The Time Mental Floss Appeared in the MCU

Mental Floss was founded in a Duke University dorm in 2001 by Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur, who were freshmen when they came up with the concept for the magazine. They published the first nationally distributed print issue in their senior year. 

Fast forward to 2017, and the magazine was featured in the highest-grossing film franchise of all time—the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Mental Floss’s MCU Appearance

The magazine’s superhero moment comes in the 13th and final episode of season one of The Punisher, a Daredevil spinoff series produced by Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Bohemian Risk Productions. 

The Punisher picks up where the second season of Daredevil left off. The show follows Frank Castle, a former Marine who discovers a massive conspiracy while exacting revenge on the people who killed his wife and child. 

The magazine appears in the hands of Sarah Lieberman (Jaime Ray Newman), the wife of David “Micro” Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Barchrach) who spends most of the season believing her husband is dead.

The moment comes in the season finale, when the Lieberman family is reunited at last and are waiting in a safehouse to flee to safety. The actual issue she’s holding is from September 2012, and features food critic Alton Brown on the cover. Not a bad time to read some celebratory trivia! 

Mental Floss in Film and TV

This was far from the first time that Mental Floss has appeared onscreen. Just two years after the magazine’s official launch, it received a major boost when it appeared in the hands of Friends character Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) in the episode “The One With the Soap Opera Party” during a scene in Central Perk. Cox’s husband, David Arquette, later name-dropped the magazine in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “I got the magazine from a friend. I thought it was so interesting, I passed it on to Courteney,” he said. She brought it to set, and the rest was history. 

Over the years, the magazine has made numerous other TV and film appearances, appearing in episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Magicians, The OA, 30 Rock, Bored to Death, and Nip/Tuck, among others. Some fans from The OA have even linked Mental Floss magazine to evidence that certain scenes are occurring in different dimensions.

The magazine is also featured in a dramatic scene in The Affair, appearing near Dominic West’s character after he collapses following a stabbing. It also has a prominent, albeit brief, feature in the movie My Sister’s Keeper. Additionally, it was also supposed to be featured in the movie Bad Santa, but that key scene wound up being deleted from the film. 

Mental Floss’s print magazine was discontinued in 2016, but the company lives on digitally and still sells books, merch, and calendars.

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