Avengers Endgame / Tropes P to Z

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!

P

• Paradise Planet: 2018 Thanos has retired to an idyllic Arcadia-style world; the biggest settlement to be found there is the small farm he's built.
• Passing the Torch:
  • Ultimately, Steve leaves his shield in the hands of Sam Wilson a.k.a Falcon, who feels extremely inadequate but is reassured that he is worthy of the mantle.
  • Thor chooses Valkyrie to be the new ruler of New Asgard before leaving with the Guardians.
  • Tony Stark likewise symbolically passes the torch to his daughter, Morgan.
  • In the middle of Tony's rant to the Avengers, he pauses and says about Captain Marvel, "She's great by the way" as gratitude for her saving his life. He also tells her that the Avengers have more need for "new blood" like her than the "bunch of tired old mules" that he and the other Avengers have become.
  • In a more literal example, the entire game of keep-away the Avengers play with the Stark Infinity Gauntlet is largely with the second wave of heroes: Hawkeye is the first and the last of the OG Avengers to get his hands on it. After that, it passes to Black Panther, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel, who shepherd it through the remainder of the fight, with the latter receiving an all-female honor guard who are also exclusively second wave (Okoye, Shuri, Wanda, Gamora, Nebula, Mantis, Valkyrie, Hope, and Pepper).
• Pet the Dog:
  • Thaddeus Ross, who has thus spent the entirety of his time in the MCU being a jerkass to just about everybody, has the decency to attend Tony Stark's funeral out of respect. He also has an opportunity to capture Professor Hulk and the theoretically still fugitive Secret Avengers right then and there, but he doesn't take it, because it's not the time or place for that.
  • Present-day Thanos gets a very minor one. Right before getting beheaded by Thor, he admits that he might have treated Nebula too harshly when Nebula gives him a Backhanded Compliment (though this could very well have been an attempt at weaseling his way out of justice).
  • Past Thanos, who, in Guardians of the Galaxy, was extremely harsh and unforgiving towards Nebula, approves of her plan to retrieve the Infinity Stones from the Avengers and bring them to him. He also does not punish Past Nebula for 2023 Nebula's future betrayal, like he normally would have done.
  • Alexander Pierce, just after trying to take the Tesseract off Tony by force, shows genuine concern for him when he suffers a heart attack, trying to resuscitate him and calling for help. This is the same guy who would eventually mark Tony for assassination with Project Insight.
• Planet Terra: When 2014 Thanos views present Nebula's memories of the Avengers discussing the Stones' locations, he refers to them as Terrans.
• Please Wake Up:
  • F.R.I.D.A.Y. to an unconscious Tony Stark (who took Mjölnir to the chest and was tossed aside by Thanos): "Boss, Wake up!"
  • A resurrected Peter to a dying Tony: "Mr. Stark? We won. We won."
• Plot Armor: The start of the third act is Thanos's ship appearing over the Avengers compound and reducing it to rubble. Not a brick is left unsmashed. Despite this, literally none of the nine people in it are killed or even injured. Justified for some characters, such as Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and War Machine, less so for the others.
• Possession Implies Mastery: Steve is able to use Mjölnir very effectively when one considers that he's never wielded it before, and it had been nearly a decade since the last time he'd even touched the hammer.
• Potty Failure: Scott Lang is the guinea pig for the first tests on time travel, but unfortunately things go awry and Scott is pulled out of the Quantum Realm at different ages. Finally getting back to normal, Scott feels his suit has been stained and questions whether it was his baby self, his very old self, or his current self who was responsible.
• Powerful and Helpless: The Action Prologue ultimately results in this. The Avengers follow Thanos to his Garden planet only to discover that Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones after wiping out half of the Universe's population, rendering the snap irreversible. Even Thor decapitating Thanos isn't enough to make their victory anything less than hollow, and it takes Time Travel after a five-year Time Skip to bring everybody back, at the cost of two of the Avengers' lives. Of particular note here is Captain Marvel, who spent her previous screentime boasting of her ability to kill Thanos (and is later proven right when she faces 2014 Thanos later in the movie, only being temporarily stunned by the use of the Power Stone against her), only to discover that it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
• Prank Call: During the Time Heist, in order to get Pym Particles so he and Tony Stark can return to the present, Steve Rogers prank calls Hank Pym, saying that a delivery guy accidentally opened a glowing package that was for him, and Hank falls for it.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  • When Tony, Steve, and Thor see Thanos patiently waiting for them to come to him. Thor's response?
    Thor: Let's kill him properly this time.
  • When Cap rallies the fully revived forces of Earth against Thanos's forces.
    Captain America: Avengers! ...Assemble.
  • When the female superheroes show up to cut a path through Thanos's remaining forces so Carol can get to the Quantum Tunnel.
    Wanda Maximoff: Don't worry...
    Okoye: She's got help.
  • Wanda coming face-to-face with Thanos:
    Wanda Maximoff: You took... everything from me!
    Thanos: I don't even know who you are.
    Wanda Maximoff: You will...
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Beyond the usual suspects (Cap's shield, Stormbreaker and Mjölnir), Thanos's massive double-bladed sword can be thrown by spinning it, and returns to his hand afterward.
• Precrime Arrest: Rhodey semi-jokingly suggests using time travel to go back in time and kill baby Thanos.
• Prematurely Marked Grave: Because he disappeared during the last five years, like half of the world's population from the Snap, Scott finds his name on the memorial of the departed (while desperately hoping not to find Cassie's).
• Pre-Mortem Catchphrase: Tony repeats his catch-phrase "I am Iron Man" just before he uses the Infinity Stones and dies.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: During the final battle, Tony swipes the Infinity Stones from Thanos and uses them to turn Thanos and his army into dust.
  Thanos: I am inevitable. [snaps his fingers; nothing happens. He turns and his smug complexion turns to shock as he sees that Tony is now in possession of the Stones]
  Tony Stark: [inhaling] And I... am... Iron Man. [snaps Thanos and his forces out of existence]
• Prescience Is Predictable: In the midst of the Battle of New York, Professor Hulk comes to the Sanctum Sanctorum seeking Doctor Strange... and finds the Ancient One instead, who tells him he's five years too early for that to be a possibility. Later on, she states matter-of-factly that Strange is meant to be the best of them (the Sorcerers Supreme) all, so she immediately trusts whatever his judgment was in handing Thanos the Time Stone.
• Present-Day Past: In 2012, Sitwell is seen using a Galaxy S7 phone, which wasn't released until 2016.
• Product Placement:
  • Korg is playing Fortnite when Rocket and Professor Hulk visit New Asgard to find Thor. In one scene, a bottle of Irn-Bru is plainly visible on a table.
  • Tony drives an Audi to Avengers HQ. The camera lingers on the front of the car for a few seconds.
  • Tiny Scott gets a whiff of 2012-Tony and asks present-Tony, "Is that Axe body spray?"
• Prosthetic Limb Reveal: Nebula's arm burns down to its metal core when she retrieves the orb. She notes that she wasn't always a robot, which leads to a heartwarming "Not So Different" Remark moment with War Machine who can sympathise with her fate.
• Pull the I.V.: Tony does this at the beginning, pulling out the IV giving him fluids during an argument with Steve. He also stands up from his wheelchair despite everyone telling him not to. This bites him in the ass hard, as he collapses and passes out mid-rant, and has to be sedated to ensure he actually gets some nutrients in him.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • Five Beat Years Beat Later
  • "and I... am... Iron Man." [snap]
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Thanos decides It's Personal after Earth has been a thorn in his side for too long.
  Thanos: In all my years of conquest, violence, slaughter, it was never personal. But I'll tell you now: what I'm about to do to your stubborn, annoying little planet... I'm gonna enjoy it very, very much.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The original six Avengers reunite to fix Thanos's mess — and with the help of a few unlikely allies, they go about finding a way to undo the cataclysmic event that wrecked the fabric of reality.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • While the Avengers manage to track down and kill Thanos in the movie's first third, the fact remains that lots of damage has been done that they can't fix. Thor especially takes this hard as he had the chance to kill Thanos in the past but since he did not take it, it led to people being dusted. Going for the head the second time around lead to a hollow victory and did not make Thor feel any better. (Until Ant-Man shows up with an idea.)
