10) The Gentleman
Remember that man in black who turned up to talk to the bad guys at the end of both The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel? Well, thanks to the cancellation of that franchise we never got to find out who he really was. However, the name he is given in the credits reveal that he is actually a minor character from Spider-Man mythology – Gustav Fiers.
Almost uniquely, the character doesn’t actually derive from the comics. Instead, he comes from a series of novels starring Spider-Man that were written in the 1990s. In those, Gustav Fiers is a mysterious supervillain who calls himself The Gentleman. Due to his blaming Spider-Man for his brother’s death, he brings together several of the webhead’s enemies to form the Sinister Six, which is clearly what the Amazing movies were heading towards, given that Sony had a Sinister Six film in the pipeline.
9) Raza Longknife
In Iron Man, Tony Stark is kidnapped by terrorists – something which precipitates the creation of his very first Iron Man suit. Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed that the terrorists are called the Ten Rings, referring to the ten magical rings worn by the Mandarin in the comics.
Even the most astute fans, though, surely didn’t realize that one of the Ten Rings’ number is based on a separate comics character. The leader of the terrorists in the movie is named Raza and has a side of his face disfigured by Tony during his escape.
Bizarrely, the character is actually based on an alien pirate named Raza Longknife. Perhaps to show that this was a different take on the character, his disfigurement is on the opposite side of the original character’s distinctive cyborg faceplate. Furthermore, the movie Raza’s story is actually similar to a separate villain, Wong Chu.