Marvel reportedly trademarks 'Hail Hydra' after site redirects to Trump's bio on the White House website

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May 22, 2017 10:23 PM

During his visit to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Trump placed his hands on a glowing orb — setting off a new round of "Hail Hydra" jokes about the White House.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Saudi King Salman, U.S. First Lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump, visit a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After news broke that hail-hydra.com redirected to the White House website, Marvel Comics apparently made moves to trademark the famous phrase.

On May 11, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the domain hail-hydra.com redirected to President Donald Trump's biography on the official White House website.

Marvel applied to make "Hail Hydra" a registered trademark, Comicbook.com reported May 21. The trademark rights would extend to everything from electronic comic books to graphic novels and websites.

It's unclear whether the company chose to trademark the phrase because of the redirect. Marvel representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The phrase, which has been present in Marvel comics for decades, entered the popular vernacular as an internet meme after "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" came out in 2014.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the hail-hydra.com domain was registered to an account in Queensland, Australia back in 2014.

Buzzfeed News tracked down the owner of the domain who, upon condition of anonymity, said he redirected it to Trump's bio on Inauguration Day.

"Trump in particular seems to have a cult of personality about him where he thinks now that he is president everyone should be loyal to him first, and not the Constitution or laws of the land," the domain owner said, adding that he didn't plan to take down the redirect, and no White House representatives had contacted him to do so.

During his visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend, Trump placed his hands on a glowing orb with the Saudi king and Egyptian president — and thus set off a new round of 'Hail Hydra' jokes about the White House:

As of May 22, hail-hydra.com still redirects to Trump's profile on the White House page.

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