Avengers Infinity War / Tropes A to D

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to M | Tropes N to R | Tropes S to Z | YMMV | Trivia

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Avengers: Infinity War provides examples of the following tropes:

Spoilers for Infinity War, and all preceding Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

#–A

• 11th-Hour Ranger:
  • Nebula rendezvous with the Guardians and Tony's team on Titan, joining in the assault on Thanos.
  • Thor, Rocket and Groot join the war in Wakanda after finishing Thor's new weapon, Stormbreaker.
  • The Stinger sets up Carol Danvers as one, with Fury sending her a Distress Signal seconds before disintegrating.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Corvus Glaive wields one. Whatever that thing is made of, it's sharp enough to cut through the Vision's vibranium body like tissue paper.
• Achilles' Heel: A mild example; for all the power of the Infinity Gauntlet, it does have one notable limitation: the wielder has to be able to move their hand/fingers to use its powers effectively. A few heroes at different points manage to inconvenience Thanos by obstructing the mobility of his hand in various ways.
• Achilles in His Tent: Subverted. After getting his arse kicked by Thanos in the opening scene, Hulk refuses to come out of Banner, even during the climactic final battle when Banner is practically begging for his help. Writers Markus and McFeeley specifically said in the commentary that this was Hulk trying to assert agency in when and how often Banner brings him out, as opposed to the view that many viewers held as Hulk being scared to come out for fear of getting beaten down again.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Several throughout, such as Vision and Wanda in Scotland trying to decide how their relationship is going to go, and the end, after Thanos assembles the Gauntlet and enacts his Badass Fingersnap, leading to the deaths of several heroes by disintegration and half of the universe along with them.
• Act of True Love: Whether justified or not, Loki and Gamora sacrifice everything, including "greater good" (the Infinity Stones) and ultimately, their own lives, for familial love for their siblings.
• Actor Allusion:
  • The "decoy date" for Pepper Potts and Tony Stark's marriage, August 27^th, is the date of Robert Downey Jr.'s marriage to Susan Levin.
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy all chide Star-Lord for being fat. Chris Pratt, prior to getting ripped to play Peter Quill, had come to fame playing the chubby and schlubby Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation and had gained even more weight (reaching close to 300 pounds) for a role in Delivery Man.
  • Star-Lord also brags that he's good at making plans.
  • This time around, the Collector is the one who gets asked "Where is the stone?" Thanos even uses a similar sing-song voice.
  • Samuel L. Jackson is known for dropping his signature F-Bombs in his most famous scenes. In the stinger, Nick Fury's last word is none other than "Motherfu—". Amusingly, this isn't the first movie where this has happened.
  • Thor mentions having learned Groot's real language as a second language - Chris Hemsworth also learned an unlikely second language, Bahasa Indonesia (thanks to Indonesia being the closest country with a different first language to his native Australia).
• Actually a Doombot: Gamora seems to kill Thanos on Knowhere, only for Thanos to reveal it's just a very convincing illusion he generated with the power of the Reality Stone.
• Adaptational Badass: Stormbreaker, which in the comics is simply a duplicate of Mjölnir, is considered to be "the ultimate weapon" ever forged by the dwarves. All of its abilities are those of Mjölnir amplified, plus the ability to summon the Bifrost. It even manages to overcome a blast from a fully powered Infinity Gauntlet and mortally wound Thanos.
• Adaptational Protagonist: In The Infinity Gauntlet, the Avengers are basically there to help up the death toll and make for an exciting battle with the all-but-godlike Thanos. In particular, Iron Man has his head unceremoniously pulled off and Captain America is the last man standing before Thanos shatters his shield and snaps his neck. Instead, Adam Warlock is the one who plans and finally carries out a plan to bring Thanos down. When the story was adapted into the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the Avengers take center stage, with Iron Man being the one to put Thanos down once and for all; at this point in the MCU, Adam Warlock had yet to exist aside from a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and would not surface until the aftermath in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
• Adaptational Wimp: Zig-zagged with the Infinity Gauntlet itself compared to its original comic counterpart. In the comics, the Gauntlet is just an average glove designed to be able to embed the Infinity Gems. In this version, the gauntlet is a custom-made glove designed to handle the power of the Infinity Stones, which here cannot be handled by mere mortals. On the other hand, there also is a limit to the amount of power it can handle, as Thanos has a slightly harder time (but still dishes out one Curb-Stomp Battle after another) in fights that in the comics would have been effortless with even only one stone. The gauntlet also requires mechanical operation, i.e. closing one's fist or snapping one's fingers, to invoke the user's thoughts, so anything that hinders the wearer's hand motions stops it from working. It also gets damaged (though it remains functional) when used for universal level wishes, whereas the original gauntlet could grant any desire of the user as quickly as possible with no ill effects at all. The movie version is badly damaged as a result of erasing half the universe's population and severely burns Thanos, whereas this is one of the lower-end applications of the gauntlet in the comic and neither it nor Thanos are ever any worse for wear there.
  • The big difference is that in the movie the Infinity Gauntlet is a tool of near-infinite power, while in the comics simply wearing it made the wearer themselves literally omnipotent. Consequently, Thanos while wearing the completed Gauntlet suffers from this trope in a big way, as he remains just a mortal (albeit an incredibly strong one) with a godlike weapon, rather than the Physical God he became in the comics.
• Adaptation Distillation: The movie not only borrows elements from The Infinity Gauntlet (but not The Infinity War, in spite of what the title would imply), but also Thanos Quest (the story that details how Thanos got the Infinity Stones in the first place) and Infinity (the story that introduces the Black Order — called the Children of Thanos in the movie — and sees Thanos's forces invade Wakanda).
• Adaptation Expansion: Characters who are not present for the original comic event who play major roles in the MCU ^note including Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Black Panther, the Dora Milaje, Falcon, War Machine, Winter Soldier/White Wolf, and Maria Hill appear.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • The Black Order have been renamed "The Children of Thanos" and Black Dwarf has been renamed "Cull Obsidian". Cull Obsidian was another name for the Black Order in the comics.
  • The Infinity Gems of the comics are Infinity Stones in MCU. Their colors have also been rearranged from the (pre-2017) comics colors. Though the Infinity Gems have always had variable colors in the comic universe, with one issue of Silver Surfer even featuring Thanos rearranging the colors for shiggles as the issue goes on.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In the comic, the Infinity Gauntlet is merely a regular gauntlet of Thanos's and doesn't have any sort of origin, because the idea that the Infinity Gems can't be handled by mere mortals isn't present. Here, it's established that even Thanos can't wield all six Infinity Stones without a container to channel their power, so he had the gauntlet created in the same place where Mjölnir came from, and where Stormbreaker would later be forged, with the origins of these weapons thus being linked.
• Adaptation Title Change: Downplayed. It's an adaptation of The Infinity Gauntlet but named after the comic's sequel (which the movie has nothing to do with).
• Adapted Out: Like with the MCU's adaptation of Civil War, characters who are present in The Thanos Quest, The Infinity Gauntlet, and Infinity that have not been previously introduced in the MCU do not appear here. Of special note are the following characters:
  • Mistress Death — who serves as Thanos's motivation in the original event — was written out altogether, with Thanos having different motivations (to solve an Overpopulation Crisis) based on a Silver Surfer story featuring the villain. Meanwhile, Adam Warlock, who serves as the Big Good of the original event, will not be making his full debut in the MCU until Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. These choices appear to be for writing purposes rather than legal challenges, seeing as Death does appear on a mural in Guardians of the Galaxy and Adam Warlock is technically introduced in one of The Stingers to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
  • Characters related to the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer and X-Men franchises, and all the sub-franchises related to those sets of characters, do not appear due to 20th Century Fox owning their film rights until the film entered post production.
  • Cloak from Cloak and Dagger is involved in the initial Infinity Gauntlet story, and although the Cloak & Dagger series is currently in production and is involved in the MCU, he does not appear here.
  • Although the Black Order make their MCU debut in this film, Supergiant was omitted from the roster in order keep things from getting too crowded. Her powers were instead given to Ebony Maw.
  • With the exception of the Collector, the cosmic beings that Thanos steals the Infinity Gems from during Thanos Quest (the In-Betweener, the Champion of the Universe, the Gardener, the Runner, and the Grandmaster) do not appear in the film, due to the Stones belonging to other parties in this continuity. However, Red Skull does assume the same role as the In-Betweener: that of the guardian of the Soul Stone on Vormir. This is his punishment enacted by the Tesseract for misusing its power back in the '40s.
• Advertised Extra:
  • The Hulk, despite appearing on the poster, only appears for the opening fight scene and is never shown past the opening title (if you don't count Banner's unsuccessful attempts at Hulking Out).
  • Due to the massive success of the Black Panther movie, T'Challa and his supporting cast were heavily featured in most of the later marketing for the film. Despite this, they don't really get to do much until the last act of the film, and Shuri in particular (who was very prominent in the print advertisements) only gets about two scenes before she disappears from the movie.
  • Similarly, Wong was featured on the theatrical poster and even got his own character poster, but only shows up in the first act of the movie. After the fight with Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian, he heads back to the Sanctum and is not seen again.
  • Downplayed with Captain America. Though not an extra by any means, trailers and promos made it look like he was the Deuteragonist of the film to Iron Man and would be a major plot catalyst. His contributions are primarily limited to preparation for and leading the Battle of Wakanda, and the teams of Tony/Peter/Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy have a much more significant role in the plot. Trailers also made it seem like he would meet/have a major reunion with Iron Man post-Civil War, which doesn't happen in this movie.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • Tony still tries to keep Peter out of the conflict against Thanos despite Spider-Man: Homecoming ending with him accepting that Peter does have what it takes to take on the big threats and attempting to make him an official Avenger. Then again, Tony states he considered entering Thanos's ship a one-way trip, and there's a big difference between a "big threat" and a "suicide mission" — likely a callback to his actions in New York.
  • Peter Quill and Drax forget to not let emotion overcome their plans. Drax should have learned to not rush into combat with Thanos after he gave away his position and easily lost to Ronan in the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter, on the other hand, should have realized plans were more important than impulsive attacks after Vol. 2, where he rushed into a fight with his father. Drax is responsible for giving his team's position away to Thanos on Knowhere, and later, Peter hits an immobilized Thanos, causing the rest of the heroes on Titan to lose their grip on him.
• Affably Evil: Thanos. He may be an Omnicidal Maniac wanting to eliminate half the universe, but he is legitimately friendly with most of his enemies, genuinely believes he's doing what's right, and even he has a real sense of love for Gamora (even feeling deep regret for having to sacrifice her for the Soul Stone).
