We recently reported that Kevin Bacon is going to play himself in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It’s not his first time playing a character in a Marvel story. Which is weird. But actors playing more than one Marvel role is more common than you would think.

Why is that? Today, Marvel Studios is one of the most powerful studios in Hollywood, cranking out multiple hit films (and TV shows) each year. But years ago, Marvel was simply a comic book company, and they licensed their characters to various movie studios. Marvel Comics is the home of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, Daredevil, the Punisher and the Hulk, among others. DC Comics, their main rival, is the home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Shazam and Aquaman.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four live in the same comic book universe and frequently team up in the comics. But that couldn’t happen in the films. Spider-Man is a Sony property, and Fox had the film rights to the Fantastic Four. It gets complicated, but when Marvel Studios (which got bought out by Disney) launched, they had the rights to a lot of iconic characters, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, the Black Widow and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

But Fox had the rights to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men (including Wolverine and Deadpool). Spider-Man, among other characters, was under the Sony umbrella (to this day, every Spider-Man appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe requires a deal between Sony and Disney). Further complicating things, prior to Disney+, Marvel’s movie and TV productions didn’t really work together. So, while Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and the Punisher all had shows on Netflix, they didn’t really interact with the characters in the Marvel films (even though they vaguely referenced events of the movies).

Plus, Marvel had some shows that aired on ABC: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter and The Inhumans. Those also reflected storylines from the films. But as with the Netflix properties, nothing that happened on those shows was ever referenced in a movie.

In October of 2019, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige became Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment. He now oversees all of the movie and tv projects. Also in 2019, Disney purchased 20th Centry Fox’s film studio. That’s why we’ve seen Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in the MCU. Cox appeared as Murdock in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and more recently in the Disney+ show She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (as both Murdock and Daredevil!). D’Onofrio appeared in the 2021 Disney+ series Hawkeye. Meanwhile, 2022’s Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness had cameos from characters from the Inhumans (Anson Mount’s Black Bolt), the X-Men (Patrick Stewart’s Professor Charles Xavier) and the Fantastic Four (John Krasinski played Reed Richards, although there’s no indication that he’ll play him in future films).

Here are a few actors who have taken advantage of Marvel’s previously splintered multiverse and got to play more than one Marvel character.

• Kevin Bacon

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  Sebastian Shaw in 2011’s 'X-Men: First Class' and Kevin Bacon in 2022’s 'Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special'
  
  Bacon been name-dropped by the Guardians of the Galaxy before. In 2014’s 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' Chris Pratt's Peter Quill explains why he loves music, and dancing, to Zoe Saldana's Gamora. She counters, “I’m a warrior. And an assassin. I do not dance.” Quill responds, “On my planet, there’s a legend about people like you. It’s called 'Footloose.' And in it, a great hero named Kevin Bacon teaches an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that dancing… well, it’s the greatest thing there is.”
  
  Clearly, Quill talks about that movie a lot. In 2018’s 'Avengers: Infinity War,' Thor explains to the Guardians that he’s a member of the Avengers, who he says consist of “Earth’s mightiest heroes.” Mantis asks, “Like Kevin Bacon?” Quill may have forgotten to mention that Kevin Bacon is an actor who plays roles in fictional things called “movies.” But Bacon had previously played Sebastian Shaw in 2011’s 'X-Men: First Class.' Shaw was an evil mutant and the leader of the Hellfire Club (no relation to the club of the same name in 'Stranger Things').

• Chris Evans

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  Johnny Storm/The Human Torch and Steve Rogers/Captain America
  
  Chris Evans will spend the rest of his life being thought of as Captain America. But before he ever donned the red, white and blue spandex, he wore all-blue when he played Johnny (the Human Torch) Storm in the first two Fantastic Four films in 2005 and 2007. Those films are best forgotten anyway.
  
  In 2011, he took on the mantle of Captain America for the first time in 'Captain America: The First Avenger,' reprising the role in 2012’s 'The Avengers,' 2014’s 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier,' 2015’s 'Avengers: Age Of Ultron,' 2016’s 'Captain America: Civil War,' 2018’s 'Avengers: Infinity War' and finally in 2019’s 'Avengers: Endgame.' Technically, he’s actually played three characters: he played Loki mimicking Steve Rogers in 2013’s 'Thor: Dark World' and in 'Endgame.' Will he ever return to the franchise? Maybe, but he seems to have made a clean break for now. Technically, Rogers is still alive, but Evans declined to voice his character in the 2021 animated series 'What If…?' and has noted that he won’t be in the next Cap movie, because Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is Captain America.

