Which MCU film was the first to include a post-credits scene?

Iron Man was the first MCU film to include a post-credits scene. Released in 2008, the scene shows Nick Fury visiting Tony Stark and telling him that Stark has become part of a larger universe before mentioning the Avengers Initiative.

The moment was brief, but it changed how audiences understood Marvel Studios' plans. Iron Man had worked as a self-contained origin story, yet Fury's appearance revealed that Tony Stark belonged to a much wider superhero world. That promise led directly toward The Avengers, released in 2012, and helped establish the interconnected storytelling that became the MCU's defining feature.

A technical wrinkle causes occasional confusion: the Nick Fury sequence is often described as a mid-credits scene because it appears before all the credits have finished. In everyday quiz and fan usage, however, “post-credits scene” commonly includes these end-credit tags, and Iron Man is universally recognized as the MCU's first such scene. Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk came later and therefore cannot be the first.

The scene also helped popularize the practice of staying through the credits for future-story clues, a tradition that became central to Marvel films.