Avengers Endgame / Tropes D to G

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H to O | Tropes P to Z | YMMV | Trivia

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Avengers: Endgame provides examples of the following tropes:

Spoilers for all preceding Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, as well as this one, will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

D

• Dance of Romance: The very last shot of the film is of Steve and Peggy finally having their dance.
• Darker and Edgier: While still an idealistic film, the whole movie has an extremely dark and depressing tone with overtones of hopelessness and profoundly misanthropic undertones. The world here is shown to be dark and in despair (looking kinda like something out of Terminator: Dark Fate and Logan), the film opens with a truly ungodly Downer Beginning sequence, our main heroes are now Shell Shocked Veterans, there is plenty of drama in almost every scene, and two of the original six Avengers, Black Widow and Iron Man, are both Killed Off for Real, not to mention a Bittersweet Ending that is a borderline Downer Ending. This is without a doubt the darkest MCU film by a long mile, and it will hit you after the end credits.
• Darkest Hour:
  • Starts off with one, even. Let's see... Most of our heroes are dead, along with half of all life in the universe, and the most obvious means to fix everything — the Infinity Gauntlet — is out of commission after Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones. Keep in mind, this is supposed to be the one timeline out of 14 million where the Avengers win. To say that our heroes have their work cut out for them is a massive understatement.
  • In the film itself, another one happens very briefly — most of the Avengers and their allies are busy fighting off Thanos's army, who are hell bent on destroying Earth once and for all. And Thanos manages to fight off Captain America, Thor, and Captain Marvel herself, the strongest hero on the field, and prepares to wipe out all of existence itself. If Strange hadn't reminded Iron Man at the last second that this is their one shot, everything would have been lost at that moment.
• David vs. Goliath: Cap vs Thanos. Although he is a Super-Soldier, Cap is no match for Thanos on his own. However, he does have his shield and Mjölnir, allowing him to fight Thanos for a short but intense moment until the Mad Titan eventually overpowers him.
• Deadly Dodging: During the climactic three-versus-one fight against Thanos, Thor uses Stormbreaker to bat a lightning-charged Mjölnir at their foe. However, the Mad Titan is tangling with Iron Man at the same time, and he grabs Tony to interpose him as a shield against the hammer.
• Death Amnesia: The people killed by the Snap who are brought back apparently don't remember any afterlife, as Peter Parker says his last memory was of being held in Tony Stark's arms, and Peter thinks he passed out rather than turned to dust.
• Death by Cameo: Hiroyuki Sanada is the yakuza that Ronin hunts and kills right before Nat recruits him.
• Death Equals Redemption: As per the writers and directors, Natasha's sacrifice was her "wiping the red off her ledger" giving her life to save Clint and allow the heroes to bring back half the universe.
• Death from Above: Overwhelmed by Scarlet Witch, Thanos orders Sanctuary II to fire at the battlefield with its cannons to take out Wanda for him, using almost this exact phrase. And then that is subject to death from above, as Captain Marvel enters the atmosphere...
• Defensive "What?": Bruce Banner experiments time travel with Ant-Man as the guinea pig. After a series of hilarious mishaps which make it clear that the experiment was a failure, Bruce elatedly declares out loud "Time travel!", to which Captain America simply shakes his head and leaves.
  Bruce: ...What? I-I see this as an absolute win.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Proxima Midnight, one of the Children of Thanos who has a prominent appearance in Infinity War, has a significantly reduced role in this film, only appearing in one scene and with no speaking lines.
  • Nick Fury is demoted to basically a voiceless cameo during Tony Stark's funeral and doesn't even partake in any action scene, despite having a prominent role in the first two Avengers movies, and doing something very important in The Stinger of the third before his demise.
  • Downplayed with M'Baku. In Infinity War he was one of the many heroes called upon in the Battle of Wakanda and got a few lines that showed he's become a loyal brother-in-arms to his king, but he still was a minor role at best. Here, M'Baku makes a fleeting, line-less appearance during the Battle of Earth, taking part in the charge against Thanos's forces and briefly getting a focusing shot when the two armies clash (right before Giant-Man decks a Leviathan).
• Dented Iron: Several times:
  • The film begins with Tony as an emaciated husk that can barely even stand. Five years later he recovered, but he's out of practice and has lost his fighting spirit.
  • Thanos's snapping arm is still horrifically scarred from the use of the Infinity Gauntlet to destroy the Stones. In addition, it's said his overall health is severely compromised due to exposure to the Stones' volatile, dangerous energies.
  • Professor Hulk's snapping arm is similarly scarred when he reverses the snap, and he is no longer the engine of destruction he normally would be during the final battle.
  • More emotional than physical, but Thor's failure to kill Thanos properly in the moment at the climax of Infinity War really took a toll on him. He spends years drinking and developed a large gut in the process. While he still has his Asgardian strength and durability, he is out of shape and not mentally all there.

• Depopulation Bomb: The first act of the movie deals with the aftermath of the Decimation, with the survivors trying the best they can to live with this tragedy. It is shown that the population is gravely marked by this catastrophe, generally still mournful and unable to move on; Steve is leading group therapies that don't help him, Natasha is trying to sink herself in work, while Clint has become the vengeful Ronin, taking out his rage on criminals. Tony on the other hand lives a relatively happy retirement because he was lucky enough that Pepper survived.
• Despair Event Horizon: To some degree, all the Avengers are emotionally compromised after the Snap, but some still hold out hope of undoing it. When they find out Thanos destroyed the stones making the event permanent, they cross this line. It's symbolized by Thor shamefully walking out of Thanos's hut, and there is a fade to black.
  • Tony seems to have crossed it just before (perhaps at the very moment Peter died), which is why he refuses to go on that mission. He completely walks out of the Avengers and retires with Pepper and starts a family, and while he tries to be a good father to Morgan and raise her, he's not fully gotten over his past, living beside a lake in the middle of nowhere, cut off from civilization.
  • Steve, in contrast, is on the brink. He's shown openly weeping, looking to his picture of Peggy, and outright admits that he doesn't know what he's going to do if their plan doesn't work. Later, he admits to Black Widow that while Steve tries to tell others to move on, he himself can't.
  • Black Widow tries to keep up her professionalism in front of her allies when they discuss their tasks, but when alone, she breaks down crying from all the grief that's tolling on her. Steve tries to find some positive things that happened after the Snap to cheer her up, only for Black Widow to gently tell him that she will hear none of it because nothing's worth the things she had lost.
  • Hawkeye, on seeing his family snapped, breaks completely, and goes on a Punisher-esque mass-murdering spree on the world's surviving population of gangsters, bitterly wondering why scum like them get to live while his family didn't.
  • The worst of the lot is Thor, who has become a hermit who only appears among surviving Asgardians once a month to collect a shipment of beer. He has also grown fat with a beer belly and slovenly in appearance, and can't tolerate hearing Thanos's name. It takes a time-travel visit to see his mother Frigga during Thor: The Dark World to make him snap out of it.
  • Past Thanos breaks when he sees what he considers to be his destiny being undone, and the idea of having his Life's Work Ruined especially after he fulfilled it totally breaks him in the end, when Thanos sits down in despondency as he and his army crumble to dust at Tony's last act of defiance.
• Determinator:
  • The Avengers are devastated by their failure to stop Thanos. However, it doesn't take long for them to come back together to enact a plan that will reverse the damage that he's done to the universe.
