History Film / THEAVENGERS

* ComicBook/{{Loki}} (TomHiddleston)

{{ComicBook/SHIELD}} director Nick Fury recruits Rogers to join The Avengers alongside Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor, Bruce Banner (and The Hulk), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), and Clint Barton (Hawkeye) to face the threat of Loki's invasion. With conflicting personalities and motivations such as Thor wishing to protect his brother while stopping the invasion, the team must set their differences aside and work together if they hope to save the world.

An eight-issue Prequel comic, ''The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week'' has also been released digitally, tying up loose ends from all movies and setting the stage for ''The Avengers''. A second prequel mini-series focusing on Black Widow's activities leading up to the movie was also released.

* NickFury (Creator/SamuelLJackson)

* [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Incredible Hulk/Bruce Banner]] (Mark Ruffalo/Lou Ferrigno)

Steve "Captain America" Rogers, found frozen alive and thawed in the modern day, must come to terms with the loss of his past life while trying to cope with the modern world. Meanwhile, ComicBook/{{Loki}} (the BigBad of ''Thor'') manages to make his way to Earth in pursuit of the [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger Tess]][[MacGuffin eract]], and an entire army follows him.

{{ComicBook/SHIELD}} director Nick Fury recruits Rogers to join The Avengers alongside [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony "Iron Man" Stark]], [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]], [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Bruce Banner (and The Hulk)]], ComicBook/BlackWidow, and {{ComicBook/Hawkeye}} to face the threat of Loki's invasion. With conflicting personalities and motivations such as Thor wishing to protect his brother while stopping the invasion, the team must set their differences aside and work together if they hope to save the world.

* PhilCoulson (Clark Gregg)

* [[TheMightyThor Thor]] (ChrisHemsworth)

* [[{{Hawkeye}} Hawkeye/Clint Barton]] (Creator/JeremyRenner)

{{SHIELD}} director Nick Fury recruits Rogers to join The Avengers alongside [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony "Iron Man" Stark]], [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]], [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Bruce Banner (and The Hulk)]], ComicBook/BlackWidow, and {{Hawkeye}} to face the threat of Loki's invasion. With conflicting personalities and motivations such as Thor wishing to protect his brother while stopping the invasion, the team must set their differences aside and work together if they hope to save the world.

Steve "Captain America" Rogers, found frozen alive and thawed in the modern day, must come to terms with the loss of his past life while trying to cope with the modern world. Meanwhile, ComicBook/{{Loki}} (the BigBad of ''Thor'') manages to make his way to Earth in pursuit of the [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger Tesseract]], and an entire army follows him.

->''"All right, hey! Hooray, good job guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow; let's just take a day..."''

!!''The Avengers'' assembles the following tropes together:

'''''The Avengers''''' is a 2012 LiveActionAdaptation of ''Franchise/TheAvengers'' comic book directed by Creator/JossWhedon and produced by Marvel Studios, with a cast composed of:

'''WARNING: Spoilers from the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse earlier films]] are unmarked.'''

