When some rumours hit the internet, we advise folks to not only take them with a pinch of salt, but to bury their heads in a bucket of it. This is one of those times.

Thanks to some snooping around in the source code of Capcom's Japanese website by one of PS3Gen's members, it appears that the publisher carelessly left the list of characters buried deep inside. All 38 of them.

While we can't sit here and honestly say it's a legitimate list and that they were indeed hidden in the source code - presumably removed now - we do know that certain publishers have been very careless with this sort of thing in the past.

Do we think they're legit? Well, judging by the fact that there are a few really random picks in there - which Capcom usually likes to do for these titles - and some of them match the silhouette guesses that were flying around the net ever since its announcement, then we're inclined to think, "Sure, why not? They could be."

Plus, we saw Viewtiful Joe in there and our eyes lit up! No Gambit though. Insert sad face. I guess we'll find out in the coming months if this is the leaked line-up is indeed genuine. For now, take a gander at all 38 characters (with franchises in brackets for the Capcom characters) and squirm with excitement just in case:

Marvel

• Captain America
• Deadpool
• Dr Doom
• Elektra
• Emma Frost
• Hulk
• Iron Man
• Juggernaut
• Magneto
• Mr Fantastic
• She Hulk
• Shuma-Gorath
• Spider-Man
• Super Skrull
• Taskmaster
• Thor
• War Machine
• Wolverine
• X-23

Capcom

• Akuma (Street Fighter)
  
• Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)
• Amaterasu (Okami)
  
• Arthur (Ghosts 'n Goblins)
  
• Chun-li (Street Fighter)
• Chuck (Dead Rising)
  
• Chris (Resident Evil)
• Dante (Devil May Cry)
  
• Felicia (Darkstalkers)
  
• Hsien-Ko (Darkstalkers)
  
• Mike Haggar (Final Fight)
  
• Morrigan (Darkstalkers)
  
• Ryu (Street Fighter)
• Spencer (Bionic Commando)
• Trish (Devil May Cry)
  
• Tron Bonne (Mega Man Legends)
• Viewtiful Joe (Viewtiful Joe)
  
• Zero (Mega Man)

[Via G4TV]

[Update:] As pointed out by someone in the comments on the sister site, it was said that there would be none of the Fantastic Four in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I couldn't find that exact quote from a reliable source, but I did find the following quote on Joystiq by Producer, Ryota Niitsuma, which is neither here nor there, but could easily be taken as a definitive, when that doesn't appear to be the case.

"When we were making this game, we thought about putting someone in from the Fantastic Four, but the problem was: which member do you include? We kind of wanted to include all of them," said Niitsuma, with Joystiq commenting that "not all of the powers filled out a complete moveset, so instead Marvel suggested using Super Skrull as four heroes in one (villain)." Again, not completely ruling out Mr Fantastic as mentioned above.