By Geoff Boucher
Los Angeles Times
Think of Nick Fury as the spy who came in from credits.
During the making of the first “Iron Man,” Samuel L. Jackson was invited to film a quick scene in the role as “a tag,” the name for those short (and often funny or sequel-suggesting) snippets of film that roll after the credits. The Fury tag was especially fun because in Marvel Comics, the modern incarnation of spy-chief Fury was in fact modeled after Jackson — which made the “Iron Man” after-credit scene one of the most memorable ever, right up there with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Napoleon Dynamite.”
The tag also turned out to be one of heck of a job audition for Jackson — signed a nine-movie deal with Marvel Studios to make his fictional espionage czar the unifying crossover character as Marvel moves forward with the plan to interlock all of its superhero films.