Marvel Sent Skrulls Out Into The Real World To Promote Secret Invasion

There's an alien invasion brewing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with this week's premiere of "Secret Invasion," bringing with it all sorts of conspiracy theories and paranoia about who you can trust ... but have you looked around you recently, too? If so, you may have noticed some strange things afoot in your everyday life — and, no, we're not talking about the run-of-the-mill kind of craziness that seems to have come to define the last several years. Notably, movie studios have finally begun to ramp up their efforts with viral marketing that used to be so prevalent, like with the recent campaign focused on placing people with creepy, perpetual Chelsea grins for the horror film "Smile" in various public spaces. Well, Marvel's gone ahead with a sneaky, months-long scheme of their own. And it involves some on-camera appearances from the Skrulls themselves.

The shapeshifting race of extraterrestrials may be the main antagonists of "Secret Invasion," but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun seeing them pop up in the most unexpected places in real life. Marvel's already dipped their toe in some outside-the-box marketing for the new Disney+ miniseries, debuting the first five minutes of the premiere ahead of time after leaving a trail of social media clues for fans to piece together. Now, it appears that they've pulled off an impressively patient stunt going back several months.

As is usually the case, a popular Reddit post beat us all to the punch (via Dexerto). One user collected a number of different videos from news channels broadcasting fairly typical fluff pieces in front of public spaces. But hidden not-so-subtly in the background, viewers will notice some distinctly green-faced folks in Skrull makeup walking around without a care in the world. Now that's next-level stuff.

Well, we've known that the U.S. government has acknowledged the existence of UFOs for some time now, and they may even have physical evidence of such, but let's not hit the panic button just yet and sound the alarms of a real-life Skrull invasion. It should be noted that these news videos all aired on various broadcasting offshoots of ABC, which is owned by Disney (which owns Marvel), making for a pretty nifty cross-promotional marketing campaign for the eagle-eyed viewers out there (who hopefully were at least passingly familiar with the Marvel aliens). But that's not the only example of Marvel flexing their marketing muscle with "Secret Invasion," it appears.

The studio has also been casually hyping up the release of "Secret Invasion" alongside other Marvel movies, as well ... and, somehow, nobody even realized it. Just take a look at this post on Marvel's official Twitter account from the "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" premiere a little while back. Just another standard photo op hyping up what was the latest Marvel project on the horizon at the time, right? Well, look again.

#GotGVol3 pic.twitter.com/HFT9ITV75S

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) April 28, 2023

See that distinctly green spot all the way to the left? Yep, that's (presumably) some Marvel employee done up in full Skrull makeup, dutifully standing off to the side and minding their own business. And, incredibly enough, it doesn't seem like anyone in the replies even noticed it! But it has been noticed this week. You've got to love the commitment to the bit. Hopefully, these are nothing more than they seem and definitely not a sign that we're under imminent threat of invasion or anything. Now that would be silly, am I right?

"Secret Invasion" is currently streaming on Disney+.