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • During their holiday in Scotland, Wanda calls Vision "Vis".
  • Accidental; as Thor does not know what a raccoon is (and the raccoon in question doesn't ever bother to tell Thor his name), he warmly refers to Rocket as "Rabbit" throughout the entire film, which Rocket oddly does not mind. He also refers to Groot with the equally affectionate nickname of "Tree".
  • Thanos calls Gamora "little one".
  • Tony calling Peter "Kid" counts as this.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite himself, Thor includes his evil sister Hela on the list of people that he's lost.
• Alien Blood: More blood than usual for the MCU is spilled in this film, some of it in exotic colors; Hulk, Gamora, and Corvus have green, Proxima has blue, Thanos has purple.
• Alien Invasion: Thanos and his forces invade Earth for the Infinity Stones. Highlights include parking a spaceship over Manhattan and sending an entire army of Outriders to Wakanda. Amusingly, Edinburgh gets exactly the same treatment as New York (spaceship in the sky, battle in the streets), but absolutely no-one notices because it's foggy. That's Scotland for you.
• Aliens Speaking English: Per the Marvel norm, everybody can understand each other, species be damned. The only exception is Cull Obsidian, whose few short lines are in an alien language. And Groot, for obvious reasons. Thor lampshades this by jokingly saying he learned Groot thanks to an elective in school^note He might understand Groot thanks to Allspeak, a language spoken by the Asgardians in the comics that enables them to understand any other language and for everyone else understand them. It hasn't been confirmed for the MCU though. Steve plays it for laughs, thinking Groot is introducing himself.
• All According to Plan: Doctor Strange's words to Tony after he exchanges the Time Stone for the latter's life ("We're in the endgame now") and his last words to Tony before being turned to ash ("It was the only way") imply that half of the universe being killed off at this moment needs to happen so the heroes can eventually defeat Thanos.
• All Are Equal in Death: Invoked by Thanos when he explains to Doctor Strange the rationale behind his plan to kill half the universe's population. The process would have been completely random and indiscriminate, free of bias towards race, gender, rich or poor, weak or powerful, and therefore in Thanos's mind, fair. When he succeeds, those who die at the end are crumbling into dust in the same way.
• All for Nothing:
  • Played with. All the heroes' attempts to stop Thanos from completing the Infinity Gauntlet ultimately fail, with half the heroes disintegrating by the end and a few others dead. However, Doctor Strange implies that this is All According to Plan and is part of the one scenario he could see where the Avengers ultimately beat Thanos, and Nick Fury does send out a distress call to Captain Marvel.
  • The achievement of the Guardians of the Galaxy team in saving the planet of Xandar from Ronan is undone by Thanos having decimated it and taken the Power Stone from it before the movie even begins.
  • The team's plan to take Vision to Wakanda and have his stone removed without killing him, all while defending him from Thanos and his "children", is rendered moot by the film's end. Not only does Thanos get the stone, but he kills Vision in the process.
• All There in the Manual: Thanos, according to Josh Brolin, keeps his comic background of being a mutant and shunned for his deformation, likening him to Quasimodo.
• All There in the Script: Corvus Glaive, Cull Obsidian, and Proxima Midnight are not named in the film but are called such in the credits. Ebony Maw is called "The Maw" once by Thanos.
• All Webbed Up: When Mantis encounters Spider-Man he mistakes her for a hostile alien trying to lay eggs in his body so he covers her with webbings to immobilize her.
• Alone with the Psycho: Once Gamora is recaptured by Thanos, this happens twice: first in his throne room, and then again on Vormir (Red Skull doesn't really count as a witness, since he doesn't care about preserving Gamora's life, plus he's at minimum a former psycho himself). In the latter situation, Gamora dies.
• Always Save the Girl: Subverted twice over.
  • Star-Lord, after a great deal of reluctance and under visible pain, ultimately tries to kill Gamora on her own request. Thanos prevents it using the Reality Stone.
  • After spending the whole movie looking for an option that might destroy the Mind Stone while keeping Vision alive, while outright refusing the possibility of having to kill him, Wanda still does it when they run out of options. Thanos rewinds the stone's destruction with the Time Stone, then takes it, killing Vision again.
• Always Someone Better: The Hulk always relied on his raw strength to overpower his opponents throughout the films and often succeeded. Cut to the beginning of this one when he faces off against Thanos whom not only matches said strength, but also has the skill and technique to break the deadlock between the two and effortlessly defeat him. This has been seen as having instilled great fear in the Hulk, knowing that there is someone more powerful than him, which results in him never showing up again for the rest of the film. Word of God subverts this, however, with the commentary suggesting that the Hulk persona is sick and tired of fighting Banner's battles for him, and is pushing him to fight back himself, leading to Banner's defeat of Cull Obsidian.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • During his talk with the Guardians, Thor specifically says that half of his people were lost. It is not specified whether he is referring to those who did not survive Ragnarok, with the slaughtered refugees being the other half, or the refugees themselves, possibly implying that half of them were allowed to leave before the massacre. However, Thanos and his enemies point out multiple times that his method is to kill half and leave half alive. On that note, it's not clear if Korg and Miek survived, although Word of God is that Valkyrie lived.
  • Although the fates of Maria Hill and Nick Fury are revealed in The Stinger, those of Shuri, Wong, and Eitri — among many others — are still unknown by the end of the movie.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Cull Obsidian gets his arm cut off while attempting to jump back through the portal trap Wong lays for him. When he shows up again later at the Battle of Wakanda, he has replaced it with an Artificial Limb.
  • Thanos kills all of the dwarves on Nidavellir except King Eitri, who's merely forced to dip his hands in molten metal.
  • Seeing Thor on the brink of death and Eitri searching through the metal is what spurs Groot to sacrifice his own arm as a handle for the newly-forged Stormbreaker. Of course, Groot's arms can grow back.
  • The Hulkbuster's arm is torn off as Banner fights Cull Obsidian, but he does manage to use the lost arm to his advantage.
• And I Must Scream:
  • During the confrontation on Knowhere, Thanos uses the Reality Stone to turn Mantis into a spool of fleshy ribbon. Her eye is still blinking as the ribbons land on the floor and there's a sound that might be her muffled cry.
  • Nebula's extended suffering in Thanos's Torture Cellar. We see her suspended in mid-air, literally stretched and disconnected from her various metal pieces.
• And Starring: "Featuring Vin Diesel as Groot / Bradley Cooper as Rocket / with Gwyneth Paltrow / with Benicio del Toro / with Josh Brolin as Thanos / and Chris Pratt."
• And Then What?: Doctor Strange asks Thanos what he is going to do after he uses the Infinity Stones. It doesn't work on him because killing half of the universe's population is the plan in itself. He states that once he won, he would like to simply "watch the sun rise on a grateful universe". Thanos wins and does exactly that, but he's clearly a bit lost in doing so.
• Answer Cut:
  • When the Avengers find out that the Guardians know Thor, and Doctor Strange asks them where Thor is at the moment, the scene cuts to Thor, Rocket, and Groot powering up the forge on Nidavellir.
  • After Okoye asks why Scarlet Witch has been in the lab rather than out fighting the Outriders, Corvus Glaive is radioed by Proxima Midnight to move in on Vision now that Scarlet Witch is no longer guarding him.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Thanos is shown stoically but openly weeping before and after he kills Gamora, whom he did love despite everything he did to her. On Titan, it's also shown he has long been mourning his family and people, who are all long dead. When he hears Ebony Maw died as well, he sounds weary and saddened. Man's got a lot of baggage.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Stark mocks Strange for saying "hitherto undreamt of". Evidently, the latter has been developing that type of speech pattern in the year of training since his origin film.
• Anyone Can Die: Many people associated with the film promised that Infinity War will be a "last goodbye" to certain characters (producer Kevin Feige stated that anyone who died in the film will stay dead), and Marvel went as far as to refuse to confirm most of the Phase 4 Movie line-up until this and Avengers: Endgame were released.^note The only films that were confirmed prior were Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (which didn't guarantee all of the Guardians would make it out of this film alive). By the end of the film the only named characters who are confirmed to be alive are Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man, Nebula, Okoye, M'Baku, Bruce Banner/the Hulk, Rocket, War Machine, and Thor. Everyone else on the cast list is either dead or unknown. Take a look at the movie poster at the top of the page. Apart from Thanos, the poster has 23 heroes. Exactly 11 of them, almost half, are confirmed dead by the end of the movie.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Thanos wants a Class 1 applied to every planet and species in the universe, by using the Infinity Stones to destroy half of all life in the universe at random, in order to slow down the consumption of its finite resources. He succeeds.
  • Thanos' homeworld Titan suffered one somewhere between Class 4 and Class 6, which reduced it from an idyllic world to a stormy-skied, ruin-littered wasteland. Thanos claims that an Overpopulation Crisis caused the extinction event, but Peter Quill notes that the planet is off its axis and gravitational pull is "all over the place", indicating that a lack of resources wasn't the only reason for Titan's demise.
• Applied Phlebotinum:
  • The weapons that the Children of Thanos attack Vision with are able to stop his phasing power. This is the first thing he points out after getting stabbed.
  • Tony is seen using his own nanomachines to heal a stab wound Thanos inflicted on him. A keen-eyed viewer can later see that the same nanomachines in the Iron Spider costume are trying to keep Peter from turning to dust, but ultimately fail. At least Peter is able to get a few last words.
• Arc Number: The ratio one-half comes up a lot due to Thanos's desire to wipe out half of the universe's sapient population in order to save the other half from overpopulation like what happened on Titan. By the end of the movie about half of the named heroic cast is erased from existence, leaving behind only the original Avengers (along with Ant-Man and Hawkeye, who never appear in the film but are confirmed for the sequel), Okoye, M'Baku, Rocket, War Machine, and Nebula as the fully confirmed surviving heroes of the movie.
• Arc Words: For Vision and Wanda, "Time" comes up a lot.
• Are We There Yet?: Thor responds to a rather bored "I Am Groot" with "You'll know when we're close."
• Arrow Catch: Or spear catch, in this case. Proxima Midnight hurls a spear at Captain America, who dodges and catches it one-handed.
• Artifact of Doom: The Infinity Gauntlet, a Tricked-Out Glove holding six Power Crystals that can destroy entire worlds on their own. Together, they can reshape the nature of the Universe.
