want you talking about anything."
Both hyped the segment up as containing a major spoiler on Twitter, and after it aired,
directors Joe and Anthony Russo jokingly told Ruffalo he was fired.
So what was the big reveal?
Well… it wasn't really a reveal at all, actually.
Ruffalo seemed to utter the title, but The Tonight Show bleeped it out, to the chagrin
of fans everywhere.
"The title of the next Avengers movie is: BLEEEEEEEP."
Online sleuths set to decoding the audio and trying to lip-read, but the results were inconclusive
until Marvel formally announced it to be Avengers: Endgame.
So was it a real slip of the tongue?
Nah this one seemed a bit too self-aware.
But now that Ruffalo knows how firmly MCU's superfans hang onto his every word, maybe
he'll chill out with the spoilers from here on out… but probably not.
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