    Steve: I keep telling people to move on. Some do. But not us. Not us...
  • During the big climax, Captain America finds himself wounded, disarmed, with his previously indestructible shield in pieces, and facing down not only Thanos but an army of hundreds. His response is to just strap the remains of his shield tighter to his arm and get ready to take them all on.
  • Thanos himself is no slouch in this department; at several points Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel almost defeat him, but using his resources, willpower, and intelligence he takes both out. It is not until Iron Man literally snaps him out of existence that he resigns himself to his fate.
• Deus Exit Machina:
  • Most of the preeminent physicists and engineers including Hank Pym, Erik Selvig and Shuri were killed in the Snap, leaving Tony Stark as the only person left, at least on Earth, who could figure out accurate time travel.
  • This is used on most of the heroes who could plausibly defeat Thanos one-on-one, with the rest falling under Drama-Preserving Handicap:
    • Captain Marvel is undeniably the strongest remaining superhero. She vanishes after the first act — justified by her having to help all the other planets without superheroes — and shows up late to the final battle. Although she makes one hell of an entrance by tearing through the Sanctuary II and starts to overpower Thanos with pure strength, he already has the Power Stone at that point, which he uses to catch her off-guard and knock her out for the rest of the battle with a sucker punch.
    • Similarly to Carol, Wanda doesn't confront Thanos one-on-one until late in the fight, and her understandable desire to drag out Thanos's death for what his 2018 self did to Vision gives him enough time to call in an airstrike on himself and break Wanda's focus.
    • During Infinity War, Doctor Strange's magic was sufficient to force Thanos to use four Infinity Stones. When Thanos's ship takes out a nearby dam, Strange has to turn his attention to containing the resultant flood, taking him out of the fight.
    • The other Masters of the Mystic Arts spend the fight providing shields against Thanos's airstrikes instead of confronting him directly.
    • Scott proves to be one of the Avengers' heaviest hitters during the the final battle, effortlessly destroying Leviathans in his Giant-Mode. Unfortunately, when the heroes realize they need Luis's van to send the Infinity Stones back, he has to stop fighting and work with Hope to get it functional.
    • Many of the other heroes with plausible advantages against Stone-less Thanos, such as T'Challa, Peter Parker, or Clint, are kept busy by Thanos's ground forces.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Thanos's objective in wiping out half of all life is to allow the remainder to flourish. He doesn't think that the remaining heroes will band together to try to undo his action.
  • In retrospect, sending Nebula on the mission where she'd run into the past version of herself, as opposed to one of the other two missions, wasn't the brightest idea.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • The spoiled and stupid little Internet Troll known as "Noobmaster69" bit off a bit more than he can chew when he calls Korg, Thor's roommate and friend, a dickhead while playing Fortnite. Cue the drunk and angry Thunder God yelling that he'll "fly over, rip off his arms and shove them up his butt", sending the kid literally crying off to his daddy.
  • In 2012, Alexander Pierce demands Thor to hand over Loki to him and tells him that Odin can have the rest.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: After an Infinity Stones-wielding Tony snaps his fingers, scenes of Thanos's army getting turned to dust follow. Rather than fight the inevitable, Proxima Midnight is shown cradling Corvus Glaive, who was earlier impaled by Okoye.
• Dies Wide Open:
  • In the prologue, Nebula closes the eyes of the disembodied head of her father, Thanos, after Thor decapitates him.
  • Natasha, after she throws herself down the cliff on Vormir, so that Clint can get the Soul Stone.
  • Past Nebula, when Present Nebula shoots her to protect Past Gamora.
  • Tony Stark, when he dies after snapping his fingers wearing the Infinity Gauntlet to destroy Thanos and his army.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: After Tony tells his daughter not to swear, after she overhears him saying "Shit!", he then says "'Cause I got shit to do!".
• Digital De-Aging:
  • The late Stan Lee was digitally de-aged for his final cameo, set in The '70s.
  • The younger Hank Pym briefly returns, this time de-aged to look as Douglas appeared in 1970.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Thanos ends up playing this role to himself. The Avengers find the planet where Thanos went to and goes to him to get the Stones; in his current state, with him having already destroyed the Stones, he is defeated rather easily. When Nebula and Rhodey travel to 2014, Thanos in that year learns of their presence and ends up as the Big Bad for the rest of the movie.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Scott's pitch to Steve and Nat to use the Quantum Realm to time travel back to get the Stones prompts Steve to ask if he's talking about a time machine. Scott denies it's a time machine (since it's more a process than an actual machine) but when he tries to explain this, he realizes the difference is inconsequential and concedes that, yes, it's a time machine.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: Tony makes fun of Steve's 2012 outfit, saying it didn't do anything for his ass. Scott says that "As far as I'm concerned, that's America's ass". Later, after Steve knocks out his 2012 self, he stops to look at himself and agrees with Scott.
  Steve: That is America's ass.
• Do a Barrel Roll: A Freeze-Frame Bonus shows Pepper entering the field of view doing a barrel roll before shooting down a necrocraft, then joining her husband in a combined Back-to-Back Badasses and Battle Couple moment.
• Dog Pile of Doom: Despite the Spider Limbs of his armor in "Instant Kill Mode" skewering them left and right, the Outriders ganging up on Spider-Man carrying the Infinity Gauntlet are soon overwhelming him. At first Peter tries to man up by repeating I'm Okay!, but when he starts disappearing under the many opponents, he cracks and desperately calls for help.
• The Door Slams You: In 2012, the time-traveling Tony Stark gets a door in the face thanks to the Hulk, very annoyed that he had to walk down the stairs from the top of the Stark Tower.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest:
  • Although Gamora is dead, her younger 2014 self arrives with the rest of Thanos's forces. Despite making violently clear that she never met the Guardians, Peter Quill becomes determined to find her.
  • Steve Rogers becomes this to Peggy Carter after deciding to stay in the past with her.
• Double Take: Scott does one when checking the Decimation Memorial to see if Cassie was one of the victims, only to find his own name instead of hers.
• Downer Beginning: The opening scene revisits the snap from the perspective of a different character: Hawkeye, who goes from having a nice picnic with his family to suddenly finding that his entire family has vanished without a trace. It continues for pretty much the whole first act. Tony and Nebula are on the verge of dying from lack of oxygen on the Benatar, and while Captain Marvel rescues them, Tony is a wreck, looking malnourished and raging against his teammates for failing to heed his warnings that something like this was coming. Steve and Natasha are barely able to pull together a squad of shell-shocked Avengers for one last-ditch tilt at Thanos, and they utterly curb-stomp him... only to find that he's destroyed the Stones, and with them the only chance of undoing what's been done. Thor kills the Mad Titan, but even that revenge is hollow and meaningless. Smash cut to five years later, and everyone, across the entire universe, is circling the Despair Event Horizon.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Sees some use in the final battle with Thanos, where the Story-Breaker Power heroes who aren't kept away from Thanos are fighting at less than full strength:
  • Hulk's main contribution to the battle is holding up the remains of Avengers HQ after using the gauntlet and frying most of his arm. Not to mention that as Professor Hulk, he's much less enthusiastic about violence in general, as seen by his rather pathetic attempts to imitate his 2012 self.