• Artistic License – Economics: Thanos believes that the Universe must have half of its population wiped out to prevent resources from being eliminated. In reality, either creative destruction would result in the number of resources increasing with the population, or if that was not possible, the Universe would fall into a Malthusian Trap, and the Universe would become sustainable on its own. Also he virtually halves all populations regardless if they are themselves resources to another so even in an all things being the same concept he isn't changing anything. Thanos also doesn't take into account the deaths and damage caused by the sudden deaths of his victims.
• Ascended Extra:
  • In the original Infinity Gauntlet story, Thor is absent due to being in exile at the time, and the Thor that appears in the comic is Erik Masterson (who would later become the hero Thunderstrike) assuming his identity. The real Thor is confirmed to be involved after the events of his third film, Thor: Ragnarok.
  • Doctor Strange is one of the main characters, with about as much screen time as Thor. He had only been introduced in Phase 3 in a movie that (by Marvel standards) was only moderately successful. Quite a big jump to being a main character in a big team up movie.
  • Black Widow only plays a very minor role in the original Infinity Gauntlet story and its sequels. Here, she is part of the main lineup. The same goes for Black Panther, who is also one of the heroes taken out during Thanos's initial use of the Gauntlet.
  • This pretty much applies to everyone. In the comics, the Earth heroes are little more than a distraction and cannon fodder. Outside of Thanos and Nebula, the characters who play major roles in the comics do not yet exist in the MCU.
• Ascended Meme: While fighting alongside Bucky Barnes, Rocket expresses an interest in his metal arm.◊ (And this is just one of many.)
• Asshole Victim:
  • Thanos devastated the Collector's place and destroyed his prized collection. Whether the Collector himself died or not is unknown, but whatever happened to him, he had it coming since he was a greedy, cruel Bad Boss who enslaved his workers.
  • Red Skull is revealed to have suffered a Fate Worse than Death due to his attempt to use the Tesseract during his reign of terror in World War II. He was banished to Vormir to serve as the keeper of the Soul Stone, something he will never possess since it requires a sacrifice of what you love — which Skull is incapable of feeling for anyone but himself.
  • All of the Children of Thanos perish during the film, but given they're the chief enforcers of a genocidal maniac, nobody is really going to mourn them (Thanos himself only briefly asks about Ebony Maw's fate).
• Ass Shove: Rocket gives Thor a cybernetic eye and suggests he wash it, with this trope as Rocket's method of hiding it when he stole it. He says it after Thor has put the eye in.
• Audience Surrogate: Bruce Banner is this for anyone who comes into Infinity War without having seen Captain America: Civil War beforehand. He's been off-world since Age of Ultron, meaning he's Locked Out of the Loop regarding the Avengers breaking up, Steve and Tony's falling out, Team Cap's criminal status, Vision's growing independence, Clint's absence after going home to his family, the existence of Peter Parker and Scott Lang and Wakanda's opening up and T'Challa's more relaxed attitude to social graces, leaving ample opportunity for people to have to explain these things to him for the benefit of the audience without dipping into As You Know.
  Bruce: Who's Scott?
  Steve: Ant-Man.
  Bruce: There's an Ant-Man and a Spider-Man?

B

• Back for the Dead:
  • Nick Fury and Maria Hill return after a three-year absence in The Stinger so we can watch them turn to ash.
  • The Collector returns for the first time since Guardians of the Galaxy, only to be heavily implied to have been Killed Offscreen by Thanos.
• Back from the Dead: Vision. He already died via Heroic Sacrifice, but Thanos restores his destroyed body so he can take the newly restored Mind Stone, which results in Vision dying once again.
• Back in the Saddle: Bucky comes out of retirement for the final battle.
  T'Challa: This one may be tired of war, but the White Wolf has rested long enough. [shows Bucky his new arm]
  Bucky: [resignedly] Where's the fight?
• Badass Boast:
  • The opening scenes gives us this line:
    Thanos: Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same. And now it's here... or should I say, I am.
  • Aboard the Asgardian refugee ship and facing Thanos, Loki proclaims, "We have a Hulk" a moment before Hulk barrels into Thanos.
  • On Titan, Thanos notes that for Strange et al. to be there, Maw must be dead, but notes that he fulfilled his task in bringing the Time Stone to Thanos. Strange remarks that this might be a bad thing as he also brought Thanos "face-to-face with the Master of the Mystic Arts."
  • Tony gets a few before taking on Thanos:
    Tony: You throw another moon at me and I'm gonna lose it.
    Thanos: Stark.
    Stark: You know me?
    Thanos: I do. You're not the only one cursed with knowledge.
    Tony: My only curse is you.
  • Parodied when Thor attempts to deliver one while holding the Nidavellir forge open, which fails thanks to its redundancy:
    Eitri: It will kill you.
    Thor: Only if I die.
    Eitri: ... Yes... that's what... killing you means.
  • T'Challa makes one to Proxima Midnight right before the climatic battle.
    T'Challa: You are in Wakanda now. Thanos will have nothing but dust and blood.
  • Thor appears at the battle at Wakanda and dispatches a horde of Outriders. He then demands...
    Thor: BRING ME THANOS!
• Badass Fingersnap:
  • Gamora describes Thanos as likely to do it once he's gathered all six Infinity Stones.
    Gamora: The entire time I knew him, he only ever had one goal: to wipe out half the Universe. If he gets all the Infinity Stones, he can do it with a snap of his fingers — [snap] — just like that....
  • Thanos himself threatens the heroes on Titan with this, though only in the trailer.
    Thanos: You're strong. But I could snap my fingers... and you'd all cease to exist.
  • When Thanos finally assembles the Gauntlet and shrugs off Thor's attack, he does exactly this. With a snap, half of the Universe's sapient life, including many heroes, crumble into ash and dust.
• Badass in Distress: A flock of them.
  • Thor when he is beaten by Thanos and left floating in space, injured and unconscious. Just ask Star-Lord:
    Tony Stark: You know Thor?
    Peter Quill: Yeah, tall guy, not that good-looking, needed saving.
  • Doctor Strange gets kidnapped and tortured by Ebony Maw in an attempt to steal the Time Stone from him, and has to be rescued by Iron Man and Spider-Man.
  • After Vision is badly injured, multiple heroes try to save him from being captured and killed by Children of Thanos. In the end, Thanos kills him anyway.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Thanos successfully completes the Gauntlet and reduces the population of the Universe by 50 percent, including a majority of the heroes. Only the original Avengers, M'Baku, Okoye, Nebula, Rocket, and War Machine are still standing. The film ends with Thanos peacefully watching a sunrise on his home planet, as he had promised earlier.
• Bad Liar:
  • Gamora, which Thanos even points out to her when she claims to have never found out where the Soul Stone is.
  • The Collector also qualifies as all he does is test Thanos's patience by refusing to tell him the whereabouts of the Reality Stone.
• Bad Vibrations: The arrival of Ebony Maw's ship on earth is heralded by heavy vibrations.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When Thor arrives at the Battle of Wakanda, he roars for Thanos to be brought to him to face him again. After Thor demolishes a big group of Outriders, the film immediately cuts to a pissed-looking Thanos traveling through a Space Stone-induced portal, leading one to believe Thanos is answering Thor’s challenge. However, once the portal closes, Thanos is shown to instead be arriving on Titan for his intended rendezvous with his Children.
  • The movie pulls a fast one on the audience at the end; T'Challa kneels to offer a hand up to a downed Okoye with the line "Up, General! Up! This is no place to die!" Just as you're expecting Okoye's hand to turn to dust in his, T'Challa disintegrates instead, leaving Okoye (and the audience) in shock.
• Barehanded Blade Block: During the battle on Titan, Thanos blocks Doctor Strange's conjured sword strike one-handed.
• Bathos:
  • Thanos's applications of the Reality Stone are uncharacteristically whimsical; he turns weapons into harmless bubbles, comes up with cartoonish ways to non-lethally incapacitate the Guardians, and conjures an illusion of The Collector who behaves just as flamboyantly as the real thing — all of this alongside the genuine horror Thanos tends to unleash.
  • When Gamora is in Thanos's clutches, pleading with Quill to kill her before Thanos can use her, Quill can't help but harp on a bit about how she didn't follow his plan properly, to which she replies "Now? Really?" This characteristic Guardians-esque exchange of comedy serves to heighten the horror of the moment, as Quill is clearly hysterical.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Thor isn't affected by the vacuum of space. At least, there's no indication that there isn't any oxygen to breathe while he's out there. This is lampshaded by Star-Lord, who wonders how he's still alive.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Thanos just knew that Gamora would come to Knowhere so he built a trap for her.
    Gamora: You knew I'd come.
    Thanos: I counted on it.
  • During the Battle of Wakanda, Proxima Midnight tells the heroes indirectly that Corvus Glaive is dead and unleashes a weapon consisting of giant buzz-saws that do a lot of damage until Scarlet Witch intervenes. Both turn out to be clever fake-outs — Corvus Glaive is very much alive, which the heroes never realised because they had no way to find out, and Wanda abandoning Vision to save the Wakandan army allows him to sneak into the city and interrupt Shuri's attempts to remove the Mind Stone from Vision.
• Battle Chant: Before the Outriders arrive in Wakanda, T'Challa leads a call of "Yibambe!" — which is Xhosa for "Hold the line!" M'Baku and the Jabari also perform their tribe's shout "Mie effa!" — Xhosa for "Take them!" — when they arrive before the battle breaks out.
• Battle Cry: Before T'Challa calls his troops to break formation against the Outriders, he yells, "Wakanda forever!"
• Beardness Protection Program: To help illustrate he's become an international fugitive after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Steve Rogers has gone from his usual clean-shaven look to sporting a beard.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
  • Neither Natasha nor Okoye, Gamora, and Mantis get visible injuries on their faces. Possibly Shuri as well, but we can't really see her face after Corvus Glaive attacks her. Wanda turns Proxima Midnight into alien mulch directly above her, which Natasha describes as "very gross", but only gets a few splatters of blue Alien Blood on her face. Contrast with Thor, who starts the movie looking like terrible from his beatdown by Thanos and gets even worse when he's burned by both the Power Stone and the Star Forge.
  • Averted for Wanda, who receives a large cut across her forehead to her brow during the fight with the Children of Thanos in Scotland. Although it visibly starts to heal throughout the film, it remains there for its entirety.
• Behind the Black:
  • The Hulk only becomes visible when Loki announces his presence. Where was he before that, and how did no one else see him? Of course, Loki being involved suggests certain possibilities.
