Kevin Smith Reveals There Really is a Marvel Secret Police

It's almost a cliché at this point for an actor in a Marvel project to warn about "the Marvel snipers" when asked about what they're working on the MCU, but the threat of getting in trouble for divulging things that Marvel Studios doesn't want out there is very real (as Owen Wilson will tell you). Speaking on the latest FatMan Beyond LIVE, Filmmaker and professional fan Kevin Smith opened up about something he recently learned about, revealing that Marvel Studios does in fact have a "Secret Police," seemingly meaning secret in that they don't talk about them but also in that they are a "police" specifically who guard their secrets.

"I don't think this threatens anything they do or what not, but I thought it was an interesting factoid, coming from inside the world through many sources I can't even tell you but pretty legit," Smith said. "There is a Marvel secret police who, when things are being discovered, not only sweat down the departments, so when leaks happen, not only do the Marvel secret police sweat the departments to find where the leaks sprang from, they also deal in subterfuge. We know this in as much as you'll go to auditions and read lines that have nothing to do with what you're auditioning for. They're well practiced at the art of like 'look over here,' they like to keep their secrets over there."

He continued with an example of their subterfuge, adding: "So they leave leftover call sheets where they draw allusions to characters that are well known that don't exist. So they lay little traps in the call sheets to see if it gets passed on and then try to find the leaks thusly. This is some Watergate level sh-t man. The amount of thought that goes into like 'We gotta keep these secrets,' meanwhile we're living in a world where the most open secret on the planet is there's 96 Spider-Men in the next Spider-Man movie, and everyone's like 'Don't tell the secret,' but we all know it. How fascinating man, the Marvel secret police.

Smith went on to reveal a bit of trickery that he himself employed during his own filmmaking career, noting that with each new draft of his scripts that would go to talent, executives, agenst, etc, a safe word of sort would be put in that would stand out.

"The trick that we always used to do is change one word per draft that went out. So that way if you wound up with a copy online and that word, almost like a safe word like 'Pineapple,' somewhere in the script where it really doesn't appear in any other script," Smith sadded. "Then you could really track down where the leak sprang from or something like that. Never really had to use it or anything but overly cautious, but let's be honest, nobody gives a fuck about my shit as much as Marvel. Even I would be tempted to be like 'I'm gonna find sh-t out, is this a leftover call sheet?'"

We would too, Kevin.