  • Thor is too out-of-shape to fight Thanos on the same footing he did in Infinity War. He also spends most of the fight with Stormbreaker, not Mjölnir, which he has less practice with.
  • Zig-Zagged with Steve's shield. It's too weak to defend against Thanos's sword and too damaged to have the reliable aerodynamics needed for Battle Boomerang attacks, but Steve also wields Mjölnir for the final battle and can use it in tandem with his shield for disorienting sonic attacks.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Rocket arms his Ray Gun one-handed after he, War Machine and Hulk emerge from Giant-Man's hand. This is very on-point because it marks the moment that the "Portals" theme segues into the traditional "Avengers" theme, meaning things are getting serious.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • When the Avengers brief Tony on the aftermath of the Snap, Scott Lang's photo is prominently shown among the confirmed Earth victims. Only the audience is aware that Scott isn't actually dead, but was left stranded in the Quantum Realm at the exact moment Thanos completed and snapped the Gauntlet. The Avengers won't learn this in-universe until after the Time Skip.
  • In the past, Black Widow and Hawkeye go off cheerfully to acquire the Soul Stone, expecting it to be a simple trip there and back. The audience already knows that one of them will have to die to obtain it, as the previous movie establishes that one must sacrifice someone very close to them to obtain the stone, as Thanos sacrificed Gamora in Infinity War.
• Dramatic Unmask: Black Widow sees a mysterious hooded figure dispatching someone with a katana. The katana-wielding man removes his hood and turns around to reveal himself as Clint Barton.
• The Dreaded: Clint becomes Ronin and wreaks havoc on cartels and other criminal groups as a vigilante, angry that Thanos's snap killed his family while bad people like them were allowed to live. When he goes after the Yakuza, various members recognize him and react in fear.
• Dressing as the Enemy: After Nebula from the present is captured, Nebula from the past — who is still loyal to Thanos — takes her jacket and some of her pieces to disguise herself and infiltrate the Avengers compound. It works perfectly as Nebula has always been distant with the Avengers and only has to look the part.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Thor spends the majority of the five-year Time Skip in New Asgard by drinking to cope with his depression and trauma.
• Dual Wielding:
  • Having brought back Mjölnir with him from past Asgard, Thor momentarily fights Thanos with both Stormbreaker and his hammer.
  • During the battle on Earth, Shuri can be seen fighting Thanos's forces with her signature arm cannons. She and Hope later team up to blast Thanos with their respectively dual-wielded arm cannons.
  • Captain America gets to face Thanos with two of the most powerful hand weapons of the MCU — the vibranium shield and Mjölnir! A breathtaking duel ensues as Cap combines the abilities of both the shield and Mjölnir to put the pressure on Thanos, defending from Thanos's inhumanly strong sword strokes with his shield just as he fires lightning at the Mad Titan.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: This attitude is what reveals Thanos to be a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. When past Thanos realizes that the people of the universe are not grateful for his future self culling half of life to save the other half, he decides to destroy the entire universe and create a new one where people give him the respect he feels he deserves.
• Due to the Dead: Invoked — Nebula finds Tony Stark collapsed on the deck of the Benatar, and moves him to a more dignified position in the pilot's seat.

E

• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • After years of regret for a lost past, a lifetime of battling villains, and losing his sworn brother, Steve feels that he's done his work and decides to go back to the 1940s and live his life with Peggy.
  • One actually happened during the Time Skip. After a decade, Bruce and the Hulk are able to resolve their differences and combine themselves into Professor Hulk, a single personality consisting of their best traits. The public has finally accepted him and he's finally able to live a completely normal life.
• Elevator Action Sequence: Subverted in a Call-Forward to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which Cap fights a whole squad of S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA soldiers trying to arrest him. Here, when Cap travels back to to the Battle of New York in 2012 to retrieve the Mind Stone from Loki's scepter, he gets into an elevator with the same group of soldiers and tells them the Secretary told them to give him the scepter. Just when it seems a similar fight is going to break out, Cap instead leans into Agent Sitwell's ear and says, "Hail HYDRA." Shocked, the HYDRA forces give him the scepter.
• Empathic Environment: It's implied that the environments of Earth and other inhabited planets were somehow affected by the Snap. A tectonic shift off the coast of Africa is mentioned, and Captain Marvel says that "What's been happening on Earth is happening on every world."
• End of an Age: The directors have said that Endgame is the definitive point between a pre-Endgame and a post-Endgame era, and boy-howdy do they deliver.
  • The original incarnation of the Avengers is permanently disbanded, as Tony and Natasha die after pulling heroic sacrifices, Steve travels to the past and returns to the present as an old man so as to pass on his shield to Sam and name him his successor, Thor joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, Bruce suffers a Game-Breaking Injury that apparently takes him out of action from this point forward, and Clint returns to his family to resume a quiet family life.
  • The threat posed by Thanos is brought to a definitive end, with his present self killed by Thor and his time-travelling past self killed by Tony. The Children of Thanos and their attendant armies are killed in the Battle of Earth, ensuring that they will menace the universe no more.
  • On a broader scale, the five-year Time Skip brings an end to the MCU's status quo of being set in real-time, and at the end of the movie, all surviving characters are left in very different places, thanks to the Time Skip, and in some cases, being left to pick up the pieces or take up new mantles.
  • Due to his death in late 2018, Endgame is the final Marvel film to feature a cameo from Stan Lee.
• Enhanced Punch: Shocked to see that Captain Marvel is his physical superior, Thanos quickly takes the Power Stone and enhances his punch with energy to take her out.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Knowing that Doctor Strange was the keeper of the Time Stone before Thanos got it and Strange resided in New York, Bruce goes to the Sanctum Sanctorum in 2012 at the same time as The Battle of New York to get it. What Bruce doesn't know is that Strange had not begun his training with the Masters of the Mystic Arts until 2016, so he's actually showing up at the Sanctum four years too early. He arrives there, only to encounter the Ancient One instead of Strange. Who seems to have brought the Eye of Agamotto from Kamar-Taj just in case it's needed during the invasion.
  • Looking for an escaped Loki inside Stark Tower after the Battle of New York, 2012 Captain America, upon meeting his double, comes to the natural conclusion that he is Loki under a magical disguise. The concept of a time-travelling alternate self isn't going to come to mind, especially since 2024 Cap doesn't really try to explain, aware that he wouldn't be believed.
• Epic Movie: Even by the MCU's standards, Endgame is stated to be the big payoff over 10 years and 22 movies in the making. It has the runtime to match — the movie is slated to run at just over three hours. Endgame spends all three hours of its runtime to develop all the original six Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk and Hawkeye, gives them emotional closure, honors the past of the whole franchise, and ends in an epic battle involving pretty much every hero of the franchise and more against the most dangerous threat to the Universe. It assembles all the stars featured in the MCU, some of which were made stars by the movies, has a marketing budget of $200,000,000 alone, and ends a decade-long storyline centered around the Infinity Stones.
• Equivalent Exchange: Comes back from Infinity War. In order to obtain the Soul Stone, you must first lose someone you love, so Black Widow sacrifices herself to allow Clint to obtain it despite his protests.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Black Widow realizing that three Infinity Stones could be recovered right around the time of the Battle of New York.
    Hulk: Shut the front door!
