Ever dreamt of being able to phone a superhero? Well, now you can (sort of). New Marvel comic book Thor #7 sees the Norse God engrave Tony Stark’s phone number on Mjolnir, much to Stark’s chagrin. The cool thing is, you can actually call the phone number featured in the comic book (212-970-4133) and if you do, you’ll receive the following voicemail from Iron Man himself:
“Hi, Yes this is Iron Man, however due to some big blonde jerk I no longer use this number, but hey, nice try anyway. For all things Tony Stark please visit www.TonyStarkIronMan.com and uh, try and stay safe out there yeah? I’m busy enough as it is.”
I just tried it out, but unfortunately, I wasn’t greeted by the voice of Robert Downey Jr. Now that would’ve been really cool. Too bad his contract with Marvel ran out before they decided to run this neat Easter egg/marketing trick. Next time they should get an MCU cast member on board. I mean, how sweet would it be to call a number and hear the voice of Samuel L. Jackson emanating back?
Thor‘s comic book prank brings to mind the subject of phone numbers in movies. The history of cinema is littered with on-screen numbers, most of them fake, though I seem to recall the odd clumsy production teams accidentally using real ones. Per Wikipedia, the number for God in Bruce Almighty, though unassigned in Buffalo where the film was set, wasn’t unassigned in other places. In Colorado, it directed callers to a radio station, in North Carolina it led to a church and in Florida the outcome was less amusing, where some poor woman ended up receiving 20 calls a day.
The moral of the story is, stick with fictional numbers filmmakers. Or do what Marvel did and purchase the number outright. As a result, you can now give Iron Man a ring.