  • In Edinburgh, Vision and Wanda should have been able to see Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight before they respectively attack, seeing as they get backstabbed from different directions while facing each other.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Gamora attempts to commit suicide to keep Thanos from killing her, because if she died by her own hand instead of his, her death wouldn't count as the sacrifice he needs to get the Soul Stone. Unfortunately for her plans, Thanos is able to use the Reality Stone to destroy her knife before she can drive it home.
• Big Bad: Thanos, after years of being a Greater-Scope Villain, finally takes action himself, going after the Infinity Stones so that he can kill half of all living things in order to prevent an overpopulation crisis. He succeeds. He also doubles as a Villain Protagonist, as a large portion of the film is centered around his perspective and motivations.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The climax has the Wakandan army, joined by a multitude of heroes, facing off with the Black Order and a massive army of Outriders. Simultaneously to this is Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the Guardians of the Galaxy fighting Thanos on Titan.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Little Brother Instinct from Loki: Thanos is able to get Loki to hand over the Tesseract/Space Stone by threatening to kill Thor. Loki at first tells him to go ahead and do it, but after seeing Thanos use the Power Stone to put Thor through tremendous pain, Loki caves and gives it to him. He then quickly rushes over to Thor to pull him out of harm's way when the Hulk attacks Thanos, and tries to kill Thanos himself after Thanos and his Children restrain Thor.
  • Gamora reveals the Soul Stone's location to Thanos to stop him from torturing Nebula.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • When Vision and Scarlet Witch come under attack by Thanos's forces, Captain America and his team of Secret Avengers eventually show up to help them.
  • During the battle in Wakanda, the heroes are about to be overwhelmed by the armies of Thanos. At the last moment, Thor, wielding his new weapon Stormbreaker, comes through the Bifrost and invokes lightning to smash the army so badly it gives a brief reprieve for everyone, complete with Theme Music Power-Up.
• Big Entrance: Thor's arrival in Wakanda in a beam of light wielding Stormbreaker, with Rocket and Groot at his side.
• Big Good: Doctor Strange in both this and Endgame. After using the Time Stone to see 14 million 605 possible futures, he finds only one in which the Avengers win. His presence throughout the entire movie revolves around him manipulating and moving the entire conflict so the winning outcome happens.
• Big "NO!":
  • Thor, when Heimdall gets killed. He also screams "No!" when Thanos kills Loki, but it's muffled because he is gagged by Ebony Maw.
  • Hulk, after getting brutally beaten by Thanos, continuously yells "No!" whenever Banner tries getting him to come out.
  • Doctor Strange yells one out during his torture by Ebony Maw in the second trailer.
  • Wanda, before Thanos rips the Mind Stone from Vision's forehead. Also serves as her last words.
  • Thor yells this out a moment before an injured Thanos snaps his fingers, bringing death to half of all life in the Universe.
• Bilingual Bonus: Vormir, the name of the world where the Soul Stone is kept. Vor mir^note the V is read as F, though is German for "in front of me". The German Johann Schmidt (aka Red Skull) has been keeping the stone in front of himself for seventy years, unable to obtain it for his own gain.
• Binary Suns: Thanos's homeworld, Titan, has two suns. One large and yellow, with the other being smaller and blue.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Jealous of Thor, Peter Quill imitates his voice and accent, claiming it's his real voice. Nobody believes him for a second.
  • Just before the Battle of Wakanda, Proxima Midight claims Corvus Glaive is dead. Later in the Battle, it turns out, nope, he's still very much alive. The Black Order deliberately faked his death, had him secretly infiltrate the Golden City, and then wait until Wanda was on the field and Vision was defenseless.
• Blood from Every Orifice: When Thanos strangles Loki and breaks his neck, blood starts pouring from his eyes, nose and mouth.
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • Thor during the opening sequence, after losing the battle against Thanos and his children before the start of the movie.
  • Thanos's illusion of himself that he creates with the Reality Stone, after being stabbed in the neck by Gamora.
  • Tony Stark, after Thanos stabs him in the stomach during their battle on Titan.
• Body Horror:
  • Doctor Strange is tortured by Ebony Maw via glass shard-like molecular surgery implements. They can be seen piercing his skin, and it looks very painful.
  • Drax and Mantis are turned into blocks and ribbons, respectively, by the Reality Stone. A lingering shot on Mantis shows that she, and presumably Drax, are conscious and aware of this happening. When they return to normal, they look just as uncomfortable.
  • Nebula is being painfully tortured on Thanos's ship by way of having every cyborg part forcefully separated and held there. Thanos makes it worse when Gamora refuses to tell him where the Soul Stone is. (Doubled down for those familiar with the BodyWorlds cadaver exhibits; Nebula's pose and "dismantling" strongly resembles the type of thing done in BodyWorlds.)
• Bond One-Liner: Thanos kills off Loki, a trickster prone to surviving impossible odds and Faking the Dead:
  Thanos: No resurrections this time.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Bucky's character poster◊ is a rare male example of this trope.
• Book Ends:
  • The film begins and ends with a distress signal.
  • In terms of Thanos's quest for the Infinity Stones, it begins and ends with the Mind Stone. In the first Avengers film, he has possession of the Mind Stone as part of the Chitauri scepter, only for Loki's defeat in New York City to cause him to lose it. When Thanos finally goes and collects each of the Infinity Stones personally, the Mind Stone is the last one he collects.
  • As Loki dies in the beginning of the film he utters that Thanos will never be a god. In the next to last scene, Steve Rogers breathes out "Oh, God," reflecting and inverting Loki's defiance with overwhelming despair.
  • Spanning into Endgame, this film ends with Thanos watching the sunrise upon a "Grateful" universe, as he smiles in pride having accomplished his goal. Endgame ends with Thanos watching the sunrise upon a grateful universe, as he bows his head in shame having failed.
  • There is chaos in the streets of New York near the beginning and The Stinger in the end.
• Bound and Gagged: At the beginning of the film, Ebony Maw wraps metal debris of the surrounding ship around Thor with his telekinesis, including a gag. Thus, Thor is helpless as he watches Thanos beat down the Hulk, and then execute Heimdall and Loki.
• Brawler Lock: Steve Rogers and Thanos are briefly in one, with Rogers pushing Thanos's right hand. Once the surprise wears off, though, Thanos just knocks him aside with his other hand.
• Brief Accent Imitation: When Quill tries to deepen his voice to match Thor, he also imitates the Asgardian's accent. It's a complete failure.
• Bring It: Tony has just re-entered the battle against Thanos by forcing the Infnity Gauntlet open with a nanotech device, followed by launching a small artillery barrage. Thanos, unarmoured and unable to use the Gauntlet when he can't close his fist, simply says "Come on!" at the oncoming missiles.
• Bubble Gun: Thanos uses the power of the Reality Stone to turn Star-Lord's blaster into this when Star-Lord tries to kill Gamora to keep Thanos from taking her on Knowhere.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After being supposedly deceased after the events of Captain America, Red Skull returns, serving as guardian of the Soul Stone.
  • The Stinger shows Nick Fury and Maria Hill, seen most recently in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. rather than the films.
  • The Collector appears for the first time since Guardians of the Galaxy.
• Butt-Monkey: Not even Spider-Man is immune to all forms of bad luck whether it's getting a sign thrown at his face by Ebony Maw or Cull Obsidian tossing him aside. Iron Man isn't much better as he adds a parachute feature in Peter's Iron Spider suit. Nothing ever goes right for Banner either, between narrowly avoiding getting hit by half a yellow taxi and a falling tree in the park.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": Star-Lord says he likes Tony's plan, with the caveat that it's terrible.
  Peter Quill: Let's talk about this plan of yours. I think it's good, except, it sucks.
• Bystander Action-Horror Dissonance: While they're far away enough to not be in the thick of the battle, Peter's fellow passengers on his school bus are no less terrified by the massive spaceship hovering over the Manhattan area.

C

• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": In-universe, Thor refers to Rocket Raccoon as a rabbit, seemingly because he doesn't know what a raccoon is. He does this twice, and both times Rocket is too confused and/or sardonically amused by Thor's mistake to correct him.
• Call-Back: Several lines and character decisions reference events in previous MCU films.
  • The opening scene of the teaser trailer is narrated with Fury's Rousing Speech in The Avengers, only this time from the heroes' point of view.
    Nick Fury: There was an idea...
    Tony Stark: To bring together a group of remarkable people...
    The Vision: To see if we could become something more.
    Thor Odinson: So when they needed us, we could fight the battles...
    Natasha Romanov: That they never could.
  • Rocket's habit of collecting other people's prosthetics is brought up twice, first when he gives Thor a prosthetic eye and second when he offers to buy Bucky's new arm.
  • Tony is still convinced that some ominous threat from space is heading for Earth, which was his major motivation in Avengers: Age of Ultron. He's proven right when Thanos shows up.
  • In the Sanctum Sanctorum, Tony is holding the phone that Steve sent him in Captain America: Civil War, as a means to call the latter if the former needed help.
  • Peter wears the suit (which is the MCU version of the Iron Spider suit) that Tony presented to him at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
  • On meeting the Guardians, Thor recounts the general events of Thor: Ragnarok (crazy evil half-sister killed lots of people, lost an eye, needed to blow up Asgard to stop her). Star-Lord counters with the general events of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (Dad killed Mom, he killed his dad, and came out with both eyes).
  • Bucky was last seen recuperating in Wakanda in The Stinger of Black Panther. He's forced to come out of retirement to fight Thanos's forces, with T'Challa providing him with a new metal arm.
  • Eitri initially believes his weapon-making days are over due to Thanos crippling his hands, until Thor gives him a pep-talk, telling him that he doesn't need his hands and his weapon-making skills all come from within. Thor likely learned how to give this advice from Odin's own pep-talk to him, about how he doesn't need Mjolnir to harness his powers.
  • Loki's line "We have a Hulk" hearkens back to The Avengers when he was on the receiving end of both the line from Tony and a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from the big guy, demonstrating how far he's come as a character.
• Calling Your Attacks: Played for laughs with Spider-Man announcing his attacks on Thanos while jumping through Doctor Strange's sling-ring portals.
  Spider-Man: Magic!
  Spider-Man: More magic!
  Spider-Man: Magic with a kick!
  Spider-Man: Magic with a punch!
• Call to Agriculture:
  • Bucky is working on a farm when T’Challa approaches him with a new arm for battle.
  • After wiping out half of all life in the Universe, Thanos retires to what looks like a farm, with a scarecrow beside him wearing his armor.
