Welcome to Level 7. We’re still watching Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. No joke, its only getting better and we feel its time to revisit those early episodes and give you the lowdown of how they relate to the bigger Marvel Universe.

In this series, we’ll be looking into Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD subtle references every week as they relate to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. We will be updating this as each episode airs and other instances come to light. Feel free to let us know if we miss any Secrets of SHIELD along the way, we’d love to have the most complete list available by the time the series hits home release.

**Please not these secrets may contain SPOILERS for the episodes. You have been warned.**

Tune in as we come back and release more of SHIELD’s secrets, but for now enjoy Part 1 – Episodes 1-5.

Episode 1 – “Pilot”

1. First of all, we get Agent Maria Hill from the Avengers portrayed by Cobie Smulders, and the magnificent return of Agent Coulson. Theres also a throwaway line to Romanoff, the Black Widow as well.

2. The Chitauri are mentioned again since their attempted invasion in the Avengers, you may remember them as the evil aliens in New York, especially with the Neural Link.

3. Simmons calls the Bus their “journey into Mystery” which is a reference to the comic book series that SHIELD was first introduced in.

4. During the episode, we also hear Skye state “With great power,” which we all know and associate with Spider-Man. Don’t get your hopes up as Sony owns the live-action rights to the hero and his rogue gallery.

5. Project Pegasus is name dropped real quickly too. Pegasus is a secret area where SHIELD keeps their objects they want to study or don’t want to study. Usually in the desert, we’ve yet to see it on screen.

6. Each of Fitz’s drones are named after the 7 dwarves from Snow White, another Disney property.

7. Since SHIELD premiered so closely to the Iron Man 3 Blu-ray/DVD release, they also play up the Centipede soldiers as being powered with Extremis, the serum that gives people super powers in bursts…unless they burst first, and Super Soldier powers from Captain America.

8. Lastly, the car Lola is a working model of Howard Stark’s flying car model from the Captain America movie. I’m happy to see that wasn’t a one off bit for the Stark tech.

Episode 2 – “0-8-4”

1. This episode was relatively light on the references, but still had a few. Most notably, the Bus (airplane, whatever) has a call sign of SHIELD 616. This number is in references to Marvel’s 616 Universe, the mainstream universe we all know about. They number them to convey differences.

2. It’s also worth nothing Coulson mentions his stab through the heart with a Chitauri weapon.

3. Also, the last 0-8-4 SHIELD had was a hammer, alluding to Thor.

4. They mention HYDRA, tesseract, Captain America and gamma radiation all in one go. Things that make Marvel’s universe go round.

5. The Consultant is mentioned in this episode, which we all know to be Tony Stark. There was a Marvel One-Shot called the Consultant, which had Agent Coulson talk about how they got ‘the consultant’ to speak with General Ross in The Incredible Hulk. Glad to know they still treat him as a SHIELD consultant.

6. Lastly, we get Samuel L. Jackson himself in the Bus as Nick Fury himself, giving Coulson a good berating.

Episode 3 – “The Asset”

1. In this episode we’re introduced to Ian Hurt (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) as Franklin Hall who eventually turns into the villain Graviton. If you’re unfamiliar with the character, you can watch the the first few episodes of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes on Netflix to understand the character and his powers.

2. Gravitonium is ‘discovered’ in this episode, the thing that Graviton has power over. It is like introducing Adamantium and Vibranium in the universe as well.

3. Melinda references Coulson dying, which is the big mystery for the show this season. I hope we uncover more of this as we go.

4. Hall mentions the alien invasion that came about because a search for an infinite power source, the tesseract. So much blame in so many places!

5. Coulson has a Captain America card collection, which we’ve been privy to in the Avengers film. We get another reference to that in this episode as well.

Episode 4 – “Eye Spy”

1. This episode is rather dry on references as well but introduces something rather peculiar, the Skrull language. Introduced by Chris Eliopoulos during Marvel’s Secret Invasion in 2009, the letters are visible on the chalkboard during the episode. However, the letters do not make any sense and are pure jibberish. Since the Skrulls are assumed to be Fantastic Four property and we’ve only been introduced to the Chitauri (Ultimate Marvel’s Skrulls), perhaps this will turn up to be Chitauri language in the Marvel cinematic Universe. If you can see anything else on the chalkboard, let us know!

Episode 5 – “Girl in the Flower Dress”

1. Chan Ho Yin is the young man who becomes Scorch in this episode. There are currently other Scorch heroes in the Marvel Universe, however none are the same character as this. This would be the closest version we’ll see to that character on screen, related only in name and nothing else.

2. Raina brings up Steve Rogers, not known for his name but for being Captain America.

3. As usual, Coulson refers to being killed. Perhaps they think we’ve forgotten?

4. The Centipede organization returns this episode, while not existing in the Marvel comics, they do mention mixing the Extremis formula (Iron Man) with Gamma radiation (Hulk) to create super soldiers, like Dr. Irskine did in Captain America. That is some crazy cocktail of super hero powers.

5. Lastly, Coulson uses the same lock exploding device that they first introduced in Iron Man (2008). I’m happy to see SHIELD hasn’t forgotten it’s humble Cinematic Origins.