Every sports reference in Guardians of the Galaxy
“I have lived most of my life surrounded by my enemies. I would be grateful to die surrounded by my friends.”
It’s Marvel Cinematic Universe Week at SB Nation and across our team brands! We’re using the superior superhero franchise to guide our coverage for this week, as we pass the two-month mark without sports.
Here at Fear the Fin, I’m going to take on a very stupid mission: to watch every film in the MCU and document every reference made to sports throughout. I’m playing a little fast and loose with my definition of “sports reference,” but I’m going to try to avoid making the same jokes more than once in this series. You’ll see what I mean.
That’s 23 films, totaling 50 hours, by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 10.
(I’m aware the week starts on Sunday, but the next theme week doesn’t start until Monday and I got a late start on this, okay? I’m cutting myself some slack to make this ridiculous thing a complete project.)
I’ll be watching in a chronological order (some films take place around the same time, so it doesn’t matter too much) that is dubbed the “spoiler” version, as post-credit scenes will contain spoilers for movies further along in the timeline, as opposed to release order.
I’ve set up a storystream to help you keep track of each post as they go up — which won’t be on any kind of set schedule, since I’m gonna be putting some weird hours into this thing in order to pull it off. No worries, though — that’s the whole point of having a centralized location. I’d suggest reading them in order, but hey, I’m not your mom.
Reminder that time stamps are approximate, not exact, and may vary based on streaming services.
This is a space-centric film written by nerds, so don’t get your hopes up.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Director: James Gunn, Written by James Gunn & Nicole Perlman
00:09:11: Star-Lord plays a little alien bowling, gets a strike.
(He uses his foot to roll an orb at them and it causes them to freeze and break into pieces. Basically the same thing.)
00:39:50: Drax says, “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.” Avengers slowpitch softball league, he’s your guy.
00:50:32: We’re in some sort of alien casino with a game that involves small alien lizards eating each other on top of a table that moves and also is on fire.
Can’t say I get how this game works, but I’ve never been much of a gambler, either.
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