• Cannon Fodder: Dozens of Wakandan soldiers are turned into this as they fight against Thanos's army.
• Captain Obvious: When the film cuts to a new location, there's an establishing shot with the name of the location shown. During the introductory scene to the Guardians of the Galaxy, their ship, Benatar, is shown with the cosmos as a backdrop, accompanied by the word "SPACE".
• Cast Herd: Infinity War has perhaps the largest cast of superheroes and supervillains in any superhero movie, if not any movie, yet — MCU or otherwise. On the theatrical poster alone there are twenty-seven listed actors, and that still doesn't include everyone (for example, Winston Duke and Florence Kasumba). Cast herding therefore becomes necessary, as such divisions make the large cast easier to follow. The story becomes more streamlined thanks to the cast being split in four distinct groups: the traveling in space group lead by Tony Stark, Peter Parker and Stephen Strange, the earth protection group lead by Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Wanda Maximoff and Vision, and the Guardians with, well, most of the cast featured in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 along with Thor, all tangled up with Thanos and his minions.
• Casting Gag:
  • Earlier Thor films (Thor, Thor: The Dark World) have been criticized for trying too hard to be Game of Thrones. It is ironic, then, when Thor turns to none other than Peter Dinklage for help in forging a new weapon.
  • Peter Dinklage, who is a midget, plays the largest character in the entire movie.
  • During the movie's opening logo, an Asgardian on the Statesman can be heard sending out a distress signal out into the depths of space. Said Asgardian is voiced by Kenneth Branagh, who directed the very first Thor film all the way back in 2011.
  • The naturally blonde Scarlett Johansson plays a red-haired character who dyed her hair blonde to survive being a fugitive.
• Casual Danger Dialogue:
  • Subverted in New York. When Tony starts to talk with Bruce about his new armor, Ebony Maw flings him away.
  • While Thor and Steve are fighting Outriders during the defense of Wakanda, the two have an opportunity to comment on each other's new haircuts, with the long and short having been reversed since the last time they saw each other.
  • During the same battle, Rocket shows an interest in acquiring Bucky's gun. As soon as he's told the gun isn't for sale, he asks about his arm.
• Catching the Speedster: A Teleport Spam variant occurs with Spider-Man and Doctor Strange fighting in tandem against Thanos. Strange opens portals while Spider-Man appears and disappears through them to sneak some hits in. This works for all of three attacks before Thanos chokes him out mid-leap.
• Cathartic Exhalation: Loki takes a deep breath when Thanos stops torturing Thor with the Power Stone.
• Caught Up in the Rapture: Heavily invoked by the imagery of the Snap. Billions of people simply vanish, their bodies turning to dust, while those left behind look on in shock and horror. The Stinger, in which Nick Fury and Maria Hill witness the chaos caused by the Snap before they themselves get dusted, explicitly recalls stories like Left Behind and A Thief in the Night that show the Rapture accompanied by mass panic. The film is in essence, a secular rapture movie.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Iron Man making a SpongeBob SquarePants reference is a two-fold example, in that Clancy Brown, who plays both Major Ray Schoonover in the Netflix shows and Surtur in Thor: Ragnarok, is a regular cast member of the series. Also, Scarlett Johansson, a.k.a. Black Widow, is the voice of Princess Mindy in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
  • Spider-Man comes up with the plan to defeat Ebony Maw by name-dropping Alien. Sigourney Weaver, who plays Ellen Ripley, has the role of the main antagonist in The Defenders. Harry Dean Stanton, who plays Brett in the first Alien film, appears in The Avengers in a cameo role.
  • When they get the chance the TVA might wanna look into how this Bolivar Trask dude in another universe looks a hell of a lot like 616s Eitri the dwarf!
• Central Theme: Sacrifice. Sacrifices, of a heroic nature, of a personal nature, or of a loved one, pop up in the film again and again, to see what the characters will do in the name of the greater good. This theme also extends to Thanos himself sacrificing something to get all the Infinity Stones.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • The situation is so dark that Star-Lord tells the Guardians to "put on their mean faces" when they survey the aftermath of one of Thanos and his Children's attacks. Dialed back slightly, though, when you see Mantis's mean face.
  • The movie itself completely drops the jokes once the second round of fighting Thanos on Titan begins (the last joke is Peter Parker apologizing to the Guardians for not learning their names). After that point, it's completely serious, besides Fury's Curse Cut Short in The Stinger.
  • The darker tone even applies to the external, non-diegetic aspects of the movie. Infinity War gives a visual equivalent to Silent Credits by refusing to have Creative Closing Credits for the first time in the movie series save for the title itself disintegrating similarly to the casualties of the big finger snap, and instead of the usual "The Avengers will return" text before The Stinger, it reads "Thanos will return." The movie also begins in utter silence, without the usual Marvel theme playing over the logo... just the Asgardian distress call.
• Chainsaw Good: In Wakanda, the Children of Thanos deploy a contraption that is best described as a giant lawnmower made of great buzzsaws put together. Proxima Midnight is killed by one of them when Scarlet Witch telekinetically throws her into its path.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Though there have been deaths of major characters in previous movies, it was usually limited to one big one per film. Here, to show just how much higher the stakes are, prominent characters bite it throughout the movie. Around half the cast ceases to exist at the end.
  • The movie opens with Loki, Heimdall, and half the Asgardians being slaughtered by Thanos. Thor himself only survives being left for dead thanks to the Guardians.
  • The first Child of Thanos to die is Ebony Maw, after Iron Man succeeds in throwing him into the vacuum of space. Not too long after, the second of his children to be killed is, unfortunately, one of the good guys: Gamora, whom Thanos himself murders to get the Soul Stone.
  • The heroes manage to kill off the rest of Thanos's evil children—Proxima Midnight, Cull Obsidian, and Corvus Glave—in the Battle of Wakanda, but unfortunately, this battle ends with Thanos brutally murdering Vision by ripping the Mind Stone (the final one he still needs) out of his head.
  • Thanos successfully pulling off his Badass Fingersnap kills off a whopping twelve heroes in the span of a couple minutes of screentime: Bucky Barnes, T'Challa, Wanda Maximoff, Sam Wilson, Groot, Mantis, Drax, Peter Quill, Peter Parker, and Stephen Strange, plus Maria Hill and Nick Fury in The Stinger.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: The Avengers leaders confront the Children of Thanos before the war in Wakanda, and they notice Proxima Midnight's partner Corvus Glaive (which Cap's team clashed with previously) is not among their number. There's a good reason for that: He's lying in wait inside Wakanda, preparing to capture Vision when the opportunity arises (namely, Wanda taking off for the battlefield). Proxima pretends Corvus died of his wounds earlier in order to not raise the heroes' suspicions.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The ending of Captain America: Civil War shows that Steve also had sent Tony what looks like a BurnerPhone. Tony finally remembers to use it in this movie. Until he gets dragged into space, then Bruce Banner picks it up, and then, well...
  • Five of the six Infinity Stones have appeared through the MCU before this film, save the Soul Stone, which remains absent as it is only acquired by means of sacrifice of one's greatest love — to Thanos, this is Gamora.
  • The film opens with the Asgardian ship broadcasting a distress signal. Later, it's shown that the Guardians heard and are responding to the signal, allowing them to pick up Thor.
  • Doctor Strange mentions that the Time Stone could be the only hope of fixing things if everything goes wrong, and in the end, he never even uses the Time Stone against Thanos at all. Instead, it's Thanos who uses it to rewind the destruction of the Mind Stone.
  • The grenades that Quill argues with Gamora about are later used against Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man.
• Chiaroscuro: The entire first scene is shot with stark contrast of dark and light, especially the frames with Loki holding the Tesseract.
• Choke Holds: After Loki unsuccessfully attempts to attack Thanos, Thanos lifts him up by the throat with his gauntleted hand and strangles him for a while before eventually increasing the pressing and breaking his neck, killing him.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Among the many supporting characters from Black Panther who show up in Wakanda, Nakia and Ramonda are not among them despite how much help the heroes need by the end. The Russos later confirmed that Nakia was absent due to being on an undercover assignment overseas.
  • Thor's new companions from Thor: Ragnarok, Valkyrie, Korg, and Miek, are not shown among the refugees at the beginning of the film with no reference to their whereabouts. Thor later mentions that Thanos only killed half of the people aboard the ship, with director Joe Russo later confirming that Valkyrie led the other half off in the ship's escape pods.
  • Kraglin, the new leader of the Ravagers, and an associate of the Guardians of the Galaxy, is not mentioned at all as the Guardians themselves take center-stage.
  • Everett Ross, the CIA agent who was a major power player in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther is absent this time around.
• Citywide Evacuation: King T'Challa orders that the capital city of Wakanda be evacuated so that its citizens will be spared from the damage causes by Thanos's forces.
• Cliffhanger: Thanos fully assembles the Infinity Gauntlet and wipes out half the population of the Universe. Of our heroes, only the original Avengers, War Machine, Rocket, Okoye, Nebula, and M'Baku survive. It would be a full-on Downer Ending if it weren't technically part one of a two-part story. Also, Doctor Strange hinted after the final confrontation against Thanos that "there was no other way," referring to his finding one successful outcome out of 14,000,605.
• Cliffhanger Wall: Avengers: Endgame would hit theaters only a year after this film released and address the above cliffhanger, but Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel would come out in the intervening time, taking place before the events of Infinity War.
• C-List Fodder: Downplayed, since there are still a good number of major character deaths alongside the minor. Few going in seriously expected headliners like Black Panther and Spider-Man to bite it alongside lesser-knowns without discrimination. However, after the finger snap, every single one of the original Avengers lineup is shown to have survived, whereas more recent Avengers or heroes are the ones to fade away.
• Coincidental Broadcast: In Scotland, Vision and Scarlet Witch have a conversation about their relationship before Wanda notices a broadcast behind them about the Children of Thanos's attack on New York.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Thanos tortures Thor by slowly burning him with the Power Stone to make Loki reveal the Tesseract.
  • Ebony Maw uses hundreds of pieces of scalpel-like alien surgical equipment to stab into every part of Doctor Strange's body to make him lift the spell protecting the Time Stone.
  • Thanos tortures Nebula by partially disassembling her and then using the Infinity Gauntlet to stretch her remaining biological internal tissues, to force Gamora to agree to lead him to the Soul Stone.