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[[folder:A-D]]
* ActionFilmQuietDramaScene:
** After the chaotic battle in the Helicarrier [[spoiler:in which Loki kills Coulson and escapes]], Fury talks to Steve and Tony about what he really wanted out of the Avengers.
** A lot of the scenes after that first Helicarrier battle qualify, especially [[spoiler:after Barton wakes up from his enchantment, realizing he has killed fellow agents,]] and then discusses with Black Widow their experiences. She doesn't say much, but their entire relationship is established as he understands exactly what she means with what little she says. Considering the relationship they are supposed to have in the movie, the fact that they only have about three scenes alone, two of them being action, this solidifies ''everything'' we've been told about them up until now.
* AchillesInHisTent: Both Natasha and Bruce have this to some degree: Natasha is working with Fury to manipulate the rest of the Avengers to SHIELD's ends and rebuffs all meaningful contact and collaboration with them, while Bruce adamantly refuses to do anything other than lend his scientific expertise to help SHIELD track the tesseract. Both of them have changes of heart later in the film.
* ActionGirl: Black Widow and Maria Hill.
* ActionPrologue: Right away, the film starts off with Loki breaking into S.H.I.E.L.D. and stealing the Tesseract.
* ActingForTwo: Thanks to [[SerkisFolk advances in motion capture technology]], Mark Ruffalo got to not only play Bruce Banner, but also the majority of Hulk's part. This marks the first time Banner and the Hulk were portrayed by the same person.
* ActorAllusion: Harry Dean Stanton, who played "Brett" in ''Film/{{Alien}}'', has a brief cameo as a security guard who asks Bruce Banner if he's "some kind of alien."
* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Even ''Bruce'' laughed at Tony's prank with the cattle prod.
* AdHominem: Nick Fury uses the "Tu quoque" (hypocrite) version of this while arguing with Stark.
-->'''Fury:''' [Thor] forced our hand. [[BiggerStick We had to come up with something to--]]\\
'''Stark:''' A nuclear deterrent. [[SarcasmMode Because that always calms everything right down.]]\\
'''Fury:''' Remind me again [[ArmsDealer how you made your fortune, Stark]].
* AdaptationDistillation: Several:
** {{Hawkeye}} and Black Widow are agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and dress like their [[UltimateMarvel Ultimate incarnations]], but act more like their [[MarvelUniverse 616 counterparts]].
** Nick Fury is played by SamuelLJackson. His 616 counterpart is an old white guy, but the Ultimate Universe gave him a RaceLift and later artists drew him to resemble Jackson. In fact, they specifically asked for likeness rights from Jackson for the comic which he granted[[hottip:*:One of the requests that he made in order to use his likeness was to portray Nick Fury in any movie adaptation]], which made his later casting as Fury a no-brainer.
** Captain America's costume resembles his Ultimate counterpart's, but he acts like the original 616 character.
** Thor's costume takes elements from the Ultimate line, his original costume, and his contemporary comic book outfit.
** The team is formed by S.H.I.E.L.D. (''The Ultimates'') in response to a threat by Loki (616) and the Chitauri (back to ''The Ultimates'').
* {{Adorkable}}:
** The normally [[TheStoic stoic]] Agent Coulson due to being a ClosetGeek for Captain America. Near-mint condition trading cards are involved.
** Also Captain America, mainly thanks to still being a FishOutOfTemporalWater.
--->'''Thor:''' Flying monkeys? I do not understand.\\
'''Steve:''' I do! ...[[TheWizardOfOz I understood that reference]].
** Also, Doctor Banner, in all his slightly snarky, but still clearly shaken by authority glory. He keeps his head constantly averted from anyone with a gun or in a uniform and only becomes comfortable once he's in his lab. Notable especially, in the scene where he and Cap are first exploring the Helicarrier, he sees guards on the door and inconspicuously turns back around like they're going to lock him up if he so much as ''looks'' at them wrong.
* TheAestheticsOfTechnology: Asgard and Chitauri weaponry/engineering tends toward the sleek and shiny, while modern human technology favors functionality, though with clear embellishments like Cap's uniform and shield and the Iron Man armors. Form does not, however, follow function, as [[spoiler: S.H.I.E.L.D. shows with their boxy, gunmetal-black "Thorbuster" gun based on the remains of the Destroyer, an Asgard weapon.]]
* AirborneAircraftCarrier: The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, as usual. It's even invisible from underneath!
* AlienInvasion: Loki calls in a Chitauri army to conquer Earth.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Loki and the Chitauri. In the comics it's explained that Loki speaks the "All-Tongue", which is understood by anyone as their native language.
* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: Loki manages it three times: the SHIELD Tesseract facility, the Helicarrier, and finally [[spoiler:Stark Tower.]]
* AllStarCast: Not just with the actors themselves, but with all the heroes involved, as a movie of this magnitude was thought to be impossible a decade ago.
* AllThereInTheManual: ComicBook/WarMachine's absence in the film isn't explained or even alluded to. The comic book prequel to ''Film/IronMan3'' ends up explaining where he was during the Chitauri invasion.
* AlternateAesopInterpretation: In-universe example. When the old man in Stuttgart refuses to kneel to Loki, Loki prepares to kill him and calls upon the assembled to "Look to your elder; let him be your example." However, it gets two whole new interpretations when Captain America [[BigDamnHeroes drops in to deflect the blast]]. The first is the more obvious, which is to do the right thing regardless of whether you have any hope of survival. The second is an amusing twist, as Captain America is both an [[LawfulGood exemplar of goodness]] and technically older than everyone present (except Loki).
** Or alternatively, the aesop behind having Captain America defend a German, considering he spent the last time killing Nazis. Oh, and said German clearly showing the backbone the Nazi supporters lacked.
** Especially poignant when you consider that the old man may have been old enough to remember parts of World War II himself, and see Loki as the same.
* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:Hawkeye's description of what it's like to be brainwashed by Loki. "You ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out, stick something else inside? Do you know what it feels like to be unmade?" Natasha, who started training as a child, looks away and says, "You know I do."]]
* AndroclesLion: Tony's kindness towards Bruce and acceptance of the Hulk pays off when [[spoiler:the Hulk saves his life at the film's end.]]
* AndStarring:
** SamuelLJackson as Nick Fury.
** With [[Creator/StellanSkarsgard Stellan Skarsgård]].
* AndThisIsFor: Combined with ItsPersonal.
-->'''Stark:''' And there's one more person you pissed off. [[spoiler:His name is Phil.]]
* AndYourLittleDogToo: Zigzagged by Loki for extra sadism during his confrontation with Black Widow.
-->'''Loki:''' I won't touch [[spoiler:Barton]]. Not until I make him kill you, slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear. And then he’ll wake just long enough to see his good work. And when he screams, ''I’ll split his skull''.
* AntiAir: Hulk's response to the pilot who tried to eject from the jet.
* AntiHero: The Avengers are all over the sliding scale.
** Bruce Banner is a Type I - he's a meek scientist who just wants to be left alone.
** Tony Stark and Thor are both Type II - they're snarky, arrogant, and mostly involved with the conflict for their own reasons (Tony because of his ego, Thor to retrieve his adoptive brother), but the former is a JerkWithAHeartOfGold and the latter is a SpoiledSweet who comes around to being a team player easily enough.
** Hawkeye ([[spoiler:when he's not under Loki's control, anyway]]) is a Type III or IV, depending on the situation he's in. If he's spotting, he's perfectly cool and collected, but get him out on the battlefield and he's lethal.
** Black Widow is all over the scale herself, formerly a Type V before she came to meet Clint Barton, she works as a Type IV spy for S.H.I.E.L.D, and ends up being more of an Extreme Type III by the time the movie ends.
** The Hulk starts as a Type V, being just as likely to attack his team mates as the enemy, and ends up as a Type IV, being a textbook example of DestructiveSavior.
** Averted with Captain America. He's the only one who's a straight up hero.
** Nick Fury, much like the other members of S.H.I.E.L.D., is a Type IV that may have slid down to a type III by the end of the movie. He's a ManipulativeBastard that [[spoiler:keeps secrets from the team and tried to use alien tech to build a WMD]], but ultimately he just wants to protect the Earth.
* ApocalypseHow: Loki attempts a Class 1.
* ArcWords:
** "Old-fashioned".
** "War".
** "Suit up".
** "Sentiment."
* ArrowCatch: Loki catches an arrow fired at him by Hawkeye, and smirks. [[spoiler:Then the arrow explodes]].
* AscendedFanboy: Agent Coulson, who turns out to be a ClosetGeek for Captain America.
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: Played for laughs during the FinalBattle. The NYPD won't listen to Cap's orders to evacuate the civilians and set up a perimeter until Cap takes out a couple of Chitauri in front of the officers, at which point the the Sergeant there starts giving his men the exact same orders Cap gave a second ago.
* AsskickingPose: The entire team as they stand prepared to fight against the enemy.
* TheAtoner:
** Black Widow has "red in her ledger" ([[spoiler: i.e. the many people she's killed]]) that she wants to wipe out.
** Hawkeye also shows some shades of this. [[spoiler:After being freed from Loki's brainwashing, the first thing he wants to know is how many of their fellow agents he's killed while under Loki's control]]
** Though not overly prevalent in this installment of the universe, Tony Stark's role as Iron Man and his participating in the battle at all can all be attributed to him trying to make up for all the years that he [[ArmsDealer manufactured weapons]] and that Obadiah Stane was selling them under the table to terrorist organizations.
* AttackBackfire: Thor's lightning strike [[spoiler:against Tony supercharges the Iron Man suit's power to 475%.]]
* AttackReflector: Captain America's shield, once again.
** Cap redirects Loki's bolt when Loki tries to kill the old man who refused to bow.
** Thor's overhead strike on Cap's shield causes a blacklash that flattens Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and several hundred feet of surrounding forest.
** Later, Cap and Iron Man use Cap's shield to reflect a repulsor beam blast into a squad of Chitauri behind Tony, a'la ''VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance 2''.
* AudibleSharpness: Two blunt examples:
** Thor's hammer hums a whole lot whenever it's used or brandished.
** Captain America's shield also hums quite frequently. Expect much din when the two hit each other in the squabble in the forest.
* AudienceSurrogate: Captain America, being a FishOutOfTemporalWater, regularly needs to be brought up to speed on the new world around him.
* AutobotsRockOut: Invoked. When Iron Man arrives in Stuttgart to back up Captain America, he first hacks the nearest sound system -- the PA system of Black Widow's quinjet -- to blast Music/{{ACDC}}'s "Shoot to Thrill" during the fight. This also serves as a CallBack to ''Iron Man 2'', where he enters the Stark Expo with the same song.
* AvengersAssemble: [[TropeNamer Naturally]]. Though the line itself is only used in a begrudging sarcastic tone by Stark, as seen in the preview. Used as the actual title of the movie in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel:
** Steve still dresses and wears his hair like he's in the [[TheForties 1940s]]. Lampshaded when Steve worries that a jaded public might not receive his star-spangled, patriotic uniform as well as the WorldWarII generation, worrying that it might be seen as old-fashioned, to which Agent Coulson assures him that "Maybe we ''need'' some old-fashioned."
* AwesomeYetImpractical: The S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier. Banner even lampshades it. It takes tons of Tony Stark's arc reactor technology to keep it afloat and is likely astronomically expensive. [[spoiler:And if two of the turbines are taken out, you have a ColonyDrop on your hands.]]
* AxCrazy: Crossed with CameBackWrong. [[spoiler:According to TomHiddleston, Loki's unprotected fall through the cosmos has led him to "see things".]] He's forsaken his family and is determined to destroy the Earth and hand the Tesseract over to those who would use its power to subjugate the entire universe just to spite [[spoiler:his brother.]]
* BackedByThePentagon: Averted. The [[http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/pentagon-poo-pooed-avengers-teamup-163438080.html Pentagon]] said they [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial "couldn't reconcile the unreality of [S.H.I.E.L.D.] and our place in it"]] (to elaborate, it's left ambiguous as to whether SHIELD is a national or international agency, and the Pentagon didn't like the implication that the US military would answer to anyone other than the US government) and thus declined involvement in this movie. However, the US Army did give their involvement.
* BackToBackBadasses: Cap and Thor, Cap and Iron Man, Cap and Black Widow, Black Widow and Hawkeye, Thor and the Hulk... it's a popular tactic. The shot of all of them in a circle during the climax is a MoneyShot featured in the trailer.
* BadassBoast:
** Tony makes several in a conversation with Loki.
*** "You're missing the point — there's no throne, there is ''no'' version of this where you come out on top. ''Maybe'' your army comes, and ''maybe'' it's too much for us, but it's all on ''you''... 'Cause if we can't protect the Earth, you can be ''damn'' well sure we'll avenge it."
*** "I have an army." "We have a Hulk."
** Loki himself gives one complete with an AGodAmI line, unfortunately he just had to do it to [[spoiler:the Hulk. It [[ShutUpHannibal didn't end up well]]]].
** At the end, Nick Fury suggests that he orchestrated much of what happened in the film as a big BadassBoast on behalf of the planet Earth, a way of declaring to all those SufficientlyAdvancedAliens and [[AlienInvasion would-be invaders]] "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" The Chitauri themselves acknowledge this at the end. [[spoiler:Their master Thanos, however, takes it as a challenge]].
* BadassBystander: The old man who refuses to kneel to Loki. He knows what Loki is about, and he knows what is going to happen to him if he doesn't comply with the villain's wishes, because [[AdolfHitler he's seen this sort of tyrant before]]. Yet he ''still'' delivers a ShutUpHannibal with his head held high.
-->'''Loki:''' [[AGodAmI There are no men like me]].\\
'''Old German:''' [[AdolfHitler There are]] ''[[AdolfHitler always]]'' [[AdolfHitler men like you]].
* BadassCrew: Of course! The idea behind the Avenger's Initative was to invoke this trope!
* BadassInANiceSuit: Loki, while not wearing Asgardian attire. Agent Coulson and most (male) S.H.I.E.L.D. agents also wear suits.
* BadassLongcoat: Nick Fury and Loki.
* BadassNormal: Nick Fury, Agent Coulson and Maria Hill contribute to the fight using SHIELD weapons, tactics and leadership. Hawkeye and Black Widow fight side-by-side with the superpowered superheroes, on two occasions needing superpowered assistance to get to certain locations.
* BaldBlackLeaderGuy: Nick Fury heads up the team.
* BashBrothers: Several team ups, the most notable pairings being Iron Man and Captain America, Thor and the Hulk, and Black Widow and Hawkeye. Though Cap and Widow have their moments too.
* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: The Chitauri don't seem to have any apparatus other than their (possibly ornamental) metal masks while riding their sleds in outer space. Of course, they may come from a dimension where the laws of physics are a bit different or their strange cyborg bodies may not need air.
** Averted with Iron Man as Stark [[spoiler: passes through the portal]] since the Iron Man suit didn't have space-faring attachments and Stark quickly passes out.
* BatmanGambit: Loki's plans. All of them rely on pressing the hero's buttons to provoke reactions that he thinks will help him.
* BeatTheCurseOutOfHim: "Cognitive recalibration. I hit you on the head really hard."
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Maria Hill gets small cuts on her cheek and forehead, though it notably stays there for the rest of the movie. Black Widow takes an accidental backhand from the ''Hulk'' and it doesn't even smudge her makeup, let alone pulverize her ribcage.
* BenchBreaker: Black Widow does a flip ''while tied to a chair'', shattering it on impact and freeing herself.
* BerserkButton: Don't tell Thor to put his hammer down!
* {{BFG}}: Coulson retrieves one based on the Destroyer's remains from the Helicarrier armory to face Loki.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Dr Banner, obviously. Agent Phil Coulson also counts: barring Captain Rogers, Coulson is probably the kindest and most polite character in the cast, and yet he's one of the top agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and one of Nick Fury's trustees, a position you do not get if you're not able to kick some serious ass. The way he gives [[spoiler:Loki a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech and shot him while bleeding to death]] speaks for itself.
** Coulson's method of getting through the Russian mafia's call screening.
--->"You're at 114 Solenski Plaza, third floor. We have an F-22 exactly eight miles out. Put the woman on the phone or I will blow up the block before you can make the lobby."
* BigApplesauce: The climactic fight sequence occurs in Manhattan. [[spoiler:For once this is fully justified; it is explicitly stated that Loki is trying to show off and make a spectacle of his EvilPlan, so it makes sense that he'd deliberately choose New York. Captain America tells the Avengers to try to contain the Chitauri in Midtown around Stark Tower (In RealLife the site of the Met Life Building), and within three blocks of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_Viaduct Park Avenue Viaduct]] in front of Grand Central Terminal.]]
* BigBad: Played with. Loki is the main threat and the one who needs to be stopped but it's clear from the start that he's a mere errand boy for a bigger threat.
** BiggerBad: In TheStinger #1 this threat is revealed to be [[spoiler:Thanos.]]
* BiggerStick: [[spoiler:SHIELD]]'s true plans for the cube. [[spoiler:The consequence of the dawning age of superheroes.]]
* BigBrotherInstinct: Thor towards Loki. Even after all the scheming and attempted murder and genocide, he's still looking out for his little brother.
* BigDamnHeroes:
** An elderly German man defiantly stands against Loki in Stuttgart. As Loki is about to kill him, [[ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Cap]] bursts in, blocks the blast with his [[MadeOfIndestructium shield]], and fights. Then, when Loki has Cap on the ropes, Iron Man arrives to provide backup.
** Later, Thor saves Black Widow from Hulk on the Helicarrier.
** And when the Avengers Assemble to stop the invasion from destroying New York.
** And Hulk leaping to catch [[spoiler:Iron Man as he falls helplessly from the portal]].
** When one of the leviathans is closing in on an office building and the people inside can only watch with horror, here comes the Hulk, storming through cubicles to the rescue.
** Played for laughs when Bruce does this...by slowly chugging into Manhattan and up to the badly-outmatched heroes on an ancient, ridiculous-looking, tiny little motorcycle with the oh-so-inspiring comment "Well, this all looks...horrible."
* BigGood: Nick Fury, considering he (nominally) commands all of the heroes and everyone who outranks ''him'' is a KnightTemplar jerk. In actual battle, it's good ol' Cap, who's the most natural leader.
* BigGuyRodeo: At one point, Thor hops on Hulk's back and starts choking him with his hammer.
* BigNo: Thor does one when [[spoiler:Loki stabs Coulson in the back.]]
* BloodFromTheMouth: [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]].
* BloodlessCarnage: This kind of goes without saying by now but it was particularly noticeable in this film. [[spoiler:The army attacks Manhattan without a single person being visibly injured. Despite this, the Avengers seemed quite concerned about the safety of the people on the streets. Afterwards, there's a video of a wall commemorating those who died in the battle, so clearly there were quite a few off-screen casualties.]] In the UK 3D release, however, alien gore does splatter out onto the audience in the final battle.
* BluntYes: Loki responds this way when Thor asks him if he considers himself above the humans.
* BoobsAndButtPose: Black Widow does this in some posters, ''Iron Man'' does it in others.
* BookEnds: Tony and Pepper in Stark Tower.
* BoringButPractical:
** The SHIELD agents all use conventional firearms. Even Nick Fury's RPG launcher fits here, since he uses it for its intended function: shooting down aircraft.
** During one of his InsufferableGenius monologues, Tony wonders aloud how Fury can see the monitors stationed to his left when he's missing an eye. He's told that Fury just turns to look at them, which Tony comments on as inefficient.
** When Fury wants to move the crippled Helicarrier south, the helmsman remarks that navigation systems are offline. Fury's response:
--->'''Nick Fury:''' Is the sun coming up?
--->'''Helmsman:''' ...Yes, sir.
--->'''Nick Fury:''' Then put it on the ''left''!
** [[spoiler:When Tony uploads a computer virus to unlock all of SHIELD's files to find out what they're really doing with the Cube, Cap decides it's taking too long. So he just breaks into the armory, steals a captured HYDRA gun, and dumps it on the table in front of the team.]]
* BoringInvincibleHero: Averted. Maria Hill is injured by a grenade and Fury is shot in the chest. He's wearing a bulletproof vest, but he's still winded. During the final battle, each of the Avengers is winded, wounded, or pinned down at least once. [[spoiler: Coulson also dies, maybe]].
* BorrowedCatchphrase: [[spoiler:Captain America borrows the Hulk's catchphrase: "Hulk? Smash."]]
* BottomlessMagazines: Captain America and the EliteMook he fights at the Helicarrier never seem to run out of ammo in their rifles. Hawkeye does run out of arrows, however. Also, Black Widow is seen reloading one of her guns.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:Hawkeye, Selvig,]] and some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are all mind-controlled by Loki.
* BreakTheCutie: Black Widow to a certain degree. She is chased by the Hulk in the Helicarrier and is nearly smashed by him, causing her considerable distress. [[spoiler:She also confesses to Hawkeye that she's been "compromised" by Loki's HannibalLecture in spite of playing a WoundedGazelleGambit to trick him]].
* BreakingTheFellowship: Part of Loki's EvilPlan early in the film, [[spoiler:by causing Bruce Banner to turn into the Hulk and help break the Avengers group apart so they'd be out of his way while he summoned the Chitauri to Earth. It nearly worked.]]
* BreakThemByTalking: Loki, every chance he gets. [[spoiler:Which is presumably why he's muzzled at the end.]]
* BrickJoke: Used repeatedly, mercilessly, and at every opportunity.
** Cap and Fury's ten dollar SideBet as to whether or not Cap has SeenItAll. Fury wins.
** Agent Coulson's Captain America trading cards are mentioned to Steve and that he'll probably childishly ask him to sign them. The second time the two are together Coulson sheepishly asks if he will sign them. [[spoiler:After Coulson's death, the cards appear again in a much darker context.]]
** Tony offers Loki a drink. He declines at first, but later [[INeedAFreakingDrink he ends up needing one]].
** Tony says they should all eat at a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma shawarma]] joint he saw. [[spoiler:In the second stinger added to the U.S. version, they do. Everyone except Tony and Bruce are in full costume, and the place is still messed up from the attack.]] There's almost no way anyone would notice it on the first viewing, but Tony actually bounces past a shawarma joint when he crash-lands after his "Jonah maneuver" through one of the Leviathans. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of thing, and is kind of amusing if you consider what it says about Tony.
** Tony calls an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D. out on playing VideoGame/{{Galaga}} instead of working. It sounds like he's just [[HoldingTheFloor holding the floor as a distraction,]] so he can plant his virus bug to break into S.H.I.E.L.D's mainframe. Cue the end of the scene where we see a S.H.I.E.L.D grunt sheepishly switch windows and go back to playing Galaga.
** After Banner riles off some TechnoBabble, Tony says, "Finally! Someone who speaks English," to which Steve wonders bemusedly, "Was that what that was?" Later, Tony attempts to explain to Steve what to do while they make some repairs, but does it [[TechnoBabble in such a way]] that Steve has to tell him "Speak English!"
** Hawkeye commenting that he'd like to put an arrow in Loki's eye. [[spoiler:It comes back twice: Once in Manhattan, he fires an arrow at Loki's eye, Loki catches it, and it explodes. The second return is at the end of the battle, when Loki crawls out of his Hulk Smash hole. The Avengers are all circled around him, and Hawkeye is front-and-center, with an arrow pointed at Loki's face (presumably aimed for the eye).]]
** A rather heartwarming one occurs when Pepper asks Phil Coulson about his girlfriend, only to be informed that they broke up when she moved to Portland. Later, when Tony arrives on the Helicarrier, he's shown offering to fly him out to see her on his private jet.
** ''Ant. Boot.''
** Several characters, most notably Natasha and Tony, express curiosity about Banner's "secret" for how he's managed to avoid getting angry and keep the Hulk from emerging for so long - Natasha speculates about yoga, while Tony's guesses include "an enormous bag of weed." Just before joining in the final battle, Bruce reveals his secret: [[spoiler:he's ''always'' angry.]]
* BuffySpeak: Inevitable, with the TropeNamer [[JossWhedon on board]].
-->'''Tony Stark:''' ...enormous green rage-monster.
* BuildingOfAdventure: Stark Tower is a somewhat mundane example that's just focused around awesome Iron Man stuff but a FreezeFrameBonus at the end reveals that he plans to give the building a substantial upgrade that includes a hanger for the Quinjet as well as giving the various members personalized floors of their own.
* BulletproofVest: After getting shot, [[spoiler:Fury]] makes it a point to extract the bullet from the vest and show it to the camera as per trope tradition. Cap also gets shot during the battle, but survives thanks to his armor.
* BullyingADragon:
** [[spoiler:Yes, Loki, you ''are'' a god, but that ''doesn't'' mean you should try to push the Hulk around.]]
** Similarly, Tony shocking Bruce Banner mid-conversation with a miniature cattle-prod to see if he can control his episodes. Possible Subversion as Tony seems to be playfully teasing, rather than bullying. In fact, Steve seems more annoyed about it than Bruce does, he even ''[[NotSoStoic laughs.]]''
** Tony invokes this towards Loki, casually pointing out that he's met some of the most dangerous people on the planet and somehow managed to piss off ''every single one'' of them. What makes Loki think this will end well for him?
** The [[spoiler:Chitauri]] acknowledge that [[HumansAreWarriors humanity]] is a ''[[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant very]]'' credible threat to the other realms.
* ButtMonkey: Despite being the BigBad Loki seems to have a few spells of being one of these, especially towards the end of the film. Every Avenger (with the exception of Cap) gets his goat at least once. Even [[spoiler: Phil Coulson]] gets in a good shot.
* CainAndAbel: Loki and Thor themselves as usual. Loki tries to [[spoiler:outright ''murder'' his brother Thor when he was safely imprisoned]]. [[ForegoneConclusion It doesn't work]]. Thor later [[spoiler:makes one last bid to talk Loki down during the climactic battle. Loki's response is to pull out a knife and stab him.]]
* CallBack:
** [[spoiler:"His name is Phil." A Call Back to the start of the movie, where Pepper refers to Agent Coulson as "Phil", and Tony jokingly responds "Um, his first name is 'Agent'."]]
** In the middle of the movie Tony refers to Banner's Hulking out as "suiting up." At the climax of the film, when Banner arrives at the battle Tony says to tell him to suit up.
** Stark calls Fury's plans for the Tesseract and reverse-engineered Asgardian technology a "nuclear deterrent" and scoffs at them. During the Senate hearing near the beginning of ''Iron Man 2'', he referred to himself as America's nuclear deterrent.
** Black Widow's "cognitive recalibration" [[spoiler:(how she shook the brainwashing off of Hawkeye)]] apparently comes up again when Iron Man attacks the portal generator and creates a shockwave that hurls [[spoiler:Dr Eric Selvig]] into a wall, fixing ''him'' up as well.
* CameraAbuse: The camera lens gets splattered with gore multiple times.
* TheCape: Captain America, who's definitely the most upstanding guy around. He's worried a bit that some may view this as old-fashioned in the cynical 21st century, but Coulson tells him that right now we may need his brand of "[[GoodIsOldFashioned old-fashioned]]."
* CaptainObvious: When asked to inspect an electrical panel, all Captain America can report is a distinctly sarcastic, "It appears to run on some kind of electricity."
* TheCaptain: Captain America (duh) but the man proves his rank isn't just for show when he displays terrific organization and leadership abilities. During the final battle he manages to get everyone together and quickly tells them all how to play to their strengths for maximum group benefit. (Hawkeye being the team spotter, himself and Black Widow evacuating people on the ground, Stark and Thor taking out enemies in the air, and Hulk... [[PhraseCatcher smashing stuff]].)
* TheCameo: StanLee, naturally, as he's done it in almost every other Marvel movie thus far, this time as a man playing chess in the park being interviewed by a news crew. "Superheroes? In New York? Gimme a break!" A deleted scene (now being taken down by Disney/Marvel) shows a different Stan Lee cameo which takes place near the beginning of the movie where he gives Steve some girl advice.
* CarCushion: Cap gets this treatment. It helps that he only fell about one story on to [[MadeOfIndestructium his shield]] and is empowered by [[SuperSerum the Super Soldier Serum]]. He still takes at least a couple of minutes to get going again; it ''really'' hurt.
* CarFu: Thor takes out a few mooks with a car using a swing of his hammer.
* CasualDangerDialogue:
** During the final battle in New York:
--->'''Tony:''' I'm bringing the party to you.\\
''(Tony appears, chased by a Leviathan)''\\
'''Natasha:''' [[ThisIsGonnaSuck I... I don't see how that's a party.]]
** Also, when she and Hawkeye are standing side-to-side once again against heavy opposition, Black Widow with her handgun and Hawkeye with his bow and arrow:
--->''(fighting techno-organic alien invaders)''\\
'''Black Widow:''' It's like [[NoodleIncident Budapest]] all over again. \\
'''Hawkeye:''' You and I remember Budapest ''very'' differently.
** Coulson and Black Widow's very casual conversation while she was being held hostage and tied to a chair. She then shows she wasn't really in danger by knocking out the guys holding her hostage while [[SeenItAll Coulson is still on the phone just waiting for her to finish.]]
* {{Catchphrase}}:
** Captain America says, [[spoiler:"And Hulk? Smash."]] [[BorrowedCatchphrase borrowing the catchphrase]].
** Averted: nobody says "Avengers assemble!" Depending on which scene they tried to work it into, [[http://io9.com/5908245/why-the-avengers-dont-say-their-most-famous-catchphrase-in-the-avengers it was deemed too cheesy or redundant of a line]]. However, there is the UK title, and cast members reportedly texted one another the phrase before gathering socially in their off-hours.
* ChairmanOfTheBrawl: Black Widow beats up criminals with a chair and she doesn't even have to get up from it.
* ChangedMyMindKid: Bruce Banner reluctantly lets himself get recruited for his scientific skills, and makes it clear that he's only there to help find the Tesseract and won't be sticking around once the fighting starts. After he leaves, Tony Stark is confident he'll decide to come back and help, but everybody else assumes he's gone for good. [[NeutralNoLonger Tony turns out to be right.]]
* CharacterDevelopment:
** Tom Hiddleston described Loki in this film as having "seen things" while falling through the void, saying that getting tossed through a wormhole of his own making has really affected his psyche and his development as a villain.
** Tony Stark starts out the snarky anti-hero of previous films, but when Cap calls him out on the selfish, lone wolf approach he's taken to superheroism, Tony realizes what it really means to be part of a team and to put his life on the line for someone else. It helps that [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]], someone that Tony knew personally, does exactly this [[spoiler:and suffocates when his suit shuts down as a result.]]
** Bruce Banner must continue his arc from the previous film, accepting that the Hulk is a part of him, for good or ill.
** Captain America goes from being confused about his place in the present and wondering if GoodIsOldFashioned in the present, to using his [[NiceGuy inherent goodness]] and tactical skills to lead the Avengers and ends up inspiring people, as shown [[spoiler:in the news reports after the invasion.]]
** Thor goes from continually trying to reach out to and believe in his brother, [[BigBad Loki]], and not being a good team player, to becoming a much better teammate and eventually realizing he has to stop Loki.
** Loki's personality actually [[{{Irony}} devolves]] from his unusual antagonist status of an AntiHero with ByronicHero traits whose actions, while not particularly enjoyed by Thor, were at least reasonable and well-followed, (his methods were the issue) into the traditional villain antagonist.
* ChekhovsGag: Black Widow quips it's only a matter of time before Coulson rabidly begs Steve Rogers to sign his trading cards. This quickly turns out to be the case. When we actually see the cards in question, they're still [[spoiler:wet with Coulson's ([[EpilepticTrees fake]]) blood.]]
* ChekhovsGun:
** Much is made early on of the newly-launched Stark Tower, which runs on its own arc reactor, and how it could be interpreted as a giant monument to Tony's ego. [[spoiler:Later, Steve and Tony figure out that Loki needs access to a big power source to activate the Tesseract, and that Loki wants the invasion to be a monument to his own ego.]]
** Cap berates Tony for his inability to be heroic, especially when it comes to making sacrifices.[[spoiler:Naturally, Tony makes a HeroicSacrifice at the end. He suffocates, but survives.]]
** Early in the FinalBattle, Black Widow kills a Chitauri mook by ripping a bunch of electronics out of its neck, establishing these aliens as at least party cybernetic. [[spoiler:At the climax, Iron Man throws a nuke at the Chitauri command ship, [[InstantWinCondition shutting down the attack force]].]]
** Nick Fury's description of Loki's jail cell is a classic example: as soon as he mentions it's [[spoiler:designed to be dropped out of the Helicarrier and will fall 30,000 feet]], you know that capability is getting put to use ''somehow''.
** Cap says that Loki's staff looks like HYDRA technology, which was powered by the Tesseract. [[spoiler:SHIELD too was designing HYDRA inspired weapons powered by the Tesseract. And at the end, Loki's scepter is the only thing that can pierce the Tesseract's energy barrier]].
** Averted with Thor's lightning providing Stark's armor with a 475% overcharge, as demonstrated accidentally during their forest skirmish. Although a potentially useful if self-destructive tactic (the armor didn't come out of it unscathed), this is never used during the final battle against the Chitauri.
* ChekhovsSkill:
** [[GuileHero Black Widow]]'s WoundedGazelleGambit used in the beginning is used on Loki later on.
** Early on Tony is introduced while totally underwater, revealing that his suits are totally airtight and temporarily life-sustaining without an outside source of oxygen. This comes in handy when [[spoiler:he needs to survive in the vacuum of space for a while during the climax.]]
* ChewingTheScenery: Loki gets his moments in the cell tearing into Black Widow and trying to do the same to Hulk.
* ColbertBump: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma Shawarma]] started selling like hotcakes in April. [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/avengers-shawarma-scene-i_n_1500762.html One Hollywood shawarma restaurant]] has seen ''80% more business'' since the movie opened.
** Arguably it gave one to ''{{Galaga}}''; a webcomic about the game started up after the film's release.
** In the comics, {{Hawkeye}} gained his own (very successful) title as a result of the film's popularity.
* ColdSniper: Hawkeye, with his bow. The trope is particularly in effect during the first half of the film [[spoiler:while he's under Loki's MindControlDevice]].
* ColonyDrop: [[spoiler:Part of Loki's plan involves having the Hulk wreck up the SHIELD Helicarrier, thus distracting everyone from the brainwashed Agents sabotaging the engines until it drops like a stone out of the sky.]]
* CombatPragmatist:
** The Hulk has a style that consists of bashing, smashing, and using whatever is nearby. It is most obvious in his fight with Thor, who is a seasoned warrior with a much more refined style.
** Black Widow, a highly trained martial artist, is not above resorting to [[GroinAttack groin kicks]] and biting.
** Hawkeye is a talented archer. In his second combat sequence in the film, he also carries a handgun and a knife. He also resorts to hair-pulling in his fight with [[spoiler: Natasha]].
** When Hawkeye and Black Widow fight [[spoiler:each other]], there's a noticeable amount of biting, scratching, and hair-pulling among the fancy martial arts moves.
** As in his own film, Cap relies on his shield because of its powerful symbolic value but he'll still use a gun or any other weapon that's handy if the need arises, cuz ya know, there's a war on out there.
* ComicBookMoviesDontUseCodenames: Per the course of their previous appearances, their superhero names are only mentioned a few times:
** Banner goes out of his way to avoid saying "Hulk", instead referring to his alter-ego as [[TheScottishTrope "the other guy"]]. Other characters use the name, however, and he does manage to slip at least once.
** Natasha directly calls Clint "Hawkeye" when she's riding a Chitauri hovercraft on piggyback because it's his radio callsign. Dr. Selvig also refers to him as "the Hawk" in the first scene. Otherwise, people refer to him as Clint or Barton.
** Whilst being interrogated, Natasha Romanoff is referred to as "the famous Black Widow", but Nick Fury typically refers to her as "Agent Romanoff." Clint refers to her as Tasha or Nat.
** Tony is once again never referred to as "Iron Man" during the film, with closest being Thor calling him "Metal Man" and a reporter making the clear distinction of "Tony Stark's Iron Man" during one of the reports on the battle in Manhattan.
** A mention is made of Captain America trading cards and Banner mutters the name once. A civilian bystander also refers to him as Captain America in an interview on the news during the epilogue. In conversation, though, he's always just addressed as "Steve" or as "Captain"--but "Captain" is only used because, in this version, that's actually his rank in the Army.
* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Amusingly, a wooden desk is the second best thing to hold off Chitauri blast lances after the Captain America shield.
* ConceptsAreCheap: Loki's words about TheEvilsOfFreeWill hardly come up except a few times in the beginning, and hardly matter (except to briefly [[GodwinsLaw compare him to Hitler]]).
* ConsummateLiar: Nick Fury. Lampshaded late in the movie concerning [[spoiler:where he found Coulson's Captain America trading cards]].
* ContinuityNod: Quite a few.
** Black Widow mentions to Coulson that Stark doesn't trust her after finding out she's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in ''Iron Man 2''.
** We get clips from previous films either as FlashBack or as raw footage, especially when it comes to Captain America.
** Pepper Potts' previous meetings with Coulson are referenced.
** When inspecting the hologram of the Tesseract at Stark Tower, Tony gets a look on his face that says: "Wait a minute, I know this! This cube was in my father's journal..."
** Banner mentions nearly destroying Harlem, referencing the Hulk's fight against the Abomination at the end of ''The Incredible Hulk''.
** Banner also mentions that at one point he [[spoiler:tried to kill himself, but the "other guy" spit out the bullet]]. This was shown in the alternative opening to ''The Incredible Hulk''.
** Iron Man refers to the new suit as Mark VII, indicating past armors. He also uses the lasers from ''Iron Man 2'', and they're still apparently one-offs until he upgrades to the Mark VII suit, which has them on auto-reloading clips.
** Practically every plot element of ''Thor'' was mentioned throughout the movie.
** Tony still doesn't like to be handed things.
** Tony mentions that his father knew Captain America. Who found the Tesseract while searching for the Captain?
** Insulting Thor to his back is still not a good idea.
** Black Widow makes an allusion to Tony's talk with General Ross in ''The Incredible Hulk''.
** [[NataliePortman Jane Foster]] is explained as being transferred to a distant place to protect her from Loki. Her actress was very pregnant at the time of production.
** The gun Coulson uses on Loki was reverse engineered from the Destroyer in ''Thor''.
** The Hulk can't lift Mjölnir because he isn't worthy.
** Captain America, when first meeting Loki in Germany, notes that the last time he went to that location, he also had to deal with someone who believed he was higher than everyone else, referring to either Red Skull or Hitler.
** Cap says that Loki's scepter may run on magic, but it looks like HYDRA technology.
*** Thor stated the reason in his own movie: Asgardian technology is so far advanced beyond current human tech that it is indistinguishable from magic to us.
** Cap destroyed a punching bag when Fury walked in at the end of his movie. When Fury walks in on him in this movie, he's working a punching bag and knocks it off its chain, though he doesn't destroy it. When he's walking out, he picks up a punching bag from a row of them he has on the floor.
** Tony's line about bringing "the party to you" is a callback to a line Natasha says to Tony in ''Iron Man 2'' when the Hammer drones attack.
** Loki flat out lampshades it when he traps Thor with an illusion trick.
-->'''Loki:''' Are you ever ''not'' going to fall for that?
** The conversation Thor and Loki have just before trading blows in the climax mirrors the one Odin and Laufey had after Thor's destruction of Jotunheim.
** A very subtle one, but a lot of Tony's dialogue while [[spoiler: mourning over Phil Coulson]] reflects Yensin's death in the first ''Iron Man'' movie.
** The beam of light generated by Selvig's portal device resembles the beam created by both the Bifrost in ''Thor'' and the overloading Arc Reactor in ''Iron Man''. The generator itself incorporated design elements from both the Bifrost (where the beam emerges) and the Arc Reactor (the coil surrounding the iridium).
* CoolOldGuy[=/=]BadassGrandpa: When Loki intimidates a crowd of people and forces them to kneel, an elderly man defies him.
--> '''Loki''':...You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.\\
'''Old Man:''' Not to men like you.\\
'''Loki:''' There are no men like me.\\
'''Old Man:''' There are ''always'' men like you.
* CoolPlane: The Avengers' Quinjet is almost as fast as Iron Man and has a machine gun.
* CoolShades:
** {{Hawkeye}} has these in the promo material but only wears them at the very end of the film itself.
** PhilCoulson sports a pair when greeting Fury at the start of the movie.
* CoolShip: The Leviathans for the Chitauri. The [[AirborneAircraftCarrier Helicarrier]] for {{SHIELD}}.
* CoolVSAwesome: Just about any of the fights in this movie.
** The world's first superhero (a SuperSoldier) vs. the Norse God of Mischief (who's also a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien and an EvilSorcerer).
** Supergenius in PoweredArmor vs. the Norse God of Thunder, with the SuperSoldier trying to break it up. [[UnstoppableForceMeetsImmovableObject Features Mjölnir vs. Captain America's Shield]].
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FrzYzJUmVg Norse God of Thunder]] vs. an [[BuffySpeak Enormous Green Rage Monster]].
** World-class assassin vs. [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy [[TheAce master]] [[ArcherArchetype archer]].]]
** All of the above fighting the Norse God of Mischief and his army of [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot cybernetic alien monsters]].
* CosmopolitanCouncil: The World Security Council. Consisting of American, British, Chinese and Russian members.
* CountryMatters: Loki calls The Black Widow a "mewling quim".
* CrazyPrepared: Tony almost out Batman's ''{{Franchise/Batman}}'' for designing a suit that can [[spoiler:deploy and attach itself to him ''while he's falling out a building.'']]
** Hawkeye has exploding arrowheads, hacking arrowheads, super-heating arrowheads, shrapnel arrowheads, grappling hook arrowheads, [[spoiler:exploding arrowheads disguising to look like normal arrowheads so on the off chance the target has the SuperReflexes to catch the arrow they won't recognize it as an exploding arrowhead...]]
%%* CrowningMomentOfFunny: remember, there are separate pages for the various Crownings... (leaving this here to help prevent returns)
* CrucifiedHeroShot: [[spoiler:Tony gets one at the climax. After sacrificing himself to fly the nuke into space, he loses consciousness in the vacuum and and slowly falls backwards, arms outstretched and head hanging limp. And for a double-whammy of symbolism, he hauls the nuke up through the portal while ''carrying it on his back''. He also sacrifices himself not while defeating the enemy, but while saving the WSC (who qualifies as a council of state officials) from the sin of murdering millions of civilians, skims over water to catch the nuke, carries it on his back and over one shoulder through the city while watched by thousands of bystanders and news-viewers, ascends into the heavens, ''suffocates'' and dies (temporarily) high above the city and all alone, and then returns to earth, where his limp body is caught and lowered to the ground and surrounded by his teammates before he then comes back to life and greets them. ''And'' the way the repulsor ports in his palms look while he's falling is pretty noticeable as well]]. The only thing missing from the allegory was a bit of PietaPlagiarism.
* CurbStompBattle:
** At the climax, [[spoiler:Loki loses his cool and yells at the Hulk. This is exactly as bad of an idea as it sounds.]]
** You know the gigantic biomechanical Leviathan the trailer builds up as a grave threat? After roughly five minutes of being unstoppable, [[spoiler:the Hulk stops the first one with a single punch to the face, setting it up to be blasted by Iron Man.]]
* CursedWithAwesome: This is how Tony Stark has come to view the electromagnet and the miniature arc reactor plugged into his chest 24/7 and are the only things keeping him alive. He spends a good deal of the film trying to convince Bruce Banner that the Hulk is a similarly awesome curse. For Tony, the "awesome" part kicks in when [[spoiler:Loki tries to brainwash him, but he can't, because his heart is protected by the arc reactor.]]
* CuttingTheKnot: During their argument, Steve accuses Tony of not being the sort of man to lie on a wire to let a comrade crawl over him. Tony remarks that he'd rather just cut the wire.
* TheCynic: Tony Stark is still more than a little self-absorbed and doubtful of the competence and intelligence of anyone but himself, though throughout the film we see this change.
* DangerouslyGenreSavvy:
** When Hawkeye fires an arrow at Loki [[spoiler:while he's riding a Chitauri glider, Loki catches it in mid-air with his SuperReflexes and looks at it, as if to check what type of arrow it is. The arrow in question looks markedly different from the explosive one Hawkeye used earlier to blow up part of the Helicarrier, so Loki smirks when he's sure he's safe. This turns out to be a setup, however, when the arrowhead opens and explodes anyway.]]
** Someone in [[WellIntentionedExtremist the WSC]] must have been pretty genre savvy; [[spoiler:they scramble two F-35s with nukes rather than just one, and the first is shot down by Fury.]]
** [[spoiler:When Barton is mind-controlled]], he realizes Fury is stalling so the place will collapse and they and the Tesseract will all be buried, keeping it out of Loki's hands, and informs Loki.
* DarkestHour:
** Loki calls Fury on it.
-->'''Loki:''' How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?
** Invoked for the team at large following the Helicarrier siege. Loki breaks it down again:
-->"Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky. Where is my disadvantage?"
* TheDeadHaveNames: "[[spoiler:His name is Phil]]."
* DeadpanSnarker: All of the Avengers (sans Thor and for the most part, Cap) as well as Loki have their moments.
-->'''Thor''': Listen well, brother -- (''Gets bowled over by Iron Man.'')
-->'''Loki''': (''amused'') I'm listening.
* ADeathInTheLimelight: In as much as it's possible in an ensemble cast. [[spoiler:Coulson gets a lot more character development here and in the tie-in comics, including that he has/had a romantic relationship with someone who may have been a cellist, and that he's a giant Captain America fanboy.]]
* DeathIsDramatic: Despite numerous casualties suffered by both attackers and S.H.I.E.L.D agents on the Helicarrier the only one that any time is spent dwelling on is [[spoiler:Coulson.]] Barton does ask [[spoiler: how many died because of him]] but he seems more [[spoiler: angry that he was responsible rather than mourning their deaths]].
* DefeatMeansFriendship: After Thor spends a couple minutes beating the crap out of him before the two of them figure out they're on the same side, Tony brushes it off with a merry "No hard feelings, PointBreak, [[WorthyOpponent you've got a mean swing]]" and cheerfully claps him on the shoulder.
* DefiantStoneThrow: The old German man, with ''words''.
* DefiantToTheEnd:
** The old German man who refuses to kneel before Loki.
** [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]], who shows no fear when confronting Loki.
* DemotedToExtra: A number of important supporting characters from the previous films receive much less screentime in this film.
** Gwyneth Paltrow reprises her role from ''Iron Man'', but in a minor capacity. Robert Downey Jr. asked for her to be included as a way of explored the Potts/Stark relationship that was established at the end of ''Iron Man 2''. Whedon agreed, because "you should always, given the opportunity, put a Gwyneth on-screen."
** Dr. Selvig also returns from ''Thor'', in a role that's more plot-important but doesn't necessarily get any more screentime.
* DestinationDefenestration:
** Tony Stark gets tossed out of a window. Sans armor.
** Cap later gets blasted out of a window at Grand Central Terminal. [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe Luckily, his shield protected him]].
* {{Determinator}}: Much of the cast.
** Cap especially seems this way, especially after the point where he gets flung out of a building by a bomb, is clearly worn down, and yet he gets up and keeps fighting.
** Black Widow, especially where Hawkeye is concerned. On the Helicarrier, she takes a full on hit from the Hulk and is obviously rattled and injured, to the point of a mini-BSOD. [[spoiler:When she hears Hawkeye is in the complex? She gets right up and takes the fight to him.]]
** Hulk, naturally. It's in his character, after all: he'll just keep fighting. Nothing you throw at him will stop him.
** Thor when it comes to Loki and Earth. It's implied that he had his father [[SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology use a lot of dark energy]] to send him back to Earth, and when he gets there he seeks out Loki with almost single minded drive.
** Coulson [[spoiler:takes a spear through the back]] and ''still'' manages to give Loki a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech and blast him through a wall [[spoiler:as he's bleeding out.]]
** Tony probably takes more punishment and damage than everyone else combined (the Mark VI armor is one good tap away from falling to pieces by the end of the second act) and still keeps going, making hasty repairs on the fly and pushing his servos to the limit when trying to restart the Helicarrier's engines.
** Maria Hill in the pre-credits sequence, when she furiously chases down Loki, [[{{Hawkeye}} Clint]], and Selvig in a Jeep through the rapidly-collapsing base, shaking off multiple crashes, gunfire, and falling debris. It takes an ''entire tunnel'' caving in on top of her and crushing her engine flat to finally stymie her.
** The NYPD officers in the final battle. There's a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy gaping open above Manhattan, aliens with futuristic weapons and giant mechanical whales are pouring in and swarming the city, and yet New York's Finest are still out in the streets, keeping order, directing the evacuation, and trying to form a defense.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu:
** [[spoiler:Hulk putting a smackdown on Loki]].
** [[spoiler:Coulson]] gives a demonstration of why not to talk smack to a downed opponent.
** Hulk [[spoiler:rolling through an office to jump out the window and literally punch out a Leviathan]].
* DiesWideOpen: [[spoiler:Coulson.]]
* DisabilityImmunity: The arc reactor in Tony's chest that keeps his heart beating also [[spoiler:makes Tony [[NoSell immune to Loki's brainwashing technique]].]]
* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:Iron Man.]]
* DivideAndConquer: [[spoiler:This is Loki's plan for dealing with the Avengers; he targets Bruce in particular. He succeeds for a while even after they realize what he's up to.]]
* DividedWeFall: Happens quite brutally, with tragic consequences, during Act II.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything:
** Massive damage to New York ensues after a surprise attack. The ending with post-strike reports just screams 9/11. Also, you will find few Americans who remember that day vividly and who empathized with the office workers who ''weren't'' reminded of it in the scene when the office workers look out the window to see, not a plane, but an equally impossible to imagine giant bug creature. (None who didn't feel a slight sense of satisfaction in seeing the ''Hulk'' racing through the cubicles to the rescue.)
** At one point, a Leviathan exits from a building and you can see the building begin to fall behind it in a fashion similar to the World Trade Center towers.
** A more comedic moment: when [[spoiler:Loki fails to brainwash Tony with his staff, he looks taken aback and says this has never happened to him before. Tony makes an idle comment about [[TheLoinsSleepTonight performance issues]].]]
** When Iron Man lets go of [[spoiler:the nuke]], it does a fair job of being the Space Shuttle separating from its external fuel tank. Though it's actually the shoulder jets from the Iron Man armor falling off, the imagery is there.
* DoNotTauntCthulhu: Loki's attempt to [[spoiler: ''intimidate'' the Hulk ends [[CurbStompBattle just as well as you can imagine]].]]
* DownerBeginning: The film opens with Loki killing over a dozen people, [[spoiler:brainwashing one of SHIELD's top agents along with a renowned scientist]], and escaping with the Tesseract as an entire SHIELD base is destroyed and Nick Fury escapes by the skin of his teeth. Cue title card.
* TheDreaded: Even his own team members are afraid of the Hulk.
* DreamTeam: The best the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to offer.
* DrivenToSuicide:
** [[spoiler:Banner reveals that he once tried to commit suicide, but the Hulk took control and spat the bullet out,]] which actually happened in a comic AU miniseries, and was a deleted scene from ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk''.
** Subverted with [[spoiler:Selvig. After he wakes up from Loki's brainwashing, Natasha finds him looking over the edge of Stark Tower's roof, like he's thinking about jumping. Natasha tries to talk him down, only for him to reveal that he's not looking at the ground; he's looking at Loki's scepter a few stories down, which is the key to closing the portal.]]
* DroppingTheBombshell: Banner reveals he knew all along that S.H.I.E.L.D. had a contingency plan to kill him in case the Hulk got out of control - and then he drops the ''real'' bombshell, which is that the plan won't work because [[spoiler:he's ''already tried'' to kill himself.]]
* DropTheHammer: This trope pops up whenever Thor is around, but this movie has a particularly interesting example since Thor drops his hammer on Cap's shield, [[ExactWords in response to Cap's request that he put down the weapon]].
-->'''Thor:''' [[BerserkButton You want me to put the hammer down]]?!
* DutchAngle: Used several times throughout the film.
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:Agent Phil Coulson gets stabbed. Despite this, he gives Loki a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech and blasts him through a wall with a BFG. He tells Fury he's okay with going out this way, because it will give the Avengers -- specifically Tony and Cap -- the push they need to work together as a team.]]
* DynamicEntry: When Stark flies in to aid Cap, he swoops in and blasts Loki before he's close enough for Loki to see Stark clearly.
* DysfunctionalFamily: Thor and Loki have a rather rocky reunion. Hemsworth has noted that Thor's attitude in this movie is a mix between anger, disappointment, and protectiveness towards his little brother.
-->'''Thor:''' [[ThickerThanWater He is of Asgard and he is my brother.]]\\
'''Black Widow:''' He killed 80 people in 2 days.\\
'''Thor:''' ({{Beat}}) ...[[VerbalBackspace He's adopted.]]
* DysfunctionJunction: Take your pick: the ex-LonelyRichKid orphan whose replacement-father figure tried to murder him and steal his company and became a supervillain? The ShellShockedVeteran who was preserved in ice since 1945 and woke up to find that the war he was made to fight was over and everyone he knew was dead? Guy being chased around the world by his ex-girlfriend's father who is literally out for his blood due to his, uh, personality disorder? Russian assassin who was stolen from her parents and trained from childhood to be a cold-blooded killer? [[{{Hawkeye}} Or the former orphan of an archer]] whose emotions get destroyed so thoroughly and will definitely blame himself worse than {{Spiderman}} if the invasion succeeds? Or to top all of them put together, the [[RoyallyScrewedUp crown prince of a godlike alien dimension]] whose little brother is a throne-grabbing, world-conquering, DaddyIssues-plagued, fratricidal, patricidal, genocidal maniac from a completely different species than him and has a case of SiblingRivalry so intense a squabble over daddy's approval between the two of them leveled a town? The correct answer is of course all of the above! Furthermore, all the egos visible from space having to exist together in a single room. These issues have a very strong effect on the characters' volatile, overly-developed, wildly divergent, intra- and inter-personal conflict-ridden Type-A personalities and actions, too. In the words of WSC, they are "isolated and unstable". In the words of Loki, they are "lost creatures". In the words of Bruce Banner:
-->'''Banner:''' What are we, a team? No, no, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:E-L]]
* EatMe: Tony's approach to a giant alien Leviathan with impenetrable armor. It's even lampshaded by Tony, who asks Jarvis immediately beforehand if he's ever heard of the story of Jonah from Literature/TheBible.
* EpicFail: Loki attempts to [[spoiler:subdue Hulk in Stark Tower by yelling at him. Granted, Loki ''was'' having a Villainous Breakdown, but it still wasn't one of his better ideas]].
* EpicMovie
* EpicTrackingShot: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69kGmPeHw0 Required]] for such an [[SceneryGorn epic moment in New York City]]. It starts with Black Widow on the back of a Chitauri on a hovercraft, controlling him. Iron Man flies by her and he blasts a couple of aliens on the ground. He lands next to and fights alongside Captain America, then flies up the side of a building where Hawkeye is on the roof fighting off aliens. He shoots an arrow and the camera follows it as it hits a Chitauri sled. It falls and a Leviathan smashes into it. Aboard it the Hulk and Thor are together fighting aliens. The Hulk rips off a big piece of shell off of the Leviathan and stabs the top of it, and Thor summons lightning and then hammers it in. This brings the Leviathan crashing into Grand Central Station. The two later stand on the defeated Leviathan for a moment, catching their breath, [[spoiler:only for Hulk [[FriendlyRivalry to punch Thor off the Leviathan]].]]
* EqualOpportunityEvil: Loki's henchmen seem fairly diverse, at least racially. Where they're from is never specified though; Hawkeye just refers to them as enemies of S.H.I.E.L.D.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** Maria Hill shows up in the beginning of the movie, butts heads with Nick Fury over the evacuation of a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, and gets into a car chase with an escaping Loki that ends up with her driving backwards at full speed trading gunfire with another vehicle, all before the title credits. Although her role in the rest of the movie is minimal.
** In his first five minutes, Loki slaughters half-a-dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, puts the mind control whammy on some main characters and steals the MacGuffin.
** Black Widow's first appearance in the film has her utilizing the rather unique interrogation techniques on some rogue Russians, and then kicking ass and taking names when Coulson contacts her about Hawkeye being compromised by Loki.
** It's subtle, but Bruce Banner's humanity is the first thing established about him. When a little girl comes begging for his help healing her sick father, Banner's compassion overrides his better judgment; in fact, this is the bait Black Widow uses to draw him into their initial meeting. This moment is an extremely effective contrast with the jibes later in the movie about Banner being a "beast" or "monster."
* EverythingIsOnline: Justified by the qualifier "if it's wireless-connected".
* EvilBrit: Played straight with TomHiddleston's Loki, [[WellIntentionedExtremist subverted]] with the British member of the World Security Council, and averted with Jarvis. Also averted with Thor. Although ChrisHemsworth is Australian, Thor speaks with an RP accent (of varying quality).
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Loki apparently thinks breaking the Avengers team up is enough to eliminate them as a threat. It doesn't occur to him that their better nature as heroes might bring them together again -- as an even stronger team, at that. Tony later guesses, however, after some prodding from Steve, that Loki might have indeed been able to tell what would happen and wanted them to get together so that he could defeat them in front of everyone.
