MCU Timeline: The Incredible Hulk
This timeline is based on dates from the movie, its deleted scenes, calculations and logic, and not on Fury's Big Week (see the reason here). I must admit that compared to the other movies I've covered, this one gave me a bit of a headache.
~1946 - Thaddeus E. Ross is born.
December 18, 1969 - Robert Bruce Banner is born.
~1970 - Emil Blonsky is born.
~1973 - Ross returns from Vietnam at the age of 27.
March 5, 2004, 2:30 pm - experiment by Dr. Banner and Dr. Betty Ross turns Bruce into the Hulk. He kills two scientists, a military officer, and injures General Ross and his daughter.
In the newspaper we can see part of the date "06". The most logical option would be "2006", but this contradicts other dates, plus Marvel often blurs or skips years in their newspapers. The next option is - day. We can't see the month, but there is another paper connected to it that says "March 07". So I assume the original incident happened on March 5 (the day before this newspaper was published).
~March 6 or 7, 2004 at 2:50 pm - Bruce visits Betty in the hospital. General Ross confronts him. Bruce runs away. Ross begins his hunting campaign.
April 18, 2004 - Banner is spotted by a surveillance camera.
This is a US surveillance camera (date format), meaning it happened while Bruce was hiding inside the country (thus shortly after the original incident).
2004-2006 - Banner spotted in Idaho. Hulk kills a state trooper.
Here I would guess that the suicide attempt in Alaska from the deleted alternate opening scene took place in the winter of 2004-2005 or 2005-2006. And it wasn't the suicide attempt Banner was talking about in The Avengers, because he didn't put a bullet in his mouth in the deleted scene. Instead, he aimed at the ice so it would break and drag him out to the sea, I guess. So officially he's attempted suicide at least twice, and the bullet-in-mouth was before that ice-cold-one (it doesn't make sense to put so much effort into attempting suicide if you haven't tried all the easier options. And I'm sure he tried them).
February 7, 2006 - Banner attempted contact with Betty Ross.
May 27-28, 2006 - Bruce/Hulk spotted in Canada. Hulk (possibly) kills two Canadian hunters.
September 4, 2006 - Hulk out with house demolition. Probably still in Canada.
Not sure why "Notification: MOSSAD": this doesn’t look like Israel at all. But perhaps after this incident Bruce flew from Canada to Israel, and then from there went to Europe.
October 21, 2006 - "last seen fleeing".
This "No Sightings For 5 Months" contradicts October 21, 2006, because there were events a month before and after that date. And that's okay, because it doesn't actually mean that that line has to have any connection to that specific date. It just means that Ross lost him for 5 months during his hunt, and it's just part of a larger report, most of which we don't see.
November-December 2006 (snow) - Hulk smashes trucks in Europe (European license plate).
January 22, 2007 - Hulk out in Samara, Russia.
2007-2008 - Bruce in a Tibetan monastery.
March 2009 - Bruce is hired to work at the Antonio Carlos soda bottling plant in Rio (Rocinha favela), Brazil.
So his path most likely looked like this: US (Virginia > Idaho) > crossed US/Canada border > Alaska > back to Canada > Israel > Central Europe > Russia > China (Tibet) > Japan > South America (Paraguay > Brazil).
5 years after initial incident (2004-2009):
~August 2, 2009, 158 days after the last incident:
Banner cuts his finger at the plant and a bottle of soda containing his blood is shipped to the US.
Here on the sticker we see "19 APR". At this quality I can't really see what that date means, but I'm guessing it's a bottling or shipping date. So in the movie it must be April 19th, right? But if we use that date, other dates won't work (especially the last scenes in Canada). Instead, I'll use secondary evidence like the weather and college students later in the movie (doesn't look like summer, does it?) to determine an approximate date, and ignore "19 APR".
Note: This weather forecast matches August 2009 in Rio, but not April.
