Aside from Thanos marching through the plot, Marvel Studios' "Guardians of the Galaxy" felt fairly unconnected from the rest of the company's cinematic universe. But as director James Gunn explains it, that almost wasn't the case.

The "Guardians" helmer -increasingly known for going on the record about behind the scenes moves - spoke at a recent event about Marvel's original plans for an Avengers-related post-credit sequence for his film. "I thought we were going to have an end credits sequence from like 'Avengers,' ok. We never got it. 'Cap 2' stole it from us. But that's fine. We didn't really have any relationship to the Avengers anyway, so it makes sense that we didn't get it," Gunn explained on the Jeff Goldsmith podcast, as reported by ComicBook.com.

The late-in-the-game change made necessity the mother of invention when Gunn and company decided to bring back Steve Gerber's famed Howard the Duck for another screen outing. "We were trying to cut footage together that we already had to create an ending," he said. "And I thought about having Cosmo talk or do something like that. And then Fred Raskin, our editor, said, 'It's kind of like Benicio looks over at this box for a minute. We could probably cut something into that.' And that's when we came up...and I honestly can't remember if it was me or Fred...when we came up with putting Howard the Duck in the box."

The move has led to a resurgence of interest in Howard, who is soon to have a new comic series courtesy of Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones. Whether more film adventures will follow is yet to be seen.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" is on DVD and BluRay now from Marvel.