• Cold Equation: In the backstory to the movie, Thanos originally came up with a radical version of this idea to save his entire home planet during an Overpopulation Crisis — kill half the population completely randomly, so that those who remain will be able to have full access to their resources. His idea was rejected and he was banished from his world, which soon became extinct. Vowing to never let the tragedy of Titan happen anywhere else, Thanos traveled the galaxy with an army of loyal followers who traveled from world to world to reduce populations. In the film itself, Thanos seeks to complete the Infinity Gauntlet in order to do this to the entire Universe in one fell swoop... And he succeeds.
• Collapsible Helmet: Beyond the already established examples from previous films (notably, Star-Lord and Black Panther), Iron Man's armor and Spider-Man's Iron Spider suit being now constituted of nanomachines, the helmet part can come and go in a blink whenever they need to visibly emote. A new helmet can even reform if the first one is torn off, as happens to Iron Man while fighting Thanos.
• Colon Cancer: The films were originally titled Avengers: Infinity War: Part I and Avengers: Infinity War: Part II until the directors decided to rename them to avoid the "Part I/Part II" format.
• Colony Drop:
  • The Outriders enter Wakanda using massive, triangular Drop Ships that fall straight out of the sky. Though, when the first ship tries to drop right on Wakanda's capital, it's destroyed by the energy shield. The others have to drop beyond the barrier and try to get in on foot.
  • On Titan, Tony Stark introduces himself to Thanos by dropping a space ship on him from what looks like orbit.
  • Thanos returns the favor when he uses the Power and Space Stones to shatter a moon and then rain the fragments on the heroes. They survive, but everyone except Iron Man and Doctor Strange is taken out of action.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The six Infinity Stones come in various colors to help distinguish their abilities from each other: yellow (Mind), purple (Power), red (Reality), blue (Space), green (Time), and orange (Soul).
• Color Failure: Vision's body loses all color after the Mind Stone is ripped from his head.
• Colorful Theme Naming: The members of Thanos's Children based on the "Black Order" squad all have names evocative of the color black: Corvus Glaive ("corvus" is the Latin name for ravens, which are black), Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, and Proxima Midnight.
• Combat Pragmatist: The group on Titan realizes that fighting fair is not an option, and manage to almost subdue Thanos this way. They attack from all sides, they don't give him time to recover, they target the Gauntlet so Thanos can't use it, and Spider-Man throws webbing over his eyes so he can't aim.
• Comfort the Dying: Peter Parker's Spider-Sense tells him that he is going to pass away after Thanos snaps his fingers with the full Infinity Gauntlet and he gets terrified, sobbing that he does not want to die. Tony Stark hugs him and tries to calm him down before Peter eventually turns to dust.
• Comically Missing the Point: Rocket intentionally misses the point to mock Quill.
  Star-Lord: Wow. This has been a real wake-up call for me. Okay. I'm gonna get a Bowflex. I'm gonna commit. I'm gonna get some dumbbells.
  Rocket Racoon: You know you can't eat dumbbells, right?
• The Comically Serious: In a group that contains Peter Parker and half of the Guardians of the Galaxy, a very high-strung Tony Stark, usually The Gadfly, finds himself playing the straight man.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Lampshaded when Peter Parker meets Doctor Strange. Peter introduces himself using his real name and is rather surprised Stephen uses what appears to be his codename instead. (Of course, he's actually a physician named Strange.)
  Peter Parker: Oh, we're using our made-up names. Um, I'm Spider-Man, then.
• Coming in Hot: Iron Man, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange have a rough landing on Titan with Ebony Maw's ship.
• Conflict Killer: Downplayed. Thanos' arrival doesn't mean Captain America's Secret Avengers that had split up from the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War have been pardoned, either officially or by Tony Stark, who's still reluctant to call for help, but they wind up on the same side against Thanos anyway.
• Continuity Cameo: Both Nick Fury and Maria Hill, who had major roles in the previous movies, briefly return in a post-credits scene.
• Continuity Nod: Enough to have their own subpage.
• Continuous Decompression: Iron Man and Spider-Man blow a hole in Ebony Maw's ship, causing him to get blown out into space. The continuous wind then endangers the heroes, Spider-Man having to catch Doctor Strange and both being nearly blown out too if not for the Spider Limbs of Peter's suit. Stark has to close the breach with his suit's tech to keep everything else from being sent outside. Can be justified by the large size of the ship, and the fact it has lots of empty space inside.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • How the Guardians of the Galaxy meet Thor. They just happened to be the only ones to pick up the Asgardian distress signal, they just happen to exit right in the middle of the wreckage instead of further away, they crash right into Thor amongst the all the bodies and debris floating about, who then sticks right on their window facing them, who then opens his eye randomly despite being unconscious to let them know he's still alive. Had any of these increasingly improbable events not happened, chances are the Guardians would have arrived and then left with Thor still floating in the middle of space for the rest of the movie.
  • Similarly, Thor happens to be saved by a group of people who not only have experience with the Infinity Stones, but one of its members has a connection with the Mad Titan as well. This is enough for him to enlist their help in stopping Thanos from achieving his goal.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind:
  • Corvus Glaive is about to kill Captain America, but in the last second Vision fatally impales him from behind on his own glaive.
  • During the Designated Girl Fight at Wakanda, Scarlet Witch helps Black Widow from behind when the latter is about to be finished by Proxima.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After his abuse of the Space Stone for power in the 1940s without a care for anyone, the Red Skull was made into the Keeper of the Soul Stone for many decades, not aging, with the knowledge that he can't have the ultimate power of the Stone as he doesn't have anyone he loves, who he could sacrifice in order to obtain it.
• Cool Starship:
  • Thanos's gigantic ship from Thor: Ragnarok reappears here. The "Flying Donuts" that drop from it also count.
  • Benatar, the new ship of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Since they learnt that being stranded on an abandoned planet isn't a good thing, this one comes equipped with an escape pod.
• Cool vs. Awesome:
  • Tony Stark, a part-machine playboy in a superpowered exoskeleton with a nanite factory, casually explains to Spider-Man, a teenager genius with spider powers, that New York is under attack by two aliens who are after a magic stone that two wizards and a gamma-powered scientist monster are trying to protect, and they've got to defend it. Peter takes it in stride. They are later joined by a empathic alien and a treasure-hunting half-Planet space dude and their Dumb Muscle, and fight a Mutant alien overlord who is powered by stones representing basic laws of the universe.
  • The other half of the film covers the Norse God of Thunder, a sentient tree, a cybernetic raccoon, an ex-Hydra sleeper agent with a metal arm, a CIA spook, a WWII super-soldier, said gamma-powered scientist in a giant mech, an African king of a hidden country, a jetpack-powered Air Force Pararescue operator, and a reality-warping telepath fighting for the life of a AI-turned-sentient-being against feral parasitic gene-engineered aliens backed up by giant buzzsaws.
• Cope by Pretending: After losing everyone and everything, Thor has shades of this, especially during his talk with Rocket. When Rocket asks him about his dead brother, Thor casually responds that he has been dead before, implying that he can therefore deal with his death. Then Rocket asks him after his other family members and friends who are all turn out to be dead as well, after which Rocket asks Thor if he really is ready to face Thanos. Thor forces a smile and tells Rocket that those losses have in fact made him stronger and that he will defeat Thanos as soon as he gets his new weapon. However, his tears betray him and it is clear that this pretending is all that is keeping Thor from completely breaking down.
  Rocket: You sure you're up to this particular murder mission?
  Thor: Absolutely! You know, rage and vengeance, anger, loss, regret... they're all tremendous motivators. They really clear the mind, so, I'm good to go!
  Rocket: Yeah, but this Thanos we're talkin' about... he's the toughest there is.
  Thor: Well, he's never fought me.
  Rocket: Yeah, he has.
  Thor: He's never fought me twice.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: In a flashback, Thanos is shown meeting Gamora as a child and giving her a double-bladed knife as a gift. At that moment his army start to carry out Thanos's genocide program by massacring half the population. As Gamora turns to look, Thanos gently pushes her face back to his gift instead.
• Covers Always Lie: The first official poster was drawn in such a way to avoid spoiling the ending of Thor: Ragnarok, which saw Thor have his right eye cut out by Hela. Early promotional art for the movie also neglected to include Thor's eyepatch. Though, in retrospect it's technically not a lie and more a spoiler, as Thor gets a replacement eye.
• Cradle of Loneliness: Seeing how he lost his mother in The Dark World and his father in Ragnarok, Thor has officially lost his entire family following the death of Loki. As the ship goes up in flames, all Thor can do is crawl towards Loki's corpse and cradle his dead body.
• Cradling Your Kill: Thanos holds the critically-wounded Stark in his arms out of respect for his courageous final stand, reassuring the latter that half of humanity will live on, and warmly wishing that they will remember him for the hero that he is. Subverted since Tony heals himself after this.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Stan Lee makes his obligatory cameo as Peter's school bus driver.
  • Writer Stephen McFeely plays one of the secretaries accompanying Ross.
  • Original Thor director Kenneth Branagh is the voice of the Asgardian sending out the transmission heard over the first few seconds of the movie.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Vision meets his end by Thanos clutching his head and forcefully ripping the Mind Stone out, leaving his body a depowered and lifeless husk with a massive crater in his head. This is essentially the equivalent of yanking out someone's brain barehanded.
• Crisis Crossover: The film involves multiple MCU characters joining forces to fight Thanos. The Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Stones have also been a running plot thread through half a dozen previous MCU films. The film also marks the first major crossover between the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
• Crossover Punchline: Look closely◊ and you can see Tobias Funke among the Collector's collections.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Thanos, not surprisingly, gives several. One to the Hulk and Thor at the start of the movie; to the Guardians when they tried to fight him on Knowhere; to the heroes on Titan once he got use of the gauntlet back; and he pretty much wades through everyone who tries to rush him when he arrives in Wakanda. Ironically, he's only on the receiving end (not counting the scuffle with Gamora in said Knowhere scene which was revealed to be an illusion) once in the film, near the end when Thor throws Stormbreaker at him, which slices through the Gauntlet's power and manages to impale him. Sadly it's not enough to kill him, however, and Thanos succeeds in doing his Badass Finger Snap before retreating.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Thanos thrashes the heroes on Titan, but an all-out attack from Iron Man does at least scratch his cheek.
  Thanos: All that for a drop of blood.
• Curse Cut Short: Nick Fury, as he's disintegrated in The Stinger. Pretty appropriate for Samuel L. Jackson (though this isn't the first time his character's only attempt to say that word fell victim to this trope).
  Nick Fury: Motherf...