He tries the mysterious flower on his blood cells, but it's just another failed attempt to cure himself of the Hulk. He sends a sample of his blood to Dr. Samuel Sterns.
~30 days later - Stan Lee in Wisconsin drinks the bottle with Banner's blood.
Shortly after, ~September 2, 8:10 pm - General Ross learns of this and sends his men to search for Banner.
~September 3 (190 days without incident):
Ross has assembled a special forces team to capture Bruce, led by Emil Blonsky. They are sent to Brazil immediately.
Same day in Brazil - Sterns informs Bruce that he has succeeded in reducing the gamma radiation levels in Banner's blood sample.
~September 4, early morning - Ross' team tries to catch Bruce. He hulks out and escapes.
Morning - Bruce returns to himself in Guatemala, thousands of miles from Rio.
Why ~4 days later and not 1: Hulk's running speed in the MCU is about 100 km/h. The distance between Rio and Guatemala that he had to run is ~7 thousand km. I doubt he ran at the same speed the whole distance, so that gives us at least 3-4 days.
(Probably) same day, evening - Bruce in Chiapas, Mexico.
10:40 am - Bruce arrives at Culver University but can't get inside.
Note: there are too many students for summer, and some are wearing sweaters and jackets. All this tells us that it is most likely September.
Night - he visits his old friend Stan.
Bruce gains access to the university database, but finds that all of his data has disappeared.
Bruce and Betty meet. She hides him at her house (or rather at her boyfriend's house, according to deleted scenes) and gives him the data she saved.
Betty mentions that it's Friday, and in this movie the days of the week match our universe, unlike Iron Man 1 where they don't. I'll make another post explaining why there's such a difference between the movies, rather than just calling it a mistake.
Blonsky gets an injection of super soldier serum.
~September 26 - General Ross attacks Bruce at Culver University. Bruce hulks out, badly injures Blonsky, saves Betty and runs away with her. They spend the night in a cave.
Note that some trees in the scene are already changing colors to yellow and red, which usually starts in mid-September.
~September 27 - Hulk in. Betty takes Bruce to a motel. Blonsky is healed of all his injuries.
Bruce sends the data to Sterns. He and Betty drive to NYC. Blonsky gets a second injection.
Here we can see "06.12.08", but: 1) it contradicts other dates; 2) the time +0004 does not match the time Bruce sent the message (it was daytime, not 00:04); 3) there is another message with "06.00.08". I conclude that this is not even a date, or not a date we can trust.
Night - Sterns uses his antidote on Banner, which temporarily suppresses the Hulk.
General Ross tranquilizes Bruce and takes him into custody. Blonsky forces Sterns to inject him with Banner's blood, and Blonsky becomes the Abomination. He hits Sterns, and a drop of Banner's blood falls into Sterns' head wound.
The Abomination attacks Harlem. Bruce hulks out and fights him. He defeats Blonsky and runs away.
~October 29 (31 days later) - Bruce in Bella Coola, BC, Canada. He learns to control the Hulk and hulks out on purpose in his cabin.
This is not earlier than October. Closer to November. Not summer at all. The warm clothes people are wearing in the last scenes also confirm this.
Note: the "more than a year without an incident" from The Avengers doesn't really tell us anything about the year of this movie, because Bruce could have had an incident at any time after that. Or a whole bunch of incidents.
Note: comic book The Incredible Hulk: The Big Picture is not compatible with the movie, despite being released in the same box in 2008. Why we can say this: 1) the date of the first incident in the book is April 16, 2005. The movie contains evidence of Ross's hunt from April 2004. 2) The scenes of Bruce and Ross's first confrontation are different. In the movie, it takes place in the hospital; in the book, it takes place in the destroyed lab, where shirtless Banner stayed for three days. 3) In the book Blonsky had already encountered Hulk before the chase in Rio. He didn't see him, but he interrogated a boy who did. In the movie, Blonsky had never heard of the Hulk before.
MCU Timeline: The Infinity Saga
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