Nick Fury Cast Samuel L Jackson As Himself 6 Years Before The MCU

After 11 movies and 12 years, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Samuel L. Jackson playing the role of Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (sorry, David Hasselhoff). And it turns out Nick Fury couldn’t have imagined anyone else playing the role either, considering the comic book counterpart singled out the actor as his best stand-in a full six years before the MCU even launched.

The story behind this prediction is convoluted to say the least. In Marvel’s traditional Earth-616 Universe, Fury had always been depicted as a white man with a full head of graying hair, decidedly not the bald African-American Fury most fans know today. But when writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch basically rebooted the Marvel universe with the Ultimates series in 2002, the pair shook things up quite a bit. This version of Fury would be modeled after Sam Jackson – Millar’s favorite actor – though they didn’t exactly ask for his permission first.

The Ultimates saw a modern spin on the characters that readers had grown to love over the decades, and in issue #4, the team had some downtime. During a very meta pizza party, they discussed who would play themselves onscreen after Brad Pitt started talks to play Captain America. When Hank Pym asked who Fury would want filling his shoes, the answer was obvious: “Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, of course.” Millar apparently thought his nod to the actor would go unnoticed. “I had no idea when we used his likeness he even knew who the Avengers were,” Millar told THR in a profile on Jackson.

But it turned out Jackson wasn’t only a big fan of the medium, he actually had his own pull list at his local comic shop. When he saw a strangely familiar-looking Nick Fury amongst his latest haul, Jackson’s people got in touch with Marvel to ensure he play the character in any future movies. Thus, cinematic history was made, as years later, Jackson would take up the role as the eye-patched Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man – a full six years after The Ultimates unofficially drafted the actor to the team.

“Sam is famously the coolest man alive and both myself and artist Bryan Hitch just liberally used him without asking any kind of permission,” Millar said of the character’s re-invention. “You have to remember this was 2001 when we were putting this together. The idea that this might become a movie seemed preposterous as Marvel was just climbing out of bankruptcy at the time.” Luckily, the actor took it in stride. While working on Kingsman – another Millar adaptation – Jackson said he thanked the scribe for the nine-picture deal with Marvel the reboot earned him. And if all this intermingling between the Marvel Comics universe and real world Hollywood wasn’t already enough, this same issue also kicked off the bizarrely fun, decades-long rivalry between Hulk and actor Freddie Prinze Jr.

As silly as the entire situation is, the re-imagining of Nick Fury/the casting of Sam Jackson has had momentous and far-reaching implications. Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury (the human one) has become the thread tying the MCU together for over a decade now. And with mainstays like Iron Man, Black Widow and Captain America ostensibly gone from the universe (excluding prequels), Nick Fury stands as one of the billion-dollar franchise’s last remaining OG characters. The actor has become one of the most instantly recognizable character throughout the entire MCU, and if it wasn’t for Millar’s thinking it would be a fun gag to remodel the character based on the iconic actor, Endgame may have instead ended up including The Hoff.

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