  • Thanos's victory in the previous film also turns out to be this, where he ultimately sacrificed everything he cared about in order to achieve his goal of wiping out half the life in the universe. Not only is he unceremoniously hunted down and killed by the Avengers just a couple of weeks later, but after some years they undo the snap completely, ultimately making his quest All for Nothing.

R

• Ramming Always Works: Just ask Captain Marvel. The Flying Brick simply plows right through several enemy vehicles including the Sanctuary II like she did in her movie to the Kree accuser ship without sustaining even a scratch.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: As Hulk testily explains to Scott and Rhodey, the popular portrayal of time travel in films like Back to the Future isn't how time travel works at all.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Tony, when prodded by Steve about the whereabouts of Thanos despite his situation — still mourning Peter's death and recovering from his near-death experience in space — rips his IV drip out and erupts in grief-fueled rage at Steve, ranting that he and everyone else should have listened to his concerns about the aliens coming back.
    Tony: I said we'd lose. You said, "we'll do that together too." Guess what, Cap? We lost, and you weren't there.
  • When everyone returns to 2023, the remaining five original Avengers stand on a pier when Thor — oblivious to everyone else's grief regarding Natasha's Heroic Suicide — insists to Tony that the stones can be used to bring everyone back and that they were talking about "space magic". He is torn a new one by Barton.
    Barton: Yeah, look, I know I'm way outside my pay grade here, but she still isn't here, is she? It can't be undone! Or that's at least what the red floating guy had to say! Maybe you wanna go talk to him, okay? Go grab your hammer, and you go fly and you talk to him!
• Reclaimed by Nature: A small-scale example is shown when Scott is walking through the suburbs of San Francisco. Houses and sections of sidewalk are shown being covered with overgrowth from house plants and trees because there was nobody there to maintain it.
• Recurring Camera Shot: There are two reaching back to earlier films:
  • Pepper kissing Tony on the cheek right after his death is framed the same way his mother kissed him right before she and his father left for the last time in Captain America: Civil War in the B.A.R.F. simulator.
  • The last time we see an Iron Man helmet, it is in the same position and the same angle as the first time we see the Mark I helmet.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Wanda's eyes start glowing red as she confronts Thanos.
  • The lenses on Spider-Man's mask turn from white to red when he activates his suit's Instant Kill Mode.
• Redemption Earns Life: Gamora makes a Heel–Face Turn right before the final battle and fights on the side of the heroes. As revealed in a deleted scene, she's the only one of Thanos's army that Tony spares from his Snap.
• Redemption Rejection: While past-Nebula is conflicted about pulling a Heel–Face Turn like her sister does, in the end, despite present-Nebula imploring her to be a better person, she says she can't, and she attempts to draw her weapon on Gamora.
• Red Herring: Ant-Man's van with the Quantum Tunnel. While it is the reason that Lang reappears after five years, afterwards it fails to be useful to travel back in time as Stark invents a better design. In the final battle, Thanos destroys the van before they can use it to send the glove with the Infinity Stones back in time and out of his grasp for good.
• Reduced to Dust:
  • In the opening, Clint's family is turned to dust via Thanos's snap.
  • When The Avengers locate Thanos following a second use of the Stones, they find that he destroyed the Stones, by using them on themselves. Thanos mentions that he reduced them to atoms so that they could not be used to undo the Snap. While he couldn't destroy them permanently, it would take millions of years for them to reform into the Stones; time the Avengers don't have.
  • Later, it is Thanos who is on the receiving end of this. Tony, wielding all the Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers, turning Thanos and his forces to dust. Before he dies, he gets the privilege of watching all of his forces disintegrate before him, including his children, as he finally accepts his fate.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: They use the Infinity Stones to stop Thanos and bring back his victims but curing cancer or ending world hunger are never mentioned. Though this is justified because using the Infinity Stones will unleash unimaginable quantities of raw power that could kill anyone not strong enough to withstand it (even Hulk and Thanos himself barely survived; and the latter was explicitly using something designed for the stones), and even if they did they are left with a scarred body. Using it only for the specific goal of bringing back the snapped victims takes priority over anything else, and they couldn't use it for any other goal without risking their lives in the process. It is further justified when you consider that such a use of the stones would only solve the problem in the here and now but would not prevent it from becoming a problem again in the future, which is also what was wrong with Thanos's original plan to wipe out half of all life to preserve the universe.
• Refuge in Audacity: Steve, having traveled to 2012 post-Battle of New York, gets onto an elevator full of HYDRA moles in S.H.I.E.L.D. He tells them that the higher-ups in S.H.I.E.L.D. have changed their orders and that the scepter should be given to him. The agents refuse to, and it appears there's going to be an elevator fight, just like in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Rather than waste time and draw unnecessary attention, Steve just convinces them he's on their side by murmuring, "Hail HYDRA", shocking the agents and taking the scepter from them.
  
  This also counts on a metafictional level. In the source material, this line reveals that Cap has been Evil All Along — a plot twist which readers hated. The Russo Brothers used the same line for multiple subversions: not only to allow Sequence Breaking of the elevator fight, not only to show Cap's Character Development into a Guile Hero who can effortlessly play his enemies, but from character assassination into punch line.
• Relationship Reset Button: Gamora is brought back via quantum time travel shenanigans, but since this is a Gamora from before Guardians of the Galaxy, she's never met Quill before, much less fallen in love with him.
• The Remnant: Thanos's obliteration of half the life in the universe means that many once proud factions and places have been reduced to few and made into shells of their former selves.
  • While all of the original Avengers are miraculously still alive, War Machine is the only remaining survivor from the New Avengers team that was created after Ultron was destroyed. He was even the only other known hero at the time they first assembled.
  • With Bucky's death, Cap is now the only remaining member of the Howling Commandos unit from World War II that's still alive today. And later, with Steve going back to live in the past and Bucky resurrected, Bucky's the only active Howling Commando in the 21^st Century.
  • Rocket is the last of the original five Guardians.
  • Nebula is the only surviving "child" of Thanos, which is somewhat ironic considering that she's The Unfavorite.
  • With Hank, Janet, and Hope Pym all dead, Scott Lang is the only survivor affiliated with Pym Technologies.
  • With the death of Peter Quill on Titan, Kraglin is the only surviving original member of Yondu's Ravager clan.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: The Avengers list Scott Lang along with Peter Parker and Shuri among the heroes who were KIA, but then Scott shows up outside the facility, to their astonishment.
• Reset Button: With the Infinity Stones destroyed but Thanos dead, the Avengers eventually develop time travel and plan to steal the Infinity Stones from the past to gather them and snap everyone back with a new Infinity Gauntlet. However, it is downplayed in that Tony specifically tells the Avengers that he wants everyone brought back the way they were five years ago in the present because he absolutely wants to keep his family the way it is, to which Steve agrees. This means that everything that happened in the last five years (such as Cassie growing up and Bruce's bonding with the Hulk) remain in place.
• Retired Monster: Thanos begins the movie content with retirement after killing half of all sentient life in the universe, albeit with mental and emotional scars from his experience. To the surprise of the Avengers, he had actually retired completely, destroying the Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity Stones in order to signify that his work was finished and to prevent it from being undone.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • During the cold opening, at the moment of the Snapture, the background noises of birds and bugs diminish by half. This could be explained as a Doylist heightening of drama, but should also be taken as a Watsonian diegetic event.
  • When Ant-Man receives a distress call from Rhodey after Thanos attacks the base, there is a War Machine suit in the background, which explains how Rhodey gets a new suit during the final battle after his previous suit was damaged. A freeze-frame watcher will also see Scott instantly shrinking down when the first missile hits.
• Riches to Rags: The Asgardian survivors. From living in a magical paradise with golden palaces to making a living fishing and dwelling in a town of crude shacks in Northern Europe, it's a major step down for Thor and others. Though for the likes of Valkyrie and Sakaaran exiles like Korg and Miek, it's a trade-up from living in a garbage planet. Not surprisingly, those three seem to be the most settled and sorted of New Asgard denizens.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The Avengers chose the Battle of New York as one of the targets for the Time Heist because they assume Stephen Strange and the Time Stone resided there, meaning that in that day there were three Infinity Stones in New York City. However, at that point, Strange was still a surgeon who had never even heard of things like Infinity Stones and from Doctor Strange we know that before 2017 the Eye of Agamotto was usually kept at Kamar-Taj. The Time Stone normally would not have been there, except that the Ancient One had brought it to defend the New York Sanctum.
