History Headscratchers / TheAvengers

** They weren't aware of what was behind the portal. They wouldn't know the alien mothership was right behind the portal, nor that the army was a KeystoneArmy with the ship being the keystone.

* Why didn't the World Security Council [[spoiler:fire the nuke into the portal rather than ''at Manhattan'', again?]]

** The movie brings this up: [[spoiler:[[SacrificalLion Coulson]]]]'s implied to be saying "they needed something to (avenge)", the bracketed part implied as he's KilledMidSentence. Iron Man later [[AndThisIsFor brings him up]] before shooting [[BigBad Loki]] with a repulsor.

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** The name was chosen just for the sake of sounding cool. Their name never had anything to do with who they were

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* When the avengers start getting annoyed with other why does no one think the staff of Loki (Trickster god) might be messing with them? One of them is meant to be a god, one a super soldier and two people with genius intellects.

** Most likely because the Avengers seem to live in a different universe to Spiderman, the X-Men and other heroes, even though they exist in the same comics universe. After all, there is no mention of human mutants existing in any of the previous films.

** Because the staff may not have been doing that much - we're talking about two giant egos in the room (Stark and Thor), a massive case of values dissonance (Rogers and Stark), the paranoid fears of Banner who is justifiedly suspiscious of the government and its interest in him (knowing Thunderbolt Ross so well), and is afraid to be around anyone for long and with damn good reason, all compounded by a general air of mistrust in the roomdue to Shield's shady activities which Fury hid from everyone.

** Because the staff may not have been doing that much - we're talking about two giant egos in the room (Stark and Thor), a massive case of values dissonance (Rogers and Stark), the paranoid fears of Banner who is afraid to be around anyone for long and with damn good reason, all compounded by a general air of mistrust in the roomdue to Shield's shady activities which Fury hid from everyone.

* Not really a big issue, but what the hell the rest of the horde of heroes that base themselves out of NY doing during the alien invasion? That is, the in universe reason the invasion even manage to damage the city so much, considering how much the hero community in the marvel universe seem to love Manhattan? Sure, on a meta level, they didn't because it's an avengers movie, and they are going to show the avengers, not the dozen others heroes that live nearby, but it'd be good to see some in universe explanation why the major heroes based out of the big apple don't help.

* Not really a big issue, but what the hell the rest of the horde of heroes that base themselves out of NY doing during the alien invasion? That is, the in universe reason the invasion even manage to damage the city so much, considering how much the hero community in the Marvel universe seem to love Manhattan? Sure, on a meta level, they didn't because it's an Avengers movie, and they are going to show the avengers, not the dozen others heroes that live nearby, but it'd be good to see some in universe explanation why the major heroes based out of the Big Apple don't help.
** The characters making up the Avengers are the only superheroes shown to exist in the Marvel cinematic universe so far (except War Machine, but he probably didn't keep the suit), and the fact that people acted surprised on the news reports at the end suggests that superheroes aren't as common as in the comics. More heroes will inevitably be added over time, but Marvel can just say that they started out sometime after the events of this film.

* Not really a big issue, but what the hell the rest of the horde of heroes that base themselves out of NY doing during the alien invasion? That is, the in universe reason the invasion even manage to damage the city so much, considering how much the hero community in the marvel universe seem to love Manhattan? Sure, on a meta level, they didn't because it's an avengers movie, and they are going to show the avengers, not the dozen others heroes that live nearby, but it'd be good to see some in universe explanation why the major heroes based out of the big apple don't help.

* When the avengers start getting annoyed with other why does no one think the staff of Loki (Trickster god) might be messing with them? One of them is meant to be a god, one a super soldier and two people with genius intellects.

** If you want to get technical, he was on Cap's team during ComicBook/CivilWar, and I'm fairly sure that team is considered an incarnation of the Secret Avengers.

** . . .because he's a homicidal vigilante wanted by the police?

* Why hasn't the Punisher ever been on the Avengers?

** Also, it was in the middle of battle, during a skrull invasion where they tried to destroy most of the US. 3-D man never saw the crusader do his heroic thing IIRC, and thought he was just another infiltrator.