* EvilIsHammy: While Loki is still subdued compared to Thor or Odin, he still gets his moments of this when he wants to make a speech or some grand gesture.
* EvilWillFail:
** "You're going to lose. It's in your nature. You lack conviction."
** As well as Tony's comment that "There's no ''throne''".
* EvilPlan: Loki wants to rule the earth. For this reason he works with the Chitauri and steals the Tesseract to create a portal for them.
* ExactWords:
** Captain America tells Thor to "put the hammer down." Thor puts the hammer down... On Captain America.
** [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy Hawkeye]]'s cover story when approaching the Helicarrier:
--->'''Control tower:''' "We have you on record but not on schedule; what is your haul?"\\
'''[[spoiler:Hawkeye]]:''' "Arms and ammunition."[[hottip:*: The brainwashed army then uses the arms to fill SHIELD agents with ammunition.]]
** Tony Stark tells JARVIS to blow off Agent Coulson's call because he's "not in". He was standing on the balcony right outside.
---> '''Stark:''' I'm not in. I'm ''actually'' out!
** And a few seconds later...
---> '''Stark:''' I did do the heavy lifting. Literally, I lifted heavy things.
* ExplosionsInSpace: Done correctly at the end of the film. [[spoiler:The nuke Tony steers into the Chitauri mothership detonates as an expanding sphere, with no mushroom cloud or PlanarShockwave.]]
* EyeScream:
** [[spoiler:Hawkeye, while BrainwashedAndCrazy,]] has a decidedly blunt approach to bypassing retinal scanners, and Loki is happy to oblige him.
** Hawkeye shows a desire to "shoot an arrow into Loki's eye".
* EyepatchOfPower: Nick Fury.
* FailedAttemptAtDrama:
** Loki's dramatic failure to deliver a climactic brainwashing to Tony thanks to the latter's [[spoiler:miniature arc reactor.]]
** Thor throwing his weight around with Loki, ordering him to "Listen well, brother..." He doesn't get too far in his speech before Tony rockets into him and tackles him off the cliff.
* FakeNationality: Black Widow, being a master manipulator and spy, can pass herself off pretty convincingly as an American. Whether this is done deliberately by the film makers or it's a case of Scarlett Johansson NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent (the character is traditionally portrayed in most iterations with said accent and using Gratuitous Russian) isn't elaborated upon.
-->'''Natasha Romanoff:''' Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I'm Russian...or I ''was''.
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: It goes by very quickly, but when the Hulk is fighting several Chitauri on a rooftop, he palms one guy's head and crushes his skull like a grape...
* {{Fanboy}}: Agent Coulson is a pretty big fanboy of Captain America.
* FantasticRacism: Loki views humans as an inferior race meant for slavery. He sums up this opinion pretty succinctly when he and Thor are talking on the mountain:
-->'''Thor:''' You think yourself above them?\\
'''Loki:''' [[CaptainObvious Well, yes.]]
* FatalFamilyPhoto: [[spoiler:Coulson's trading cards]]. Tony also makes mention of [[spoiler:a cellist girlfriend whom Coulson]] had been seeing in his spare time.
* FateWorseThanDeath: The Chitauri have something special planned for Loki, should he fail to fork over the Tesseract.
-->'''The Other:''' You think you know pain? [[BiggerBad He]] will make you long for something as sweet as pain.
* FemaleGaze: The male heroes' chiseled physiques are often on display. Even their civilian clothing often includes tight muscle shirts. However, only a newly de-Hulked Bruce Banner is seen shirtless.
* FightingFromTheInside:
** [[spoiler:Selvig managed to install a fail-safe in Loki's portal that would allow it to be shut down]], even while he was deep under Loki's control.
** Some hints that this is happening to [[spoiler:Hawkeye]]. He shoots Fury in his armored vest, which Fury notes in a deleted scene. Also, when Loki asks him what the Tesseract showed him, he responds, "My next target" while looking at Loki.
** The Hulk helps out his fellow Avengers during the climactic battle, in contrast to attacking them earlier in the film. Either Banner's feelings toward the rest of the Avengers have changed, causing the Hulk to behave differently toward them, or Banner is actively guiding the Hulk's actions from the inside. Banner himself ''always'' attempts control over the Hulk, as quite plainly demonstrated by his first involuntary Hulk-out: [[ResistTheBeast he gives Natasha an utterly anguished look as the transformation takes hold]], and actively hurls himself ''away'' from her as the change takes place.
* FireForgedFriends: An element of the story is that the members don't get along at first but eventually become friends and learn to work together.
* FishOutOfTemporalWater: Captain America, falling exactly in line with his comic counterpart. PlayedForDrama or PlayedForLaughs depending on the situation.
* FiveManBand:
** TheLeader: Captain America. Type II in practice and Type IV in theory. It takes him a while, but eventually he realizes his good heart and tactical knowledge are what is needed to bring the team together.
** TheLancer: Iron Man. The total opposite of Captain America and the most resistant to being a team player. However, his loose cannon recklessness saves the day several times and conversely it is eventually he who benefits the most from having people watching his back.
** TheBigGuy: Thor is a [[BoisterousBruiser boisterous]] ProudWarriorRaceGuy. Between his SuperStrength, hammer, and ShockAndAwe powers he's strongest of the team. %%Tony is a normal human without his suit and Bruce better fits Smart Guy.
** TheSmartGuy: Bruce Banner was reassured he was recruited for his scientific expertise and that his purpose was to track the Tesseract. Aside from [[spoiler:the climax]] this is his purpose. Stark, also being a super-scientist, is a secondary example. The two of them bond over TechnoBabble.
** TheChick: Black Widow, by virtue of being the girl of the group, her ability to get to places where people don’t want her to be, and her use of emotions to manipulate villains. She's almost a heroic version of the DarkChick.
** TheSixthRanger: Hawkeye. [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy]] for most of the movie, but joins the team at the end for some payback. Appropriately he's a brooding, dark loner, and his ImprobableAimingSkills are ''awesome''.
* FiveRoundsRapid: The NYPD is seen firing at the Chitauri with just their handguns.
* [[FourTemperamentEnsemble Five-Temperament Ensemble]]: The four main members of The Avengers fit this. Tony Stark/Iron Man is sanguine (minus the optimism); Thor is choleric; Steve Rogers/Captain America is phlegmatic; Bruce Banner is melancholic (but appears choleric, of course, whenever he turns Hulk); and Clint Barton/Hawkeye is leukine. Even their most distinctive colours are appropriate (of the following three) for their respective temperaments: Stark (red), Thor (yellow), Rogers (tranquil blue), Barton (neutral black), and Banner (an almost olive green whenever he turns Hulk, which is ironically the only time he doesn't fit his respective temperament, as mentioned above).
* FlawExploitation:
** Loki's favorite tactic. However, Tony correctly spotting that Loki's ego ([[NotSoDifferent similar in size to his own]]) could make him sacrifice pragmatism for showmanship means this trope comes back to bite Loki ''hard''.
** Black Widow also makes use of his love for the BreakingSpeech and TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. The Chitauri use his thirst for vengeance and "worthiness" to make him his errand boy to fetch the Tesseract; in exchange, Loki gets Earth, which they don't give a damn about.
* {{Foil}}: The heart of the humor and drama of this movie lies in the [[BirdsOfAFeather similarities]] and [[OppositesAttract contrasts]] of the lead characters.
** It's taken to ridiculous extremes with Tony to the point where it's not just that he stands in [[IncrediblyLamePun stark]] contrast with every other main character, but even with HIMSELF, (Tony at the beginning vs. Tony at the end)
*** Bruce Banner vs. Tony Stark: Both are genius-level scientists, and harbor mutual respect for each other. While both have a dark side, they are completely different personality-wise. Bruce is, by necessity, mild-mannered and cautious to control his id, while Tony's flamboyance and irreverence are the tip of his self-destructive decadence.
*** Tony Stark vs. Steve Rogers: Apart from being tied by family history, both are motivated by a sense of American patriotism and a desire to end wars and bring peace to the world. But Tony and Steve are completely different in terms of temperament and modus operandi, and Steve has uneasy memories of having worked with Tony's father. According to Creator/RobertDowneyJr, Tony has heard so much about Steve from his dad that he's like a big brother he can never live up to. Also noted is that Steve and Tony are the two main benefactors of Howard's legacy: Steve couldn't have received the Super Soldier Formula without Howard (he wouldn't have even met Dr. Erskine if he hadn't watched Howard's performance), while Tony inherited everything from his father.
**** In an odd contrast, going back to their origin movies, how they received their powers and what they had before them are on the opposite ends of the spectrum: Steve had no physical resources, but had the moral and personality traits necessary for super-heroism, and was handed the Super Soldier Formula on a platter. Tony, who was given a lot of outside resources but nothing internally, didn't just have to build his armor, but he also had to create the whole superhero mindset from his previous status as a "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist". On top of that, Steve received his powers because he wanted to go from his to the front lines, while Tony built his so he could escape for his live from the front lines! Heck, even the scientific workshops where their powers began; Steve's was nicely furnished, clean, run by a government agency, while Tony's was IN A CAVE WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS. Then there's the chase post-lab shootings, Steve's running to catch an enemy and with Tony, the enemy is chasing him!\\
\\
It reaches the point where it just somehow suffers from Steve not bringing up a few stories about Howard, or at the very least a photo of the Captain and Howard together (but if Pepper Potts almost didn't appear in the movie, then there's no way that was making it in.)
** Thor vs. Steve Rogers: Both are old-fashioned in ideals and aesthetics, initially felt ill at ease on modern Earth, and are driven by a sense of duty before their homeland. Still, both find it difficult to comprehend each other - they are two very different kinds of old-fashioned, after all. They also share a lack of understanding of modern idioms.
** Thor and Steve's origins are also from opposite directions. Thor was born into power and privilege, a spoilt, proud, but well-meaning child, abusing his strength as a bully. Steve was a sickly, skinny little orphan from Brooklyn, weak and poor, but possessing an unshakeable sense of justice, standing up against those he felt needed standing up to despite his weakness. Thor was stripped of his gifts and learned humility. Steve gained strength and never changed from who he was.
** Steve Rogers vs. Bruce Banner: It's only touched on briefly, but Steve Rogers is the Super Soldier experiment gone right, while Bruce Banner is the experiment gone wrong (or "[[CursedWithAwesome wrong]]").
** Natasha Romanoff vs. [[{{Hawkeye}} Clint Barton]]: Secret agents with {{Dark And Troubled Past}}s, a sense of chilly professionalism, and a deep, long-standing friendship originating when [[{{Hawkeye}} Clint]] made a choice that perhaps Natasha wouldn't have.
** In addition, Loki has traits that resonate or clash with the leads: Asgardian origins (Thor), intelligence, mercurial temperament, and love for theatrics (Iron Man), manipulation of emotions (Bruce Banner), disregard for freedom and human life (Captain America), a lack of empathy (Black Widow), and a disregard for free will (Hawkeye).
** All four of the main powered heroes have different ways by which they acquired and use their powers. Iron Man had no power, but built them on his own in a time of crisis. Thor was born with power, then stripped of them and learned humility to use them responsibly. Bruce Banner was given power he never wanted, and it is a struggle for him to control it. And Captain America was born with weakness, but granted power by a benefactor. Iron Man has some resentment towards this in particular because he's the only one whose abilities, aside from his intellect and charm, could be realistically negated. (You can't untrain Widow or Hawkeye, nor is there anyone to strip Thor of his powers, cure Banner of the Hulk, or negate the Super Soldier Serum in Rogers.)
---> '''Tony:''' "You're a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."
* FlyingFirepower: Essential in how the final battle plays out.
** When Thor arrives on the scene, the first thing he does is rain lightning down on the soldiers threatening the {{Badass Normal}}s. Cap then charges Thor (one of only two members of the team that could fly high enough) with using his lightning as artillery to bottleneck the Tesseract portal.
** But even moreso, this is Iron Man's ''specialty''. His armor is extremely fast yet highly maneuverable, which is a huge advantage against the Chitauri. Furthermore, because of his speed and firepower, Cap places him in charge of containing the enemy to a few blocks. To see just how well Tony can pull this off, check out his feats in TheOner. He provides cover for Black Widow, Cap and Hawkeye in the span of a few seconds.
* [[spoiler:FoodEnd: At least in the U.S. release. There's Shawarma!]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** When Loki is being led to his prison onboard SHIELD's airship, he briefly smirks at [[spoiler:Bruce Banner]]. Guess what his insurance plan for escaping is?
** Not long before TheReveal, Coulson makes an offhand comment to Thor that he "changed everything".
** Cap telling Tony that he's not the kind to [[spoiler:sacrifice himself for a greater cause]].
** A very subtle one in the beginning: [[spoiler:Barton shoots Fury on the chest, even though he would have normally been able to hit him on the head. It shows that Loki's MindControl is not 100% perfect. Later it turns out that the brainwashed Selvig was able to install a backdoor to turn off the Tesseract and the portal.]]
** Loki's new staff that was given to him by the Chitauri's leader. With its distinctive blue gem and mind control powers hints that it is [[spoiler:the mind gem from the Infinity Gauntlet and that the leader is Thanos.]]
* ForTheEvulz: Loki probably didn't need to shove the eye scanner into that guy's eye quite so hard... [[EvilFeelsGood or gleefully]].
* FreezeFrameBonus:
** When Iron Man crash lands after pulling his "Jonah" stunt, the building behind him is actually the shawarma joint he later mentions wanting to try out.
** The blueprints Tony's studying in the very last scene are of Stark Tower, with floors labeled for each Avenger to live in.
** After Bruce blurts out that he once tried to kill himself, the expression that flits across Tony's face is utterly terrified and heartbroken.
** If you look closely, Stark tower is not only where the current Metlife Building stands, the tower itself appears to be growing out of the Metlife building's lower half.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent:
** As the team is busy striking a badass pose, watch Tony crack a trademark smirk when Loki [[INeedaFreakingDrink finally accepts his offer for a drink]].
** During Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk [[spoiler:aboard the Helicarrier]], a floor panel says "WARNING CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE" with arrows pointing to Banner.
* GenerationXerox: Captain America's initial dislike and butting heads with Tony Stark mirrors the relationship he had with his father, Howard.
* GeniusBruiser: Captain America, both a SuperSoldier and a brilliant strategist, as the final scene shows.
** Also Loki, who might not have the strength of Thor, but is still a badass Asgardian.
* GenreBlind: Thor, yet again, is lured into a vulnerable spot by falling for Loki's trick of creating false images of himself.
-->'''Loki:''' Are you ever ''not'' going to fall for that?
* GenreSavvy:
** "You're gonna lose. It's in your nature."
** Tony eventually figures out that Loki's [[spoiler: set up the Tesseract at the top of Stark Tower because of Loki's ego]].
** Stark and Banner collaborate theirs to figure out the truth about what SHIELD wants with the Tesseract. Being a organization of spies, they ''must'' have some kind of hidden purpose.
--->'''Steve:''' You think he's holding something back from us?\\
'''Tony:''' He's ''the'' spy! His secrets have secrets!
** Captain America realizes Loki gave up far too easily.
--->'''Thor:''' Loki is a prisoner.\\
'''Nick Fury:''' Then why do I feel like he's the only person on this boat who wants to be here?
** Towards the end of the fight between Natasha and [[spoiler:a brainwashed Clint, he looks up and says her name with a bit of tenderness]] to get her to ease up. She punches him in the head again.
** And during the battle in New York, [[spoiler:Hawkeye switches around the arrowhead of the arrow he shoots at Loki, just in case he manages to catch it.]] He's actually witnessed Loki's physical speed and senses firsthand at the start of the movie, so he knows that [[spoiler: it is entirely possible Loki could catch the arrow]].
** Central to Black Widow's interrogation techniques is the fact that she knows Bad Guys just ''love'' to Monologue.
* GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: In an astonishing display of GenreSavvy during the final battle, Thor (between trading blows) tries to make Loki realize that even if the invasion succeeds, [[YouHaveOutLivedYourUsefulness it's highly unlikely that the bad guys he's working for will allow Loki to rule the Earth afterwards]].
** Steve does a subtle one to Tony when the latter, not having Cap's combat experience or training, is having a HeroicBSOD over [[spoiler: Coulson's death]].
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** Loki calls Black Widow a "mewling quim", which is [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain archaic slang]] for the [[CountryMatters female anatomy]]. Though WordOfGod said it was a close call.
** Loki's scepter trick fails on Tony, who notes that "performance issues" affect about "one in five."
** Tony's line to Banner suggesting he uses a "big bag of weed" to stay calm is said very quickly, probably for this exact reason.
** When Tony asks Pepper what they would do if she "bunked over" in his tower, she whispers something in his ear. His expression says it all.
** When Natasha is being "interrogated" by the rogue Russian officer, she mentions that she knew what he "had planned" for the evening before she was "captured" and that she ''prefers'' the situation she's in.
* GlassesPull: Done by Coulson in the first scene of the film. Especially notable because those were sunglasses and was ''during the night''.
* GoKartingWithBowser: As mentioned below, Tony pours himself a drink as he talks to Loki and even offers him one.
* AGodAmI:
** Loki has developed a full-blown god complex - which is rather appropriate, given that, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Asgardians]] were mistaken for and [[NorseMythology worshiped as gods]].
--->'''Black Widow:''' They're basically gods.\\
'''Captain America:''' There's [[RealMenLoveJesus only one God]], ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that.
** [[spoiler: Loki later tries to give his AGodAmI speech to the Hulk. Let's just say he won't be doing that again anytime soon.]]
** Thor also starts slipping into this when everyone in the lab argument scene was succumbing to the discord field that Loki's staff was giving off.
* GodzillaThreshold: Fury states that the events of ''Thor'' proving humanity wasn't alone in the universe prompted S.H.I.E.L.D. to initiate Phase Two in the event that a hostile alien threat attacked Earth and crossed the threshold. Later, [[spoiler:the WSC decides to go ahead and nuke Manhattan, in the event that the Avengers can't force the Chitauri back.]]
* TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin: Lampshaded, but not stated outright.
* GoodIsNotDumb: Captain America, who despite his belief in doing the right thing and following orders, knows as much as anyone there's something insidious about SHIELD's "phase two" program.
* GoodIsNotNice: Almost everybody, as is often the case in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse.
** Tony Stark is of course a conceited and arrogant jackass who has problems with authority, but still a man who wants to make up for his past failures.
** Thor still has shades of being a BoisterousBruiser that smashes first and asks questions later, but he follows his heart and demonstrates UndyingLoyalty to his family, allies, and the Earth itself.
** The Hulk is a rampaging id monster which smashes friend and foe alike during his temper tantrums, but just because he doesn't like you doesn't mean he won't protect you.
** Hawkeye and Black Widow are assassins and former criminals who won't hesitate to [[IDidWhatIHadToDo do what needs to be done]]. That doesn't stop the two of them from being loyal to each other and to their comrades.
** And Nick Fury, who will employ every dirty trick he can think of to get the job done. Of course, the job is preserving worldwide freedom.
** Averted by Coulson, who is amicable, polite, and gets along with every other member of the team. [[spoiler:So of course, he was TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth.]]
* GoodIsNotSoft: Steve Rogers is a nice, lovable guy and the only straight-up hero who will rip the arms off invading Chitauri and [[spoiler:is ready to sacrifice Tony if necessary to save the Earth.]]
* GoodIsOldFashioned: {{Invoked}} and {{discussed}} several times, mostly regarding Captain America. The conclusion is that old-fashioned heroism is [[JustifiedTrope is exactly what people need]] during Earth's DarkestHour.
* GoodOldWays: Being old-fashioned is Thor's and Captain America's trademark, although it's significantly {{downplayed}} compared to many of their previous portrayals.
* GoodGunsBadGuns: SHIELD agents are mostly armed with Glock pistols and [=M4A1=] carbines. Bad guys use a mix and match collection of weapons that wouldn't look out of place in your average [[VideoGame/ModernWarfare MW2]] match or, in the case of the aliens, high-tech blasters.
* GoshDangItToHeck: Captain America.
-->'''Steve:''' Son of a gun.
* GracefulLoser: [[spoiler:Loki would like that drink now, thank you]].
* GreenAesop: This is central to the plot. The Tesseract is a clean power-source, Stark Tower runs on self-sustaining energy, and so on. Although, one of the key fights of the film ends up [[CueIrony leveling half a forest]]. It also causes severe complications at the climax - self-sustaining energy is hard to just switch off.
* GuileHero: Black Widow's favorite interrogation technique is to make the bad guys feel powerful with her acting skills and then listen to what they let slip in their victorious rants.
* GunsAkimbo: The Black Widow uses two glock pistols at the same time fighting the Chitauri.
* GuysSmashGirlsShoot: A rare gender inversion in the team of Hawkeye and Black Widow: while both are entirely capable in the other field (she's a crack shot and he can certainly deal damage hand-to-hand), Natasha is the superior martial artist while Clint is the finer marksman.
* HannibalLecture: Loki's ''other'' favorite tactic; he was ''loving'' the chance to tear apart Black Widow from inside his cell.
** This is also Black Widow's prefered method of interogation: get captured, act vulnerable and nail her 'captor' with information they felt comfortable enough to share with their 'victim'.
* HatePlague: Not that the Avengers weren't getting on each other's nerves before, but it's implied that Loki's scepter somehow has the ability to supernaturally raise tensions between the team while he was on the Helicarrier. When Banner starts getting angry, he picks up the scepter without realizing it.
* HeadbuttingHeroes: Thor and Tony's first encounter, when they fight over custody of Loki. Literally.
* HeelFaceTurn: Subverted. In the fight between Thor and Loki, Loki starts to do this, but it turns out [[spoiler:he was just playing Thor's emotions to get the upper hand in the fight.]]
* HeHadAName: And it was [[spoiler:Phil.]]
* HeroInsurance: After everything's said and done, one of the many news reports tries to blame the Avengers for the damage to the city. Fury conveniently fails to ask where the Avengers were going after their mission is complete, precisely to avoid such questions.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Every member has had his own movie or at least a minor role (or cameo) in a previous film.
* HeroStoleMyBike: The Avengers snag a SHIELD quinjet to take to the final battle. An agent mentions they are unauthorized, but Captain America quickly shuts him up.
* HeroicNeutral: Banner doesn't want to get involved in the fighting, mostly to keep Hulk at bay, [[spoiler:but he changes after some character development]].
* HeroicSacrifice:
** {{Discussed}} when Captain America thinks the other Avengers (particularly Iron Man, who's a TakeAThirdOption kinda guy) aren't heroes at all because they're not willing to make the "sacrifice play", as he calls it. It's a CallBack to ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'' and how Cap wound up in the future in the first place.
** [[spoiler:Coulson's decision to face Loki alone would count as one. Even with the big anti-Destroyer gun, he seemed to think his death would inspire the Avengers to work together in order to avenge him]].
** [[spoiler:Tony eventually does attempt this, and while he ''does'' survive his heroic act of driving a nuke into space, he did it accepting that he may die.]]
* HeroicSafeMode: A secondary trigger for the Hulk, in situations where Banner's life is in imminent danger. It proves a complication in [[DrivenToSuicide certain endeavors]].
* HoistByHisOwnPetard:
** Black Widow uses a fallen alien weapon to use against them at one point, and is actually very proficient at it.
** Loki's scepter [[spoiler:serves as a tool for shutting down the portal to the other dimension.]]
** Thor tries to fry Iron Man with a bolt of lightning. Though it causes some damage, it also charges the armor to quadruple capacity, which Tony uses immediately to blast Thor with a supercharged repulsor discharge.
** In the movie ''Thor'', Loki took control of the Destroyer and sent it to Earth to get rid of Thor. It also did a number on Agent Coulson's men. It was trashed and its remains were picked up by S.H.I.E.L.D. Fast forward to the present, and Loki is blasted through a bulkhead by an Earth-made BFG built from Destroyer technology, wielded by Agent Coulson. It doesn't kill or seriously harm Loki, but it probably hurt his pride at least a little.
** Loki decides to [[spoiler:[[AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs hijack Stark Tower, and its arc reactor]] to power the portal. However, this gives Tony an opportunity to switch out the Mark VI suit, which had been severely damaged in battle, and get into the Mark VII suit. If the battle had been held ''anywhere'' else, Tony would not have had that opportunity, and would have been significantly less effective in battle.]]
* HoldingTheFloor:
** Fury attempts it against Loki during the opening sequence. Later, Tony Stark's borderline CloudCuckooLander monologue when he first arrives on the Helicarrier [[spoiler:successfully distracts the group while he slips his hacking device onto a nearby computer.]]
** Also, Tony's BadassBoast to Loki in Stark Tower was undoubtedly at least in part to stall for time while Jarvis prepped his Mark VII Suit.
* HonorBeforeReason: Captain America, while retaining his core sense of honor, averts this. Despite his initial insistence to Tony and Bruce that they should trust in their orders, [[spoiler:Cap does take their skepticism seriously, and does some off-book investigating of his own. He ends up ''beating Tony to the punch'' in calling out Fury.]]
* HoodHopping: Cap hops along a few car roofs while avoiding explosions.
* HowDareYouDieOnMe: Tony takes [[spoiler:Agent Phil Coulson]]'s Heroic Sacrifice ''really'' badly, calling him an idiot for facing Loki alone and hopelessly outmatched.
** Also when the Hulk roars Tony back to consciousness.
* HulkingOut: It is the Hulk, after all.
* HumansAreWarriors:
** After the Avengers repel the Chitauri invasion, the Other informs his master that humans are not a species to be messed with.
** Tony invokes this when talking with Loki, that even if he ''wins'', humanity won't simply lie down and submit.
--->'''Tony:''' You're missing the point — there's no throne, there is ''no'' version of this where you come out on top. ''Maybe'' your army comes, and ''maybe'' it's too much for us, but it's all on ''you''... 'Cause if we can't protect the Earth, you can be ''damn'' sure we'll avenge it.
* HumanPopsicle: Unlike ''Captain America: The First Avenger'', we do get to see Steve's frozen fate, which is briefly seen in a series of flashbacks that he has while working out.
-->'''Tony Stark:''' Yeah, you may have missed out a few things, doing time as a Cap-sicle.
* HumiliationConga: Over the course of the movie every single Avenger and Agent Coulson manage to land at least one good hit on [[spoiler:Loki]], with the amount of them increasing by the finale.
** Captain America [[spoiler:takes Loki in one on one combat. Though he manages to throw in a few quips and put up a decent fight, he's on the losing end before Iron Man shows up.]]
** Nick Fury [[spoiler:turns Loki's previous retort about how "an ant has no quarrel with a boot" on its head by locking him in an enormous cage and declaring himself the "boot".]]
** Black Widow [[spoiler:has a battle of the minds with Loki and uncovers his agenda while seemingly unfazed by Loki's HannibalLecture, but it ultimately does nothing to hinder Loki's EvilPlan, and it's later shown that Loki ''did'' get under her skin.]]
** Coulson [[spoiler:is fatally stabbed by Loki, but bravely tells him that Loki is doomed to fail. As the latter tries to retort, Coulson shoots him through the wall.]]
** Iron Man [[spoiler:likewise has a lecture battle with Loki, then is immune to his attacks. Both succeed, as Loki's {{plan}} follows through and Tony is only stalling, but Loki's VillainousBreakdown begins.]]
** Thor [[spoiler:is outsmarted by Loki earlier but when the two fight in the climax, he maintains the upper hand, forcing Loki to flee.]]
** Hawkeye [[spoiler:fires an arrow at Loki's glider, which the latter [[ArrowCatch catches in midair]] before it explodes and sends him flying.]]
** The Hulk [[spoiler:grabs Loki mid-monologue and beats him into the ground.]]
** When confronted with the entire team together, [[spoiler:Loki doesn't even bother resisting.]]
-->[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnaMwQ1Xsis "Has everyone here had a chance to talk to, and beat up]] [[spoiler:Loki]]?"
* HurtingHero:
** Captain America, as seen in his first onscreen appearance. He's seventy years out of his own time, everything he's ever known is gone, and nothing in the world makes sense to him anymore. Also, super-serum or not, the war took its toll on him.
*** A deleted scene shows how out of time he is as he tries to wander around modern New York City. Whedon cut it because a) it made Cap's character too complicated (by throwing him out of time ''and'' giving him PTSD), and b) because the line of punching bags in the gym is more than enough to show [[ShellShockedVeteran exactly what he's going through anyway]].
** Also Bruce Banner. Though he tries to hide it through sarcasm. The "secret" to how he controls his transformation pretty much spells out much this trope applies.
** Hawkeye, especially [[spoiler:after being freed from his brainwashing.]] If he's lucky, he's going to be having nightmares for a while.
* HypocriticalHumor: "You people are so petty... ''and tiny''." And:
-->'''Thor:''' Have care how you speak! Loki is beyond reason, but [[ThickerThanWater he is of Asgard, and he's my brother]].\\
'''Natasha Romanoff:''' [[AxCrazy He killed eighty people in two days.]]\\
'''Thor:''' ([[{{Beat}} hesitantly]]) ...He's adopted.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: Bruce Banner's secret to keeping his Hulk Mode on standby is to [[spoiler:stay just angry enough... ''all the time'']].
* IDontWantToDie: Subverted. When [[spoiler:Tony Stark]] sacrifices himself to save New York, he does so completely calmly and professionally, without a fuss, hesitation, or even any kind of acknowledgement or last words other than trying (unsuccessfully) to call his girlfriend to say goodbye. However, the expression of sheer, naked terror on his face as he flies himself into space through the portal, where he knows he will die, effectively serves this trope's purpose anyway. [[spoiler:Tony survives just barely.]]
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Bruce Banner, literally (he mentioned that he tried to commit suicide by [[AteHisGun orally shooting himself]] once, but he went Hulk and spat the bullet out).
* IHaveNoSon: Subverted and Double Subverted by Thor with regards to his adoptive brother Loki. HilarityEnsues.
-->'''Bruce Banner:''' I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him.\\
'''Thor:''' Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but [[ThickerThanWater he is of Asgard, and he is my brother.]]\\
'''Black Widow:''' [[AxCrazy He killed eighty people in two days.]]\\
'''Thor:''' ([[{{Beat}} hesitantly]]) ...He's adopted.
* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: Thor attempts this with Hulk the first time. Amusingly, the fact that Hulk sucker-punches Thor later on shows that the only thing "in there somewhere" was "the other guy".
* INeedAFreakingDrink: Loki decides to take Tony up on his offer of a drink after [[spoiler:he's defeated and cornered by the entire team]].
* ISurrenderSuckers: [[spoiler:Loki gets captured and taken to the Helicarrier. He then uses this as a distraction while his men attack the Helicarrier and set up the Tesseract device right on top of Stark Tower.]]
* IcyBlueEyes:
** A visible effect of Loki's brainwashing. Everyone under its influence is suitably cold and ruthless, except for Selvig whose more ForScience
** [[spoiler:Thanos has them as well.]]
* ImportedAlienPhlebotinum: The Tesseract in general. [[spoiler: The remains of the Destroyer]], as well.
* ImpossiblyCoolWeapon: Front and center.
** Captain America's [[MadeOfIndestructium Mighty]] [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe Shield]].
** [[NorseMythology Mjölnir]], [[TheMightyThor Thor]]'s [[DropTheHammer hammer]].
** The ComicBook/IronMan [[PoweredArmor armor]].
** Coulson's {{BFG}} which was created from the [[{{Magitek}} Destroyer]] in ''Thor''. Now given the name "Coulson's Revenge" in the ''VideoGame/MarvelAvengersAlliance'' game.
** ComicBook/{{Loki}}'s [[MindControl mind-controlling]] [[BladeOnAStick scepter]].
** {{Hawkeye}}'s {{Trick Arrow}}s.
** ComicBook/BlackWidow's [[StaticStunGun taser bracelets]].
** [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Hulk.]]
* ImprobableAimingSkills:
** Hawkeye's special power is his improbable accuracy with a bow. He manages to land a USB arrow into a computer, curve an explosive arrow around a ship to hit from the other side, and hits speeding enemy planes without even looking at them. Hawkeye later nails a Chitauri on one of their hovercraft while looking in the ''[[OffhandBackhand complete opposite direction.]]''
** In one scene, Hawkeye is targeting some Chitauri chasing after Iron Man. If you notice, his bow is angled in a slightly different direction from where he's looking as he pans to track his targets. This is because he's ''leading the target''.
** Nick Fury lands a hit on the engine of a jet taking off, with an ''unguided RPG launcher'', using ''iron sights'', with ''one eye''.
* InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt: The movie's full title is ''Marvel's The Avengers'', probably to help avoid confusion with the [[Film/TheAvengers1998 1998 film]] based on the [[Series/TheAvengers unrelated series of the same name]].
* InferredHolocaust: Much of Manhattan is wrecked in the climactic fight. Though only bad guys are shown dying, the death toll is probably in the thousands, and a memorial is briefly shown in a news report afterwards.
* InNameOnly: The alien invaders are called the Chitauri. In the comics, the Chitauri are the Ultimate Marvel version of 616 Marvel's Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens whose modus operandi is impersonation and infiltration (see the Skrull-centric storyline ''SecretInvasion''). The movie Chitauri take a blunt AttackAttackAttack approach. They do resemble heavily-armored Skrulls, however. The movie rights to Skrulls are technically tied to the Fantastic Four, and therefore owned by Fox. The choice to use the Ultimate equivalent is a conscious use of this trope.
* InherentlyFunnyWords: Shawarma.
-->'''Tony:''' "I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."
* InsistentTerminology: Bruce Banner does not turn into the Hulk. He turns into "the other guy." All the other characters continue to refer to his alter ego as the Hulk, however, and Bruce himself slips up once before correcting himself. This is likely a HeWhoShallNotBeNamed trope: Banner doesn't want to give the Hulk any extra power.
* InstantWinCondition: [[spoiler:Apparently, Chitauri all die if you blow up their command ship. The leading theory is that the Chitauri are somehow linked to their home-ship, similar to the Buggers in ''Literature/EndersGame''. And since the leviathan ship seemed to be biologically related to the Chitauri themselves, this is entirely plausible.]] Joss Whedon notes in the commentary that he didn't particularly ''want'' to do this, but the movie was already two hours long and it was easier.
* InvisibilityCloak: A partial one. The underbelly of the SHIELD Helicarrier displays the sky above the ship, making it invisible to ground-based observation.
* IronicEcho:
** In Tony's introduction scene Tony is trying to convince Pepper to take some credit for the Stark Tower idea.
--> '''Tony''': Give yourself 12%.\\
(a bit later, when Agent Coulson interrupts them)\\
'''Tony''': I thought we were having a moment\\
'''Pepper''': I was having 12% of a moment.
** "Well, let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something." In response to Loki's boasts.
** When Loki first appears, Fury tries to defuse the situation by saying "We have no quarrel with your people": Loki responds "An ant has no quarrel with a boot." When Loki is captive on the Helicarrier, Fury says that one button is all it will take to jettison the cell, Loki included, and remarks (pointing at Loki) "Ant..." (points at button) "...Boot."
** A more serious one: while ferrying Captain Rogers to the Helicarrier, Agent Coulson says that "Maybe people need 'old-fashioned'" in response to Captain America's traditional suit, but clearly referring to the ideals Captain America represents. Later, at the team's darkest moment, Fury suggests that believing in heroes might be "an old-fashioned notion."
** Tony sarcastically remarking that Coulson's first name is "[[LastNameBasis Agent]]", then later, [[spoiler:"His name is Phil." Bonus points for it being said both times in the same room.]]
** "Put on the suit." Takes on a new meaning when [[spoiler: Banner swiftly and painlessly transforms into The Hulk.]]
** Loki says of Hawkeye, just before he brainwashes him with the scepter, that he has heart. Coulson, just before owning Loki with the Destructor-based gun, says to Loki that he lacks heart.
* ItsPersonal: Tony theorizes that [[spoiler:this was Loki's purpose in attacking the Helicarrier while getting everyone to fight amongst themselves]]. He later congratulates Loki for making it this, as he's successfully managed to [[NiceJobFixingItVillain piss off every one of the Avengers.]]
* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: The World Security Council decides to stop the Chitauri threat by [[spoiler:nuking Manhattan (''while the Avengers are still fighting there''). Fury dismisses this as a stupid idea and outright tries to prevent it. With a rocket launcher.]]
* JekyllAndHyde: Banner and the Hulk. Banner's CharacterDevelopment has him realizing that the Hulk isn't some villain: he's just a part of Banner driven by the doctor's own simplest desires, which needs to be accepted rather than constantly restrained. This leads to the final battle, where [[SplitPersonalityMerge Banner willingly transforms to help the Avengers and the Hulk willingly follows Captain America's orders]].
* JerkassHasAPoint: Black Widow's reaction when Cap asks what Tony is without his armor and he answers "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist".
** And not long after, Tony to Steve "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle". Harsh but true, compared to Tony and Banner's intelligence-derived powers and Black Widow and Hawkeye being trained, Cap's power was handed to him for being a NiceGuy.
*** Also could be interpreted as Tony failing to see that it's not Cap's powers that make him special, it's his noble resolve.
* JumpScare:
** The Hulk popping up out of nowhere and roaring at Natasha.
* JurisdictionFriction: S.H.I.E.L.D. and the World Security Council want Loki to be judged for his crimes on Earth, while Thor insists that he must "face Asgardian justice".
* JustPlaneWrong: If you look at the scene where the SHIELD F-35-lookalike jet is firing its guns, you'll see that the muzzle flashes are coming out of the jet intakes--an enormously bad idea as 1) you don't want to reduce the amount of air you can intake by having guns in there, and 2) you'll send the spent shells [[TurbineBlender right into the jet engine]].
* JustTrainWrong: At the beginning of the scene introducing [[ComicBook/BlackWidow Black Widow]] we see an establishing shot of a Norfolk Southern freight train passing by the ratty looking warehouse where the heroine is [[WoundedGazelleGambit conducting an interrogation]]. The only problem is that the scene is set in Russia where American locomotives do not operate.
* JustYouAndMeAndMyGuards: "Just the two of us, huh?" He's surrounded by S.H.E.I.L.D agents.
* KeystoneArmy: The Chitauri, apparently. [[spoiler:Once Iron Man nukes the mothership, all units on Earth cease functioning.]] Whedon has said that he wasn't happy about using it, but needed a way to skip the "cleanup" phase of the battle.
* KickTheDog: Loki's pleasure in murder and destruction, such as the EyeScream.
* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:Agent Coulson.]]
* KillTheCutie: This being a Joss Whedon production, we should have known that [[spoiler: Coulson taking a level in adorkable by fanboying over Captain America]] was not going to end well.
* KissOfLife: Averted, but thoroughly lampshaded and PlayedForLaughs.
-->'''[[spoiler:Iron Man]]:''' What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.
* KneelBeforeZod: In Stuttgart, Loki forces an entire crowd to kneel before him and tries to do the same to Captain America.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Agent Coulson is a huge fanboy of Captain America. [[MeaningfulEcho Trading cards are involved]]. Plus, it turns out he helped design Cap's modern-day costume.
* KnowWhenToFoldEm: [[spoiler:After being blown up, beat down by Thor and the Hulk, and watching his army die, Loki wisely comes quietly.]]
* KubrickStare: TomHiddleston seems to have this down to a fine art, especially the first time we see him.
* LampshadeHanging: Quite a few subtle ones, which if you've seen the previous films, you catch right off the bat.
-->'''Tony Stark:''' Uh, [[Film/{{Thor}} Shakespeare in the park]]?
* LastSecondChance: Thor's fight with Hulk starts off as this, but Thor stops trying pretty quickly. Later he tries it with Loki and it works just as well.
* LateArrivalSpoiler: If you've missed some of the movies from the MCU, there'll be quite a few spoilers for you, particularly in regards to ''Thor'' and ''Captain America: The First Avenger''.
* LaymansTerms: Steve is forced to interrupt Tony's technobabble-laden explanation of how he's going to get back out of the engine: "Speak English!"
* LeParkour: Cap engages in this when New York becomes a war zone and the streets are littered with cars and debris.
* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The entirety of the second stinger but they did do [[RuleOfThree three]] separate takes so they could pick out the best.
* LeeroyJenkins: Iron Man gives us this gem.
-->'''Captain America:''' We need a plan of attack!\\
'''Iron Man:''' I ''have'' a plan: {{Attack| Attack Attack}}.
* {{Leitmotif}}:
** Meta-version. [[GeniusBonus Loki's motif]] from ''Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung'' plays during the scene in Germany.
** Whenever Cap does anything awesome, notes of his theme plays.
** Invoked by Stark when he flies in during the Captain / Loki fight. The stereo of the SHIELD helicopter overhead is commandeered by Stark, and seconds before he shows up, 'Shoot to Thrill' starts playing. It probably wouldn't count if Stark hadn't intentionally played the same song in his first scene in ''Iron Man 2''.
* LensmanArmsRace: Thor states that SHIELD's experiments with the Tesseract have started one: it's the equivalent of an otherwise unremarkable postage stamp in Eastern Europe or Africa suddenly getting a nuclear reactor [[spoiler:and with their efforts to reverse-engineer HYDRA's weaponry, nuclear ''weapons'']]. Once Earth re-ignited the Tesseract, it was no longer an InsignificantLittleBluePlanet in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_World_Factbook CIA Galactic Factbook]] - it's now a potential ''rival''. And when [[spoiler:the Avengers wiped out an entire force of Chitauri and thus earned Thanos' attention, it was equivalent to said postage stamp wiping out a Spetsnaz unit and thus earning ''Stalin's'' attention!]]
* LetsGetDangerous: Invoked by Nick Fury at the end, that Earth is no longer an insignificant little fish in the galactic pond;
-->'''Director:''' Was that the whole point of this... a statement?\\
'''Nick Fury:''' A statement... a ''promise''!
* LetsYouAndHimFight:
** Thor's introduction, after Cap and Stark have "captured" the surrendering Loki, is to burst into their transport and remove his brother by force. This could prove an obstacle to saving their world, so both heroes jump out of the plane to give chase. The showdown involves a lot of snarking and pummeling, and answers the question of what happens when a near-unstoppable hammer swing meets an unbreakable shield.
** Also, the Hulk briefly chases Black Widow and tangles with Thor when he first "meets" the team. [[spoiler:Loki planned to use The Hulk to destroy the Helicarrier and all of his enemies along with it.]]
* LightningBruiser: The Hulk is phenomenally strong even compared to the mighty Thor, but the movie also does an excellent job of portraying just how dangerously ''fast'' he can be for his size, particularly when he's tearing things up with remarkable agility in the final battle.
* LivingLegend: All the Avengers but mostly Captain America. Tony Stark uses the phrase itself.
* LogoJoke:
** The Marvel and Paramount logos are seen inside the Tesseract.
** Also seen at the end of the movie. [[spoiler:Stark Tower's "STARK" logo gets all the consonants removed during the final fight. What's left? A very stylish 'A', similar to the one in the classic "Avengers" logo.]]
* LockAndLoadMontage: When the team decides to [[LetsGetDangerous collectively get dangerous]], we are treated to a montage of Captain America and Iron Man suiting up while Thor grabs Mjölnir and Hawkeye checks his bow.
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: After Captain America breaks up the fight between Tony Stark and Thor and tries to convince Thor to "put the hammer down", Thor acts on those words by smashing Captain America with it. Captain America blocks it with his shield, which indeed protects him from a blow from the hammer of a Norse god - by reflecting the force of the blow in all directions in a shockwave that levels everything in the immediate area.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:M-P]]
* MacGuffin: The Tesseract is a powerrful artifact everyone wants.
* MacrossMissileMassacre: Iron Man launches one from his shoulders. They perform an ItanoCircus.
* MadeOfIndestructium: Cap's shield is used to block or reflect every attack in the movie (including Mjölnir, as DropTheHammer above shows), and only the paint is damaged.
* MadeOfIron: Par for the course for a superhero movie.
** Tony Stark takes what would be fatal impacts both in and out of his suit. A crash from exploding a Leviathan from the inside only made minor cuts to his face.
** An example of just how tough Asgardians are: [[spoiler:Loki takes a pounding from Hulk which would turn a normal human into ''goo'', but is just well enough to [[BrickJoke remember Tony offering him a drink]] immediately after, and able to walk around on his own by the end.]]
** Thor can take a flying punch from Iron Man and a shield throw from Captain America right after, both to the head, and act like he got hit with a paper ball. Note that he does not wear a helmet for the entirety of the movie.
** In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment at the intro to the movie, Loki gets shot ''in the face'' by Hawkeye and shrugs off the bullet with no signs of damage. Later, a direct hit from the Iron Man Mark VII's repulsors doesn't do more than knock him down, and he takes a hit to the chest from [[spoiler: a Phase Two prototype gun]] and is only winded. He also has a [[spoiler: disguised high-explosive arrow]] detonate inches from his face that launches him into the Stark Tower, but doesn't even do more than knock his helmet off. This puts the [[spoiler: Hulk-delivered beatdown mentioned above]] into perspective.
** Even non-powered heroes like Hawkeye and Black Widow can take an enormous amount of punishments such as a backhand from the Hulk or [[spoiler:[[MindRape mind control]]]].
* MageInManhattan: Loki provides the trope picture for the scene in Germany.
* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Thor appears to be highly annoyed after Iron Man tackles him off a cliff at high speeds. Justified in that he's a PhysicalGod.
-->'''Thor''': Do not touch me again.
* MakeAnExampleOfThem: Loki preparing to zap a mouthy old man standing amid his flock, before Captain America intervened.
* MaleGaze: The movie does this a great deal with Black Widow and Maria Hill seems to be walking away from the camera in a ''lot'' of shots. Pepper Potts wears Daisy Dukes and bare feet during her cameo.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler:Thanos is revealed to be this to Loki in The Stinger.]]
* ManBitesMan: During her scuffle with [[spoiler:a brainwashed Hawkeye]], Black Widow bites his hand in order to avoid being stabbed.
* ManipulativeBastard:
** Loki ''can'' hold his own in combat with that staff of his and his misdirecting illusions, but he prefers to trick the heroes into fighting each other.
** Nick Fury, as usual, manipulates the heroes into working for S.H.I.E.L.D.
* ManlyTears:
** Tony's eyes are openly brimming with tears during the "we are not soldiers" scene after [[spoiler: Coulson's death]], although they never fall.
** After Loki traps Thor in the cage and tells him that he's going to kill him, Thor is too heartbroken to respond, simply letting his tears fall as he averts his eyes from Loki.
** Blink and you'll miss it, but a tear runs down Loki's cheek right after he stabs Thor in their fight on Stark Tower.
* MarketBasedTitle: In the U.K., the film will be known as ''Avengers Assemble'', no doubt to avoid confusion with the [[Series/TheAvengers classic British TV series]] of the same name. Strangely, the merchandising such as children’s toys all still bears the ''original'' title, next to posters with the revised title. For some reason, both titles were used to advertise it, saying that 'The Avengers' would be released on the 26th, and 'Avengers Assemble' being released on the 27th.
* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: A rare live-action example. This movie is possible since all of these franchise characters are owned by Marvel, and also because the previous films of the team's big four (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America, in this order) all lead up to this.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane / SufficientlyAdvancedAliens: Downplayed, but present. Even with our current understanding of science fiction, some things the Asgardians do are just easier to explain with magic. People refer to Loki as 'casting spells', often in the same scene as discussing Asgardian technology.
* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: When Loki is talking to the Other, at one point, a giant snake flies past in the background. In the attack on New York, they end up using those things as weapons.
* MegatonPunch: Hulk does this to [[spoiler:a Leviathan]].
* MerchandiseDriven: Every single returning character has a new costume/uniform. Even Black Widow gets an altered black catsuit and a new haircut. [[http://worrierprincessme.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/scarlett-johansson-black-widow-009-1.jpg Compare]] and [[http://images.wikia.com/scratchpad/images/1/19/The-avengers-black-widow-scarlett-johansson.jpg contrast]].
* MetronomicManMashing: [[spoiler:Hulk does this to Loki during the final battle at one point.]]
* MidSeasonUpgrade: Iron Man upgrades to the Mark VII armor during the film. It can fly by itself when deployed by Jarvis, track and line itself up with Stark using a pair of bracelets he wears, and assemble itself around him. Now Stark can don the armor no matter where he is. Also, the Mark VII's laser lenses do not eject after use, implying that they are now limited only by the suit's power source.
* MillionairePlayboy: Tony Stark describes himself as a "billionaire playboy" as well as "genius philanthropist."
* MindControlEyes: When Loki controls people with the scepter. First, their eyes turn pitch black, then their irises and pupils turn the same shade of blue as the scepter's gem.
* MindRape: [[spoiler:Hawkeye]]'s description of what it felt like to be brainwashed by Loki definitely gets into this territory.
* MisappliedPhlebotinum: PlayedForLaughs when Tony Stark calls out a SHIELD agent on the Helicarrier for using some of the most advanced computers in the world, surpassed only by Stark's own, to play Galaga.
* MisfitMobilizationMoment: [[spoiler:Coulson's death finally motivates the heroes to get together and, yes, avenge him. Thor sees the Son of Coul get skewered as he watched helplessly. Tony gets roused to action because Tony knew him the longest of all. Cap gets motivation from the bloodstained Captain America trading cards that Coulson so eagerly wanted him to sign. Romanoff and Barton have plenty motivation because they were all longstanding comrades in the agency. Only Bruce Banner isn't motivated by this event, because he wasn't there for it; he [[ChangedMyMindKid came back]] for other reasons.]]
* MistakenForAliens: PlayedForLaughs with Bruce Banner. As the Hulk, he lands on a warehouse, half-destroys it and becomes human again. Then, he speaks to an old man, the security guard, who believes that Bruce is some sort of alien. The security guard is played by Harry Dean Stanton, who was in ''Film/{{Alien}}''.
* MoodWhiplash: JossWhedon indulges his penchant for intentionally derailing dramatic moments with a witty one-liners. They're better heard than read.
* MomentKiller: Coulson drops in on Tony during a romantic interlude with Pepper. Luckily, it was only [[BrickJoke "12% of a moment."]]
* MomentOfSilence:
** When Loki delivers his HannibalLecture to Black Widow.
** After [[spoiler:Coulson dies.]]
* MonumentalDamage:
** Grand Central Station is a wash.
** N.Y.'s new landmark, Stark Tower, gets trashed, as well as some famous real-world buildings in Manhattan.
** Stark Tower itself is built on top of the Metlife building. Part of the background set up by the designers for the movie was that Stark literally built his tower ''over'' it, meaning the bottom of it would still be the real-life landmark.
* {{Mooks}}: The Chitauri.
* [[TheMountainsOfIllinois The Skyscrapers of Stuttgart, Ohio]]: Loki's first attack on earth was stated to be in Stuttgart, Germany, but it quite clearly was filmed in {{UsefulNotes/Cleveland}}
* MouthOfSauron: The Other, a go-between for Loki and his new boss, [[spoiler:Thanos]]. Coincidentally ([[ShoutOut or not]]), he looks an awful lot like Peter Jackson's version of the Mouth; nasty skin, covered-up eyes.
* MovieSuperheroesWearBlack: Most of the cast avert it. Hawkeye is the only character who plays this straight (his classic outfit is purple). Black Widow has always worn black. The color of the Hulk's clothes is pointless since he rips them apart when he [[HulkingOut Hulks Out]], and Iron Man's reasons for red and gold were [[IncrediblyLamePun ironed]] out in [[Film/IronMan his first film]]. Agent Coulson, in fact, flat out [[DefiedTrope defies this]] ''for'' Cap.
-->'''Captain America:''' Aren't the stars and stripes a little... old-fashioned?\\
'''Agent Coulson:''' With everything that's happening, people might just need a little old-fashioned.
* MrFanservice: Ladies, take your pick. The blond, clean-cut, all-American NiceGuy? The tall, dark, and [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] millionaire playboy? The pretty boy god with an accent? The DracoInLeatherPants BigBad? The stoic, "cool loner" archer? The {{adorkable}} bespectacled scientist? Almost all of which are incredibly buff and march around in skin-tight clothing, shiny badass armor, and/or sleeveless with arms the size of tree trunks?
* MsFanservice: Creator/ScarlettJohansson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cobie Smulders all receive some MaleGaze. Pepper Potts, in particular, shows up to a meeting with Tony Stark wearing daisy dukes and no shoes.
* MythologyGag:
** Georgi Luchkow, the Russian who Black Widow beats up early in the movie, shares his name with a minor Black Widow villain from the early 90s.
** Romy Rosemont appears as Shawna Lynde, a Thor supporting character during the 1980s.
** James Eckhouse appears as Senator Boynton, a minor character during the ''Armor Wars'' storyline. He is seen [[spoiler:near the end, asking on a cable news show about where the Avengers are and who they should be accountable to.]]
** The Tesseract facility at the beginning of the film is revealed to be Project Pegasus, a S.H.I.E.L.D. research sites from the comics.
** "You have reached the Life Model Decoy of Tony Stark." Life Model Decoy is the term used for an entire sub-set of robotic "clones" featured in the comics.
** The Captain America trading cards display artwork by JackKirby, save for the one that has a picture of Cap in his stage show outfit.
** Possibly ''[[NorseMythology literal]]'' {{Mythology Gag}}s:
*** [[spoiler:When Loki has his mouth sealed shut at the end of the film, it echoes how he had it sewn shut by dwarves in myths.]]
*** During Thor and Loki's conversation on the cliff side, two ravens fly past, evoking Odin's two ravens.
*** When The Other threatens Loki with "[[FateWorseThanDeath more than pain]]" should he fail, one of the Chitauri's giant snakes can be seen moving through the background. In Norse mythology, Loki is punished for his role in [[{{Gotterdammerung}} Ragnarök]] by having a snake drip venom in his eyes for all eternity.
** During TheOner across NYC, Captain America and Iron Man pull off a fusion move lifted directly from ''MarvelUltimateAlliance''.
** This one is half-Mythology Gag, half-Continuity Nod; [[spoiler:Banner mentions that at one point, he tried to kill himself with a pistol "and the other guy spat out the bullet."]] This was going to be the opening scene in ''The Incredible Hulk'' film (and actually appeared in the AlternateUniverse miniseries "Banner!") but was cut because Louis Leterrier, who directed this ''Hulk'' film, thought it would be too dark (and yet that scene showed up in the video game tie-in, as well as the novelization). Years earlier, this also happened in the comics.
** While talking to Loki, Tony refers to the Avengers as "Earth's mightiest heroes", a moniker that has followed the team since day one.
** Where the last couple ''Hulk'' movies referenced the character's iconic purple pants; ''Avengers'' reference is subtler by having Banner wear a purple shirt for most of the film.
** Within the movie continuity, Hulk chasing Black Widow through a narrow corridor can bring to mind a similar scene from ''Iron Man'' where Iron Monger chases Pepper.
** [[spoiler:"To challenge them is to court death." The primary aspect of Thanos' motivations in the comic books is that he saw the personification of death when he was young... and fell in love with it. Now you know why he's smiling.]]
** Banner mentions that he's [[spoiler:always angry, can transform into the Hulk at will, and implies that the two personalities are more or less on the same wavelength]]; the WorldWarHulk arc is built around this.
** While Hulk never says "Hulk smash!", or "Puny humans!", his two most famous catch phrases in the comics, both of them are alluded to. Captain America commands Hulk to smash (his exact words being, "and Hulk? Smash."), and Hulk calls Loki a "puny god".
** From a deleted scene: The security guard asks Bruce "[[{{Ant-Man}} Are you a big guy that gets all little? Or a little guy who sometimes blows up to be all big]]?"
** The air-dropped prison intended to kill the Hulk if necessary references the way that Hulk died in the TV show: He fell out of an aircraft as Hulk and landed as Banner.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: Dr. Banner's nudity after crashing through the factory is PlayedForLaughs by the security guard.
* NeckLift: Loki does this to Tony, right before [[DestinationDefenestration tossing him out of the Stark Tower window]].
* NervesOfSteel: The {{Badass Normal}}s of the group keep their cool when surrounding by an alien invasion and lacking superpowers.
* NeverFoundTheBody: Downplayed. [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]] ''appears'' to die, but the scene cuts away before we find out whether [[spoiler:he]] was really OnlyMostlyDead and taken to a hospital room. Fury plays the death for all it's worth in getting the bickering heroes to put aside their differences but is explicitly shown to be a ConsummateLiar about other things [[spoiler:(including lying about the Captain America trading cards being taken from Coulson's body, rather than his locker!)]]. Furthermore, [[spoiler:Clark Gregg]] has said [[spoiler:that he]] was assured by Joss Whedon that the character survives, and is rumored to be in talks to appear in future Marvel movies as that character... though an [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/clark-gregg-interview interview with the actor in the Huffington Post]] seems to debunk the assurance. Time will tell.
* NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: In contrast to his teammates, Tony calls [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]] an idiot for trying to take Loki on alone but it quickly becomes clear that this is really just Tony's way of trying to ensure the cracks in his usual snarky facade don't overwhelm him completely.
* NeverTrustATrailer:
** That scene where Black Widow stands in front of an explosion? It's not in the film. Many alternate takes are used as well.
** Coulson never suggests a "time out."
** The circumstances surrounding the Hulk catching Iron Man are different from what the trailers would have you believe. It's a case of clever editing. [[spoiler:Iron Man's falling because he's out of power after a long fight, ending with his delivering a nuke to the Chitauri control ship, not because he was shot out of the sky.]] See also TrailersAlwaysSpoil.
** The editing would also have you believe that Loki was smirking at the Black Widow when he first escorted into the helicarrier, when in fact he is smiling at Bruce Banner.
** Editing suggests Thor laughs at Tony's rebuttal when Captain America asks what use he is without his armor. In the movie, Black Widow is the one shown amused by the response, though it's much more muted. Thor is actually laughing at how "You people are so petty... and tiny."
** Tony's delivery of his rebuttal in the trailers is calm and just a little snarky, while in the actual movie it's much quicker and a bit more mean-spirited.
** Steve and Tony's curt introduction to each other ("Mr. Stark." "Captain.") occurs not on the Helicarrier when they're out of uniform, but in Stuttgart while they're both suited up.
** In the trailer Tony says "Guys, I'm bringing the party to you", but in the movie it's "Then tell [[TheIncredibleHulk him]] to suit up, I'm bringing the party to you."
** Nick Fury's speech is longer in the movie:
-->'''Nick Fury, Trailer:''' There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, so when we needed them, they could fight the battles that we never could.\\
'''Nick Fury, Movie:''' There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. [[spoiler:Phil Coulson died still believing in heroes... Well, it's an old fashioned notion.]]
** In the teaser trailer, Fury says, "Gentlemen, you're up." This was actually two separate lines clipped together. In the actual movie, he says, "Gentlemen" when Rogers and Banner first step on to the Helicarrier bridge, and "Captain, you're up" when they find Loki in Germany.
** That strange chord that plays when the Leviathan rounds the building chasing Iron Man doesn't play in the film. It's been replaced with a roar.
* NewscasterCameo: MSNBC's Thomas Roberts covers the aftermath of the final battle.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Loki's portal created using the Tesseract allows [[spoiler:the heroes to dispose of the nuke by sending it through the portal. Which conveniently destroys Loki's army as well.]] Most of his scheme helps bring the Avengers together, which pays homage to Loki's role in the Avengers comic-book origin, where he brings the team together even more accidentally.
* TheNicknamer: Tony calls Loki "[[WesternAnimation/RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer Reindeer Games]]" (because of the horns on his helmet), his scepter "the Glowstick of Destiny" (because of its Mind Control properties and how it [[PowerGlows glows]], and also a reference to [[PublicDomainArtifact the Spear of Destiny]]), refers to Steve being frozen as a "Capsicle", he calls Thor "PointBreak" (because of his long blonde hair, muscles and beard), and Clint Barton "[[Film/LordOfTheRings Legolas]]" (because of his bow and arrow). It ''is'' a Creator/JossWhedon movie, after all.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot
** Tony Stark, a self-described "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist" who is also a super hero.
** The Leviathans which are something like giant cyborg space snakes that serve as [[AwesomePersonnelCarrier Awesome Personnel Carriers.]]
* NoEndorHolocaust: DefiedTrope.
** During the massive superhero battle in the middle of Manhattan, no civilian casualties are shown. However, in the aftermath, the news footage includes several shots of people lighting candles and putting up messages on memorial walls. When the Leviathans die, they are shown then crashing to ground [[spoiler:and Captain America urges Black Widow to close the portal so the nuclear explosion doesn't come back to Earth.]]
** Joss Whedon didn't want any of the jets to fall off the Helicarrier because that also would be an aversion. He commented that it would kill innocent people, and he didn't want viewers blaming the Avengers or SHIELD for that. Prior to take off workers are shown strapping the jets down, so that could be an excuse for why they didn't fall off.
** Aircraft are designed for lift, so any sufficiently strong wind can send them airborne. They are chained down to steel loops embedded into the tarmac in the event of tornadoes and hurricanes as well. When you consider the speeds and angles the helicarrier will be achieving during normal flight maneuvers, securing the jets for flight would be a very reasonable safety protocol.
* NoExceptYes:
** Meta-example: Before the movie was released Whedon and co. repeatedly denied that the Skrulls would be in the movie. The Chitauri are actually UltimateUniverse versions of the Skrulls.
** Tony certainly isn't stalling for time while talking to Loki (and waiting for the Mark Seven to be deployed). He's threatening him.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: [[spoiler:Hulk grabs Loki by the ankle and slams him into the floor like a rag doll about five times.]]
* NoodleIncident: Black Widow and Hawkeye make numerous references to these from their partnership.
-->'''Black Widow:''' This is just like Budapest all over again.\\
'''Hawkeye:''' You and I remember Budapest ''very'' differently.
* NoOSHACompliance: The Helicarrier's angled flight deck leads directly to one of the huge rotors. This means that pilots making use of the flight deck better pray that they land the first time because overshooting will mean getting sucked into a rotor designed to ''pull the air above it and direct it down with enough force to lift an aircraft carrier.'' The helicarrier ''can'' apparently stay in the air with one of the rotors turned off to make landings safer, but that endangers the entire helicarrier.
* NoPartyGiven: Averted. Senator Boynton, the politician criticizing the Avengers at the end of the movie, is explicitly labeled as a Democrat though if you blink, you miss it.
* NoSell: [[spoiler:Loki gets a very unpleasant surprise when his mind-control powers are blocked by Tony's Arc Reactor.]]
* NotSoDifferent: Tony and Loki, much to Tony's chagrin.
-->'''Tony:''' ...And Loki, he's a full-tilt diva! He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered on-\\
''(realizes he's describing Stark Tower and in turn, himself)''\\
'''Tony:''' [[ExplainExplainOhCrap Sonofabitch]].
* NotThatKindOfDoctor: {{Inverted}} by Bruce Banner: he's a physicist, but is seen practicing medicine in the slums of Calcutta.
* NotTheFallThatKillsYou: Played straight for the most part, except for one instance where [[spoiler:the Hulk rescues a falling Iron Man by sliding down a building to slow his fall, then sliding several hundred yards down the street before finally coming to a stop. He then just drops Iron Man on the ground]].
%% The Scottish Trope is more appropriate than Not Using The Zed Word:
* NukeEm:
** [[spoiler:The World Security Council]]'s solution to the alien threat is to target [[spoiler:Manhattan]] with a nuclear missile. Nick Fury mentions how monumentally stupid it is.
--->'''Nick Fury:''' I recognise that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a ''stupid-ass'' decision, I've elected to ignore it.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Black Widow was introduced during an interrogation with [[TheMafiya a Russian mobster type]] who calls her "just another pretty face" while she manipulates information out of him by pretending to be a naive prisoner. She later uses a similar interrogation technique on Loki, playing up her vulnerability until he feels the need to threaten her and reveal something of his plan.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The World Security Council. Styling themselves like an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness is bad enough, but then they go and act like complete jerks.
* OddFriendship: Pretty much any pairing minus Black Widow and Hawkeye, but who does Tony actually get along with first? Banner. It helps that Banner "[[TechnoBabble speaks English]]".
* OffhandBackhand:
** Hawkeye does it with arrows.
** Hulk punches Thor ''right out of the shot'' at one point.
** Thor also does this to Iron Man right before he "drops" his hammer on Cap
* OhCrap: Natasha's reaction when she realizes that she's been tasked with recruiting The Hulk.
-->'''Natasha:''' Bozhe moi... [[hottip:*: Russian for "Oh my God"]]
** When she's pinned down [[spoiler:during the attack on the Helicarrier, within a few feet from Banner, ''and he's changing''.]]
** The S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot's reaction when he tries to distract the Hulk by shooting at him with a Gatling gun [[spoiler:and the Hulk jumps toward the plane]]:
-->'''Pilot:''' Target angry! ''Target angry!!''
** Tony Stark gets one when [[spoiler:the blades of the turbine that he's been pushing start picking up speed, with him briefly getting carried along by one.]]
-->'''Tony:''' Uh oh.
** He gets another right after [[spoiler:he blasts Loki with the new Mk. VII armor...then sees the portal opening overhead, reminding him that the Chitauri are coming.]]
--> '''Tony:''' ...Right... (HUD goes into battle mode) ...''army''...
** Thor has a dawning realization of just how much '''rage''' Hulk has when he looks Hulk in the eye for the first time.
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Bruce Banner is a physicist whose special field is radiation, while Tony Stark is an engineer specializing in weapons, robotics, and electricity generation, yet upon meeting each other for the first time, the two are immediately able to speak (and bond over) the same TechnoBabble.
* OnceMoreWithClarity: Just like in ''Thor'', a Stinger from a previous movie (''Thor'' itself in this case) is fully elaborated here.
* OneOfUs:
** Tony Stark can spot and identify someone playing ''Galaga'' without trying, wears a Black Sabbath T-shirt, hacks speakers to play AC/DC and makes a ''LordOfTheRings'' reference by calling Hawkeye 'Legolas'.
** The usually dry and reserved Agent Coulson turns out to be a huge Captain America fanboy. He even collected the entire vintage set of Captain American trading cards in near-mint condition.
** Tony feels this way in-universe about Bruce Banner. Banner being the only one who can understand and speak TechnoBabble back to him. There's also this exchange that got cut off in the final edit:
-->'''Natasha:''' You'll love [your lab], doc; it's got all the toys.
-->'''Banner:''' Does it have a {{Commodore 64}}?
-->'''Natasha:''' I'm not sure...
-->'''Banner:''' Oh, you're very young.
** After Captain America is unmasked during the confrontation at the bank, the camera lingers on a waitress who catches sight of his face. As it turns out, she recognizes him; in a [[http://youtu.be/SnLm3KlakNE deleted scene]] we find out that they've met recently.
* OneManArmy: The Avengers are a One Man Army but Tony Stark specifically describes the Hulk as one in the climax.
-->'''Loki:''' I have an army.\\
'''Tony:''' We have a ''Hulk''.
* TheOner: There are a couple of notable ones. Joss is a fan.
** On the Helicarrier, half of [[spoiler:the blowout between all the Avengers]] is a single shot.
** We start with [[spoiler:Black Widow riding a hijacked Chitauri craft... to Iron Man covering her back by blasting chasing craft... to Iron Man landing next to Captain America and reflecting his beam off of Cap's shield to clear out enemies... to Hawkeye picking off Chitauri from nearby and far... to Thor and Hulk fighting on top of a Leviathan and ultimately using a concerted effort to bring the monster down.]] Marvel released this scene to the press to promote the Blu-Ray/DVD edition. It can be viewed [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0OLF7MZPMo here]].
* OnlyAFleshWound: Cap gets shot, and later Thor is stabbed, both in the abdomen. They suffer only momentarily since both are wearing armor.
* TheOtherDarrin: Ed Norton was originally going to reprise his role as Bruce Banner from ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'', but negotiations broke down. Mark Ruffalo replaced him, making him the only Avenger actor to not appear in a previous film as his character.
* OutOfFocus: Thor is used sparingly compared to the rest of the Avengers. [[TropesAreTools This works nicely]] - since Loki is the main villain, the film could have risked being ''Thor 2'' if he'd had too much screentime, and his CharacterDevelopment is mostly shown through body language and facial expressions. It also helps that the extended cast from his movie is inaccessible; Selvig is in enemy hands, Jane is MIA because Natalie Portman was pregnant during filming, and the rest are Asgardians. The only person on the Helicarrier he knows is Agent Coulson. He does get a scene with Phil discussing his feelings about Loki targeting Earth.
** Also Cap, even though he has the most screentime, is usually not the focus on whatever scene he is in.
* OutdatedOutfit: Steve's fashions are hopelessly out of date and what he deems "casual" (long-sleeve collared shirts, maybe with the sleeves rolled up and slacks) seems stuffy and formal compared to Tony and Clint. Cap himself suggests that his old stars-and-stripes uniform is a bit old-fashioned. Coulson doesn't argue, but suggests that with everything that's happened, people "might need a little old-fashioned."
* OutrunTheFireball:
** During the prologue, [[spoiler:the Tesseract's deactivation leaves a remnant of portal energy, which builds up into a massively destructive blast which implodes the facility and forces everyone to outrace the collapse]].
** [[spoiler:When the Chitauri mothership is destroyed by a nuclear missile, Captain America orders the portal closed to prevent the explosion from coming through to Earth. As the offline Iron Man falls back, not only does he have to get through the portal to come back home, but also to escape the nuclear explosion himself (he makes it with half a second to spare.)]]
* OutsideRide: Black Widow hops on the back of an alien glider, though to be fair those don't really have an "inside" to begin with. Also, Hulk and Thor both hop onto a Leviathan and take it apart. Then there's the scene in which Thor lands on top of the Quinjet.
* OverlyLongGag: [[spoiler:The second stinger]].
* PetTheDog: Tony offering to fly Phil Coulson on a private jet to Portland, apparently having overheard his earlier conversation with Pepper where he mentioned that he'd had to break it off with his girlfriend after she'd moved there.
-->'''Tony:''' I'll fly you to Portland, [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming keep the love alive]]!
* PhraseCatcher: At the climax, when Cap is divvying up tasks. Last up is the Hulk with the exchange mentioned above.
* PillarOfLight: As seen on the poster, [[spoiler:the Tesseract beam has this look while creating the portal]].
* PlayfulHacker: Tony Stark points out that if SHIELD expects him to be effective, he needs to know ''everything''.
* PlayingAgainstType: Mark Ruffalo, veteran of indie cinema and the occasional RomCom, as Bruce Banner/The Hulk.
* PlotTailoredToTheParty: Played with. While there are few obstacles that can be overcome only by a specific superhero, it is unavoidable due to the very nature of the set-up. As Fury points out, the entire idea of the Avengers is to be a versatile and flexible response team.
* PocketProtector: [[spoiler:Tony's Arc Reactor performs like this against Loki's brainwashing spear]].
* PoisonousCaptive: Loki will taunt you and demoralize you and lead his minions to you.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Loki calling Natasha a "[[CountryMatters mewling quim]]".
* PopCulturalOsmosisFailure: Steve doesn't get a lot of references the other characters make. When someone puzzles Thor by mentioning [[TheWizardOfOz "flying monkeys"]], Steve's happy that he finally got one. It also goes the other way, when Thor describes an Asgardian beast that Coulson is unfamiliar with.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Obviously a major theme in the movie.
* ThePowerOfTrust: Between Stark and Banner. In this movie, Stark makes a point of offering Banner trust (even his poke in the stomach can be seen as a demonstration of his confidence in Banner's self control). Banner repays it in ''spades.''
* PowerWalk: Right before the final battle, the team walks out all together in full {{Badass}}ery.
* PreAsskickingOneLiner: Captain America gives one to the Hulk near the end of the film as he's giving the other heroes tasks to accomplish.
-->'''Captain America:''' And Hulk...
--> Hulk turns to face him.
-->'''Captain America:''' Smash.
--> Hulk smirks and leaps towards some Chitauri.
* PrecisionGuidedBoomerang: Both Thor and Cap toss their weapons around with this effect. Thor is justified by it being a magic hammer that he can summon to his hand whenever he wants. Cap is apparently really good at calculating ricochet angles in fractions of a second.
* PreemptiveShutUp: Delivered by Cap to a SHIELD pilot.
-->'''Captain America:''' Son, just don't.
* PreviewsPulse: The second trailer [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOrNdBpGMv8 had some instances of this]], coupled with Loki's HannibalLecture. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8PVqw2jfrI So did its third trailer]].
* ProductPlacement:
** During the final battle, one of the only buildings with no noticeable damage sports the motto for Farmers Insurance, which all of New York would need by this point.
** Tony Stark drives an Acura in this movie instead of the Audis from the ''Film/IronMan'' films. S.H.I.E.L.D. also uses Acura cars, and in a deleted scene, Steve (mulling over his past) walks past a showroom with the Acura RDX 2012 model prominently displayed, along with the company's logo.
** Tony Stark's bracelets are Colantotte bracelets, which are supposed to administer magnetic therapy for healthier blood flow. A tie-in comic explains that Pepper bought them for Tony's brithday, and their magnetic properties inspired him to build the Mark VII.
* ProductionThrowback:
** "Does anybody feel like ''shawarma''? I feel some ''shawarma'' coming on." was evidently the line that got Nicholas Brendon cast as Xander on ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''.
** [[spoiler:Coulson]]'s dying speech to Loki is inverted in an older Whedon production, ''Series/{{Angel}}'', at the end of the aptly-titled "Conviction": The ''villain'' lectures the hero about a lack of "conviction" to his cause, ensuring that evil will always triumph. Both scenes end in the same way, with the good character silencing the villain with a well-placed shot.
* ProlongedPrologue: The movie begins with The Other explaining to [[spoiler:Thanos]] (and the audience) what their EvilPlan is. Then we cut to Nick Fury arriving at a joint S.H.I.E.L.D./NASA/Project Pegasus research facility being evacuated. Then Loki arrives, [[spoiler:takes control of Hawkeye and Dr. Selvig,]] and escapes with the Tesseract as the entire facility collapses. Finally Coulson asks Fury "What now?" and we get an AnswerCut to the title "The Avengers", a moment made even cooler in the UK release as the [[MarketBasedTitle title]] is "Avengers Assemble."
* PsychoticSmirk:
** Loki's entrance comes adorned with an epic one. Many more follow.
** [[spoiler:Thanos gives one as he is revealed in The Stinger, just after the Other says that attacking Earth is to "court death".]]
** The Hulk sports one after Cap's order to defeat the Chitauri is merely: "And Hulk? Smash."
* PunchCatch:
** Loki catches Captain America's fist during their scuffle. Later, Thor catches Hulk's fist and tries to [[IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight talk to Banner]] before Hulk slugs him with his free hand.
** Thor also catches Iron Man's punch the first time they fight. Iron Man responds with a repulsor blast to the face.
* PunchedAcrossTheRoom: For half the main characters, this is the basic at-will attack.
* PunyEarthlings: The Chitauri had been told that humans were those but changed their mind after their invasion of New York faced the Avengers and Iron Man [[spoiler:nuked their command ship]]. Also [[InvertedTrope inverted]] when the Hulk [[spoiler:smashes Loki and calls him a "Puny God".]]
* PureEnergy: When Tony tries to blast the portal generator with his repulsors, they are blocked by a DeflectorShield. Jarvis points out that the repulsors will have no effect, as the shield is made of pure energy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Q-Z]]
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: {{Lampshaded}} regularly by Loki, Nick Fury, Bruce Banner and every other character, but none so much as Creator/JossWhedon himself.
-->'''Joss:''' The Avengers is a terrible idea for a superhero team. They really don't belong in the same movie, let alone in the same room.
* RatedMForManly: The super heroes, the explosions, the fighting, and the general epic scale.
* TheRealHeroes: During the Chitauri invasion of Manhattan, New York's fire department tries to ameliorate the disaster under fire while the NYPD try to fight back even if they only have their side arms. Eventually, the US Army and/or National Guard manage to get troops in for some fire support for the Avengers.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
** Natalie Portman was enthusiastic about returning to the role of Thor's human love interest Jane Foster, but was heavily pregnant during filming. Jane was thus PutOnABus to a conference in Tromsø, away from the action of the movie.
** Chris Evans quickly grew a full beard once filming was complete, so Cap keeps his face hidden from the camera during TheStinger.
* RealMenLoveJesus: Shortly after Thor nabs Loki from the transport, after Black Widow explains that Thor's basically a god, Captain America states that there's only one God in existence, and it's pretty clear that he's referring to the Judeo-Christian {{God}}.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Loki's ''other'' other favorite tactic: He tells everyone and the human reace itself that they suck and he is so much better than them.
** [[BadassNormal Agent Coulson]] gives one right back to Loki, punctuated with a {{BFG}}, ''[[spoiler:while bleeding to death]]''.
--->'''Agent Coulson''' You're going to lose. You lack conviction.
** Steve gives one to Tony that stings:
--->'''Steve:''' Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away, [[RhetoricalQuestionBlunder what are you?]]\\
'''Tony:''' [[GadgeteerGenius Genius]], [[{{Fiction 500}} billionaire]], [[ThePornomancer playboy]], [[UnclePennybags philanthropist]].\\
'''Steve:''' I know guys with none of that worth ten of you.
** Stark proceeds to fire right back at him.
--->'''Tony:''' Everything special about you came out of a ''bottle''.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Nick Fury plays this role. [[spoiler:As Tony notes, Nick Fury is a top spy, so everything he says is loaded with half-truths, misdirections, omissions, and good old-fashioned lies, but he has everyone's best interests at heart.]]
* RedemptionRejection: [[spoiler:When Thor fights Loki on Stark Tower, he tells him it's not too late to turn back. For a second Loki seems to be considering it. Then he stabs Thor in the stomach]].
* RedOniBlueOni: Iron Man is the red to Captain America's blue. Heck, they're even ColorCodedCharacters.
* RedShirtArmy: S.H.I.E.L.D. comes across as one because only the named agents (Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hill, Coulson) ever achieve anything.
* ReflexiveResponse: Twice.
** When the Council sends out jets [[spoiler:to nuke Manhattan]], overriding his orders, Nick Fury takes things into his own hands. He successfully takes one out with a rocket-propelled grenade. Then the second one takes him by surprise, and he instinctually whips out his sidearm to shoot at it, even though (a) the jet's already out of range, and (b) there's very little chance that a small weapon like that could have done to the jet in the first place. You can practically ''hear'' him thinking DamnYouMuscleMemory.
** During the battle in New York, Hawkeye finds out that he's out of arrows the hard way: he reaches to pull one out of his quiver and there's nothing there. This startles him so much that he's ''almost'' too late to smack a Chitauri warrior in the face when it gets close.
* RenegadeRussian: The Russian who was interrogating Black Widow was wearing a Russian military uniform and running what is strongly implied to be an illegal arms dealing business.
* {{Revenge}}: After the Hulk and Thor work together for a brief to moment, they stand watching something and facing the camera for a second. Cue the Hulk punching Thor out of the shot offhand still staring forward, in revenge for a vicious fight earlier in the movie.
* RevolvingDoorRevolution: In response to a query by Loki during the WoundedGazelleGambit scene, Natasha claims this of Russia:
--> '''Natasha:''' Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over them; I'm Russian. Or rather, I used to be.
* RuleOfCool: A standard in super hero movies.
* RuleOfThree: Phil Coulson seems to have a romantic relationship with a cellist that is mentioned thrice throughout the film. Each time it's mentioned it corresponds to a particular part of the ThreeActStructure.
* RustProofBlood: The blood on [[spoiler:Coulson's Captain America cards]] is still bright red long after it should have dried up. [[spoiler:It's our first clue that Fury wasn't telling the truth about where he found them. Note that it smears on the glass table when Steve picks them up.]]
* SceneryGorn: Most of Midtown Manhattan becomes this by the end of the movie.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight:
** The entire team, even Captain America. This almost sets the Avengers ''against'' S.H.I.E.L.D. in the middle of the film.
** The council has made its decision, but given that it's a "stupid-ass decision", Director Fury has merely elected to ignore it, even going so far as to shoot down one of his own birds to curtail it.
* ScienceHero: Stark and Banner are recruited for this mission specifcally because of their science genuis. The fighting was because they were there to help.
* ScottyTime: Fury asks Coulson how long it will take to evacuate the research campus and immediately demands that he "do better." Indeed, the Tesseract blows up in less than half that time and many people are killed.
* TheScottishTrope: Bruce refuses to call his alter ego Hulk. Instead, he refers to him as The Other Guy. He only slips once, and immediately corrects himself. Though he has made his peace with the Hulk he still doesn't like it. The others don't bother.
* SerkisFolk: The Incredible Hulk, with Mark Ruffalo himself doing most of the motion capture work.
* SequelEscalation: The film involves stakes and action about an order of magnitude higher than any of the previous MCU universe films.
* SequelHook: [[spoiler:After the main end credits, The Other is shown talking to a person's back, mentioning how fighting the humans after the Chitauri's disastrous defeat would be "to court death". Cue The Reveal from Thanos, smiling. Fans with a keen eye may have noticed the Infinity Gauntlet in ''Thor''. Putting together those two facts will cause this hook to become much more interesting. In addition, Stark Tower now only has an A on it... and Tony seems to be doing some major renovations, like a hangar to hold a Quinjet. If you look closely, he also has plans for a floor for each member of The Avengers.]]
* ShadowArchetype: Loki works as a twisted mirror to the Avengers more than once. He's an example of different parts of their personalities, like Thor's values about becoming king, Black Widow's past murderous life or Tony's big ego, with the incident that led to him becoming Iron Man.
* SharpDressedMan[=/=]BadassInANiceSuit: Just like in ''Thor'', whenever he's not wearing his conqueror gear (with the horned helmet), Loki prefers a suave and classy longcoat that would be right at home for a night at the opera.
* ShellShockSilence: A subdued example after a bomb explodes near Captain America.
* SherlockScan: Tony Stark demonstrates this several times, often referring to a FunnyBackgroundEvent that no-one else noticed. Fittingly, Creator/RobertDowneyJr has twice played the trope namer, Film/SherlockHolmes.
-->'''Tony:''' That man is playing ''{{Galaga}}''. Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did.
* ShoutOut:
** The opening sequence references the ultimate fate of Sunnydale in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' with the misfiring portal flare, collapse wave and fleeing vehicle.
** Iron Man throwing a nuclear missile into outer space is a big hello to ''Film/{{Superman}}''.
** Loki is brought to "face Asgardian justice" in chains and a face mask resembling that of [[SilenceOfTheLambs Hannibal Lecter]]. AnthonyHopkins plays Odin in ''Thor''.
** Tony wears a Black Sabbath shirt from their "Never Say Die!" era; one of Black Sabbath's hits is "Iron Man".
** When Thor and Loki are talking on the mountaintop, a couple of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huginn_and_Muninn ravens]] are seen flying by.
** Tony's [[ReversePolarity "reverse the polarity"]] references many sci-fi shows.
** Tony calls Hawkeye "[[Film/LordOfTheRings Legolas]]", Thor "PointBreak", and Loki "[[WesternAnimation/RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer Reindeer Games]]".
** Loki taunts Nick Fury about coming so close to unlimited power, the very same phrase used by Palpatine when he killed Mace Windu in ''Franchise/ StarWars''. Both recipients of the speech were played by SamuelLJackson.
** Tony briefly asks Jarvis if he's ever heard of [[Literature/TheBible the story of Jonah]], immediately before he goes through the mouth of one of the leviathans and blows it up from the inside out.
** Blink-and-you'll miss it, but the image of the iridium that Selvig shows Loki? If you look right at the beginning, the shadows on the iridium sample make it look ''exactly'' like ''[[Series/{{Firefly}} Serenity]].''
** The shot during the final battle when Cap, Black Widow and Hawkeye are looking up at the portal watching the first Leviathan come out is shot in the exact same manner in which Peter, Ray, and Egon look at Gozer's portal opening in ''Film/{{Ghostbusters}}'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mNuG25oq_b0 (The scene is at 2:19.)]]
** Could just be a coincidence, or AuthorAppeal, but Black Widow and Hawkeye's discussion of Budapest as a NoodleIncident also happens between Darla and Angel in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''.
** Iron Man's [[WesternAnimation/{{AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes}} pose]] during his entrance in Germany: Insane Amounts of bonus points for the circumstances: Captain America is on the ropes and now on the ground without his shield against Loki in both instances, and Hawkeye is using Loki's monologue to his advantage.
* ShowyInvincibleHero: The Hulk. The only time he's even remotely in trouble is in his fight with Thor or when he is briefly pinned down by a dozen or so Chitauri gliders.
* ShutUpHannibal:
** [[spoiler:The Hulk has the last word on this when Loki confronts him.]]
** Also applies to [[spoiler:a dying Phil Coulson shooting Loki in the middle of a sentence]].
* SignsOfDisrepair: Invoked. After the final battle, the '''STARK''' on Stark Tower is reduced to an '''A''' for Avengers.
* SingleTear: Loki has one after he stabs Thor on the Stark Tower.
* SlasherSmile:
** Loki's is coming along.
** Hulk gets a brief but effective one when Cap [[BorrowedCatchPhrase tells him to smash]].
* SleevesAreForWimps:
** Thor in this incarnation, looking more like the original costume in the comics. He actually gets the sleeves back when things get serious.
** Hawkeye's costume is based on his original ''Ultimates'' uniform, although his 616 costume is often sleeveless as well.
* SmugSuper: Loki ''will'' remind you at any opportunity that he is a god.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Black Widow.
* SoftGlass: While Hulk and the Chitauri grunts bash through windows with no problem, Hawkeye gets noticeably winded after one attempt. Tony also gets thrown out of a window made of fairly thick glass from Stark tower while not suited up. It doesn't hurt him at all and he seems much more worried about falling to his death.
* SophisticatedAsHell:
-->'''Fury:''' I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a ''stupid-ass'' decision, I've elected to ignore it.
* SoundtrackDissonance: [[spoiler:Elegant classical music plays when Loki and Brainwashed!Hawkeye are killing people at a party in Germany. It gives the scene a very surreal feeling.]]