• Right Makes Might: During the final battle, Tony is knocked unconscious by Thanos and Thor is a breath away from having Stormbreaker thrust into his chest by Thanos in the exact same way he tried to finish 2018 Thanos in Wakanda. In this Darkest Hour, Steve, noble of heart, is deemed worthy by Mjölnir to wield it in defiance of the tyrant. Dr. Abraham Erskine would be proud.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Early in the film, the remaining heroes manage to track Thanos and set off to confront him, and while reversing the Decimation is first priority, it's fairly obvious that to everyone involved, It's Personal.
  • Scarlet Witch engages in her own when she confronts Thanos during the last battle, culminating in immobilizing the Titan and attempting to simply wrench him apart with telekinesis.
• Rotating Arcs:
  • After being kept Out of Focus in Infinity War, both Captain America and Black Widow have substantially larger roles in the plot of this film.
  • Iron Man also has a larger role here than in Infinity War, where while more important than Cap, was still less so than Thor. In fact, he has the honor of killing Thanos once and for all.
  • In the film itself, with the heroes split into three groups, the focus shifts from one team to another until they accomplish their missions.
• Rousing Speech: Captain America gives one just before the team goes back in time. Rocket and Ant-Man are particularly impressed.
  Captain America: We lost. All of us. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves. Today, we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones, get them back, one round trip each. No mistakes. No do-overs. Most of us are going somewhere we know. That doesn't mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other. This is the fight of our lives... and we're gonna win. Whatever it takes. Good luck.
  Rocket: ...He's pretty good at that.
  Ant-Man: Right?
• Rule of Three: While traveling through time, three Avengers cross paths with someone important in their lives who they had since lost.
  • Thor encounters his mother, who immediately recognizes him for who he is. She gives him some advice in putting his life back together.
  • Tony meets his father, who does not recognize him (to be fair, this meeting took place before Tony was born). They end up talking about parenting.
  • Steve crosses paths with Peggy, but takes care that she doesn't see him. After the mission is over and he has finished replacing all the Stones, he goes back further in time to be with her again.

S

• Sad Clown: Thor already is this in Infinity War. Following his father's passing and Thanos killing the people he swore to protect, including his best friend, Heimdall, and his brother, Loki, Thor still tries to cope with his pain by cracking jokes and forcing himself to remain confident that he can defeat Thanos. He gets far worse in this movie. He has grown an incredibly thick Beard of Sorrow five years after the events of Infinity War and seems jolly most of the time, but actually has been reduced to a depressed, overweight, alcoholic shell of a man who spends almost all of his time drinking heavily (even by Asgardian standards), eating pizza, and playing Fortnite with Miek and Korg. Thankfully, upon revisiting his mother during his time-traveling to 2013, she gives him a pep talk and helps him get his old self back.
• San Dimas Time: The only thing stopping the Avengers from getting unlimited do-overs if elements of their plan to steal past versions of the destroyed Infinity Stones went wrong is a limited supply of the particles they use to enter the quantum realm to travel to the past, since the creator of the particles is currently dead. They need to keep some Pym particles in reserve in order to return to the present, so if they fail to get one of the stones, they can't simply chase it further back. When the Avengers fail to retrieve the space stone from 2012 New York, it's a major setback and it forces Steve and Tony to take a major risk by using the rest of their supply of Pym particles to travel further back to a time where they can find their original goal and enough Pym Particles to return to a present, specifically a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in the 70s.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: When the Avengers confront Thanos in his hut, Banner tells Thanos "You've murdered trillions!" Even assuming the observable universe constitutes the entire universe, and only .1 percent of planets are peopled, the number would still be more like septillions (a septillion is a trillion trillion).
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Steve seems to break some of his own internal rules for the sake of pragmatism during the heist; he makes off with the Mind Stone (still in Loki's Scepter at this point) by using his foreknowledge of HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L..D to pretend he's with HYDRA and walk off with the container case from Agent Sitwell's squad, and then gets a figurative below-the-belt hit on Past Steve when he's on the ropes by mentioning with foreknowledge again that Bucky is still alive. For his efforts, he succeeds in acquiring the Mind Stone.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In a humorous throwaway moment, 2012 Hulk is seen bringing down a car on several Chitauri then using it to bat others aside; the lucky two who survive immediately lose morale and flee while the Hulk is busy roaring.
• Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: It's confirmed that the Ancient One had been watching Stephen Strange for a very long time prior to his arrival in Kamar-Taj, and despite originally trolling Strange with the prospect of refusing to accept him for training back in Doctor Strange, it was an empty threat: she had been intent on training him in the mystical arts from the moment she was able to assess his role in the future via the Time Stone.
• Seen It All:
  • Thor is impressed by Carol's lack of reaction to his summoning Stormbreaker right in front of her, declaring "I like this one!"
  • Frigga is completely unfazed while correctly predicting that the overweight Thor is really her son traveling from the future. She is an actual witch who can see beyond appearances, after all.
  • The Ancient One is similarly nonchalant about meeting a future Bruce Banner asking about Doctor Strange in 2012. Should come as no surprise given her incredible life-span and being a Sorcerer Supreme.
  • Thanos is remarkably quick on the uptake when confronted with the possibility of a time-traveling Nebula, and doesn't react at all to the sudden appearance of an entire army from magic portals to support the Avengers at the climax. Well, except for losing the smug grin from his face.
• Self-Care Epiphany: This is essentially how Captain America's story ends. He has to go through time to return the Infinity Stones to their proper places but doesn't immediately return when his friends expect him to. Sam and Bucky find him nearby... and looking very aged. Steve had spent nearly his entire life since becoming a Super-Soldier involved with one military or security organization after another, from the armed forces to S.H.I.E.L.D. to the Avengers. A big part of this had been Steve's status as a Fish out of Temporal Water making it difficult to truly embrace life beyond the call of duty and his own altruistic instincts to help people. Steve reveals that he took advantage of the time travel to return to the past and live out his life as he would have had he not been frozen. He explicitly notes that he felt it was time to live life rather than just protect it.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: Played with regarding the one in 14,000,605 timelines in which Thanos loses. Doctor Strange knows that the events occurring out will lead to Thanos's defeat, but he's following that path without deviating. When Tony asks him, "Is this the one where we win?", he says he cannot answer because then events would not occur as they should. He only relents and tells him that they're in the winning timeline by raising a single finger after Captain Marvel is knocked out, at which point Tony realizes that he has to die in order for the Avengers to win.
• Self-Deprecation: The whole joke about "America's ass" is the studio making fun of themselves for designing that costume.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Discussed. When Tony and Strange reunite, the former asks him if this is the one timeline in which they win; Strange says that if he tells him that outright it would not play out. His only hint? When Thanos has knocked Carol away with the Power Stone and is about to reattach it to the Gauntlet, Strange silently closes his hand to form a "1" with his index finger, meaning that this is the one chance that they are ever going to get. Tony immediately realizes what this means, and takes it.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: With the Avengers living in a nightmarish future where half the population is gone, their plan is to travel back in time and find the Infinity Stones from 2012, 2013 and 2014 and return to 2023 to perform a reverse snap and bring everyone back.
• Sequel Hook: Despite having no mid-credit and after-credit scenes and every main character arc already concluded:
  • In the timeline where Steve, Tony, Scott, and Banner go back to recover the Infinity Stones during the Battle of New York, Tony and Scott's plan to steal the Tesseract goes awry and Loki manages to escape with it, creating an alternate timeline where Loki is still alive and at large, making way for the Loki Disney+ series. This timeline likely still has a Thanos as well, as it is completely independent of the 2014 timeline that Past Thanos came from.
  • The past version of Gamora is still out there and the Guardians (now joined by Nebula and Thor) are searching for her, setting the stage for the third Guardians film.
  • Steve retiring and giving his shield to Sam sets up The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.
  • Everyone who died from Thanos's snap, from their perspective, have been sent five years into the future, setting up for all sorts of new issues external and emotional to deal with in future movies and series.
  • Valkyrie being made queen of New Asgard would make an excellent premise for a series around her.
