Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Five Reasons That Big Spoiler Is Almost Certainly Bull

Yesterday, Marvel Studios raised some red flags around the Internet with a TV spot for their upcoming film Captain America: The Winter Soldier that seemingly spoiled a major plot point. NOTE: This article will talk about that plot point at length, in detail and exclusively. If you don't want to be spoiled, we're not sure why you clicked on this headline in the first place, but you should probably back away slowly before you do something you'll regret. That plot point, though, is almost certainly rubbish, and there are any number of reasons why. Just for the sake of argument, we'll discount the idea that he's signed for and/or been confirmed for Avengers: Age of Ultron and whatever its sequel is. Why? Well, because the studio could just as easily fib to keep people guessing about his death, or for some other reason we won't understand until we see The Winter Soldier. Now that we've got the spoiler space out of the way, here's the thing: Yesterday's TV spot, which you can see embedded below, featured Captain America relating that Nick Fury's "last words" were not to trust anybody. The idea that the identity of the person under that mysterious sheet from the second trailer could be Fury is one that's been floating around for a while, but it's been largely dismissed as unlikely they would actually kill the character. Nothing has changed, in my opinion, with the release of the latest trailer. Why? Read on...

Nick Fury in the comics has faked his own death more than a couple of times. He's employed trickery, life model decoys and other means to evade dangerous and powerful foes, and sometimes remained underground and "dead" for quite a while before resurfacing. It's almost a super power--and what do we know about having super powers? When you make a movie that revolves around a character with one, it's borderline irresponsible not to show them using it. Fury's last words "Fury's last words were not to trust anyone," Captain America says. About a spy and counterintelligence agent who has--even in the Marvel Cinematic Universe--proven some control over the flow of life and death (hi, Phil! How's your TV show going?). Fury's last words (redux) "Fury's last words were not to trust anyone," Captain America says in yesterday's TV spot. "You told me not to trust anyone," Captain America tells Fury in the Super Bowl trailer released earlier this month. That seems an interesting thing to do--to repeat as your last words something that you've not only already said, but that you know the listener has already internalized. Granted, it's far from impossible--but it seems more likely to us that Fury is having this conversation with Captain America after the event that's implied to have killed him, especially because...

A face only mother could love ...take a look at the way Fury looks in the Super Bowl trailer. That's pretty busted up for a guy who doesn't go out in the field a ton. And if somebody made an attempt on the life of Nick Fury, what do you think the odds are they would get another shot before they were found, forced underground or Fury went underground himself?

Plainclothes Combine that with the fact that Fury isn't wearing his trademark jacket, and Captain America isn't wearing his uniform, when the pair are having this conversation. You know when else we see Cap in plainclothes during the Super Bowl trailer? When he's in the room with Fury's most trusted aide (Maria Hill) and Captain America's most trusted ally (Black Widow), standing over what seems to be a body covered in a sheet. Even Hill is in plainclothes in that scene, which tells us that it's probably not at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. And if your attempted murderer is working for someone within S.H.I.E.L.D. (which seems the most likely scenario since Robert Redford has already identified his character as both the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the villain), what better way to fake your death than to get the heck out of their facility? One more point, just in case he's dead... Bonus Round: Coulson! Let's touch on this for a minute: Fury has already proven, as we noted above, that he has within his resources as S.H.I.E.L.D. the ability to bring someone back from the well-and-truly dead. That was a sophisticated process, and one that required a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. resources, so one might think that it would be virtually impossible to swing while your arch-nemesis is running the organization... ...but does Fury really strike you as a guy who doesn't keep a few connections on the side?