'Avengers: Endgame': Here's How 'Back To The Future' Co-Creator Bob Gale Responded To Those References

It's fair to say that Bob Gale may be one of the people on Earth who has most shaped the way human beings think about time travel.

Sure, you could put people like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking up there, but Gale is the co-writer/producer of the Back to the Future trilogy, and it's a safe bet that more people have seen those movies than have cracked open a book by either of those two scientists. As you undoubtedly know by now, Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame deals extensively with time travel and even makes a specific reference to Back to the Future along the way. So how did Gale react to that when he first saw it? Read on for his comments.

"So you're saying Back to the Future is bullshit?" Paul Rudd's Scott Lang incredulously asks at one point during Endgame. Though the structure of this Marvel sequel borrows a plot device from Back to the Future Part II, this film also posits an entirely different functionality of time travel, and one might assume that the co-creator of that franchise could potentially bristle at having his creation impugned in one of the biggest movies in human history. But in a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Gale revealed that he had the exact opposite reaction when he saw that Avengers Endgame Back to the Future reference in the Marvel Cinematic Universe:

"I was delighted to learn from Endgame that all of the Marvel superheroes are fans of Back to the Future. I knew our movie had been seen in almost every part of our world, but I had no idea we'd been playing in other parts of the multi-verse too. Now I need to find out if we're owed some money from those multi-verse theatrical runs, and if not, why my contract didn't cover those territories!"

Of course, the movie references within Avengers: Endgame open up a host of much larger questions. As /Film veteran Angie Han wrote over at Mashable, does Endgame's shout-outs to The Big Lebowski and Hot Tub Time Machine mean that actors Jeff Bridges and Sebastian Stan exist in the MCU? If so, does anyone notice that they look exactly like Obadiah Stane and Bucky Barnes? Or were the versions of Lebowski and Hot Tub that exist within the MCU cast with different actors? If so, who? See, this is the downside to making pop culture jokes in a franchise populated by so many successful actors.