D

• Dangerous Device Disposal Debacle: One of the running subplots is the attempts by Scarlet Witch, Steve Rogers, et al to safely remove the Mind Stone from Vision so it can be destroyed and kept out of Thanos's hand. Through much of the movie, Scarlet Witch has the opportunity (and permission from Vision) to destroy the stone with it still embedded inside him, likely killing him, but she can't bring herself to do that. In the climax, she finally acquiesces, but it ends up being too little too late. She destroys him and the Stone, but Thanos, practically standing over her at the time, uses the Time Stone to revive Vision and the Mind Stone, and tears it out of Vision's head himself, killing Vision and obtaining the sixth and last Stone.
• Darker and Edgier: This is the darkest MCU film in the Infinity Saga, next to its sequel Avengers: Endgame. The stakes are much higher than they ever were in previous films. Thanos finally makes his debut on Earth to assemble all the Infinity Stones and take over the Universe, showing how immensely powerful he is, along with just how the heroes are about to face their most life-threatening battle. Multiple characters on both sides are killed off throughout the entire film, and three characters are seen tortured. Even the credits reflect this, just being very plain serif fonts on a black background as opposed to the usual "fancy visual effects matching the motif of the movie" that the previous MCU films have used.
• Darkest Hour: The Avengers are still divided following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Asgard has been destroyed and the survivors of its Sufficiently Advanced Alien population are now refugees after Thor: Ragnarok, Wakanda is weakened from the coup attempt in Black Panther, and now Thanos, the villain who set in motion the events of The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron while just sitting on a chair, has finally come to destroy the heroes personally. The film ends on the bleakest note yet for the entire MCU; Thanos has assembled the Infinity Gauntlet and wiped out half the population of the Universe. The surviving heroes number less than half by the end.
• "Darkness von Gothick" Name: All of the Children of Thanos: Corvus Glaive, Cull Obsidian, Ebony Maw, and Proxima Midnight. The groups name was changed from the Black Order, which made the naming theme make a lot more sense.
• Dark Reprise: The first trailer opens with a lonely piano playing The Avengers theme, followed by an orchestra playing its own slower, heavier version, with dark minor cords mixed in, to reflect the Darkest Hour our heroes now face. It also ends with a Triumphant Reprise of the theme to reflect that they also won't go down that easily.
• Dating Catwoman: Vision and Scarlet Witch have secretly been meeting up for romantic holidays since the events of Captain America: Civil War, even though Scarlet Witch is a fugitive and a member of the Secret Avengers, whereas Vision is a member of the New Avengers and part of his duties is trying to apprehend rogue superheroes.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Subverted; Gamora and Peter while going to kill Thanos and save the Collector end up in a situation where Thanos holds her hostage and Peter prepares to kill her on Gamora's request. Thanos is impressed that Peter actually tries and says he likes his daughter's choice of boyfriend.
• Deadly Force Field: The Outriders breaking through Wakanda's shield through sheer force of numbers are cut to pieces. Even the ones who make it through intact have large amounts of flesh burned off.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, Drax, Doctor Strange, and Nick Fury are among those who died to Thanos's Badass Fingersnap, despite surviving the same event in the original Infinity Gauntlet storyline. The latter three also survived the entire comic.
  • Gamora died from the fingersnap in the comic, but dies before that in the movie so Thanos can retrieve the Soul Stone.
• Death by Irony:
  • Loki was originally sent to Earth with the Mind Stone to obtain the Space Stone (in the Tesseract) for Thanos. Here, he tries to hand over the Space Stone, and Thanos promptly kills him.
  • Ebony Maw, a silver-tongued manipulator and pompous windbag, is killed by someone distracting him with words. He runs out of air after being Thrown Out the Airlock.
  • Corvus Glaive stabs the Vision through the back and spends the movie going after him. Corvus is killed by Vision in the same manner with his own weapon.
  • Cull Obsidian dies slamming into a shield that's even tougher than he is. He liked using his grappling hook to pull enemies around, and he dies because someone pulled him around.
  • Proxima Midnight is killed by one of the machines she ordered out, by someone whose powers were created by the item she was fighting to get.
• Death by Looking Up: Subverted, since it doesn't kill the target. Talking to Doctor Strange on Titan, Thanos looks up to see Iron Man dropping down a building-sized piece of wreckage on him. Since it's Thanos we're talking about, this is only the opening salvo of the fight.
• Death Glare: Thor gives Thanos a very menacing one as he pushes Stormbreaker into his chest while calmly reminding Thanos that he told him he would die for what he did at the beginning of the movie.
• Death Is Cheap: Discussed. When Rocket asks about Thor's dead brother, the latter mentions that his brother Loki has been dead before but he fears that this time he might have been Killed Off for Real.
• Death Is Gray: When the Vision has the Mind Stone torn out of his head by Thanos, he fades from his usual red and green into a lifeless gray. Justified because he's made of Vibranium metal, which is naturally gray in its unaltered state.
• Death Is the Only Option: After looking through 14 million versions of future to find the one where the heroes win, Doctor Strange trades Tony Stark's life for the Time Stone and dies as a result. With his last words he claims that there was no other way.
• Deathly Dies Irae: As Thor is explaining to the Guardians of the Galaxy how many Stones Thanos has and where he needs to go for the rest of them. As he mentions the Soul Stone, dies irae plays as the camera cuts to Gamora, foreshadowing her death, sacrificed by Thanos to gain the Stone.
• Death Montage: After Thanos performs his Badass Fingersnap with the fully armed Infinity Gauntlet, viewers are treated to a quiet, somber montage of watching superhero after superhero being Reduced to Dust one at a time, starting with a series of victims on the Wakandan battlefield before moving on to those on Titan.
  Steve Rogers: Oh God.
• Decapitation Required: Thanos's only true weak point is apparently his head/brain. The Avengers/Guardians come closest to defeating him when Mantis essentially hypnotizes him. Once Star-Lord breaks Mantis's control of his mind, Thanos is able to defeat the entire team all by himself. And later, Thanos directly tells Thor that he should have gone for the head.
• Decoy Protagonist: For the first half of the film, Gamora gets a lot of focus — in fact, she has more screentime than any other character in the film apart from Thanos. Halfway through the film, Gamora dies, leaving the role of main hero to bounce around between Thor, Tony Stark, and Doctor Strange. By the end, though, it's clear that the real protagonist of the film is Thanos himself.
• Deep Breath Reveals Tension: Before attacking Thanos, Loki appears to be calm and collected, but then takes a deep breath specifically to show how frightened he really is.
• Deep-Fried Whatever: The Edinburgh-set scene with Wanda and Vision features a chip shop with a prominent sign in the window saying "We will deep fry your kebab."
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Subverted. The team of Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Drax and Mantis with help from Nebula gave their all, and with great coordination they almost manage to subdue Thanos who up until that point was practically unstoppable. Then Thanos brings up killing Gamora, and Star-Lord promptly ruins everything in his emotional rage. Strange's later comment about this all being the only way to get to the one good future out of fourteen millions also suggests even if they had gotten the gauntlet off Thanos, he would have just beaten the crap out of them by himself and taken it back eventually.
• Defiant to the End:
  • Heimdall and Loki's deaths. Heimdall grins, knowing people on Earth have warning about Thanos's impending arrival, while Loki's last words to Thanos are, "You will never be a god."
  • Despite being outclassed by Thanos, Captain America continues to stand up and fight the Mad Titan with everything he has, even managing to grab his Infinity Gauntlet hand and preventing him from closing his fist. Thanos is suitably impressed with Steve's determination before knocking him out with his other hand.
  • Gamora died willing to kill herself to keep Thanos from getting the soul stone and fights him the whole way to being thrown off the cliff.
• Deflector Shields:
  • A huge dome-shaped energy shield protects the Wakanda capital against the assault from Thanos's forces. One of the Drop Ships trying to crash through it is utterly destroyed. It later contains the immense flow of Outriders, but the continuous pressure by the alien mooks allow a few to pierce through. Once the heroes understand they're at risk of being flanked, Black Panther orders a section of the shield to be opened to direct their attack where there are troops ready to fight them.
  • The Border Tribe personal shields, introduced in Black Panther, are also seen in action.
• Demonic Head Shake: Strange is doing this as he's having spasms from seeing millions of possible futures through the Eye of Agamotto.
• Demoted to Extra: With so many characters involved, this was bound to happen, as many of the characters end up more like a cameo with one or two lines. Especially expected with the supporting cast, but even the main heroes aren't immune to it despite being present for a lot of action. Other reasons for this include the Two-Part Trilogy aspect of the story, many characters shortchanged here will get more focus in the conclusion with Avengers 4.
  • Steve gets a dramatic introduction and makes the decision to stage a Last Stand in Wakanda, but otherwise has little impact on the story.
  • Hulk himself appears for less than a minute of screen time in the first scene. The rest of the movie, Hulk refuses to emerge from Banner, with only brief glimpses of a transformation, forcing him to fight using the Hulkbuster armor instead.
  • Natasha and Sam are members of Captain America's team, but only have a handful of lines between the two of them. Okoye is similar.
  • Nick Fury only appears in The Stinger with Maria Hill.
  • Loki and Heimdall are killed in the opening scene.
  • Ned’s appearance on the bus is a brief one as he’s nowhere to be seen for the rest of the movie. He later is confirmed to have died from the snap felt round the universe, albeit offscreen.
• Despair Event Horizon: Wanda has to kill the man she loves, watches Thanos undo it, and then sees her love get murdered all over again. She is understandably mentally shattered by it, and doesn't say a word even as she crumbles into dust.
• Department of Redundancy Department: When Thor attempts a Badass Boast, it fails and just confuses Eitri instead because it's a tautology (Thor says that getting blasted by the energy of a star can only kill him if he dies).
• Designated Girl Fight:
  • When Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight attack Vision and Scarlet Witch, the events make it so the two women fight together.
  • Later, Proxima Midnight ends up fighting a trio of Action Girls: Black Widow, Okoye, and Scarlet Witch.
• Destination Defenestration: Corvus Glaive infiltrates Wakanda and attacks Shuri and Vision. Once Vision is back on his feet, he tackles Corvus through a window.
• Destroy the Product Placement: A very quick Freeze-Frame Bonus; as Spider-Man chases Ebony Maw through the city, Maw slams him with a Rocket Mortgage billboard, making it fall to the ground.
• Detonation Moon: Thanos blows up one of Titan's moons to rain meteors on the heroes.
