Marvel Sent Skrulls Out Into The Real World To Promote Secret Invasion

There's an alien invasion brewing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with this week's premiere of "Secret Invasion," bringing with it all sorts of conspiracy theories and paranoia about who you can trust ... but have you looked around you recently, too? If so, you may have noticed some strange things afoot in your everyday life — and, no, we're not talking about the run-of-the-mill kind of craziness that seems to have come to define the last several years. Notably, movie studios have finally begun to ramp up their efforts with viral marketing that used to be so prevalent, like with the recent campaign focused on placing people with creepy, perpetual Chelsea grins for the horror film "Smile" in various public spaces. Well, Marvel's gone ahead with a sneaky, months-long scheme of their own. And it involves some on-camera appearances from the Skrulls themselves.

The shapeshifting race of extraterrestrials may be the main antagonists of "Secret Invasion," but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun seeing them pop up in the most unexpected places in real life. Marvel's already dipped their toe in some outside-the-box marketing for the new Disney+ miniseries, debuting the first five minutes of the premiere ahead of time after leaving a trail of social media clues for fans to piece together. Now, it appears that they've pulled off an impressively patient stunt going back several months.

As is usually the case, a popular Reddit post beat us all to the punch (via Dexerto). One user collected a number of different videos from news channels broadcasting fairly typical fluff pieces in front of public spaces. But hidden not-so-subtly in the background, viewers will notice some distinctly green-faced folks in Skrull makeup walking around without a care in the world. Now that's next-level stuff.