The Fantastic Four: First Steps Has Four Of The Most Unexpected Cameos In MCU History, And I Want More Like It!

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the latest entry in the 2025 movie schedule to dominate the box office, and for many, including me, it’s a great soft reset of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the things I most liked about it was that it wasn’t heavy on the MCU-cameos like so many others have been.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t any cameos, however. In fantastic nod to an oft-forgotten bit of Marvel movie lore, all four cast members of the ill-fated, Roger Corman-produced, unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994 turned up in the latest. I’d love to see Marvel do more of this.

First Steps Is Full Of Tributes

The latest MCU movie features several tributes to the history of Marvel, most notably a major, long-overdue tribute to Jack Kirby, the co-creator of The Fantastic Four. Not only is there a quote from Kirby at the end of the film, but the Earth-828, where the movie is set, is in honor of Kirby’s birthday, August 28th, 1917. There is also a scene portraying Kirby and co-creator Stan Lee in the movie.

Those aren’t all, however. One cameo (or cameos) that you might have missed is the four actors who played the First Family of Marvel in the wild adaptation that B-Movie legend Roger Corman produced in 1994. The movie was famously shelved at the time and has yet to see the light of day. Still, First Steps director Matt Shakman found a wonderful way to pay tribute to the movie.

At the beginning of the movie, there is a montage of people thanking The Fantastic Four for everything they have done. In one of those floating bubbles are four unassuming actors who express their gratitude. Those four actors -- Rebecca Staab, Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, and Michael Bailey Smith -- play Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben, respectively, in the infamous adaptation. I say, why stop now? Let’s get some more cameos from actors in long-forgotten Marvel adaptations in a pre-MCU world.

There Is A Rich History Of Pre-MCU Movies And TV Shows To Draw From

The MCU is great about including cheeky cameos. This reached a zenith in 2021 with Spider-Man: No Way Home when Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield returned as their pre-MCU versions of the web-slinger. I think they could go deeper. Much deeper.

The first show in the pre-MCU world that stands out to me, as a Gen Xer, is the 1970s television show, The Amazing Spider-Man. Nicholas Hammond played Spidey in that version. Hammond, who is most famous for playing Friedrich von Trapp in The Sound of Music, is still working, with his most recent film credit coming in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We’ve got a new Spider-Man movie coming next year, let’s see a cameo!

Another fun choice for a random cameo would be David Hasselhoff, who played the role Samuel L. Jackson has made most famous, Nick Fury, in Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a made-for-TV movie that was intended to be a pilot for a show that never happened in 1998. How much fun would that be? Hasselhoff, of course, did make a cameo as himself in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

The list is not endless, but there are so many options. Eric Allan Kramer, who played Thor in a TV movie in the ‘80s, Matt Salinger, who starred in a straight-to-video Captain America movie in the ‘90s, and Peter Hooten, star of the forgotten 1978 TV movie, Doctor Strange, are all excellent candidates.

Let’s pay tribute to those actors who took on these roles in low-budget, almost doomed-from-the-start productions, but helped keep Marvel going in the lean times, in some upcoming Marvel movies. It's the right thing to do and a fun way to do it!