• Deus Exit Machina: Thor, while wielding Stormbreaker, is the only hero present that stands a chance of stopping Thanos — at least before he completes the Gauntlet — so of course he's nowhere to be found, despite being in the vicinity, while the other heroes are struggling to prevent Thanos from reaching Vision, while Thor is locked in combat with Thanos's remaining troops. It's justified in-story, as since Thor's just returned to Earth, he's not equipped with an Avengers communicator and thus did not hear Steve's orders to converge on Vision's location.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Ross orders James Rhodes (the only pro-accord hero left on the planet) to arrest the fugitive Avengers when they come to help, ignoring the fact that the planet is under the threat of an Alien Invasion, and they could use all the help they can get. And even if Rhodey were willing to follow that order, he would have been unable to carry it out, due to being completely out-numbered, not to mention his disability.
  • On Vormir, Gamora laughs that Thanos kills and tortures and considers it mercy and he doesn't love anyone enough to get the Soul Stone. She neglects to consider that what's relevant here is what Thanos feels. If, in his mind, those horrible actions really are well-intentioned, then he can love someone while still treating them terribly. Such as her.
  • In addition to stopping him alongside everyone else to protect half the universe, Thor has a personal vendetta with Thanos for killing his brother, best friend, and many of his people. It seems that he'll get his chance to avenge all of them when he lodges his stormbreaker in Thanos's chest. Unfortunately, Thanos is not killed or incapacitated, summing this trope up via Wham Line:
    Thanos: You should have gone for the head. [SNAP]
  • Thanos's stated goal is to reduce the population of the universe by half to save resources, specifically citing that there were too many mouths to feed. However, invoked Word of God said that Thanos also killed half of all flora and fauna in the universe, thus destroying half of all food resources. Oops.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: After Thanos's Badass Fingersnap, Peter stumbles towards Tony in mid-disintegration, and vanishes after reaching his arms.
• Dies Wide Open:
  • Heimdall's eyes remain open after Thanos stabs him through the heart as punishment for sending Hulk to Earth with the Bifrost.
  • Later in the scene, Thanos snaps Loki's neck and then leaves him on the floor while his eyes stare up at the ceiling.
  • In the climax, Vision's eyes remain open after Thanos rips the Mind Stone off his head, causing Vision to shut down.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: Played With. Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet runs on a collection of six other MacGuffins hidden inside key objects from from earlier MCU films, which when combined make their user omnipotent. However, it was never dismantled in the first place, and Thanos ordered the Gauntlet to be made specifically to harness the power of the Stones. The six objects in question, and the Infinity Stones they contain, are...
  • The Tesseract (Space Stone) — last seen on Asgard just before Surtur blew it up, although Loki grabbed it from the vault shortly before he summoned Surtur.
  • The Aether (Reality Stone) — given to the Collector.
  • The Eye of Agamotto (Time Stone) — in Kamar-taj in Doctor Strange's possession.
  • The Orb (Power Stone) — handed over to Nova Corps custody.
  • Loki's Scepter/The Vision's Third Eye (Mind Stone)
  • The Soul Stone is not an artifact at all, but simply hidden on a distant planet and watched over by the Red Skull.
  • The gauntlet itself was first shown in Thor as a Freeze-Frame Bonus, although Hela dismissed it as a fake in Thor: Ragnarok. The actual gauntlet appeared in The Stinger of Avengers: Age of Ultron and is revealed to be forged by Eitri in this movie, even showing a prototype.
• Distress Call:
  • The movie opens on the Asgardian refugee ship's distress call, as they are boarded by none other than Thanos. The Guardians of the Galaxy check on the call in hope of a reward (or looting) and ultimately rescue Thor.
  • In The Stinger, Nick Fury uses what little time he has left before disintegrating to send a message to Earth's last hope, Captain Marvel.
• Distressed Dude: Doctor Strange gets abducted by Ebony Maw who tries to take the Time Stone from him via torture. Tony Stark and Peter Parker follow to save him and the Stone.
• Divided We Fall: Zigzagged. Prior conflicts and inability to get past them (best demonstrated by Tony Stark's unwillingness to call Steve Rogers) lead to groups of heroes acting on their own (on Titan, in Wakanda) and without any common plan, which is deemed to result in failure. They do lose, but how much their divided status caused that is up for debate. ^note Tony gets grabbed off the street for his debriefing with Bruce and Stephen and the Black Order's attack happens immediately, not allowing him time to join up even with the Avengers that were still allied with him like War Machine. And after his group departs for Titan, the rest of the heroes gather in Wakanda. The only real effect of the Accords was sidelining Hawkeye and Ant-Man.
• Diving Save: Loki pushes Thor out of Thanos's grip so that the Hulk can take care of Thanos, which is unfortunately to no avail. He thus returns the favor, as Thor pushed him out of being sucked into a black hole in Thor: The Dark World.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Banner can't get the Hulk up.
  Bruce Banner: [slapping himself repeatedly] Come out! Come out! Come out!
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Star-Lord displays trust issues towards Iron Man after he suspects Star-Lord of being sent to the planet Titan by Thanos. Likewise, Iron Man also doesn’t trust Star-Lord either. At first anyways. When he realizes teaming up with him is his only option, he decides to work together with Star-Lord, as well as Drax, Mantis, and Nebula.
• Dog Pile of Doom: During the big battle in Wakanda, Thanos's Outriders pile up on the Hulkbuster and bring it to the ground under their number.
• Do Not Go Gentle: When the heroes see just how severely they're outnumbered by Thanos's forces at the climax:
  M'Baku: This will be the end of Wakanda.
  Okoye: Then it will be the noblest ending in history.
• Do Not Spoil This Ending: This Tweet◊ from The Russo Brothers was a written letter asking fans not to spoil the plot, complete with an #EngineeredHashtag stating #ThanosDemandsYourSilence.
• Doppelgänger Attack: At one point on Titan, Doctor Strange creates dozens of astral copies of himself to surround and distract Thanos, all of them generating energy whips to restrain him. However, they aren't enough to stop Thanos from activating the Gauntlet, using the Soul and Power Stones to simply destroy them all at once and reveal Strange's true body.
• Double Tap: Thanos chokes Loki to death. Then, he snaps his neck just to be sure.
• Downer Beginning: The film begins with the Happy Ending Override for Thor: Ragnarok, with half the passengers aboard the Asgardian refugee ship dead when Thanos's forces assaulted it, Heimdall and Loki included. Thor and Hulk are the only survivors (discounting the half who were presumably allowed to go free), and in Thor's case, it's only because the Guardians happened to respond to his distress call and rescue him from the vacuum of space. Back on Earth, the Avengers are split, or scattered, after the events of Captain America: Civil War, which make them unprepared for arrival of Thanos's forces.
• Downer Ending: Thanos wins. By the end of the film, half of the universe has been killed, including a majority of the heroes. Even Thanos has lost virtually everything in pursuit of his goal. Even the credits that follow are plain white letters instead of the Creative Closing Credits Marvel has usually provided. There's still a glimmer of hope to be found by those who realize that even this is part of Doctor Strange's plan for the one scenario where Thanos is beaten, and those who sit through the credits know that a heavy-hitter is headed back to Earth to help the Avengers.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • Vision, one of the most powerful Avengers, is badly wounded in a sneak attack shortly after he first appears. He spends the rest of the movie barely able to stand, which makes him easy pickings for when Thanos attacks him during the finale.
  • Hulk, the strongest Avenger ^note  It is his official Quinjet username , gets so psychologically traumatized by being soundly beaten by Thanos in the first couple minutes of screentime, he flat out refuses to "come out" even when Banner actively tries. Regardless of whether Hulk's "get beaten, get angrier, come back, rinse repeat till win" thing is in force for MCU, team good guys definitely lose both a cosmic-strong "dueler" and a power comparable to an army, in one. While facing, easy guess, a number of bad guy "bosses" and an army.
  • Thanos is nigh-omnipotent after obtaining all six Infinity Stones, but the sheer magnitude of deaths caused by his Badass Fingersnap visibly damages his Infinity Gauntlet, signaling that conflicts against him in Avengers 4 won't be completely hopeless.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: In the final moments of his fight against Thanos, Tony's arc reactor begins running out of nanites and he has to shift his armor from limb to limb to both protect himself and continue his attack.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: When the Guardians arrive at the location of the distress call, they find the bodies of the people of Asgard floating in space, one of them being Thor, who has survived.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • When the Guardians learn of the Avengers from Thor, the God of Thunder is confident the Mind and Time Stones are safe on Earth as they're protected by the team. Despite briefly returning to Earth during Thor: Ragnarok, Thor still does not know that the team imploded a year after Age of Ultron (or that the field's wide open for the Black Order to acquire the Stones, as they did with the Time Stone).
  • During the fight on Titan, Thanos chides Strange for not once using his greatest weapon (i.e. The Time Stone). Thanos of course has no way of knowing that Strange had already used the Stone before Thanos's arrival and that this had dictated their course of action.
• Driven to Madness: The writers' statements implied that this is the case for Thanos's character. After witnessing his home world's destruction, Thanos became insane (or was already insane from the start) and began his obsession of halving the population of the universe which he ostensibly claims is for the universe's good but in reality its just to prove himself correct.
• Drop Ship: The Children of Thanos attack Wakanda by summoning drop ships containing hordes of Outriders.
• Dye or Die: Black Widow dyed her red hair blonde to better hide after going underground at the end of Civil War. Same goes for Wanda, who dyed her dark brown hair red.
• Dying Declaration of Love:
  • Right before he is destroyed by her powers, Vision tells Wanda that he loves her.
  • Gamora and Quill have a moment like this, and although Thanos prevents the latter from killing the former, it is the last time the two ever see each other.
  • Thanos reveals he does truly love Gamora as his daughter by sacrificing her life to obtain the Soul Stone, which could only be claimed by giving up a soul you truly love in exchange.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • After Thanos has taken over the ship that escaped from Asgard at the end of Ragnarok, there's a tense moment where Loki appears to be handing the Tesseract over to Thanos. Then Loki quips "We have a Hulk," which is the Big Guy's cue to charge in from off-screen and knock Thanos flat on his ass.
  • Falcon's first scene is him delivering a flying kick to Proxima Midnight.
  • Nebula enters the fight against Thanos on Titan by crashing a spaceship into him.
  • Thor enters the fight against Thanos's army by riding the bifrost into the middle of the field, taking out the Outriders pinning down his allies with a single throw of Stormbreaker, and then unleashing a massive lightning-laced blow that kills hundreds more.

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