Am I the only one who believes that some people are complaing just because Marvel has made it clear that they plan to make an Avengers movie?
If Marvel had never announced their plans to make an Avengers movie, then something tells me that people would have accepted SHIELD as part of the Iron Man universe, and thought the easter eggs and after-credits scene were just something special for comic book fans. But, because Marvel
did announce their plans to make an Avengers movie, suddenly
everything little thing becomes an advertisement for it. Anything that relates to the Avengers, no matter how remotely, suddenly becomes
all about the Avengers. People refuse to accept the fact that things can relate to both Iron Man
and the Avengers.
Just look at people's reactions to IM1, when the future of Marvel movies was still uncertain. People loved Nick Fury's appearance at the end, and they didn't mind that SHIELD popped up a few times, and they all paused their DVD's to see if they really could see Cap's shield in the background. But now that an Avengers movie (and Cap and Thor movies) is almost a guarantee, stuff like that sucks, and it takes too much focus off of Iron Man.
EDIT: As a side note, at the end of the first movie SHIELD fabricated Tony's aliby for the fight with Iron Monger, and it appeared as if they were about to fabricate the small plane crash that caused Obadiah's "death." Did people really think they were just going to
disappear after that? Or that they would never interfer in Tony's life again?