• Michael B. Jordan

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  Johnny Storm/The Human Torch in ‘Fantastic Four’ and Eric Killmonger in ‘Black Panther’
  
  Chris Evans isn’t the only ex-Human Torch. Michael B. Jordan played Johnny Storm in 2015’s (awful) ‘Fantastic Four’ reboot. Three years later, in 2018, he played one of Marvel’s greatest characters when he took on Eric Killmonger in ‘Black Panther.’
• Mahershala Ali

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  - Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in the 'Luke Cage' TV series and Blade in the upcoming film
  
  The two-time Oscar winner first entered the Marvel universe when he played Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in season one of the Netflix show ‘Luke Cage’ in 2016. Stokes, a gangster, was killed by his sister “Black” Mariah Dillard midway through the season.
  
  In 2024, Ali will debut as the vampire Blade in 2024. (Blade was previously played by Wesley Snipes in a trilogy of pre-MCU films from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.) We’ve already heard his voice, as he spoke to Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman in a post-credits scene in 2021’s ‘The Eternals.’ It might be weird if we see a MCU return of Mike Colter’s Luke Cage in the MCU, and the two characters encounter each other. But hey, we’ll take it if it means we can see Colter’s Cage again.

• Alfre Woodard

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  “Black” Mariah Dillard in the ‘Luke Cage’ TV series and Miriam Sharpe in ‘Captain America: Civil War’
  
  Woodard’s case demonstrates how, back in 2016, Marvel’s TV and film production studios just did not communicate. In 2016, she debuted as “Black” Mariah Dillard in the first season of ‘Luke Cage.’ Also that year, she had a brief but important role in ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ as a bereaved mother. In her one scene, she confronts Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark. Her son had been killed during the Avengers' battle in Sokovia in 2015’s ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron.’ She blames Stark and the Avengers for his death. This upsets Stark, and leads him to support the Sokovia Accords, the cause of the rift in the team that split them until ‘Avengers: Infinity War.’ But it was confusing if you were a Marvel fan who watched the shows and the movies.

• Rebecca Romijn

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  Mystique in the X-Men films and ‘Joan’ in 'The Punisher'
  
  One of Romijn’s first big roles was as the shape-shifting mutant Mystique in 2000’s ‘X-Men.’ She reprised the role in 2003’s ‘X2’ and 2006’s ‘X-Men: The Last Stand.’ The X-Men franchise lived at 20th Century Fox films back then. She also was in ‘The Punisher’ (a New Line Cinema property at the time) in 2004. While Mystique was a badass with awesome powers, Joan was a squatter who lived in an abandoned building that the Punisher moved into in that film. If you don’t remember that, don’t worry. It was awful. (The Netflix revamp of ‘The Punisher,’ however, was excellent. We would love to see Jon Berenthal’s Punisher again.) These days, Ramos plays Una Chin-Riley, aka Captain Pike’s “Number One” in the awesome ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ series. The woman must have a lifetime pass to Comic Con at this point.
• Peter Dinklage

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  Dr. Bolivar Trask in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ and Eitri in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
  
  As with Chris Evans/Steve Rogers, for many fans, Dinklage will always be Tyrion Lannister from ‘Game of Thrones.’ But he also has had some cool Marvel roles. In 2014, he played Bolivar Trask in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past.’ Trask was a military scientist and the head of Trask Industries. He created lethal robots called Sentinels, designed to find and destroy mutants.
  
  We won’t quite say that Marvel has typecast him but in ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ he plays a weapon maker, albeit a very different one. Eitri is a giant dwarf who creates the most lethal weapons the universe has ever known. He (reluctantly) created Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet, and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) came to him on his planet, Nidavellir, asking for a new weapon after Mjolnir was destroyed by Hela (Cate Blanchett) in the events of 2017’s ‘Thor: Ragnarok.’ Thor, Groot and Rocket eventually help Eitri to create Thor’s new weapon, Stormbreaker. Apparently, some scenes with Eitri were shot for 2022’s ‘Thor: Love And Thunder,’ but weren’t used. So we might see this character again.