  • Tony getting the idea to go to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in 1970 in order to get both the Tesseract and the Pym Particles he and Cap would need to return home.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Proxima Midnight sadly cradles Corvus Glaive's body as she disintegrates. In the comics, the two are husband and wife.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • After Ronan finds the location of the Power Stone in 2014, Thanos orders Gamora and Nebula to go to the Dark Aster to help him retrieve it. He absolutely loathes the Kree's obsession to destroy Xandar, especially since it clouds his judgement.
  • When Thanos orders Sanctuary II to fire on the battlefield in an attempt to stop Wanda's attack on him, Corvus Glaive reacts with shock and protests it, since countless members of Thanos's forces are there.
    Thanos: Rain fire!
    Corvus Glaive: But sire, our troops—!
    Thanos: JUST DO IT!!
• Event Title: The film is the Final Battle against Thanos and the Grand Finale of his Myth Arc.
• Everyone Has Standards: Played for (very) Dark Laughs; Rhodey casually suggests going back in time to find and strangle baby Thanos with a garrote, complete with pantomime and choking noises. Professor Hulk, understandably, is disturbed and shoots down the suggestion immediately.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Past Thanos learns of the Avengers' plans to undo his damage, he dismisses them for being ungrateful, and believes that the universe refused to thrive because the survivors couldn't get over the deaths of the people he killed, clearly unsympathetic to those who lost friends, comrades and loved ones.
• Evil Learns of Outside Context: Late in the movie, the past versions of Thanos and Nebula figure out that the Avengers have discovered time travel and are using it to collect the Infinity Stones. Thanos' forces quickly figure out how to replicate the Avengers' method of time travel and use it to come to the present so Thanos can take the Stones for himself. It also tips Thanos off to a potential flaw in his original plan, giving him reason to expand his goals into becoming a god and then subjugating the Earth, which has been a frequent thorn in his side.
• Exact Words: In the film's epilogue, Sam asks Banner how long it will take Steve to return the Infinity Stones back from whence they came, and Banner says that Steve can take all the time he needs. Steve also makes a promise to meet with Professor Hulk, Sam and Bucky again in that same spot. Indeed, Cap really did take his time coming back, just not in the way they expected.
• Exhausted Eye Bags:
  • A malnourished Tony who's drifting in space has dark eye bags.
  • Clint has a very dark pair under his eyes when he meets with Natasha. It would seem that he doesn't sleep much since becoming Ronin.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Defied. After Bruce Banner learns from The Ancient One that permanently removing the Infinity Stones can doom the new alternate timelines, he spends the rest of the movie reminding everyone that the Stones will need to be put back in their proper place, which Steve eventually does.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Banner and the Ancient One argue over getting the Time Stone, Banner reveals Dr. Strange willingly gave up the Time Stone. At first, she doesn't understand why Strange did so, but when Banner suggests that maybe Strange made a mistake, she stops him and suggests she was and gives him the Time Stone.
• Expository Hairstyle Change:
  • Steve goes back to his clean-shaven look, given he has much bigger problems than hiding his face.
  • Natasha starts the movie with her same blond bob cut from Infinity War. After the Time Skip, we see she's grown her hair out and left it unstyled, perhaps suggesting she can't be bothered to worry about something as unimportant as hair-styling when she has so many more important things to worry about. Later still, after discovering a possible way to undo the Snap, she puts her hair into a functional braid, signifying the return of her will and determination.
  • Clint's hair has been noticeably cut shorter when we see him as Ronin, and later stylizes into some sort of fauxhawk.
  • Captain Marvel's hair is significantly shorter after the Time Skip.
  • When Thor summons the power of thunder in the film's climax, his ragged facial hair transforms into a braided beard befitting his Viking ancestry.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: Ant-Man realizes that time moves at a different speed in the Quantum Realm. The Avengers end up using it for time travel, rather than teleportation.
• Extra-Long Episode: Clocking in at a little over three hours long, this is the longest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date (as of its release date of 2019, in comparison to the twenty-two films that came before it) and has the epicness to match.

F

• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Adrift in space with seemingly no hope of rescue, Tony is barely hanging on by a thread and knows he will die soon, but still composes himself for a final message to Pepper.
  • Natasha is extremely composed before her Heroic Suicide, taking the time to reassure Clint.
  • When it looks like Rhodey, Rocket and Professor Hulk are going to drown after Thanos destroys the compound, Rhodey tells Rocket he'll see him on the other side.
  • Thanos does this twice:
    • First, on Planet 0259-S, Thanos realizes he doesn't have the strength to fight back against the remaining Avengers, and while he likely doesn't see Thor's deathblow coming, he clearly has come to terms with his fate.
    • At the end of the film, after watching his entire army disintegrate, Thanos' reaction is to sit down and calmly accept his own disintegration at the hands of Tony's snap.
• Face Palm:
  • When Thor rambles about his experiences with the Aether, everyone aside from Scott (who is enthralled by it) is just waiting for him to finish, with about half the team facepalming.
  • Bruce claps a hand to his face after witnessing past-Hulk throwing a temper tantrum, jumping up and down on a car and hurling debris.
• Facial Horror: Thanos is shown suffering from a horrible burn scar on the left of his face, including the loss of an entire ear. That is because he's destroyed the Infinity Stones using their own power, and the power surge has seemingly destroyed the gauntlet and taken Thanos's left side as a result. Later, Tony is shown with the same scar after snapping Thanos and his forces out of existence.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Thor and Rocket travel to 2013 Asgard to steal the Aether. They tiptoe past Loki in his cell in an obvious manner, which Loki fails to notice because he's too busy flipping a cup in boredom.
  • 2014 Nebula takes out 2023 Nebula's golden face-plate so as to blend amongst the Avengers and not arouse suspicion. Her utterly different body language would be a dead giveaway, not to mention having a fully intact arm (2023 Nebula's was burned down to the metal skeleton whie retrieving the Power Stone)... though, in fairness, she avoids the heroes immediately, and they ignore her in favor of undoing the snap. Before that, they didn't pay attention to her because they were busy mourning Natasha's untimely death.
  • Finally, 2014 Thanos begins gloating as he seems to have finally regained the Stark-tech Infinity Gauntlet for himself before snapping — only for nothing to occur and Tony to reveal that all the stones were, in fact, with him.
  • Nobody in the Avengers compound notices when Thanos's ship comes through the Quantum Tunnel and blows out their roof in the process in the very next room. To be fair, this happens while they locked the base down and they're currently in the process of having Bruce use the glove to undo the Decimation, and everyone is more concerned about the sparking energies and Bruce in agony as it fries his arm, but still: a giant spaceship pops out of the next room and nobody hears it. Likewise after they open the shutters nobody seems to notice the huge spaceship big enough to block out the sun until an instant before it starts shooting at them.
  • When Bruce, Bucky and Sam are waiting for Steve to come back from returning the Infinity Stones, they don't initially notice a now-old Steve seated on a bench. Though to be fair, he is seated about 30 yards away, and from the way the setting is framed it's possible he had been there the whole time.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Corvus Glaive and Cull Obsidian. Corvus seems to be the weakest member of the dark order, because he is no match for Okoye, while Proxima is able to fight both Okoye and Black Widow at the same time.