• Sequel Logo in Ruins: In the trailer, the Marvel logo disintegrates as one of Thanos's victims. Inverted with the logo in the film, which is shown regenerating in a similar fashion to the disintegration effect.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • In the opening act of Guardians of the Galaxy, Korath the Pursuer was also on Morag the same time as Quill and was not far behind him when Peter took the Power Stone. When Rhodey and Nebula visit Morag in 2014, they don't encounter Korath at all. Could be a matter of timing, as Quill was goofing around while Rhodey and Nebula are straightforward, but it's nowhere obvious watching the movie.
  • While the fact that time flows slower in the Quantum Realm is a major plot point, it's never addressed why Janet still aged normally during the 30 years she spent there — by this film's logic, she was only trapped there for 30 hours. If it's anything like real quantum mechanics time doesn't even "flow" there, it's just a matter of places you enter and exit.
• Series Fauxnale: While this is the end of the Thanos and Infinity Gauntlet Myth Arc that's been built up since The Avengers, it's not the end to the overall story of the MCU. Marvel's producers have described the movie as being "a" finale, but not "the" finale for a reason. They've even said that the movie is not technically the end of Phase 3 either, but that Spider-Man: Far From Home is more of the epilogue.
• Shadow Archetype: By 2023, Tony Stark had become the bright reflection of hope to the nihilistic darkness of his arch-nemesis Thanos. Both were great men of power, wealth, intellect and scientific mastery driven by ironclad ideals and haunted by obsessions and self-perceived obligations to a greater purpose. Both were fathers to daughters whom they loved dearly, and both walked down the path of tyranny in defense of defending the safety of their perceived reality. And both men indeed accomplished their ideals at great personal cost by their deaths, with Tony triumphant as he fought not for himself, but for others. Even their very musical Leitmotifs are written to the same basic melody, with Thanos's "Porch" played in a cold, somber minor key, and Tony's "The Real Hero" played in a warm, hopeful major key.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Happens twice to Scott twice after getting hit with the Fountain of Youth during the initial Quantum Tunnel test. Scott goes into the test wearing the Quantum Realm Exploration Suit that Hank used during Ant-Man and the Wasp. The Suit then noticeably becomes baggier on the-now 12 year old Scott (and then oversized when he's regressed to an infant).
• Shield Surf: Discussed by Tony when he comes back to the Avengers and hands Steve the shield. Apparently he did it so his daughter wouldn't use the shield as a sled in winter.
• Ship Sinking: Natasha's prospects with either Steve or Bruce are firmly ended by this film, largely thanks to her sacrifice for the Soul Stone. Even still, Steve's choice to return to the past and live a life with Peggy makes it clear that he never intended to move on from her.
• Shirtless Scene: Thor has his usual one, but this time it's after five years of depressed binge-eating and drinking.
• Shout-Out: Collected in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Shout-Outs page.
• Shown Their Work: When Steve, Natasha and Scott find Tony to pitch him the idea of time travel, he quickly shoots the idea down as "Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck scale, which then triggers the Deutsch proposition." Tony then quickly explains in Layman's term that time travel would be impossible, but a bit of research shows that he's not just reciting Techno Babble but is actually saying that on purely scientific grounds. Time travel breaks some of the fundamentals of physics and implies that a multiverse really exists, alluding to physicist David Deutsch, who is among the most known proponents of the multiverse theory and a pioneer in quantum computation.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Upon finding an unarmed Thanos, Thor beheads the Mad Titan while he's in the middle of giving a Motive Rant.
• Signature Line:
  • "Whatever it takes."
  • "That is America's ass."
  • "Let me go. It's OK."
  • "I knew it!"
  • "Is that everyone?" "What, you wanted more?"
  • "AVENGERS... assemble".
  • "You... took... everything from me." "I don't even know who you are." "You will."
  • "I am... inevitable."
  • "And I... am... Iron Man."
  • "I love you 3000."
• Simple Solution Won't Work:
  • At the start of the film, the Avengers plan to steal the Infinity Stones and Gauntlet from Thanos in order to undo the Snap. Unfortunately, the energy signature that led them to his location turns out to have been from him destroying the Stones, both to prevent anyone from undoing the Snap and to keep himself from being tempted to use them for other purposes.
  • Jim "War Machine" Rhodes suggests at one point that, if the grand plan of the Avengers to revive the people killed by Thanos' Snap involves time travel, why not just go back all the way to when Thanos was a baby and kill him? The other Avengers in the room tell him that it won't work as he thinks it would, because their method of time travel involves going to alternate universes (which means that they would just kill an Alternate Self of Thanos)... after a couple of seconds of being grossed out at the idea of assassinating a baby.
• Single Tear:
  • Past Nebula, after she tries to kill Past Gamora believing that Thanos will not let her make a Heel–Face Turn, and Present Nebula shoots her to protect her sister.
  • Tony, on his deathbed.
• A Sinister Clue: Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet, with which he killed half the universe, is worn on his left hand. In contrast, the new Gauntlet Tony and Bruce make to undo the damage is right-handed.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: While it was revealed in advance of the movie that most of the cast of Avengers: Infinity War would be returning, no new footage of any of the "dusted" characters is shown. Instead, Marvel opted to tease their presence in the film by showing some Deliberately Monochrome scenes of past movies in the marketing campaign, with many scenes showing the fallen Avengers without spoiling Endgame.
• Sixth Ranger:
  • War Machine to the founding Avengers, being the only non-founding member to survive Infinity War.
  • Officially joining the Avengers for the first time are Ant-Man, Rocket, Nebula, and Captain Marvel.
• Slashed Throat: In Tokyo, Clint slashes Akihiko's throat before killing him by stabbing him in the torso with his sword.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Scott falls out of the Quantum Realm thanks to a rat wandering over the console only to discover that it's been five years and the world is a shambles thank to the Snap. Worse, for him it was only five hours.
• Slice of Life: While certainly not as a whole, this is notably the Avengers movie with the most slice-of-life moments in it. Half it seems to be to show the effects of Thanos's actions on everybody, a lot just seems to be there to humanize the Avengers.
• The Slow Path: After returning the Infinity Stones and Thor's hammer to their original timelines, Steve decides to live his life in the past with Peggy Carter. In the end, he only returns to his original timeline after becoming an elderly man, so he can pass on a new shield, and his mantle, to Sam. Dr. Banner mentioning that he missed his entry point on return implies that Steve managed to steer himself back to the late '40s in the original timeline on his return trip and simply made sure to arrive at that place on that day so his friends wouldn't go looking for him.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • Carol Danvers, oddly enough. She saves Tony and Nebula, both of whom have a large impact on the story for various reasons. She also comes in at the end of the final battle to destroy the Sanctuary II, and to hand Iron Man the Infinity Gauntlet.
  • The rat that reactivates the Quantum Tunnel doesn't appear anywhere else in the film, but it's what leads to Scott being brought back from the Quantum Realm and giving the other heroes the idea of using Time Travel.
• Someone Has to Die:
  • When Nat and Clint got to retrieve the Soul Stone, Red Skull informs them of the sacrifice needed to gain it and it doesn't take long for the two to realize if they want it, one of them will have to die to do so and both are more than willing to sacrifice their own life for the surviving one to retrieve it to the point they actually fight over it. Clint due to being near suicidal after losing his family and unsure if they can be wished back and Natasha basically having nothing to lose since she has no family to speak of due to being raised from childhood to be an assassin and atoning for all the "red in her ledger". Ultimately Natasha gives her life so that Clint can get the stone and be reunited with his family after they're brought back.
  • After those dusted in Infinity War are restored, Tony meets up with Strange and asks him if this was the timeline he meant where they won. Strange withholds how they'll do however, citing that Tony won't want to go through if he knew completely. During the fight with Captain Marvel against Thanos, both men stare at each other and it suddenly sinks into Tony what Strange was talking about: that the only way they could win was for someone to sacrifice themselves to use the Gauntlet on Thanos and his forces, an act that will surely kill the user. Tony ultimately decides he needs to be the one to do it.
