James Gunn is a busy man. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is now out on Disney Plus, he’s gearing up for what sounds like a transformative management of the DC universe over at Warner Bros, and is also deep in post-production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Not a bad slate of work considering that just a few years ago he was unceremoniously fired by Disney for some old tweets.
The Holiday Special was a particularly fun ride and packed with fun details, references, and Easter Eggs. Kevin Bacon is now an integral part of the MCU saga, we got an unexpected nod to obscure 80s cartoon GoBots, and he even dropped a direct reference to Batman.
We’re hoping Vol. 3 isn’t drowning in references as first and foremost we want to see its characters’ stories resolved satisfyingly, but chances are good Gunn is going to slip some truly bizarre references into the movie. Here are seven bizarre (but theoretically possible) crossovers we demand to see on May 5, 2023, when the much-awaited sequel hits the theaters:
Transformers
Thanks to the Holiday Special, it’s now MCU canon that a GoBot killed Drax’s uncle. For those not born in the 1970s, the GoBots were Tonka Toys’ rival to Hasbro’s Transformers. The GoBots had their own cartoon Challenge of the GoBots and a toy line but failed to knock Optimus Prime off his lofty perch. In the early 1990s, Hasbro acquired Tonka and the GoBots rights, and they’ve since made cameo appearances in Transformers.
So, if the GoBots can be in the MCU, why not Transformers? Marvel has a long publication history of Transformers comics and while the movie rights are with Paramount, Disney has a long-standing partnership with Hasbro to produce toys. All of this means that if James Gunn wanted to tuck Megatron into the background he might be in with a solid chance.
Alien
Posts its acquisition of the 20th Century Fox, Disney owns the rights to the Alien and Predator franchises. So far we’ve seen the excellent Prey on Disney Plus and there are some signs that the Alien franchise is going to return soon. Guardians of the Galaxy takes place in deep space in uncharted worlds, so seeing one of the Engineers’ ships or perhaps a familiar Alien egg in a shot wouldn’t be out of the question.
Marvel has even already had their own mini-crossover with Alien, courtesy of a collection of comics covers showing all their top heroes squaring off against the Xenomorph. We haven’t had an actual comics arc about this crossover, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time.
ROM the Space Knight
This obscure late-70s character is the exact kind of reference James Gunn would love to make. In 1979, Parker Brothers had a cool robot toy — ROM the Space Knight — they wanted to promote, so they licensed the character to Marvel for what would become a well-regarded 75-issue run of comics about his intergalactic adventures. However, Marvel eventually lost the rights, and ROM is now owned by Hasbro.
ROM is also linked to the Transformer franchise, but his deep connections to Marvel mythology are clearly catnip to Gunn. We’ve seen that companies are now more willing to loan characters to one another and he’d be a perfect fit for a Guardians of the Galaxy adventure. Gunn has even publically said he wants it to happen, posting on Twitter in 2021 that if they could solve this legal snafu “ol’ toaster head would probably be in the Guardians by now.”
Scooby-Doo
Gunn cut his teeth in Hollywood by writing 2002’s Scooby-Doo and its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed and has since reflected very fondly on his time in the Mystery Machine on Twitter. Gunn is now on his way to Warner Bros, who coincidentally also hold the Scooby-Doo license.
Now, we’ll admit that it’d be a stretch to get Shaggy and Scooby into an outer-space MCU adventure, but as far as Easter Eggs go seeing a distant shot of the Mystery Machine in the background of a scene would be a great way for Gunn to acknowledge how far he’s come since the early 2000s.
Arrested Development
Many of you will probably be wondering how on Earth you’d weave this classic 2000s sitcom into the MCU. Well, you don’t have to because it’s already happened. In Avengers: Infinity War, the Guardians of the Galaxy take a trip to Knowhere as they try to grab the Reality Stone. Trapped in one of the Collector’s containers is a blue figure that many quickly identified as Arrested Development‘s Tobias Fünke.
So, if we’ve already established that Tobias has somehow made his way to space in the MCU, why not have some other Arrested Development characters hanging out on Knowhere? Fans have been calling for Michael Cera to join the MCU for years, so having him prop up a bar on Knowhere in a cameo role would be a very fun addition.
Star Wars
This would be a biggie for Gunn and is probably extremely unlikely. Disney, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm have all resisted any attempts to cross the streams of these two monster franchises. However, it should be noted that the Guardians of the Galaxy video game managed to make a Kenner Chewbacca toy a key plot element, so it’s not impossible.
We very much doubt whether Gunn would be able to make any Star Wars events or characters canon, not least because everything famously happened “a long, long time ago.” However, if there’s a sequence with a lot of spaceships on screen we’d get a kick out of seeing an X-Wing in the background. Let’s just avoid anything as cheesy as Peter Quill igniting a lightsaber though.
DC Comics
Ah yes, the forbidden fruit. DC and Marvel are two flavors that probably shouldn’t be mixed as each presents a subtly different take on superheroes. That’s not to say this hasn’t happened in the past: Spider-Man has teamed up with Superman and Batman once fought the Hulk. Then, in the 1990s, the DC/Marvel ‘Amalgam’ project combined their heroes into one with Wolverine and Batman becoming ‘Dark Claw’, which was followed by 2003’s JLA/Avengers.
Gunn has already teased DC in Marvel by namedropping Batman in The Holiday Special and casting The Suicide Squad‘s Flula Borg (aka Javelin) as a bartender. Gunn will soon depart Marvel Studios to steer the DCU’s new direction, so what better way to go out with a bang than to tease his next huge project?