• False Reassurance: Thor joins with the Guardians of the Galaxy and bumps head with Quill over who is in command (all implicitely though). When Quill tries to reassert that he's the leader of the group, Thor jovially says "Of course!" but then repeats it twice with a deadpan yet sinister tone and a Death Glare, making it clear he doesn't think one bit of Quill as his leader. Quill is visibly frightened to have his place challenged by a Physical God.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Guess what, Hemsworth fangirls? Thor has another extended Shirtless Scene! Good news, right? ...not exactly.
  • Tony Stark spends the first part of the film in a tank top. Welcome to the gun show, right? Too bad he's an emaciated wreck...
• Fat Suit: Chris Hemsworth wears one as Thor after the five year time-skip.
• Fearful Symmetry: Past Cap mistakes present Cap as Loki in disguise and engages immediately by throwing his shield, to which present Cap immediately answers with a throw of his own. The two shields collide and fall off the platform on which the two Captain Americas are fighting.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: By the end of the film, the original six Avengers are no more. Tony and Natasha have sacrificed their lives to defeat Thanos, Clint once again retires to be with his restored family, Banner's arm is (possibly permanently) damaged from using the Stones, Thor leaves Earth and joins the Guardians on their adventures after dubbing Valkyrie the new ruler of New Asgard, and Steve, after going back in time to return the Stones to their original locations in history to maintain the timeline, chooses to return to the 1940s to live a full life with Peggy and passes on his title and shield to Sam Wilson.
• Female Gaze: There's quite a bit of focus on Captain America's ass, with accompanying lingering shots, but there's a funny twist in that it's only men pointing it out.
  Scott Lang: [after Tony snarks about 2012 Steve] As far as I'm concerned, that is America's ass!
  Steve: [after defeating his 2012 self] ...That is America's ass.
• Final Battle: Thanos assaults the Avengers compound with not only his flagship, the Sanctuary II, but also the Children of Thanos and his army of Outriders, Chitauri and assorted aliens. But then come the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, every sorcerer from Kamar-Taj, and the forces of Asgard and Wakanda, and even the Ravagers. The whole battle becomes a struggle for the Infinity Gauntlet, with heroes passing each other the gauntlet to throw it in the Quantum Tunnel while each of Thanos's minions try to steal it from the Avengers.
• Finale Credits: As the Grand Finale to the eleven-year and twenty-two-movie long Myth Arc, the cast roll call shows up to a whopping fifty-four names on-screen, with the original six Avengers saved for last, each with their figures shown onscreen with clips behind them and the actors' signatures, akin to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 39 of the first 48 are individually named with an accompanying clip from their appearances in past movies, usually their first appearance.
• Final Solution: Thanos decides that the second time around, he'll just erase the entire universe and start everything over.
• Finger-Tenting: On the IMAX poster, Loki is holding his hands at chest level with his fingers tip-to-tip.
• First Girl Wins: After returning the Infinity Stones, Cap goes to the 1940's and reunites with his first love Peggy, rather than returning to the present and reconnecting with Sharon, who would have returned after Hulk's snap. This also means Steve wins out over the man Peggy would have married in this alternate timeline.
• Five Stages of Grief: After Thanos erases half the population of the universe and the Infinity Stones, each member of the original Avengers sans Steve Rogers is going through one of the stages:
  • Denial: Natasha Romanov still believes she can go back to her former role of saviour of the world and still hopes for a way to undo Thanos's Snap.
  • Anger: Clint Barton is going on a murder spree across the world to rid it from the people he thinks should have died in Thanos's Snap instead of his family and admittedly has lost all hope.
  • Bargaining: Bruce Banner doubly blames himself for Thanos's snap, since both the Hulk and Bruce were unable to stop Thanos. Bruce responds by trying to fix what he sees as his major mistake: treating the Hulk "like some kind of disease." He spends 18 months in a gamma lab, reconciling and merging with the Hulk. Still, his willingness to jump at the opportunity to undo Thanos's Snap shows he has not fully got over his prior defeat.
  • Depression: Thor has stopped being a hero and spends his days drinking beers, playing video games and eating way too much. As a result, he is very out of shape and emotionally vulnerable, as seen when he reunites with his mother and starts crying like a little boy
  • Acceptance: Tony Stark has moved on from the Avengers after Thanos's Snap, and now has a daughter and lives happily with her and his wife. He is the only member of the team who (at first) refuses to take part in the plan of going back in time to take the Stones and undo Thanos's Snap.
  • Steve, however, acts as the grief counselor, trying to help the group get out of their funk, sending Natasha to Clint and so on. Nothing for nothing, the first thing we see him do post-Time Skip is him leading a literal Group Therapy Session.
• Flash Step: Frigga pulls off a subtle but no less impressive one when she passes out of view then suddenly is behind Thor before their chat.
• Flat Scare: After Tony Stark and Professor Hulk supervise the machinery assembling a new Infinity Gauntlet, and being understandably tense about it considering the power of the Infinity Stones they're manipulating, Rocket finds it funny to suddenly yell "BOOM!", making the two of them jump.
• Flaw Exploitation: After his fight against Crossbones in Nigeria during Civil War, Captain America laments that just hearing Bucky's name when he wasn't expecting it was enough to make him freeze up for a moment too long for Rumlow to activate the bomb he strapped on himself as a last resource to kill Steve. Come the Time Heist, Steve uses the same trick to knock out his 2012 self when the latter, thinking he is a disguised Loki, tries to stop him from taking the Scepter.
• Foil: With a cast this large, there's bound to be a bunch.
  • Captain Marvel and Thor. They're both cocky Blood Knight types who want to charge at Thanos head on, but during the Time Skip they handle everything in completely different ways, mostly because Carol wasn't around when the Snap happened but Thor sees it as his greatest failure on top of all the agony of losing his father, his hammer, his best friends, his home, his choice in Kingship and his brother. Carol throws herself into her superhero work and spends the entire five years continuing her pre-snap campaign and trying to help as many people (and non people) as she can recover from the catastrophe while Thor has given up on everything, even though deep down he still has some desire to do something about the situation if he can (like, say, defending his friend from a pathetic online troll because he's convinced that's his level of competence). Visually, they contrast each other even more with Thor's overgrown and unkempt hair and beard and even more overgrown beer belly while Carol looks slightly more muscular on top of her short hair (according to Rocket, she's been getting a lot of haircuts lately). In the final battle, Thor — who has spent the entire movie getting back in touch with himself — is finally the brave, enthusiastic warrior we all know and love, while Carol is cool, calm and collected enough to be sweet and gentle with the fifteen year old holding the gauntlet. While Thor is running an epic Mook Horrorshow, Captain Marvel's moves are more focused on Thanos and the Gauntlet.
  • While there haven't really been that many parallels between Clint or Natasha with Thanos, let's just take a moment to reflect on how they handled Vormir. Thanos dragging the daughter he's been torturing for years and throwing her down there for a vision that got him the nickname "The Mad Titan". Clint and Nat fight over which one of them gets to sacrifice themselves, even though neither was a Death Seeker up to that point through everything that had happened. Both times, it's out of genuine belief that they're doing the right thing but there's a pretty big difference between "I'm the only one who knows that" and what two of Earth's Mightiest Heroes would do.
• Food as Bribe: Rocket convinces Thor, who's become a depressed alcoholic in the last five years, to re-join the Avengers by telling him there's beer on the Benatar.
• Forced Sleep:
  • In 2012, after getting his hands on Loki's scepter, Steve encounters and is forced to fight this timeline's Captain America. The fight ends when present-day Steve uses the scepter to induce sleep on his 2012 self.