• Sore Loser: 2014 Thanos believes the Avengers are this, due to being unable to live with their failure they instead have resorted to trying to find a way to undo all of his hard work and get back what they lost instead of being grateful for what he has given them. Thanos himself shows shades of this too. Once he learns they are trying to undo his decimation after his victory, he uses Nebula to chase them to 2023 after they have reversed the original snap and brought everyone back to life. When he confronts the Avengers he says that now when he gets the stones he will instead wipe out the entire universe, due to realizing that they will stubbornly cling to what they lost instead of being "grateful" for the chance he has given them, and intends to rebuild it with new life the way he envisions it should be, all because he cannot accept that his original plan did not work the way he wanted it to.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Ant-Man, of all characters, plays a major part in the plan that undoes Thanos's act of mass murder. And the security guard on the CCTV who lets him out without a fuss.
  • Past Hulk unwittingly ruins the theft of the Tesseract by angrily but accidentally knocking Future Stark from behind a door, frustrated to have had to walk down so many stairs to the first floor. As a result, while Stark and Lang did manage to steal the Tesseract, the suddenly opening door throws the Tesseract right at Loki who promptly teleports away with it.
  • Nebula unintentionally puts a spanner in the Avengers' plan when her programming automatically syncs up with her past self when she time travels with War Machine back to 2014. She's captured by Thanos and his forces, and this allows him to find out that his future self succeeded with his plan to "balance" the universe, but now the Avengers are using time travel to undo this. This, in turn, leads to 2014 Nebula masquerading as Post-snap Nebula and traveling to the present day to allow Thanos and his forces through the quantum time machine, giving him the opportunity to undo the Avengers' success and wreck that pesky little blue planet that doesn't accept his vision of the universe.
• Spice Up the Subtitles: Translated literally, Ronin's Japanese Pre-Mortem One-Liner is something like "Thanos took out... half the planet. Why do you... still survive?" and the "They got Thanos. You got me." part was added to spice it up.
• Spider Limbs: The ones from the Iron Spider armor make a comeback, and we see that when the armor is in "Instant Kill Mode", they become deadly weapons, skewering Outriders left and right as they try piling up on Spider-Man.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Thanos spins his double-bladed sword to shield himself from Iron Man's Hand Blasts.
• Split-Personality Merge: Over the five-year Time Skip, Bruce Banner and the Hulk have resolved their issues and become a single being, whose size is somewhere between the Hulk's and Banner's. He retains the Hulk's strength and green skin while having Banner's personality, brains, and wardrobe.
• Splash of Color: The trailer flashbacks are Deliberately Monochrome save for splashes of bright red.
• Spoiler Title: The movie's name wasn't revealed for months after the release of Infinity War because, by its nature, it gives away what happened in the previous film... although it actually didn't, with the suggestion being that multiple other titles were planned at varying points in development. Even with this in mind, the first official trailer, as uploaded on Marvel's channel, was even listed simply as Marvel Studios' Avengers to keep the surprise going for just a tiny bit longer.
• Stable Time Loop: Zig-zagged — any major or minor deviation from travelling in the past will cause another universe to split off, as a consequence of those actions — like, say, taking an Infinity Gem and rendering it unable to be used in that timeline to fight off the Big Bad du jour. However, the timeline can remain stable if the items are returned before they're needed, thus averting disaster. It's part of what convinces the Ancient One to give the Hulk the Time Stone. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have said that Peggy Carter's husband mentioned in The Winter Soldier was Captain America from the future, but it's not consistent with the film's Alternate Timelines approach and many clues that Steve really was missing for 70 years.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Rhodey speaks for the characters and the audience alike just before Hawkeye's time jump test run. He rightly wonders that if the Avengers can make time travel work, why do they even have to go after the Infinity Stones at all? Wouldn't it make more sense instead to just go back and kill Thanos at a point prior to the events of Infinity War? Without that sequence of events, Thanos never acquires the Stones, the Infinity Gauntlet never gets snapped, and all their problems are instantly solved. However, Banner uses temporal mechanics to justify why this plan, no matter how pragmatic, is a no go.
• Still the Leader: When Thor decides to join the Guardians of The Galaxy, Star-Lord gets anxious considering the rest admire him so much. He immediately asserts himself as the leader to put Thor in his place. It doesn't work.
• The Stinger:
  • Unique for the MCU series, the film originally included only a hammering sound recalling Tony building his first Iron Man suit playing at the Marvel Studios end logo instead of a full mid-credits or post-credits scene. Given that the movie is positioned as the ending for one specific set of characters, the creative team felt that a scene teasing the future was not necessary and would have detracted from the ending.
  • After the movie's third weekend of theatrical release, the second trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home — which features Avengers: Endgame spoilers — is showcased. Given that trailers after a movie is not a common practice, Tom Holland leaves a message for audiences to stick around after the credits.
  • Following this, a couple of months since its release, it was announced that the film would be re-released with extra material after the end credits on June 28, 2019. The material consisted of a Stan Lee tribute, an unfinished deleted Hulk scene, and the opening scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which would come out a week after this Endgame re-release. A video was added before the feature, where one of the Russos ask audiences to stick around after the credits.
• Stock Animal Diet: When Natasha and Clint are talking about Rocket Raccoon, Clint comments that he thinks that Rocket technically isn't a raccoon. Natasha answers "Whatever, he eats garbage."
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: Thanos does this right before the final battle, promising that he will destroy the universe and build a new one without any of the surviving ingrates who have undone his snap. And before doing that he will destroy Earth, every living thing on it, and Thanos will enjoy it very, very much.
• Story-Breaker Power: Multiple examples.
  • Previously, Thor had managed to nearly match the power of all six Infinity Stones with Stormbreaker, but he was in good condition and working with a lot of adrenaline. Five years later, he's a an overweight alcoholic mess. Additionally, it's implied that using both Mjölnir and Stormbreaker at once divides his power between the two, as Steve is able to use Mjölnir's power at the same time. Also, this Thanos is younger than the previous version, and fresh, while the previous one was drained from his fight on Titan and his murder of Gamora. Thor just cannot put up the same fight under these conditions.
  • The Avengers theoretically could retrieve only the Time Stone from the past and use it to rewind time so that the Snap never happened, but they decide against this because doing so would erase any children born since the Snap from existence, including Morgan Stark.
  • Banner is severely weakened by his use of the Infinity Gauntlet during the final battle, meaning he cannot bring the full rage of the Hulk against Thanos.
  • Scott is working with a very limited number of Pym Particles, so he can't continually shrink and grow during the Time Heist, as he has to conserve it. When they refuel on Pym Particles, Scott is promptly buried under the rubble of the NY facility along with Banner, Rhodey and Rocket, so he cannot bring the his considerable abilities to the the fight. Once they escape, Scott and Hope become busy trying to get rid of the stones, so cannot face Thanos.
  • Mantis is busy fighting Thanos's army during the final battle, and cannot approach him directly because of the open plane and the reach of his sword. Therefore she cannot repeat her stunt from the previous film and make him go to sleep.
  • Doctor Strange, once unsnapped, is busy fighting the army and minimizing damage to the surrounding area, so does not bring his skills to bear against Thanos.
  • The reason why Captain Marvel is absent for the majority of the plot; if she shows up prior to Wanda's attempt to unmake Thanos and he doesn't have Sanctuary II, Wanda is successful. By only showing up halfway through the final battle, she still gets to make an epic entrance demolishing Thanos's ship and pushing back the titan himself, but Thanos at that point can use the Power Stone to even the odds.
• Stout Strength: Thor retains his superior strength and skills despite having an overweight body.
• Street Samurai: Barton, as Ronin, cuts through the criminal organizations which have survived after the Snap with a katana.
• Stripped to the Bone: To take the Power Stone out of its protective forcefield, Nebula simply puts her mechanical arm in and takes the Stone, burning her arm down to the metallic skeleton. She reacts to it about as much as someone holding something that's a touch too warm.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Tony and Scott find themselves somewhat fixated on Steve's ass during the jump to 2012.
• Suddenly Speaking: From Tony's point of view, the first time he hears Rocket talk.
  Tony: Up until this exact moment, I thought you were a Build-a-Bear.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham:
  • Captain Marvel only appears briefly, excusing herself because she isn't just Earth's hero but actually covers a vast area of space. Because of this, she is absent for most of the movie and her might is only unleashed near the end.
  • It's revealed that the reason that Sorcerers didn't intervene in the Battle of New York was because they were too busy protecting their own sanctum.
