What Happened To Michael J. Fox At Marvel & Who Do MCU Fans Want Him To Play?

With Michael J. Fox having announced his retirement from acting in 2020, we'll unfortunately never get to see the beloved "Back to the Future" star appear in a Marvel Cinematic Universe production. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have any ties to Marvel. In 1987, he (kind of) appeared twice in Marvel Comics. The first appearance was in October in "Iron Man" #227, which opens with Tony Stark battling the villainous Beetle at a celebrity charity auction. While he's never explicitly named, one of the attendees, who bears a striking resemblance to Fox, muses how Tony's armor could, "probably take him to the future and back."

Fox's second appearance that year would be decidedly more offbeat. The next month saw the release of "Marvel Tales" #205, which features a Spider-Ham story that sees Peter Porker on assignment photographing the Eggy Awards before battling The Three Muskrateers. Amongst the guests of the animal-themed riff on the Emmys is an anthropomorphic canine actor appropriately named Michael J. Fox. Neither comic portrayal amounts to more than a wink and a nod, but they do confirm the existence of Earth-616 and Earth-8311 variants of the actor.

Outside of tenuous comic appearances, some fans have lobbied for years for Fox to appear in different Marvel roles. There's fan-created art of a young Michael J. Fox as Peter Parker and people on Reddit have argued for the 62-year-old actor to serve as the MCU's Uncle Ben. And though his acting career may be over, Fox's legacy lives on in the MCU.

Even without ever making an MCU appearance, Michael J. Fox's work still bleeds into the franchise. In a 2021 episode of "Hot Ones," Tom Holland said that he was hoping to channel Fox's "Back to the Future" charisma in his portrayal of Spider-Man. "The biggest inspiration for me, and my biggest goal in playing Spider-Man, I really wanted to be this generation's Marty McFly," Holland said. He also compared the mentor-mentee relationship between his Peter Parker and Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark to that of Fox's Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown.

And with the time-travel-centric plot of "Avengers: Endgame," Fox's classic trilogy was bound to get another call-out as the characters try to wrap their heads around temporal displacement. When discussing causality and the potential repercussions of their Time Heist, "BttF" is used as a reference point, with Paul Rudd's Scott Lang ultimately concluding that "'Back to the Future' is a bunch of bullsh*t." There are other "Back to the Future" references in "Endgame," and writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus admitted that they drew inspiration from "BttF" while penning the epic conclusion of the MCU's Infinity Saga. 

Even without ever once appearing onscreen, Michael J. Fox and his work have had an undeniable influence on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.