OMG that makes things interesting.
I wonder if even Marvel have a firm handle on the timeline.
It's a little messy, yeah, I think it's because at first they were trying to work out how to do the MCU as they went along?
Like how the Incredible Hulk and IM2 take place at the same time? It's actually more confusing when you look at when they came out in the cinema, because Incredible Hulk came right after Iron Man in 2008 and it's got that Tony Stark cameo, so it makes you think that it's set right afterwards... but we learn in Iron Man 2, that the two films took place at the same time in 2010 and Tony's IH cameo actually takes place after the end of IM2.
Cap 2 screwed up the timeline even more since Zola is meant to have been the one to create the Winter Soldier, after Bucky was recovered after his supposed death. Yet the mission where Bucky "died" was the same one that they captured Zola in, so when did Zola manage to create the Winter Soldier for the Soviets? Especially since he ends Cap 1 in US custody and is supposed to have spent the rest of his life working for SHIELD in exchange for amnesty for his war crimes as a member of HYDRA?
That's one Gordian Knot of a continuity snarl that is impossible to cut without the use of a time machine to sort it out?
