The new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic, has led to the birth of many conspiracy theories about its real origin.
Some people have claimed that a patent was filed in 2015 for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Or that the virus came from an asteroid, also, some have said that it was genetically engineered in a Wuhan lab. Spoiler alert: none of these suggestions are true.
This conspiracy theory concerning the coronavirus, comes from the film “Captain America”. That’s right, from one of our favorite Marvel movies.
This new theory claims that the first Captain America movie ( Captain America: First Avenger ) predicted the pandemic in 2011 which means that the directors knew that it was going to happen and left clues, all for the fans.
It comes from a screenshot of a real scene from the first Captain America film: in the background, billboards show a Corona beer, while an image relatively blurred on the right vaguely suggests a coronavirus. Og course with the magic of the Internet, the conspiracy has now gone viral.
In case you didn’t know, the Corona beer, had its reputation ruined due to the pandemic simply because it has the same name. Before COVID-19, its reputation exceeded it, this explains its appearance on the left display panel.
William Mullally, a former television critic who has become a real internet detective, decided to take the conspiracy theory a little more seriously, and try to decipher what was actually going on.
This is his approach:
A friend who’s fully into the covid conspiracies sent me this post that says Captain America predicted the coronavirus outbreak in 2011, and while its obviously bs, I started fixating on that circled image on the right. pic.twitter.com/N4XywDTZEx
— William Mullally 🚮 (@whmullally) June 11, 2020
At first, he thought the image on the right display panel was from the cover of Divergent, a series of books for young adults that was popular around 2011 (when the film was released), but after further surveying, that was not the case. He managed to get a clearer picture of what was on the billboard, which seemed strangely familiar, but still was not really identifiable…
I figured out the filming date of the scene—23 April 2011. pic.twitter.com/BdkpgGykiv
— William Mullally 🚮 (@whmullally) June 11, 2020
Then, he found out the date of filming at this precise place, it was April 23, 2011. But despite the date of filming and the search for other films released around this date, nothing looked like the mysterious COVID-19 display panel.
“I started randomly watching YouTube videos and looking for images from April 2011 in Times Square, ” Mullally said on Twitter. “ No clear view of the poster. Wes has started browsing Bing and Google Street View, “he added. And here is what was finally discovered:
We recognized the logo and the color scheme. We cracked the case. pic.twitter.com/VeOKPdxZNE
— William Mullally 🚮 (@whmullally) June 11, 2020
“I started watching random YouTube videos and looking for images from April 2011 in Times Square. No clear view of the poster. Wes started scouring Bing and google street view.” he said on Twitter.
Suddenly, they figured it out!
It’s spaghetti. pic.twitter.com/IqeTZrK5jz
— William Mullally 🚮 (@whmullally) June 11, 2020
Conspiracy theorists had it all planned out until a Nerd came along and shut it down. They were laying it all on the line for a bottle of beer, and an advertisement for spaghetti.