  • The Ancient One does this to Bruce's physical body, resulting in the hilarious image of Professor Hulk with a sunhat, taking a nap in the middle of a pitched battle, while the Ancient One and Bruce's soul/astral form (portrayed by Mark Ruffalo) walk about the roof debating the merits of time travel and borrowing things from alternate timelines.
  • Mantis still has this power, and in the big final battle she's seen using it on a Giant Mook from Thanos's army.
• Foregone Conclusion: With Spider-Man: Far From Home confirmed to take place after this film, Spider-Man, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill are all safe. Otherwise, notably subverted. Of the characters who die or stay dead, three of them (Black Widow, Loki, and Vision) have their own movies/TV shows in the works.
• Foreshadowing:
  • 22 days after half the universe's population vanished, the remaining Avengers plus Carol discuss how to get to Thanos and undo what happened. Thor is the only one not contributing to the conversation; he's quietly sitting and eating bread and drinking beer. Five years later, he's more openly bitter and depressed, having gained weight due to being a shut-in who eats junk food, doesn't do exercise and drinks beer.
  • During that briefing, Scott Lang's photo is shown among the confirmed victims. This establishes that the Avengers (mistakenly) believe their ally is dead, setting up their shock after the Time Skip and brief hope that his apparent ressurection means the deceased have come back.
  • When the Avengers confront Thanos on his retirement planet, they discover that Thanos destroyed the Stones and that doing so nearly killed him. Five years later, Tony snaps his gauntlet to destroy Thanos and his army, but since Tony is not as strong as Thanos, he is killed by the power of the Stones. Tony's knowledge of this reinforces his Heroic Sacrifice since he was aware of the cost but did it anyways. As an added foreshadowing, Tony's mug shot is directly next to Thanos in the movie poster, not just to hint that it's extra personal for Tony after Thanos beat him in Infinity War.
  • Scott only has thin stubble exactly the same as his last appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp despite being supposedly trapped in Quantum Realm for five years without any tool to shave. It turns out that from his perspective, he was only trapped there for five hours.
  • Right after the Time Skip, Natasha all but said to Steve that she's Married to the Job for the past five years because she has nothing else in her life. Guess what she did when she reached Vormir with Clint.
  • Tony and Pepper's daughter Morgan has a lot of scenes with her father. In fact, she never even shares a scene with her mother until the eventual funeral. This pretty much indicates that she won't be with her father for any longer than this.
  • When Tony finds Morgan playing with the helmet of the suit he got for Pepper, he complains that Pepper never wears anything he gets her. Guess what happens during the battle against Thanos...
  • A subtle example is Professor Hulk; who has "the brains and the brawn together" (brains = Banner, brawn = Hulk). Eventually, those traits allowed him to perform the reverse-snap, since one requires both physical strength and brainpower to snap with the gauntlet.
  • When Tony finally decides to join the Time Heist, he lays his priorities out for Steve: Get back those lost if possible, protect what Tony's gained as a necessity, and "maybe not die in the process." Tony places the least priority on that last one, and will end the fight with a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Steve tells his support group that they need to move on after the Snap, and make something of what they have left. Otherwise, Thanos might as well have killed all of them. When the Avengers demonstrate to him their complete inability to do just that, Thanos comes to this exact conclusion, changing his plans from "50%" to "100%".
  • In 2012, a handcuffed Loki briefly shapeshifts into Captain America to annoy Thor. Some time later, when present-day Steve is about to walk out of the compound with the Mind Stone in the scepter, his 2012 self sees him and immediately thinks he's a disguised Loki.
  • During Thor's breakdown of the Aether (which is nothing more than a long-winded ramble), he brings up his mother, which grinds his stream-of-consciousness speech to a halt as he thinks about her. Later on he manages to get that last moment with her and set things right in his head.
  • Thor joyously saying "I knew it." when Cap lifts Mjölnir is a sign that Thor no longer bases his identity around being Thor, heir to Asgard and wielder of the Hammer of Thunder. It's consequently unsurprising when he has the humility to realize he's not the ruler New Asgard needs, and consequently abdicates the throne so Valkyrie can become queen.
  • During the Final Battle, Tony asks Strange if this was the one scenario where the Avengers prevail that he foresaw back on Titan. Strange replies, "If I told you what happens, it won't happen". Ever since Strange used the Time Stone to foresee the winning outcome, he knew that Tony would have to make the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Thanos and his army for good. Not only did Strange not want to risk anything that might compromise their already slim chances of victory, he didn’t want to tell Tony he wasn’t going to survive the fight with Thanos.
  • As Steve is preparing to go back in time to return all the stones to their respective times and locations, Bucky says "I'm going to miss you". This is despite the fact that Steve is only going to be gone for about 5 seconds on their end. And after Steve doesn't return as he is expected to, Bucky doesn't seem surprised. Moments later, he sees an elderly Steve sitting a distance away. It seems Bucky knew Steve's plan to stay in the past and be with Peggy after returning all the stones.
  • As he parts ways with Sam, Cap says that the latter is "a good man." Remember what Dr. Erskine said that the ideal Captain America should be? "Not a perfect soldier, but a good man." Sure enough, when he returns to the present as Old Man Cap, he passes on his shield — and his mantle — to Sam.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Tony finally forgives Steve, ending the feud that began with Civil War. However considering how he's incredibly uncomfortable mentioning his parent's death even obliquely, he's not fully forgotten what happened.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • During the brief moments where Thanos gets his hands on the replacement gauntlet during the final battle, he doesn't try to use the stone's individual powers. The closest he gets is suckerpunching Carol with one of them. Instead, he just tries to snap his fingers again. Largely justified as he's not just being bombarded by the Avengers every possible moment, he's the past version of Thanos; he likely has no idea how the thing even works or what the individual stones can do, since he never got to practice using them and he certainly doesn't have the six-odd years worth of research into the Stones that his prime timeline counterpart did to help him along.
  • Scott Lang doesn't summon any ants to ease the Time Heist along — even the bullet ants would be a more feasible alternative to giving Tony cardiac arrest.
    • He also doesn't summon ants into the final battle, which is unfortunate, as concept art exists that suggests he would've summoned ants, enlarged them to Humongous Mecha size, and then proceeded to use them as heavy armor to counter the larger creatures that serve Thanos.
  • Assuming he even has them in this version of his armor, Tony doesn't use the micro-missiles, jackhammers, clamps and restraints seen in previous versions of his armor against Thanos, sticking to arm blades and repulsor blasts. He also fails to use the energy shield he summoned for the Blip in his fight against Thanos, nor does he summon the Hulkbuster, which has been established to still be active, to even the odds against Thanos's brute strength and size.
  • Thor primarily relies upon the blunt power of Stormbreaker and Mjolnir against Thanos, and while he uses lightning to enhance his attacks against ordinary mooks and power up Tony's suit, it never occurs to Thor to fire lightning directly at Thanos, like how he did in the previous Avengers film.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Despite all the effort the Avengers put into trying to save Vision's life in Infinity War, they don't appear to have made any effort to resurrect him in the subsequent five years by using Shuri's research and experiments, or consider how to revive him when trying to undo Thanos's snap; not even Tony and Bruce, who created him. The only mention he gets is from Wanda, and then not even by name. This is explained by the reveal in Wandavision that his body has been in S.W.O.R.D.'s hands since shortly after the Battle of Wakanda.
