Captain America: Brave New World Leak Reveals Major Marvel Cameo Was Cut

Captain America: Brave New World plays like a sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. The second-ever MCU movie introduced United States Army General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt), his daughter Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), and Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), the cellular biologist mutated into the big-brained Leader after he was exposed to the gamma-irradiated blood of Bruce Banner (Edward Norton). Two recasts, 17 years, and 33 movies later, former Secretary of State Ross (Harrison Ford) ascends to the presidency, Betty is estranged from her Hulk-hunting father, and Sterns masterminds the Manchurian Candidate-style conspiracy that culminates in Ross’ transformation into the Red Hulk on the world stage.

But there’s another Hulk-related character who didn’t make the finished cut, according to a plot synopsis that leaked online months ago. An audience member who attended a test screening accurately summarized the film’s plot in a since-deleted Reddit post from last October, including a secret cameo by — spoiler alert — Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). It’s accurate except for a scene that doesn’t appear in the just-released film.

According to the leak, Captain America (Anthony Mackie), Falcon (Danny Ramirez), and Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) visited Stark Industries to track down Sterns following an encounter with the mind-controlling mastermind at Camp Echo One. The trio sought the aid of Amadeus Cho, a Stark tech engineer, and the deleted scene name-dropped Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) widow, Stark Industries CEO Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

RELATED: Did Captain America: Brave New World Change Red Hulk’s Fate in Reshoots?

Besides The Incredible Hulk (Ross and the Leader) and Eternals (the Celestial Tiamut), this means Brave New World had ties to another MCU movie: 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, which featured Helen Cho (Claudia Kim), whose Regeneration Cradle was used to build a body for the Vision (Paul Bettany).

In the comics, Amadeus Cho is Helen’s son: a 16-year-old super-genius and the “seventh smartest person on the planet” who befriends the Hulk. He made his debut in the pages of 2005’s Amazing Fantasy (Vol. 2) #15 from Incredible Hulk comic writer Greg Pak and artist Takeshi Miyazawa.

Cho later discovered that the Illuminati — Tony Stark/Iron Man, Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange, and Black Bolt of the Inhumans — exiled Hulk from Earth, kicking off the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines that saw Hulk, as the World Breaker, return from the savage planet Sakaar to wage war on the puny humans who launched him into space.

Having spent time as the brainy sidekick to the Hulk and the Greek demigod Hercules, Cho blended brains and brawn as the Totally Awesome Hulk when he absorbed gamma radiation from Bruce Banner during Marvel’s All-New, All Different era.

Cho has since served as CEO of the Olympian gods’ Olympus Group, a member of the Champions, and Jimmy Woo’s Agents of Atlas as the Hulk-like Brawn. A version of Cho appears in Marvel’s animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, where he’s an intern at Oscorp alongside Peter Parker.

Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World — starring Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Xosha Roquemore, Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, Tim Blake Nelson, and Harrison Ford — is now playing in theaters.