* What the hell happened to the Sentry? He was totally badass in his miniseries, but when he came to the regular continuity he was a total loser. The in-universe explanation is that in realizing he was also the Void, he suffered a breakdown, but it goes beyond that. The writers didn't put forth ANY effort into making him an interesting character. He was always just sort of hanging out in the background, occasionally doing what he was told, but most not even participating. I suspected it was a case of BoredOnBoard, but I was really disappointed to see how the Sentry was reinterpreted because I really enjoyed the miniseries.

* In a recent issue of Mighty Avengers, Iron Man showed up and tried to take over Hank Pym's team. Hank made a number of actually reasoned arguments that demolished Tony's credibility: he was a pawn of the Skrulls without ever realizing it, for one. He asked why Tony made such a better leader than Hank did. Tony's answer? "You're Hank Pym." How does that even make sense? Hell, Hank wasn't even ''there'' for ''years.'' But Tony still plays superior? Bad form.
** RuleOfFunny?
** Yeah, because it was funny; ''Mighty Avengers'' is now the wacky fun team (where ''New Avengers'' is a BMB fanfic and ''Dark Avengers'' is the awesome one)
* How the hell did ''anyone'' ever think that ''Avengers'' #200 was a good idea, let alone an idea worth printing and marketing?
** What happened in ''Avengers'' #200?
*** Carol Danvers goes into a miraculously speedy pregnancy, despite insisting there's no way there could be a father. The kid is born, ages to an adult in a matter of ''hours'', then admits that he brought Carol into an alternate dimension, tried to woo her, and when that didn't work, used his dad's (Immortus') mind control machines to get her to sleep with him, thereby ''impregnating her with himself'' so he could get out of the alternate dimension to be with her. Only he screwed it up and if he stays on Earth, he'll be dead in a few days. So he re-mind controls Carol into coming back to the other dimension with him. And this is supposed to be a ''good'' thing. Despite Carol's clear distress over her pregnancy and her uninterest in the baby, the Avengers treat it like it's totally normal and a happy occasion, then let her go back to the alternate dimension with nary a peep, even after the father/son ''told them'' he'd used mind control to make her his in the first place. The entire goddamn story was squicky as hell, and the fact that Jim Shooter actually shot down other plot ideas to get it made makes it worse.
**** Simple, Thor is a lunatic god of raping/murdering viking hordes and so he didn't care. Iron Man is a drunken sleaze so he didn't care. Captain America is the team's moral center and actually tried to figure out what the hell was going on, but is such a prude he left early when they started talking about sex. So the decision of letting her go was made by the patron god of the rapist civilization and a drunken sex-addict.
*** Which is a good attempt at explaining what happened in-story, but still doesn't explain why six writers and an editor thought this story was so brilliant that it ''had'' to be done, especially when there were at least two possible 'miraculous pregnancy' stories they could have told (one of which was actually the aforementioned shot down plot) that didn't involve a woman ''giving birth to her own rapist and being mind controlled into running off with him''.
*** Alternatively, Marcus was mind-controlling the Avengers as well. And the editors.
**** I think this is actually canon as of Avengers Forever. Well, except for Immortus doing the broader mind control, not Marcus, but close enough.
*** It should be noted that when Carol returned to Earth, they let her give an epic WhatTheHellHero speech when her ex-teammates came to see her. All the Avengers could do was stare at their feet and stammer "Well... what ha-happened was" sheepishly.

** It was shown shortly afterwards that several of the Initiative recruits were pissed off at 3-D Man for having shot Crusader like that, because they were open-minded enough to realize Crusader was one of the good guys despite being a skrull, since, you know, he just freaking saved them all. 3-D Man, of course, could not have given less of a crap and was basically a dick all throughout.

** It was probably considered at one point or another, but the entire point of the Initiative and the SHRA was accountability for superheroes; it would render the whole thing meaningless to bring her back.

* In an issue of The Initiative, one of the members was Crusader, a skrull. There was actually some backstory about his arrival on Earth and how he wanted to be a hero. He even defeated a really powerful villain in order to save his friends and home. And what does he get in reward? 3-D Man, one of the heroes, shoots him. There's absolutely no justification beyond the fact that he was a skrull. Nobody even seems upset over this. I know that the Marvel Universe really hates skrulls, but he was on the good side. What the hell?