• Formerly Fit: Two characters, in opposite directions:
  • Tony, who is usually more of a downplayed Mr. Fanservice that the other male heroes are, starts the movie as an emaciated wreck as he recovers from malnutrition and a nasty infection.
  • Thor, the poster boy for Hunk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hits a new low as he gets fat and out of shape during the five-year Time Skip. The loss of his muscle means that he's lost his drive to perform heroics, having committed the ultimate failure. Almost everyone he meets calls him out on his shape, and Thanos has an easier time beating up an out-of-shape Thor despite the latter wielding the immensely powerful Stormbreaker.
• Fountain of Youth: While testing the Quantum machine for time travel, among the mishaps is that Scott is turned into a young man, then into a baby.
• Four Lines, All Waiting:
  • Less so here than Infinity War, predominantly during the Time Heist.
    • Rocket and Thor go to 2013 Asgard to retrieve the Aether (Reality Stone)
    • Tony, Cap and Scott go to 2012 Stark Tower to steal the Tesseract (Space Stone) and scepter (Mind Stone) while Banner goes to the New York Sanctum to take the Time Stone. Cap and Tony go further back, to 1970 to capture the Tesseract when the attempt was botched the first time. Oh, and they get more Pym Particles to get back to 2023.
    • Rhodey and Nebula go to 2014 Morag, knock out Star Lord and steal the Power Stone (in the Orb) but not before...
    • They send Natasha and Clint in the Benatar to Vormir, where they fight over who takes the dive for the Soul Stone, with Nat taking the fall and Clint getting the Stone.
  • Another takes place as the heroes are split up by attack of the Sanctuary II on the compound.
    • Tony, Thor, and Steve confront and engage 2014 Thanos in a fight which doesn't go well for any of them.
    • Barton fends off three Outriders and 2014 Nebula (With 2014 Gamora and 2023 Nebula rescuing him).
    • Hulk, Rocket, and Rhodey are deposited at the floor of the facility which floods, nearly drowning all three but not before...
    • Ant-Man comes to their rescue and busts out of the remains by growing to Giant-Man.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • At the beginning of the film, when the remaining Avengers and Guardians are looking at pictures of their allies who died in both Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, it's shown that Erik Selvig, Sharon Carter, and Shuri were among those who were Snapped.
  • On one of the pillars of the "Lost" memorial in San Francisco, there may or may not be the name of one "Stanley Lieber" (a.k.a. Stan Lee). Also, underneath Scott's name, there's a "Charlotte Lee", who was Stan's dog.
  • Amusingly, a close look will reveal Bruce eating "Hunka Hulka Burning Fudge" ice cream during the planning of the Time Heist.
  • You can see Scott Lang shrinking down to ant size right after one of the missiles from Thanos's ship explodes in his face.
  • Howard the Duck can momentarily be seen to the right of Hope Van Dyne, amongst the Ravagers as they arrive as back-up for the Avengers.
  • During the "Portals" scene, Hope Van Dyne appears coming out of a very tiny portal compared to everyone else's.
  • During the Avengers Assemble charge to combat Thanos, Spider-Man is web-swinging alongside the group, despite it being outside with no apparent overhead structures. Closer inspection reveals he's actually swinging from Giant-Man's limbs.
  • It's very easy to miss, but as Tony struggles with Thanos for the Stones, they can be seen falling to the ground before Thanos knocks Tony away.
  • Some viewers have noticed the sudden absence of the multicolored lights on Thanos's Stark-tech "Infinity Gauntlet" after he grapples with Tony and throws him off.
• Friendly Rivalry: Thor and Captain Marvel seem to develop this upon first meeting, with Thor noticeably calling Stormbreaker in front of her and Carol, completely unfazed, giving him a Death Glare that turns into a sly smile. He warms up to her immediately after that.
  Thor: I like this one.
• From the Mouths of Babes: After Tony says "shit!" while discovering a plausible time travel theory, he sees Morgan watching on the steps behind him, who replies "shit!" in response. Tony then digs himself deeper by saying he has "a lot of important shit to do."
• Funny Background Event:
  • When Nebula sucks up to Thanos in the first scene on the Q-Ship when Thanos arrives, one can see Gamora rolling her eyes in disgust at her adopted sister's behavior.
  • During the big setup for the final battle, after seeing Steve summoning Mjölnir, Tony just looks briefly at the act as if to say something, but decides there are more important matters and focuses on the battle. Keep in mind he was knocked out during the time when Steve battled Thanos using the hammer.
  • While Thor and Captain America are busy swapping weapons and fighting Thanos's forces, Mantis can be seen putting a large beast to sleep.

G

• Gambit Roulette: The entire film is but one of over fourteen million timelines Doctor Strange had seen. His decision to hand Thanos the Time Stone in exchange for sparing Tony Stark's life is meant to confirm that exact timeline, to make sure that the snap happens at a time when Scott Lang is in the Quantum Realm and thus gets the idea of quantum time travel, Tony is around to (a) make quantum time travel work and (b) make the new Infinity Gauntlet out of Iron Man nano-tech, allowing him to steal the Stones from Thanos in the finale and snap his forces out of existence. Things Strange never actually told him to do. Also, the fact that he willingly gave up the Time Stone clues the Ancient One that Bruce being in the past, now, asking for it means everything is going according to plan.
• Gender-Blender Name: Before the battles of Infinity War occurred, Tony had told Pepper he dreamed they had a child, who was named after Pepper's uncle Morgan. In the present-day, they have a daughter named Morgan.
• Generation Xerox: Morgan, Tony's daughter, already takes a lot after her father. First shown with an Iron Man helmet because of a precocious interest in technology, she then demonstrates a talent for banter and more comically, wants cheeseburgers in a scene just like Tony wanted cheeseburgers upon his return from Afghanistan.
• Genius Bruiser: Two heroines empowered by Infinity Stones, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel, clearly overpower Thanos individually, but Thanos still manages to dispatch them through quick thinking: he orders his ship to fire on the former to throw her off, and uses the Power Stone to enhance his strength to blindside the latter.
• Genocide Survivor:
  • Most of the film follows the survivors of the Decimation as they try to cope with the horror of Thanos's actions and eventually come up with a plan to reverse the Decimation.
  • After Thanos killed half of Asgard, Thor and Valkyrie set up a settlement on Earth called New Asgard. But due to Thor's depression over the events of the previous film, Valkyrie becomes the de facto leader.
• Genre-Busting: While the genre of the movie is under the blanket descriptor of "Superhero", the actual genres themselves that make it up are quite varied. The best way to describe Endgame is as a Character-Driven Dramatic Post-Apocalyptic Time-Traveling Caper, and towards the last hour it becomes an epic war movie.
• Genre Shift:
  • While Infinity War was a film focused primarily on large scale set-pieces and battles, Endgame is a more overtly somber and character-driven narrative which doubles as a look-back through the history of the MCU. It's only come the Final Battle when the former's tone returns to the forefront.
  • The re-introduction of Hawkeye in his Ronin persona has him hunting down Yakuzas in Tokyo like something in a vengeance film such as Kill Bill, culminating in a Battle in the Rain sword duel with the Yakuza leader that plays out like a Samurai film.