* SpaceWhale: The Chitauri's giant living assault ships, with elements of GiantFlyer, Giant Worm and OurDragonsAreDifferent mixed in. A LivingShip?
* SpandexLatexOrLeather: Take your pick. There's at least one character who has you covered. [[FullFrontalAssault Except the Hulk.]]
* SpeakOfTheDevil: Banner refuses to call The Hulk by name, referring to him as "the other guy" and correcting himself the one time he does slip in a "he who must not be named" kind of a way.
* SpotlightStealingSquad: While Captain America receives [[http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/how-much-screen-time-does-each-avenger-get.html thirty more seconds of screentime]] and directs the battle during the climax, Tony Stark has many of the movie's crucial scenes such as [[CharacterDevelopment arresting Loki and saving Manhattan with a near HeroicSacrifice]]. At an earlier point, Tony Stark was to have an even greater role. Mark Ruffalo's Banner and Hulk were extremely well-received, considering that Hulk's movies did relatively poorly, and Hulk had some of the most memorable scenes. Hawkeye had the least screentime of each hero, but this works considerably to his favor.
* SpyCatsuit: Black Widow and Maria Hill.
* StealthPun:
** In the first [[TheStinger stinger,]] [[spoiler:the Other says Earth would be "to court death" while talking to Thanos, the one being who does this literally.]]
** Shawarma is basically a type of gyro, which is pronounced the same as "hero".
** Tony offering blueberries to Captain America. Who's wearing blue.
* TakeThat: The album of Creator/AlanSilvestri's score (as opposed to the song album - of which exactly ''one'' track is in the film). How can a soundtrack be a TakeThat, you ask? Well, soundtrack fans have long complained about digital releases having extra material not on the CD (most recently with Silvestri's ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', which doesn't have [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVC7Zvo_NyQ this]] on the disc and was only available as a download). The digital album of the score of ''The Avengers'' lasts 64:25... but the physical CD runs 76:17, and several of the tracks on the download last longer on the CD (in particular "Tunnel Chase"--[[Film/BackToTheFuture not the first time]] [[Franchise/{{Predator}} Silvestri's used that title]]--and "Stark Goes Green"), capped with the CD having a whole extra cue ("Interrogation").
* TheStinger:
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRqiklDdS3Q&feature=g-user-u One mid-credits]], revealing that the entire Loki-led Chitauri invasion was in fact orchestrated by [[spoiler:Thanos.]]
** A second one after the end of the credits, where [[spoiler:the crew eats at the shawarma place Tony suggests at the end of the final battle]]. Whilst it was originally only in the US-release of the film theatrically, it's included in all versions of the home release.
* TheStraightAndArrowPath: While Hawkeye does have a service handgun, he spends most of the time firing arrows.
* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: Steve Rogers tells Fury that he doubts anything they're about to face will surprise him after all the strange things the 21st century has already thrown at him. It doesn't help that, this being a Joss Whedon script, people keep making [[PopCulturalOsmosisFailure pop-culture references he doesn't understand]]. (He does eventually get a small victory when he [[Film/TheWizardOfOz understands a reference]] that Thor doesn't.)
* StockShoutouts:
** A113 appears in the upper left corner of Fury's video screen as he's having his last videoconference with The Council.
** And the Tesseract, a source of infinite power and knowledge with alien origins? Yeah, it's in the SHIELD books as item #[[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy 42]].
* StoutStrength: In a departure from the previous film (and most of his comics, really) The Hulk has a noticeable layer of fat around his massive trunk, though his muscles still show.
* SunglassesAtNight: Agent Coulson in his first appearance in the film.
* SuperheroPackingHeat: Nick Fury and Black Widow. Captain America to [[DownplayedTrope a much lesser extent]] than in his previous film (he uses an assault rifle in one scene). Hawkeye also wears a sidearm, though he prefers using his bow.
* SuperTeam: The Avengers Initiative.
* SuperToughness: [[spoiler:Loki, being a Frost Giant, shrugs off small-arms and assault rifle fire, but is thrown around by explosions. He also understandably gets beaten up by the Hulk, but lives to tell the tale and seems to recover without a hitch by the time he's captured again in the finale.]]
* SupervillainLair: Loki sets up shop in a warehouse somewhere, loaded to the gills with equipment and mindwiped servants. Oddly, he never seems to return to it after Stuttgart, so there's no scene of the heroes ExploringTheEvilLair.
* SuperWeaponAverageJoe: Coulson wields a gun that was created from the remains of The Destroyer.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Pepper asks Coulson if he's come to get Tony to join the Avengers, which of course she knows nothing about.
* SwirlyEnergyThingy: [[spoiler:Selvig opening a vortex over Stark Tower.]]
* TailorMadePrison: The S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier has one to stuff Loki in after the first act of the movie. It's a roomy round cell with thick glass windows suspended over a shaft. If the glass breaks or the cell is compromised the whole thing plummets thousands of feet to the ground with enough impact to kill anything that isn't NighInvulnerable. Loki notes that the cell was not made for him, but the Hulk. (Probably wouldn't kill the Hulk, but it would certainly do a number on Loki).
* TakeAThirdOption:
** Tony Stark's favorite tactic. It disgusts Captain America during his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Stark, because in his mind this means that Stark would never be willing to make a sacrifice if it came down to it.
** [[spoiler:Fury wants to fight the Chitauri off with the Avengers, while the WSC wants to nuke Manhattan to make sure the aliens are defeated. Iron Man proceeds to grab the nuke after it's been shot, fly through the wormhole and chuck it at the Chitauri fleet. Thus managing to both take a third option and make a sacrifice play.]]
* TakeOverTheWorld: Loki wants to conquer Earth and reign over it as an absolute ruler.
* TalkToTheFist: The aforementioned ShutUpHannibal moment.
* TapOnTheHead: Black Widow knocks out Hawkeye during their fistfight. Unusual for the trope, it takes two blows to knock him completely out.
* TeamPrimaDonna: ''All'' the Avengers are rather skeptical of the others' abilities and convinced their concerns are the most important ones, but especially Thor and Tony.
* TheTeaser: Loki [[spoiler:stealing the Tesseract from under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nose.]]
* TechnoBabble:
** As one of their many, myriad differences, it's another of the wedges between Iron Man and Captain America.
--->'''Tony:''' Then stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage m-\\
'''Steve:''' Speak English!\\
'''Tony:''' ... See that red lever?
** Tony and Bruce bond over their shared understanding of it.[[hottip:*:Funnily enough, it's not truly Technobabble. See ShownTheirWork on Trivia.]]
--->'''Tony Stark:''' Finally! Someone who speaks English.\\
'''Steve Rogers:''' ...is that what just happened?
* TechnologyPorn:
** The S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier.
** All the various Stark technologies.
** Hawkeye's special quiver that can attach different types of arrowheads to a shaft.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: For most of the movie. By the final act, the heroes learn to work together.
* ThatCameOutWrong: Agent Coulson is a big fan of Captain America, and watched him while he was sleeping.
* ThisIsGonnaSuck:
** While Loki's sitting in the S.H.I.E.L.D. transport, having "surrendered", and notices the raging storm outside, he cottons on that he's about to have an uncomfortable reunion...
-->'''Cap:''' Scared of a little lightning?\\
'''Loki:''' I'm not overly fond of [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor what follows]]...
** Also, Black Widow's response to Iron Man's [[CasualDangerDialogue "party"]] of a [[AwesomePersonnelCarrier Leviathan]] chasing him, as shown in the trailers.
--->'''Black Widow:''' I... I don't see how that's a party.
** Captain America's and Black Widow's realization that the latter has to to steal one of the Chitauri crafts to get back atop Stark Tower.
* ThreeActStructure:
** The Setup: The heroes gather and capture Loki.
** The Confrontation: S.H.I.E.L.D. interrogates Loki and they get more than what they bargained for.
** The Resolution: The big battle in Manhattan.
** In this case it was something of an EnforcedTrope. According to Joss Whedon [[http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/ff_whedon/all/ in an article]] in ''Wired'' magazine, Marvel Studios wanted three basic things to happen in the script: a big fight among the Avengers, a set piece in the middle that tore the team apart somehow, and a BigBadassBattleSequence. Joss goes, "Great, you just gave me your three acts."
* ThrowingDownTheGauntlet: During a particularly heated argument, Captain America demands Stark to put on his armor so they can fight. Tony refuses, however, saying he "isn't afraid to punch an old man" without putting on the suit. [[hottip:*: The line "put on the suit" takes on a very different meaning almost immediately after this, when an explosion rocks the entire transport. This time, Tony quickly agrees and puts on the suit.]]
* TitleDrop: Unless you saw it in a market which used the title "Avengers Assemble". DoubleSubverted. While the term "The Avengers" is mentioned casually many times, it's not until Nick Fury and Tony Stark's speeches that the title is given gravitas.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: A three-way argument to this effect is briefly had between Cap, Stark and Banner.
* TokenGoodTeammate: On a team plagued with detachment from humanity, egotism, anger issues, guilt, and a seething desire for revenge, Captain America stands out because his only flaw is that he's a little old-fashioned. As such, he's the first to realize Loki is playing them against each other, and later on, the team (appropriately) accepts him as TheLeader.
* TooDumbToLive:
** Hill specifically tells a pilot not to get too close to the Hulk when he distracts him. Despite the mini-gun having a range of hundreds of meters, the pilot opens up his visor and gets to stone-throw range before using it. He ''nearly'' dies when he succeeds.
** [[spoiler:Loki antagonizing the Hulk might also count. Even though it might have been a surprise just how quickly he got beaten to a pulp, nobody could have been particularly surprised that it happened. On the other hand, he was probably going to get beaten up ''anyway'' and was probably just displaying false bravado in a (doomed) last-ditch attempt to intimidate him.]]
** [[spoiler:Tony accuses Agent Coulson of having been this for going up alone against Loki, although Tony seems to be trying to hide his grief over Coulson's death through his trademark snark.]]
* TookALevelInBadass: Loki's first scene, and thus the first scene in the movie, is dedicated to this. He forces his way into a S.H.E.I.D base, wipes out a bunch of agents, mind controls the rest, and steals the Tesseract. This is far greater physical power and ferocity than he demonstrated in ''THOR''.
* TheToothHurts: Although he was interrupted, the Russian general at the beginning was clearly planning to use this [[ColdBloodedTorture method of persuasion]] on Black Widow.
* TragicKeepsake: Fury invoked this by showing Cap and Tony [[spoiler:Agent Coulson's bloodied Captain America trading cards, which he had ''taken out of Coulson's locker and added blood to'']].
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil:
** Will [[spoiler:Iron Man]] die from his fall or not? Well, anyone who remembers the trailer will know [[spoiler:he doesn't.]]
** The line [[spoiler: "Barton's been compromised."]] appears in several trailers hinting at Loki taking control of him. This happens in the opening scenes, however.
* TranquilFury: Invoked as a prelude to a superlative ass kicking.
-->'''Steve:''' Doctor Banner? ... Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.\\
'''Banner:''' That's my secret, Captain. [[spoiler:I'm always angry.]]
** Also the man himself, no pun intended.
* TrickArrow: Though he tends to stick to pointy or exploding arrowheads, Hawkeye has a couple of notable uses of this trope. He fires a ''computer override'' arrow at one point, and uses a grappling hook arrow later on. His quiver is the real impressive bit of technology. It stores dozens of specialized arrowheads and automatically attaches new ones to the shafts he's got stored; he can select which arrows he wants at the press of a button. He later takes down a Chitauri hovercraft with a ''superheating'' arrow.
* TrojanPrisoner:
** It was strongly [[ImpliedTrope implied]] that Black Widow deliberately let herself get captured by the Russian officer early in the film in order to trick him into confessing what he was intending to do before she was forced to abort the operation thanks in part to Loki's arrival.
** Loki [[spoiler:allowed himself to be captured so he could get his scepter inside the Hellicarrier, which supernaturally encouraged the Avengers to start arguing with each other, thus setting up Bruce Banner to go Hulk and smash everything. The spear also allowed Hawkeye to trace the Helicarrier's location so he could disable it and rescue Loki; you can see a readout of the spear on the Quinjet's console.]]
* {{Troll}}:
** Loki's default state of being. [[ForTheEvulz You can tell he's really enjoying it]].
** Bruce Banner, of all people, decides to scare the ever-loving crap out of Black Widow to see what she'd do. Answer: Completely freak. It turns out the one thing in the world that truly terrifies her is [[TheDreaded the Hulk]].
** And Tony Stark, who is on a nonstop troll-roll throughout the entire film.
* TrueCompanions: The Avengers are all such big egos (except for the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents) that they can barely be in a room together. They fight and argue, but at the same time, they bring out the best in one another and when they unite with common purpose, they're unstoppable. In short, the Avengers are, as Joss says, "family".
* TruthInTelevision: [[{{Hawkeye}} Hawkeye's]] techno-quiver screwing headless shafts into [[TrickArrow custom arrowheads]] at [[SwissArmyWeapon the push of a button]] is quality TechnologyPorn, but has basis in reality; medieval archers carried arrows and arrowheads separately for the same reason - so they could swap arrowheads to suit their target. Well, that and so yanking out the arrow would ''[[AnnoyingArrows leave the arrowhead inside the wound...]]''
* TurbineBlender: Iron Man nearly falls victim to a self-inflicted turbine blender when he has to spin up the helicarrier's malfunctioning engine from the inside.
* TwoShotsFromBehindTheBar: While bantering with Loki from behind the bar, Tony quietly slips on his Mark VII armor bracelets.
* UnderestimatingBadassery:
** [[spoiler:Yes, Loki, you ''are'' a god, but that ''doesn't'' mean you should try to push the Hulk around.]]
** The [[spoiler:Chitauri]] acknowledge that [[HumansAreWarriors humanity]] is a ''[[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant very]]'' credible threat to the other realms.
* {{Understatement}}:
** The security guard who discovers Banner after his [[DestinationDefenestration exit from the Hellcarrier]] sums it up pretty nicely.
-->Well son... you've got a condition.
** As does Cap when he runs into Loki in Germany.
-->You know, the last time I was in Germany, and saw a man standing above everybody else... we ended up disagreeing.
* UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny: In a movie like this, it's almost inevitable. We have Iron Man vs. Thor vs. Captain America, Thor vs. Hulk and [[spoiler:BrainwashedAndCrazy Hawkeye]] vs. Black Widow.
* UnfazedEveryman: A guard coming across Banner post-transformation. "Son, [[{{Understatement}} you've got a condition.]]"
* TheUnmasquedWorld: While everybody had already more-or-less known about Cap (although not his return), Iron Man and the Hulk, by the end of the film mankind has become aware of the existence of extraterrestrials, Asgardians and the Avengers themselves, and have even begun to react much like the mainstream Franchise/MarvelUniverse does with most of their heroes.
* UnstoppableForceMeetsImmovableObject: What happens when Thor's hammer, the most powerful weapon in the MCU, is [[DropTheHammer dropped]] on Captain America's shield, the most indestructible defense in the MCU? '''''[[KungFuSonicBoom BOOM]]'''''
* UnusualUserInterface: The Chitauri gliders are piloted by an elaborate harness that makes it looks like they're steering with their ''faces''.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: While it's still mostly [[ManipulativeBastard Loki's fault]] and he had very good reasons to be suspicious, if Stark had kept quiet on what he figured S.H.I.E.L.D. would do with the Tesseract, things could have gone smoother for the heroes. Banner's more of a [[UnwittingPawn pawn]].
* UnwittingPawn: Loki's plan to foil S.H.I.E.L.D. hinges on Bruce Banner -- not just his condition, but the fact that Banner is smart enough to put half of Loki's clues together before the rest of the Avengers realizes there's a puzzle that needs solving.
* VillainousBreakdown: The only reason why the grand schemer Loki [[spoiler:would taunt and antagonize the Hulk]] near the end of the film. Also, the only reason why Loki does anything in this film. With the throne of Asgard out of reach, he apparently wants to be ruler of someone, anything, ''no matter what''.
* VisibleInvisibility: The SHIELD carrier has this, flipped on after it lifts off, but it ceases to be a plot point after that (and certainly didn't help when Loki's posse came knocking).
* VisualPun:
** Tony in his BlackSabbath t-shirt; one of Black Sabbath's hits was "Iron Man". The design of the shirt is also a visual pun. The figure on the shirt is a British military pilot with a triangle on his forehead, and the album is called "Never Say Die!" The Iron Man armor started as a flight suit and had a triangular motif (until Whedon changed it) to match the triangular crystal that powered his arc reactor, which is what keeps him alive.
** In Black Widow's opening scene, she beats up her captors with a total of eight limbs - her own, and four on the chair.
* WaifFu: [[SignatureStyle But of course.]] The movie is directed by Creator/JossWhedon, after all. Mostly performed by [[BadassNormal Black Widow]], though not nearly as highly played as usual for Whedon.
* WallOfWeapons: Seen on board the Helicarrier next to Captain America's shield and new uniform and near a door where Coulson has to do a retina scan to enter. Presumably it's the room [[spoiler:where the BFG he uses on Loki is stored.]]
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The various characters get on each others' nerves when they're off duty, and thus set the stage for Loki's BatmanGambit, but even before they become TrueCompanions, none of them are stupid enough to let personal quarrels stop them from cooperating when trouble starts. This is clearly demonstrated when Cap and Iron Man are on the point of fighting each other, but as soon as the alarm goes off they immediately drop their argument, suit up and have no problem working together in the ensuing chaos.
* WellDoneSonGuy: Stark's still wrestling with his issues, and apparently Howard Stark spent years talking about how awesome the Captain was. And now the Captain is back, like the big brother you can never live up to. All this is confirmed by Downey.
* WhamEpisode:
** One for the entire MCU. Not only is the first major super team formed, [[spoiler:Coulson possibly dies. There are conflicting reports from his actor on whether or not he actually died.]]
** Also, the public knows about aliens, and a huge amount of innocents died in the New York attack.
* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"I'm always angry."]]
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: After the attack on the Helicarrier and the transport of the Tesseract to New York, the remaining rogue scientists and mercs that assisted Loki just up and vanish, leaving him and Selvig to operate and defend the portal device by themselves.
* WhatTheHellHero: Captain America calls Nick Fury out after discovering that [[spoiler:he has been secretly reverse-engineering HYDRA armaments and weapons.]] He also called him out earlier when Nick Fury arrives to assign him to the Avengers shortly after Loki stole the Tesseract in regards to SHIELD even possessing the tesseract in the first place, simply stating to Fury "You should have left it in the sea." (referring to Howard Stark finding the Tesseract while searching for Captain America in the previous film).
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: The usually fearless Black Widow is terrified of the Hulk until the FinalBattle, and not without good cause. This is ironic considering her heavy-handed treatment of Banner earlier in the film.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Justified in-story: [[spoiler:while Loki decides to toss Tony [[DestinationDefenestration out of the window]] (within shouting distance of his various technology) rather than just take control of him with the spear as he did with everyone else, there's that little clinking sound when the spear hits Tony's arc reactor. It probably made Loki think Tony was still wearing at least some armor]].
* WickedCultured: The beautiful opera music that plays as Loki attacks Stuttgart is from Wagner's TheRingOfTheNibelung cycle - and more specifically, it is Loge's (and thus [[IHaveManyNames Loki's]]) leitmotif and Loki is obviously ''very'' familiar with the music, because he choreographs his attack beautifully with it. Perks to the music editor [[GeniusBonus who snuck that in]].
* WithMyHandsTied: The Black Widow can still kick your ass while tied to a chair, shoeless, and on the phone with Coulson.
* TheWorldIsNotReady: [[spoiler:SHIELD hands the Tesseract over to Asgard at the end, as it makes Earth a target and they clearly aren't ready to possess that kind of power... ''yet''. Also, it's the only way for Thor and Loki to get back to Asgard, where they ''can'' build prisons capable of holding him.]]
* WorldOfBadass: It is the Marvel Universe, after all. The film also deconstructs this -- it's discussed that while the titular heroes ''are'' badass, the rest of the human race outside them and S.H.I.E.L.D. aren't, and the world isn't ready for the new universe suddenly opening up to them, or the threats it brings with it like Loki, the Chitauri, and [[spoiler:Thanos]].
* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: Just before the climax, Tony has a conversation with Loki about how he forced their hand to put together this powerful but unstable group. He explained that there is no longer a point where Loki is going to come out unscathed.
-->'''Tony:''' You're missing the point — there's no throne, there is ''no'' version of this where you come out on top. ''Maybe'' your army comes, and ''maybe'' it's too much for us but it's all on ''you''... 'Cause if we can't protect the Earth [[BadassBoast you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it.]]
* WorldOfSnark: Most of the major characters take a level in sarcasm from their previous portrayals. The most prominent are Tony Stark (as you would expect), Bruce Banner, Loki, and to a lesser extent, Nick Fury. Even the ''Hulk'' gets one, after being told by Loki that he stands before a God. [[spoiler:His response is to [[MetronomicManMashing bash him into the ground repeatedly]] and mutter "Puny god."]]
* WorthyOpponent: The smile on Thor's face after being punched by the Hulk says it all.
* WoundedGazelleGambit: Black Widow's interrogation technique uses an interesting form of this. She pretends to be at a disadvantage, prompting her victim to become overconfident and let slip some vital information. [[spoiler:While she was playing her reactions to Loki up, she later admits to Hawkeye that he did rattle her pretty badly.]]
* WrittenInAbsence:
** NataliePortman was unavailable for the film due to pregnancy. Her absence was explained as Jane Foster being transferred to a secure location in an observatory for her protection after Loki shows up.
** HayleyAtwell was probably never intended to appear as a (presumably elderly) Peggy Carter, but her character is still referenced on screen by way of a photo (and a deleted scene included on the DVD shows Steve discovering that [[spoiler: she is still alive]]).
* WrestlerInAllOfUs: Black Widow takes out a mook via hurricanrana, Hulk body slams several opponents, and Thor even gets in on the action when he gorilla presses Loki.
* WrongGenreSavvy: When Black Widow tells Captain America and Bruce Banner to enter the interior of the aircraft carrier, Captain America deduced from her comment of it "soon becoming hard to breathe" that the aircraft carrier doubled as a submarine. Turns out it was actually a literal aircraft as well.
** Loki, twice. First he mistakenly assumes that Romanoff is going to try to pretend to take his side while he's in captivity. Later, he thinks Tony is going to try to appeal to his humanity.
* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: Invoked. Tony Stark taunts Thor by speaking in mock-Shakespearean English (although, in the ''Thor'' movie, Asgardians didn't speak like that). Doubles up as a MythologyGag.
-->'''Thor:''' [[YouHaveNoIdeaWhoYoureDealingWith You have no idea what you're dealing with]].\\
'''Tony:''' Uh... [[YourCostumeNeedsWork Shakespeare in the park?]] (makes Shakespeare pose) "Doth mother know [[SuperheroesWearCapes you weareth her drapes]]?"
* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Tony keeps trying to convince Bruce, who rebuffs all suggestions that he could be a hero and is unable to see what good can possibly come form the Hulk, of this.
* YouAreTheNewTrend: The news report shows a barber trimming men's beards to resemble Tony Stark's.
* YouHaveFailedMe: Not actually done, but promised by The Other should Loki fail to acquire the Tesseract for [[spoiler:Thanos,]] though he was also talking about the possibility of Loki attempting to withhold the Tesseract as well. To wit: "If we don't get the Tesseract, for any reason, we will hurt you in ways you thought impossible and you cannot hide from us."
* YouHaveNoIdeaWhoYoureDealingWith: Said almost word for word by Thor to Tony Stark about Loki on meeting.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Our heroes are quite worried that Loki plans on doing this to his mind controlled minions. Thor worries after Selvig's fate, and Black Widow approaches Loki under the guise of finding out what his plans are for Barton after. His response is not reassuring.
* YouJustToldMe: This is how Natasha Romanoff/The Black Widow managed to deduce what Loki was planning as his escape. It's also implied earlier that this is how she gets intel, [[TrojanPrisoner among]] [[ObfuscatingStupidity other things.]]
* YouMonster: Natasha levels this one at Loki in The Avengers after he tells her what he has in mind for Barton. [[spoiler:It's just part of her very effective WoundedGazelleGambit, though.]]
* YouWouldntLikeMeWhenImAngry: The Hulk, as expected considering he is the TropeCodifier but subverted in this case.[[spoiler:He's ''always'' angry and you won't like him when he loses control but you ''definitely'' won't like him when he decides to ''voluntarily'' unleash the Hulk. Notice how fast and comparatively painless the transformation is before the final battle now that he's accepted the Hulk as part of himself?]]
* ZergRush: The aliens, given the kind of opposition they face, rely on sheer numbers to whittle down the heroes. Of particular note is when a good dozen or so of them ''simultaneously'' focus fire on The Hulk, effectively pinning him in place under the combined fire.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tie-Ins]]
!!''The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week'' contains the following tropes:
* AnotherSideAnotherStory: Much of the later issues involve the Black Widow as she Forrest Gumps her way through the chronologically-later MCU films.
* BadassNormal: Black Widow as usual, who has no problem navigating through a number of superhuman battlefields.
* ChekhovsGun: In relation to the movie [[spoiler:Coulson's request for a gun that has the strength of the Destroyer's blast is what he eventually uses on Loki in the movie.]]
* ContinuityNod: When Hawkeye visits a gas station, he notices that the place was the scene of a crime. It turns out that this is the same station where Coulson stopped a robbery in the ''[[MarvelCinematicUniverse A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor's Hammer]]'' short, which he "deduces" much to the attendant's surprise.
-->'''Hawkeye:''' Who said we don't watch out for each other in this country?
* DaChief: Nick Fury, who spends his week dealing with obstructive superiors, dying super geniuses, incursions by alien gods, idiot generals, and giant monsters tearing up New York. Probably best summed up by when he asks Black Widow to shadow the Hulk:
-->'''Widow:''' I thought Sitwell was on Banner?\\
'''Fury:''' He was, but I had to send him to New Mexico.\\
'''Widow:''' Why?\\
'''Fury: BECAUSE I GOT A GODDAMN ALIEN OBJECT IN NEW MEXICO, THAT'S WHY!'''
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Alluded to when Samuel Sterns starts to read Black Widow's mind, though all we know for this version of Natasha is that the traumatic events again took place during her childhood in Russia.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: When Coulson learns of Steve Rogers being found, [[http://i.imgur.com/dlc1c.jpg his joy is a sight to behold.]]
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The World Security Council, veering close to being a full-on [[TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness Omniscient Council of Vagueness.]] Fury ends up telling Coulson to simply tell WSC what they want to hear, and then to continue doing what they were already doing anyway.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Nick Fury's general ethos in running S.H.I.E.L.D. When his bosses cut his budget allocations and tell him to start focusing on the Cosmic Cube or else, he ignores them, lies to them, and by the end of the week turns the whole situation around and tells them to either get on board with ''him'' or get out of the way.
-->'''Fury:''' Hell, I dunno. Get creative, cook the books. Whatever it takes to let us do this job ''right''.
* SequelHook: The whole thing is designed to lead into the actual film, obviously.
* ShutUpHannibal: Black Widow's reaction to Samuel Sterns[=/=]Mr. Blue's offer to join him in world domination? [[spoiler:A [[{{Kneecapping}} gunshot to his left kneecap]] at point blank range.]]
* TimeSkip: The comic starts during the climax of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'' in the 1940s, only to jump forward to a week before his discovery by S.H.I.E.L.D. in 2010.
* WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong: Natasha asks this when Coulson asks if she can handle things with Tony Stark alone. [[Film/IronMan2 Cut to the Vanko-controlled War Machine attacking Iron Man at the Stark Expo]].
* [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse What Happened To...]]
** [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk The Leader]]? [[spoiler:Captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., kept in a people jar.]]
** [[Film/IronMan Ivan Vanko's Burd]]? [[spoiler:Died.]]
** [[Film/{{Thor}} The Destroyer]]? [[spoiler:Taken by S.H.I.E.L.D., reverse-engineered, and is about to be transformed into a line of energy weapons.]]
** [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger The HYDRA Trooper who fell out of the flying wing]]? [[spoiler:Made it to his flying bomb and strapped in, but [[KilledMidSentence hit the ground in the middle of yelling]], "Heil HYDRA!"]]