• Superweapon: With the Infinity Gauntlet having wiped out half of the universe's population, the goal of the Avengers turn to getting them back — and the only way of doing that is finding Thanos, taking the gauntlet, and using it to bring everyone back. Thanos saw that coming, and used the gauntlet to atomize the stones powering it, preventing anyone from ever undoing his own snap. It's only thanks to discovering Time Travel that a new set of Infinity Stones can be found.
• Superweapon Suspense Subversion: The audience has watched every single good guy be defeated by Thanos wielding the Infinity Gauntlet — he snaps his fingers, the gesture that resulted in a literal World Half Empty in the last movie and which he claims is going to remake the universe this time around... only for absolutely nothing to happen, as the Infinity Stones that power the gauntlet have all been swiped during the last, desperate assault by Iron Man.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Tony Stark bumps into Howard Stark in the past, he blurts out "Howard" in surprise at seeing his late father alive again. The actual Howard, who just asked for the intruder's name, remarks "Well that'll be easy to remember." Tony just goes with it and completes the Line-of-Sight Name with "Potts".
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Thor straight-up beheads Thanos in the middle of a conversation after learning that he destroyed the Infinity Stones. After seeing the amount of abuse he took in Infinity War without so much as bleeding, the quickness of Thanos's death is shocking.
• Survivor's Guilt: When Ant-Man, Black Widow, and Captain America try to convince Stark to come help them build a quantum time machine that can lead to them undoing Thanos's actions, he initially refuses to help because he doesn't want to risk the safety of his family, but changes his mind later that night after he finds a picture of himself with Peter Parker (who died in his arms in Avengers: Infinity War).
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Clint as Ronin is the closest thing the movies have to The Punisher. He's a dreaded vengeance-seeking vigilante who hunts down criminals across the world because he deems them undeserving of life following the Decimation, and all of it was due to his own family dying.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: Hawkeye swipes his sword clean after killing the Japanese mobster.
• Symbolic Cast Fadeout: The marketing posters for Avengers: Endgame list its huge cast with a gray background and a black and white color tone for the characters who were the victims of Thanos. All of these characters (except for Gamora, whose presence is filled by a pre-Character Development alternate universe counterpart) are brought back during the course of the movie to join the final fight against an alternate-universe version of Thanos.

T

• Take a Third Option: Nate Barton's choice of condiment at the start of the film for his hot dog when Laura offers mustard or mayonnaise? Ketchup!
• Take Care of the Kids: Just before he goes to make the sacrifice for the Soul Stone, Clint tells Natasha to "look after my family for me". She's already an Honorary Aunt, so it makes perfect sense to entrust them to her.
• Takes One to Kill One: Realizing that he can't overpower Captain Marvel (whose powers come from the Space Stone) with his own strength, Thanos resorts to taking out the Power Stone on its own and knocking her out with an enhanced punch.
• Take That!:
  • The characters of the movie throw jabs at Back to the Future because of the seemingly nonsensical way time works in that franchise, citing that there is no way a character altering the past could have their own present changed. Whilst BTTF is referenced the most, Scott and Rhodey list pretty much every franchise that features time-travelers changing their present by altering the past.
  • Tony gets in a line making fun of Cap's costume from the first Avengers movie, mirroring the general attitude from fans that it's his worst cinematic outfit.
  • Rocket takes a jab at Captain Marvel's hair after the 5-year time skip.
• Talking Is a Free Action: The fierce Final Battle is on, but characters still find time for a heartwarming reunion (Tony and Peter) or friendly talk around a Groin Attack (Star-Lord, Gamora and Nebula).
• Tantrum Throwing: After coming back from the Time Heist and learning that Natasha had to sacrifice herself for the Soul Stone, Bruce grabs a bench and throws it over the lake with all of his Hulk strength.
• Tap on the Head: On the planet Morag, War Machine knocks out Peter Quill with one blow of his armored fist, so that he doesn't bother them while they steal the Power Stone, and Nebula can take his thieving tool.
• Team Hand-Stack: To ignite their morale, The Avengers stand and put their hands together before breaking into groups for the Time Heist.
• Team Power Walk: The Avengers (plus Nebula and Rocket) perform this as they solemnly approach the Quantum Tunnel in the hangar, all clad in white and red quantum suits and ready to travel to the past.
• Tears of Joy:
  • Pepper cries in happiness and relief when Tony returns from space.
  • Scott Lang and his daughter Cassie both cry when Scott is brought back from the Quantum Realm and they see each other again. Scott because, after coming back, he learned about Thanos's killing half the population during his time being trapped, and he wasn't sure she'd survived until then, and Cassie because, as far as she could tell, he had been one of the victims.
  • While he manages to hold them in, Tony himself wells up when all of Thanos's victims are resurrected and he reunites with his protege and surrogate son, Peter Parker.
  • Likewise, Clint tears up when he receives a phone call from his wife after Bruce brings everyone back.
  • Peggy has some visible tears of joy in her slow dance with Steve Rogers when they reunite.
• Temporal Mutability: Of the "branching timelines" variant. No matter what the time-traveling Avengers do, they can't change their present, only creating alternate timelines affected by their actions. In order to keep those timelines from falling apart due to the absence of the Infinity Stones, Steve goes back in the end to return the Stones to their proper place.
• Temporal Suicide: The unfortunate fate of 2014 Nebula. Because an unexpected side effect of the Avengers time-traveling really screws with Nebula's cybernetic enhancements (of which she is almost completely composed of), 2014 Nebula starts receiving the recorded memories of her present-day self, up to when the team uncovers the locations of every Infinity Stone throughout the years. When 2014 Thanos watches the memories played back before him, he immediately sets out to capture present-day Nebula and sends her 2014 self in her present self's place. Lacking her present self's character development and any bond she eventually would have had with 2014 Gamora (who herself was growing ever more horrified by Thanos's actions and already planning on defecting), 2014 Nebula enthusiastically embraces her mission, very nearly costing the Avengers a second, much worse defeat when she successfully brings 2014 Thanos and his forces into the present day and tricks Hawkeye into giving her the complete Infinity Gauntlet. She does end up cornered by her present-day self and 2014 Gamora, the latter of which tries to reason with her and get her to abandon Thanos for good. Sadly, the present-day Nebula shoots her 2014 self before she could even have the chance, knowing full well how desperate her 2014 self was to please Thanos, how terrified she was of him then, and knowing that they can't risk Thanos winning again.
• Tempting Fate: However much a Badass Boast "I am inevitable..." may be, one would expect Thanos to be cautious in uttering it, specifically after witnessing what immediately followed its usage by his future self. Sure enough, the second time he says it directly proceeds to his defeat and death.
• That Man Is Dead: It's clear that Clint regards his old Hawkeye self as this. When his family died, his spirit died with them, which is why he now acts as a vengeance-seeking vigilante known as Ronin. His bow is nowhere to be found until the Time Heist.
• Theme Music Power-Up:
  • When Captain America goes toe-to-toe with Thanos after the Mad Titan attacks the Avengers' compound, a version of Cap's suite from Captain America: The First Avenger punctuates their fight.
  • Alan Silvestri's familiar theme from "Avengers Suite" gets a spectacular buildup in Endgame's "Portals", as the camera flies over all the assembled forces readying themselves for the Final Battle, then explodes into its main section when Captain America gives the signal to attack.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Thanos wastes no time laying waste to the Avengers compound, destroying it in seconds with a barrage from above. Then he does it again when he is almost overwhelmed by Scarlet Witch.
• The Teaser: The movie doesn't open on the Marvel Studios logo, but opens on a scene of Clint with his family just before the end of Infinity War, wherein Thanos's Snap causes him to lose his wife, two sons, and daughter. After that, there's another scene, of the remaining Avengers rallying to track down Thanos, before the opening titles.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Natasha is eating a sandwich while speaking with Steve about their inability to move on from the past. They are interrupted by Scott at the front door, and she abandons the sandwich so they can address more important matters. Once he's allowed in, Scott stops mid-speech when he notices the sandwich and goes over to eat it.
• Thinking Up Portals: Doctor Strange and the other Sorcerers create portals to transport nearly all of the heroes and armed forces from the MCU to fight in the final battle with Thanos and his army.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Steve has just avoided a fight in an elevator with a bunch of HYDRA operatives and is on his way out of Stark Tower with the scepter when he meets his 2012 self. Knowing a fight is inevitable, he utters a dismayed "You've got to be shitting me!"