  • And when Hawkeye desperately tries to outrun a tidal-wave of Outriders in the dark dripping tunnels of the Avengers Compound ruins, the film adopts the industrial-punk steam-gothic aesthetics of a "futile escape through the air ducts" scene straight out of 1980s horror/monster movies like Aliens.
• Gentle Giant: The Hulk becomes this, having melded Bruce’s mind and mild demeanor with the Hulk’s body. Bruce is also a much calmer, happier person himself, since he no longer has to live in fear of Hulking out. This is especially shown when some kids approach Bruce with no fear and he happily interacts with them and later, when Bruce gives Scott his tacos after Scott’s tacos are blown away by the Benatar’s arrival. When they travel to 2012, Hulk is embarrassed by his old behavior.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Rocket slaps Thor across the face when he experiences a panic attack on 2013-Asgard.
• Ghost City:
  • New York City is implied to be barely populated years after Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet. The ballpark stadium (revealed to be Citi Field, home of the New York Mets) is overgrown and crumbling, thousands of abandoned ships lie at its docks, most of the buildings are completely dark and empty, and scattered vehicles still dot its streets.
  • San Francisco is implied to be much the same — it apparently takes Scott a good chunk of time to walk through completely devoid streets before he runs into another person, and even then, it's in a residential area crowded with abandoned homes and garbage.
  • On a larger scale, the entire first third of the movie, which takes place post-Snapture, is largely devoid of life; there are only two crowd scenes, and ten or less speaking roles from characters who don't show up in the final battle: Cassie Lang, Morgan Stark, the three kids who get the photo with Hulk, the mob boss and his mooks, and Joe Russo's nameless LGBTQ survivor. The Doylist explanation is that this would save on budget (a serious consideration with this film's massive cast list — by this point in the movie, there have already been thirteen characters who do show up in the final battle), but it also helps build the Watsonian air of desolation and loneliness. Most notably, the Avengers compound is never seen occupied by anyone other than, you know, actual Avengers.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Scott goes Giant-Man during the climactic battle, and crushes Cull Obsidian like a roach while he's at it.
• Giant Mook: Thanos's forces deploy hulking brutes tethered by collars on the battlefield, quite reminiscent of the trolls from The Lord of the Rings movies.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: A variation. While the Pym Particle has been around since the 1960s, it seems to be only discovered by Hank Pym and no one else in the entire universe. When the 2014 Thanos gets his hands on the time-traveling Nebula's Pym Particle vial and beacon, he had Ebony Maw reverse-engineer it in order to mass-produce enough particles to take his entire army to the future.
• The Glomp: Tony's so happy to see Peter alive again, he jut grabs him in a great big hug, shutting down his entirely unnecessary explanation for what just happened.
• Gloomy Gray: The weather of Earth five years later is primarily grey skies with little rainfall, representing just how much suffering, depression and pain everyone is going through. This applies to nearly every area visited including New York, New Asgard, San Francisco and Tokyo.
• Godzilla Threshold: "Whatever it takes."
  • Nick Fury treated Captain Marvel as one while he was alive, as she was simply so powerful and potentially dangerous that he would only call upon her help if his Avengers ever failed. Considering that he held back when Loki launched an alien invasion that ultimately led New York City about to be nuked into oblivion in The Avengers, when tens of millions of people were going to be killed by HYDRA when it revealed itself to have survived World War II within S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or when the greater part of Sokovia was about to be dropped onto Earth to cause a mass-extinction event in Avengers: Age of Ultron, that should give you an idea of how serious things had to get before he called for her aid.
  • Learning that Doctor Strange willingly gave up the Time Stone to Thanos in 2018 is enough to convince the Ancient One to hand it over to Banner in 2012, as she immediately understands there must have been a reason for him to do so.
  • In order to get the Tesseract away from the 2012 version of Tony, it is decided to have Scott sabotage his arc reactor as to induce a heart attack.
  • Completely dominated by Wanda, who threatens to kill him, Thanos orders the Sanctuary II to fire at the battleground, even shocking his underling, who objects to the move that will destroy much of their troops. In doing so, he throws the entire battlefield into chaos, taking out Wanda.
  • This attitude completely dominates the Final Battle, where the heroes do everything they can to keep the Infinity Stones out of Thanos's hands and defeat his army. They summon nearly every heroic force they can (Kamar-Taj, Wakanda, New Asgard, the Ravagers), use lethal methods they normally wouldn't (Spider-Man activating Instant-Kill mode), and use powers they aren't even sure they can handle (Captain America using Mjölnir) to attain victory. This culminates in Iron Man swiping the stones, creating a new Infinity Gauntlet from the nanotech of his armor and snapping his hand to end the threat of the Mad Titan for good, at the cost of his own life.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Immediately after undoing the Snap, as Thanos is close to retrieving the stones again, Doctor Strange calls upon his fellow wizards to open portals and bring everyone possible back to fight. Thus, as Steve faces Thanos's army alone, he suddenly is backed up by the armies of Wakanda, the Masters of the Mystic Arts, the Asgardians, the Ravagers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and every other hero.
• "Good Luck" Gesture: Thor gives Bruce the "Thumbs Up" variant before the former snaps his fingers with Tony's gauntlet to bring back those that got dusted.
• A Good Way to Die: Implied when 2014 Thanos sees from the memory banks of Nebula that his future self eventually succeeds in his goal to kill off half the universe, but is executed by the Avengers. He completely takes his future demise in stride and prevents Ebony Maw from executing Nebula as a traitor. If anything, the lesson he takes from his future self is not simply "don't die", but that he was too limited in his scope and that the survivors were ungrateful, and plans to exterminate all of life instead.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
  • When Natasha realizes that New York played host to three Infinity Stones during the 2012 invasion, Hulk's reaction is this.
    Hulk: Shut the front door.
  • Steve Rogers inverts this multiple times after calling out Tony for language in Age of Ultron.
    Steve Rogers: [seeing his 2012 self] Oh, you gotta be shitting me.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: This time, it's the Avengers who must collect all the Infinity Stones from points in the past to undo the original snap.
• Graceful Loser: Thanos has an "I'm screwed" expression on his face, but otherwise just sits down and quietly accepts his fate as he turns to dust.
• Grand Finale: For the "Infinity Saga" story arc involving the Infinity Stones, although Spider-Man: Far From Home is technically the final film of Phase 3, and the epilogue to that arc. The film also represents the completion of the twenty-two movie saga started by Iron Man.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol:
  • Black Widow uses her grappling-hook apparatus on Vormir to catch Hawkeye as he tries to jump from the cliff and stop his fall, allowing her to sacrifice herself in his stead.
  • Later, in the tunnels under the Avenger Compound's ruins, Hawkeye uses his own grappling-hook arrow to escape the pursuing Outriders up a well, cutting up the climbers still going after him with his katana.
• Gray Rain of Depression: It's raining during the emotional reunion between Clint and Natasha after the former killed Akihiko.
• Groin Attack: Past Gamora gives Star-Lord two brutal ones, because she never met him in her timeline and thought he's being a creep by approaching her.
  Quill: [while writhing on the ground] You missed the first time. Then you got 'em both the second!
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: In the end, Tony doesn't hesitate to use the power of the Infinity Stones to Snap all of Thanos's forces out of existence, presumably rendering the Chitauri and Outrider species extinct.

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