10 of Stan Lee's best Marvel cameos of all time

The Fantastic Four film saw Stan Lee work with future Captain America, Chris Evans, for the first time, but also marked the first time he played one of his own characters that he created for the comics. Stan appeared as Willie Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four’s mail carrier, and is seen greeting the superhero quartet as they enter the Baxter Building. The character first appeared in a Marvel comic in 1963, and Stan is the only actor to have played him in a live-action film.

Stan made his first Iron Man cameo as a partygoer attending the same gala as Tony Stark, who the billionaire superhero mistakes for Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Spotting Stan arm-in-arm with several blonde girls while wearing a velour suit, Tony claps him on the back and acknowledges him “Hef” before walking off, leaving the man quite perplexed. Stan was a big fan of Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal, telling ABC news, “Nobody can play the role better than him”.

Credited in the first Thor film as “Stan the Man”, a nickname he earned during the “Silver Age of Comic Books", Stan appears as one of the many people trying to retrieve Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer from the ground after it crash lands on earth. After a chain is tied around the hammer, Stan revs his pickup truck – and tears its bed off – trying to unearth the hammer. “Did it work?” he asks, only to be met with the laughter of onlookers.

In the first Captain America film, Stan appears as a general at a wartime media conference, anticipating a speech from the legendary superhero. After another man appears on-stage instead of him, Stan remarks to the audience member next to him, “I thought he’d be taller”, a playful reference to the character’s pre-super serum physique. While Stan didn’t invent the character, he's believed by many comic fans to have come up with the boomerang power of his shield, which is now a key ability of the superhero.

One of his most beloved cameos by fans, Stan is interviewed in the first Avengers film after the superhero gang saves Manhattan from Loki and his army. As he’s interrupted from playing chess, he tells the camera, “Superheroes in New York? Give me a break” before returning to his game. Stan called his cameo “so funny” in an interview with Collider, sharing that “they’re deciding to make my cameos a little funnier…they’ve gotta play them up”.

Stan called his appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron his favourite cameo, and it’s not hard to see why. He appears as a World War II veteran at the Avengers’ victory party, and persuades Thor to let him try a potent liquor from his home planet of Asgard. While Thor warns him it’s “not for mortal men”, Stan retorts with, “Neither was Omaha Beach, blondie. Stop trying to scare us”. The camera then cuts to a scene of Stan being carried away, muttering his iconic catchphrase, “Excelsior”. 

Stan pops up at the end of Captain America: Civil War as a FedEx postman, delivering Tony Stark a package from Steve Rogers that contains his shield as a peace offering. “Are you Tony…Stank?” he asks, to which Rhodey affirms, “Yes, this is Tony Stank”. Maybe this was intentional, as Stan revealed at the Edmonton Comic Expo that he’d be likely to side with “whatever side Captain America was on, because he’s the best, pure-hearted person in the whole world”.

Another personal favourite cameo of Stan’s, and for the sweetest reason. His last appearance in an X-Men film came with 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, where he appeared as an elderly man watching missiles being launched as part of the Apocalypse’s plan to destroy the world. He appears in the doorway of his home with his wife, looking worriedly at the scenes around him – and his on-screen partner was actually played by his real-life wife, Joan Lee.

Stan appears in the first MCU Spider-Man, though he’d made plenty of cameos alongside the superhero in previous iterations. After Spider-Man mistakenly sticks a man to his own car with his webs, thinking he’s a thief, Stan appears as an annoyed neighbour named Gary after being disturbed by the alarm. “Don’t make me come down there, you punk!” he warns, before getting caught up in a conversation with the neighbour across from him.

The final Marvel film to feature a cameo from Stan, he made a posthumous appearance in Avengers: Endgame as a car driver in the ‘70s, and was digitally de-aged for the part. “Hey man, make love, not war!” he yells out while driving past Camp Lehigh army base in New Jersey, and seen next to him in the car is a digital re-creation of his wife Joan. A bumper sticker also reads “Nuff said”, a catchphrase of his, and later in the film, when Scott Lang is searching for his name on the Wall of the Vanished, some viewers claim the name “Charlotte Lee” is visible under his (albeit blurry) – the name of Stan’s real-life dog.