• Michelle Yeoh

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  Aleta Ogord in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ and Ying Nan in ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings’
  
  Yeoh is a really unique case: she’s actually played two roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, proper. In 2017’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,’ she cameoed as Aleta Ogord, a member of a group of space pirates called the Ravagers, who were led by Sylvester Stallone’s Stakar Ogord. The Ravagers once included Michael Rooker’s Yondu. Yeoh’s character only appeared in the post-credits scene. There was talk at the time that director James Gunn wanted to develop a Ravengers series. But now that he’s leaving Marvel to run DC Studios, that seems unlikely. Yeoh’s role in ‘Shang-Chi’ was more significant; she played Ying Nan, a guardian of Ta Lo; she is also Shang-Chi's aunt. Her two characters look nothing alike anyway. And hey, if we learned anything from Yeoh’s already-classic (non-Marvel film) ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once,’ she can definitely inhabit different versions of herself.

• Olivia Munn

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  Chess Roberts in ‘Iron Man 2’/ Psylocke in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse'
  Munn deserves better than the hand she’s been dealt so far: she’s a huge comic book fan and knows more about the characters than people who make comic book movies. But her roles have been pretty slim. She had a brief cameo as an anchorwoman named Chess Roberts in 2010’s ‘Iron Man 2.” In 2016, she actually played a superhero - Betsy Braddock, aka Psylocke – in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse.’ Unfortunately, that was a terrible film. Here’s hoping that Kevin Feige casts her in a better role in the MCU.
• Josh Brolin

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  Thanos in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’/ Cable in ‘Deadpool 2’
  
  Brolin has played two of the biggest antagonists in Marvel-dom in recent years. He made cameos as Thanos in 2014’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and 2015’s ‘Avengers: Age Of Ultron.’ That was just a tease: Thanos, of course, was the big cosmic villain in 2018’s ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and 2019’s ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ Meanwhile, in 2018, he also played Cable in ‘Deadpool 2.’ The always self-aware Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, of course) actually pokes fun at that at one point in the movie, saying, “Zip it, Thanos!”

• Jon Favreau

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  Foggy Nelson in ‘Daredevil’/Happy Hogan in the ‘Iron Man’ films
  
  Always the sidekick, never the superhero. In 2003’s awful Daredevil film, he played Matt Murdock’s best friend Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, and was one of the highlights of the film. He returned to the world of Marvel five years later in 2008 when he played Harold “Happy” Hogan, Tony Stark’s pal and bodyguard in 'Iron Man," the first real MCU movie. He has since reprised that role in 2010’s ‘Iron Man 2,’ 2013’s ‘Iron Man 3,’ 2017’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming,’ 2019’s ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ 2019’s ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ and 2021’s ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home.’ He also directed the first two Iron Man films. These days, he seems happy to play Happy, but his main gig is as showrunner in another Disney universe: he’s the man behind the scenes for 'Star Wars' series' ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett.’

• Patton Oswalt

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  The Koenigs in ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ / Pip the Troll in ‘The Eternals’
  
  Like Olivia Munn, Patton Oswalt is a comic book fan in real life. He had a decent role in ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ playing a character called Eric Koenig. That character got killed, but Oswalt also played his three identical brothers and his grandfather. It’s unclear if the events of that show are part of the main Marvel Cinematic Universe’s canon. But Oswalt voiced Pip the Troll, sidekick of Harry Styles’ Starfox in the post-credits scene in 2021’s ‘The Eternals.’ We think we'll be seeing more of that pair in the future.
• Linda Cardellini

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  Cardellini plays Hawkeye/Clint Barton's wife, Laura. In the final installment of the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' film series, she voices one of Rocket Raccoon's childhood friends from Counter-Earth: an otter named Lylla.

• Special Mention: Jessica Henwick

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  Jessica Henwick could have had a spot on this list. She was offered, and turned down, a role in ‘Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings.’ She could have played Shang-Chi’s sister, Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang ultimately played the character). She turned it down and ended up taking a role in ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ instead. Henwick hopes to revisit the role of Coleen Wing, who she played in the Netflilix series ‘Iron Fist,’ ‘Luke Cage’ and ‘The Defenders.’ "If I did ['Shang-Chi'], I would effectively be putting Colleen to bed," Henwick told The Hollywood Reporter. "It wasn't the main factor, but it definitely came up in conversation." She was more popular than her Iron Fist co-star, Finn Jones’ Danny (Iron Fist) Rand, and fans would surely love to see her again, especially as she acquired the powers of Iron Fist at the end of the show’s second and final season.

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