• This Is Reality: Bruce feels the need to do this when too many of the other Avengers won't stop thinking about time travel in terms of cinematic and television depictions; see Take That! above.
• This Is the Part Where...: Rhodey tells Nebula this on Morag thinking it's like a trap dungeon where booby traps starting with these Exact Words. Nebula just dismisses it and walks in.
• Three-Point Landing:
  • Rhodey lands into one in front of Scott Lang, frightening the "idiot in the landing zone".
    Rhodey: What's up, "Regular-sized Man"?
  • This is how Pepper enters the final battle in the Rescue suit. She tops it off with the lift of her face mask.
  • Hulk lands this way after jumping out of Giant-man's hand — note that the arm involved is not the one damaged by the Snap.
  • Tony approaches Strange in this fashion to try to fish out whether this is the one scenario where they win.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: When Thanos realizes that Carol is on the verge of successfully sending the Infinity Stones back into the Quantum Tunnel, thus being forever out of his reach, he immediately throws what's left of his double-edged sword (which Wanda had broken earlier) at the van containing the quantum machine to destroy it.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Wanda is amongst the returning heroes restored, and while she didn't get Vision back, this movie is overall very kind to her as opposed to making her suffer like in every previous moment she appeared. She even gets to deliver a beat-down on Thanos.
• Thwarted Coup de Grâce: During the first brawl between Thanos and the three main Avengers, Thanos almost kills Thor with Stormbreaker at that, but is then knocked aside as Cap can now wield Mjölnir.
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: They can choose where they end as well as when including planets in other galaxies.
• Time Is Dangerous: It turns out that yes, time travel is dangerous when used wrong. After thinking it over, Tony comes to the conclusion that "pushing time through someone" (rapidly changing Scott's age) is the dangerous unreliable version of "pushing someone through time."
• Time Machine: The Avengers' time machine is taking the Pym's tunnel that leads to the Quantum Realm, but using special wristbands that can guide the Avengers to precise coordinates in spacetime, both past and present (and implied to even cross timelines, which would be necessary to return the stones to their proper places).
• Time-Shifted Actor:
  • Cassie Lang has been time-shifted into a new teenage actress to be closer to her modern comics counterpart.
  • Clint Barton's daughter Lila, and younger son Nathaniel, are played by older actors than those in Avengers: Age of Ultron (Cooper is still played by Ben Sakamoto).
• Time Skip: The film starts a few weeks after the events of Avengers: Infinity War to show the immediate fallout of the tragedy. Following that, there's another time skip of five years, done in order to show how the whole world has changed in the aftermath of Thanos's victory. The latter is signified by Black Widow's Expository Hairstyle Change, Cassie now being 16-years-old (with a new actress to match), Tony and Pepper having a four-year-old daughter, and the world still in a recovering state. It's also a permanent change in the status quo.
• Time Travel Episode: Endgame hinges on the Avengers discovering and then developing a time machine to return to the past and grab the Infinity Stones to undo Thanos's genocide. However, complications ensue when Thanos from the past learns about their plans and takes advantage of their time-travel devices to go to the present and threaten the entire universe again.
• Time-Travel Romance: Steve is eventually reunited with Peggy Carter in an Alternate Timeline, or time loop (the directors insist the former, while the writers insist the latter).
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Bruce falls into this by stumbling on which tense to use when he first explains the risks of their Time Heist to undo the casualties of the Decimation. Scott, the test subject, sarcastically says it is not at all confusing.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Briefly discussed as part of the plan to extract Infinity Stones from parallel timelines in order to undo Thanos' decimation of half of the universe. When in possession of the colossal, reality-warping power of the Stones, the team considers, but ultimately decides against the idea of retroactively undoing Thanos' acts, because such an act has far too much risk involved for what life has emerged in the intervening five years (including Tony Stark's daughter and countless other children born in the post-Thanos universe). In the end, they skip attempting any time-travel-based retcons, and their final priority is simply restoring the half of the universe that was originally dusted.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The mechanics of time travel are discussed briefly, but in detail. The characters discuss that time travel in films like Back to the Future and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure isn't how time travel actually works. Traveling back in time and changing the past causes an Alternate Universe where a new timeline splits off from the changes you made, and it's implied further time travel will keep you stuck in your own original timeline even as you cause new timelines to splinter off. This means that Temporal Paradoxes are impossible and changing the past to change the future only changes the future of the new timeline, your present will stay the same no matter how drastically you interfere with the past. This is how it's possible for people and objects to be brought from the past into the present and never be sent back, and there are no direct consequences for this; those changes are now part of a new timeline and the original timeline is unaffected. That said, since the Infinity Stones are still objects of importance in many past conflicts, and The Ancient One tells Banner that the Infinity Stones affect the flow of spacetime and their absence would be catastrophic beyond just the obvious (Strange not having the Eye of Agamotto to defeat Dormammu, for instance), the Avengers take the time to put them back where they belong in the past once they're done with them, to at least try to minimize the interference done to the new timelines they've created.
• Title In: Big full-screen ones that mimic those of Captain America: Civil War, complimented by the year of the scene in each of the key locations of stone acquisition: 2012 New York, 2013 Asgard, 2014 Morag and 2014 Vormir.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Thanos is far more unhinged in this film, mainly because this is the 2014 Thanos and he gets a vision showing that not only is his grand Evil Plan destined to happen but that it is also in the process of being undone. The idea of his Life's Work Ruined makes him desperate to stop the Avengers from undoing it. This is best shown at the start of the final showdown he has with Steve, Tony, and Thor, where Thanos announces that he's not going to use the Stones to wipe out half of all life in the Universe. Nope, he's going to destroy the entire Universe, and then play God and remake it in his own image. He even states that this is the first time in all his years that he's getting personal by specifically targeting the Avengers and their world, for being such a thorn in his side for so long. He even shows some shades of sadism during the fight, such as when he has a wicked grin on his face as he tries to do what Thor did to him in Infinity War, by trying to wrestle Stormbreaker's blade into Thor's chest.
• Totally Radical: In-universe — Professor Hulk dabs (extremely poorly) to impress some kids, complete with saying it aloud. The kids laugh uncomfortably, and Steve isn't amused.
• Tragic Keepsake: Steve Rogers has a pendant with a photo of his lost love. It accidentally helps to distract his 2012 counterpart.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Some trailers depict Tony as hopelessly adrift in the void of space, and others show that he eventually reunites with the main characters, meaning that he obviously didn't die in space. After the film's release to a record-shattering opening worldwide, Marvel straight-up gave away footage of the movie's later action sequences, including showing how Hulk and Thor look during the Time Heist.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Steve is barely suppressing his rage over what Thanos has done and is genuinely looking for payback.
  • During his initial Refusal of the Call and whilst visibly experiencing PTSD, Thor places an aggressive hand on Professor Hulk, who, in an uncharacteristic display of self-control, simply and calmly tells him to take his hand away. Not only does this show how far Hulk has come, but how much his relationship with Thor has evolved — he can see his friend is in pain and empathizes with him, but he is still the Hulk.
  • In a deleted scene during Iron Man meeting back up with a now alive Doctor Strange, Iron Man loses his temper in front of Doctor Strange and Star-Lord is the one who has to tell Iron Man to calm down in this deleted scene.
• Translator Microbes: Rocket and Nebula have been living among Earthlings for five years without glaring issues, and there's no indication that they made more of their translation implants for everyone so the ones they have have got to be good.
• Trap Is the Only Option: When the three Avengers still standing after the compound is destroyed, Tony, Thor and Steve go to confront 2014 Thanos:
  Thor: You know it's a trap, right?
  Tony: Yeah...I don't much care.
  Thor: Good. Just as long as we're all in agreement.
• Trash the Set: Avengers HQ, as it has been from Age of Ultron up to this film, gets blown to kingdom come in the third act courtesy of Thanos.
• Trial by Friendly Fire: Wanda's attack pushes Thanos to the point where he orders a bombardment from Sanctuary II, notwithstanding Corvus Glaive's warning that it will hit many of his own troops.
