Captain Marvel has officially debuted to a successful weekend box office, and like all the other films within the MCU, Captain Marvel contained a cameo from the now late-great Stan Lee. What makes this particular cameo successful, besides the fact is sort of breaks the fourth wall, is that it referenced one of the creator’s first cameos in Kevin Smith‘s 90’s classic Mallrats.
Smith took to Instagram to share his reaction before creating the video above, explaining how the reference came about. Smith reveals that he was told about the reference before he saw it in theaters via a phone call with the head of the MCU Kevin Feige. The cameo was filmed just two months before Lee passed away, so he was a bit weak on set and Feige asked if he had old cuts of Lee’s cameo in Mallrats to dub into the film.
Check out the rest in the visuals above as well as the original Mallrats cameo, then take a look at the first full trailer for Disney’s live-action Aladdin.