!!The junior novelization contains the following tropes:
* {{Disneyfication}}: The book cuts off most of the story to create a HappilyEverBefore.
* HappilyEverBefore: The junior novelization only adapts the first part of the movie, up to the point where Loki is locked up on the Helicarrier, and thereby leaves out a lot of subsequent events that might upset or just confuse younger readers.
[[/folder]]

----

** Averted with Thor's ability to overcharge Stark's armour, as demonstrated accidentally during their forest skirmish. Although a potentially useful tactic, this is never used during the final battle against the Chitauri.

* ConceptsAreCheap: Loki's words about TheEvilsOfFreeWill hardly come up except a few times in the beginning, and hardly matter (except to briefly [[GodwinsLaw compare him to Hitler]].)

* EqualOpportunityEvil: Loki's henchmen seem fairly diverse, at least racially. Where they're from is never specified though; Loki just refers to them as enemies of S.H.I.E.L.D.

* EverythingIsOnline. Justified by the qualifier "if it's wireless-connected".

** "You’re going to lose. It's in your nature. You lack conviction."

* EvilPlan: Loki wants to rule the earth. For this reason he works with The Chitauri and steals the Tesseract to create a portal for them.

---> '''Stark:''' I did do the heavy lifting. Literally, I lifted heavy things

* FiveRoundsRapid: The NYPD is seen holding off Chitauri with just their handguns.

** Loki's scepter trick fails on Tony, who notes that "performance issues", affect about "one in five."

* GodzillaThreshold: Fury states that the events of ''Thor'' proving humanity wasn't alone in the universe prompted S.H.I.E.L.D. to initiate Phase Two in the event that a hostile alien threat attacked Earth & crossed the threshold. Later, [[spoiler:the WSC decides to go ahead & nuke Manhattan, in the event that the Avengers can't force the Chitauri back.]]

* GreenAesop: This is central to the plot. The Tesseract is a power-source, Stark Tower runs on self-sustaining energy, and so on. Although, one of the key fights of the film ends up [[CueIrony leveling half a forest]]. It also causes severe complications at the climax - self-sustaining energy is hard to just switch off.

* HeroicSafeMode: The Hulk comes out and smashes everything in sight, not because Banner's rage got the best of him, but because when there are threats against their lives, Hulk comes out to ensure Banner's safety. [[DrivenToSuicide He does not approve much of this, even when he's told.]]

** Thor tries to fry Iron Man with a bolt of lightning. It charges up the armor's power supplies to quadruple capacity, which Tony uses immediately to blast Thor with a supercharged repulsor discharge.

** Fury attempts it against Loki during the opening sequence; Tony Stark's borderline CloudCuckooLander monologue when he first arrives on the Helicarrier [[spoiler:successfully distracts the group while he slips his hacking device onto a nearby computer.]]

** Nick Fury [[spoiler:turns Loki's previous retort about how "an ant has no quarrel with a boot" on its head by locking in an enormous cage and declaring himself the "boot".]]

** Hawkeye [[spoiler:fires an arrow at Loki's glider, which the latter [[ArrowCatch catches in midair before it explodes and sends him flying.]]]]

-->''"All right, hey! Hooray, good job guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow; let's just take a day..."''

* ButtMonkey: Despite being [[spoiler: TheDragon,]] Loki seems to have a few spells of being one of these, too. Every Avenger (with the exception of Cap) gets his goat at least once. Even [[spoiler: Phil Coulson]] gets in a good shot.

* [[FourTemperamentEnsemble Five-Temperament Ensemble]]: The four main members of The Avengers fit this. Tony Stark/Iron Man is sanguine (minus the optimism); Thor is choleric; Steve Rogers/Captain America is phlegmatic I; Bruce Banner is melancholic (but appears choleric, of course, whenever he turns Hulk); and Clint Barton/Hawkeye is phlegmatic II. Even their most distinctive colours are appropriate (of the following three) for their respective temperaments: Stark (red), Thor (yellow), Rogers (tranquil blue), Barton (neutral black), and Banner (an almost olive green whenever he turns Hulk, which is ironically the only time he doesn't fit his respective temperament, as mentioned above).

* InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt: The movie's full title is ''Marvel's The Avengers''.

** In Tony's introduction scene Tony is trying to convince Pepper to take some credit for the Stark tower idea.
--> '''Tony''': Give yourself 12%.
--> (a bit later when Agent Coulson interrupts them) '''Tony''': I thought we were having a moment\\

*** Also could be interpreted as Tony failing to see what that it's not Cap's powers that make him special, it's his noble resolve.

*** Also could be interpreted as Tony failing to see what makes Cap so special. It's not Cap's powers that make him extraordinary, it's his noble resolve.

** Also, Loki banging his fist on the glass when delivering his HannibalLecture to Widow.

* DeathIsDramatic: Despite numerous casualties suffered by both attackers and S.H.I.E.L.D agents on the Helicarrier the only one that any time is spent dwelling on is [[spoiler:Coulson.]]

* FoodEnd: At least in the U.S. release. There's Shawarma!

** When Loki is being led to his prison onboard SHIELD's airship, he briefly smirks at [[spoiler:Bruce Banner]]. Guess what his insurance plan for escaping is?0

** A very subtle one in the beginning: [[{{Hawkeye}} Barton]] shoots Fury on the chest, even though [[{{Hawkeye}} he]] would have normally been able to hit him on the head. [[spoiler:It shows that Loki's MindControl is not 100% perfect. It turns out that Selvig was able to install a backdoor to turn off the Tesseract and the portal.]]

* UnresolvedSexualTension: Black Widow and Hawkeye, debatably. For the moment the two are just PlatonicLifePartners.

* [[ComicBook/CivilWar Maria Hill]] (Cobie Smulders)

** The trailers for ''Iron Man 3'' confirm that the event of the Battle of Manhattan change everything, though we do not yet know how.

* InsistentTerminology: Bruce Banner does not turn into the Hulk. He turns into "the other guy." All the other characters continue to refer to his alter ego as the Hulk, however, and Bruce himself slips up once before correcting himself.
* InstantWinCondition: [[spoiler:Apparently, Chitauri all die if you blow up their command ship. The leading theory is that the Chitauri are somehow linked to their home-ship, similar to the Buggers in ''Literature/EndersGame''. And since the leviathan ship seemed to be biologically related to the Chitauri themselves, this is entirely plausible.]]