‘Captain Marvel’ Nearly Included This Reference to Jim Carrey’s ‘The Mask’

It’s no secret that Captain Marvel was chock full of pop culture references, but it looks like one almost took a completely different shape.

Spoilers for Captain Marvel below! Only look if you want to know!

In a recent interview with Empire, Captain Marvel co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck revealed one Easter egg that didn’t make it into the film. As it turns out, the cardboard cutout that Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) blasts after crashing into a Blockbuster was initially supposed to be of Jim Carrey’s The Mask.

“We really wanted it to be The Mask, because of the green head,” Boden revealed. “The idea is that she thinks it’s a Skrull. We initially tried to get that but they wouldn’t clear it.”

In the film, Carol ends up blasting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face off of a True Lies standee, a moment that ended up serving as its own nod to the film’s larger tone.

“James Cameron is of course an action legend,” Fleck added. “I worked in a video story in 1995 and I remember those True Lies standees – it was more nostalgia than anything.”

But even then, it’s hard to deny that a The Mask standee would have worked on a whole other level — and been a pretty amusing nod to the film’s Skrulls.

While Captain Marvel might not have featured a nod to The Mask, it did lean into the ’90s pop culture quite a bit, something that the film’s creative team was excited to do.

“It allows us to play in an area that we have never played in before.” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige explained last year. “And tapping into a ’90s action genre was fun for us, and being able to see an earlier part of the MCU before Nick Fury knew anything about aliens or anything about super-powered people. And also tapping into the Kree-Skrull War, which in the comics was a huge part of the comic mythology, seemed like a fun thing to try and a fun way to give Carol Danvers her own standalone origin story.”

Captain Marvel is in theaters now. It will be followed by Avengers: Endgame on April 26th, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.