• Tricked Out Time: The heroes try this by taking the Infinity Stones from the past and returning them exactly as they left them once they're done. It doesn't go 100% according to plan.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: Steve attends one of multiple support groups formed to try to provide emotional support for the mass loss of friends and loved ones caused by Thanos's culling.
• True Sight: Frigga is implied to possess this, considering how easily she recognizes her own son from the future.
  Frigga: The future hasn't been kind to you, has it?
  Thor: I didn't say I was from the future...
  Frigga: I was raised by witches, boy. I see with more than eyes, as you well know.
  Thor: ...I'm totally from the future.
• Trust Password: In New York, Cap tries to take the Scepter from Sitwell and the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, all sleeper HYDRA agents. To convince them to hand him the scepter, Cap utters the "Hail HYDRA" salute, shocking everyone in the elevator. Cap is then shown carrying the Scepter suitcase away with him.
• Trying Not to Cry:
  • Much of the world is in this state even after five years. Natasha puts on a brave face in front of her allies, but when alone, she nearly breaks down, only stopping because Steve came in. Thor's sorry state is him trying to hide his grief. He nearly breaks down when recalling all the people he lost, and finally is unable to contain his tears when he meets his mother in the past.
  • A more direct example during Tony Stark's death. Pepper Potts is visibly fighting back tears but refuses to cry, allowing Tony a final moment of peace and victory. She only breaks down when Tony passes away. Tony as well — he's clearly in great pain but he does his best to smile when he sees Pepper.
• Two-Faced: Destroying the Infinity Stones in the original timeline almost killed Thanos, who got the left side of his face burnt by the explosion.

U

• Underestimating Badassery: Played with by both hero and villain.
  • Banner sees that The Ancient One has the Time Stone and insists he has to take it from her, which in his Professor Hulk form should be an easy task. When she palm-thrusts his spirit right out of his body, he realizes his mistake.
  • When Wanda confronts Thanos, he's seemingly more than a bit dismissive of this random woman showing up and threatening him. He quickly learns the hard way that she's more than capable of taking him down (and possibly out, if he hadn't played the hole card of having his ship start blasting away again).
  • Captain Marvel is entirely confident she can take Thanos on her own, and to her credit she's right. But while she has the raw power to defeat him in a one-on-one fight without the Infinity Gauntlet, when he loses the upper hand against her in the final battle he simply uses the Power Stone to remove her from the fight entirely.
  • Even before using the Power Stone, Thanos tries to headbutt Carol because it's normally been more than enough to knock out his opponents. He's shocked when it doesn't even phase her.
• Understatement: Scott calls back to the airport fight scene from Captain America: Civil War to identify himself to the Avengers when he shows up at their HQ. In his words, "I was pretty big." He was about 65 feet tall!
• Unknown Rival: When Scarlet Witch faces off against Thanos in the final battle, she's obviously enraged at him for what he's done (especially forcing her to kill Vision in what turned out to be a Senseless Sacrifice), but since this Thanos is from another timeline that hasn't progressed as far as this one, he has no idea who she is.
  Wanda Maximoff: You took... everything from me!
  Thanos: I don't even know who you are!
  Wanda Maximoff: You will.
• Un-Paused: Per Peter's description after being un-dusted, the passage of time was nonexistent for all victims of the snap. He just felt dusty and then found himself after being brought back, presuming he must have passed out, and has no memory of his final, painful moments from his death. All the dusted and un-snapped return at the same age and same state they were at that moment while the surviving half of the universe have aged five years ahead of them (with Doctor Strange the only one immediately aware of how much time has passed). This at least is useful for distinguishing who were "snapped" and who weren't. Since Spider-Man and his supporting cast at the end are the same age, they were among the dusted while Cassie Lang has gone from pre-teen to teenager.
• The Unreveal: Basically every plot point about the nature of the Soul Stone that was skimmed and hinted at in Avengers: Infinity War — why it requires a sacrifice when no other Stone does, whether the vision of Gamora is the MCU version of Soul World, what exactly its powers or abilities are (outside of its one use in combat against Doctor Strange) — remains a mystery, and, with the Stones' destruction, will likely remain so.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee:
  • Despite a thorough planning session over their Time Heist, when all the Avengers are travelling back in time to acquire all the Infinity Stones, several of them inevitably run into complications, such as Stark and Lang accidentally letting Loki escape with the Tesseract in 2012, forcing them to improvise on the spot, and Nebula getting captured by Past Thanos in 2014, giving him an opportunity to stop the Avengers from undoing his plans.
  • Invoked: when Stark sees Strange back from the dead, he immediately asks him what they do next, referencing the one timeline out of over 14 million where they win against Thanos. However, Strange tells Stark that if he were to tell him, then the plan would fail. At the end of the battle, Strange changes position and signals that this is, indeed, the one timeline where they succeed, motivating Tony to take action and snap his gauntlet, erasing Thanos's forces at the cost of his life.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • After the Time Skip, no Muggles are fazed or scared at the sight of Bruce Banner in Hulk form full time. When some kids actually notice him, they ask him to take a group photo with them, instead. Justified that since the Time Skip, Banner and Hulk have more or less merged into "Professor Hulk", a non-threatening mix of Hulk's physical strength and stature, and Banner's reasoning, intellect, and emotional calm (not to mention that people have had the three or so years it's been since they merged^note Stated by Hulk to have taken 18 months to get used to him walking around this way).
  • Rhodey tends to be flabbergasted whenever he sees something out of the ordinary, but upon seeing Scott Lang, a guy who he not only hasn't seen in years but also thought be among of Thanos's victims, he doesn't even question it and sasses at Scott instead.
  • The situation is so dire and everyone is so pumped up to go into the final battle that nobody on Avengers’ side questions that they’re fighting alongside aliens, sorcerers, a one-hundred foot tall man, etc. In the final charge, we’re treated to a sight of people as different as M’Baku and Korg charging together at the head of the fore, united as one army.
• Used to Be More Social: While the other survivors are leaning on each other and/or trying to rebuild their lives, Thor withdraws from his friends and his people and refuses to leave his house unless New Asgard's getting a shipment of beer. The only people he spends time with are Korg and Miek, which involves a lot of drunk video gaming.
• Use Your Head: Thanos tries head-butting Captain Marvel during their short confrontation... to absolutely no effect.

V

• Vengeance Feels Empty: Thor beheads Thanos, avenging the lives he erased, but after the Time Skip, he's shown to have fallen into a deep depression, well aware that Thanos's death changed nothing.
• Video Will:
  • Tony begins the film recording one for Pepper in case of his death.
  • During Tony's funeral, his friend and family view another video he made right before the time heist.
• Vigilante Man: After the death of his family during the Snap, Clint goes rogue and spends his days single-handedly butchering criminal syndicates; he's mentioned as having carved up a cartel in Mexico off-screen, and we get to see him in action as he mows down a bunch of Yakuza in Japan.
• Viking Funeral: Instead of being scattered at sea like you'd expect of funeral ashes, Tony Stark's ashes are simply sent floating off among flowers in the river by his cabin, with his first arc reactor on top.
• Villain Ball: After 2014 Thanos figures out that the Avengers are trying to reverse his use of the Infinity Stones, he becomes enraged and travels into the present to stop them and decides to take his plans a step further. He himself admits that this decision is done purely out of spite; if he'd stayed in his own time and applied this future knowledge, he'd have had a number of major advantages as well as an opportunity not to do the same thing as his future self. His personal vendetta not only fails to stop his work from being undone, but causes it to never come to pass in the timeline he's from. Justified considering that this Thanos has not had the same Character Development as the other Thanos, such as having both his daughters turn against him and then having to sacrifice Gamora — the daughter he took actual pride in rearing — to obtain the Soul Stone. All he sees at this point in his life is a way to get all six Infinity Stones right now as opposed to waiting years for a plan to come to fruition.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: After Tony drops the Tesseract when slammed by Past Hulk, Loki immediately grabs it and teleports away. He's got his own show to attend to.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Thanos claimed that erasing half of the current population would have good consequences. This is true but only to a degree. On the one hand, Steve notes that he's recently seen whales in the Hudson River thanks to the decrease in boat traffic and areas that were depopulated are now overgrown with nature. On the other hand, Earth, and galactic society as a whole, is falling to pieces slowly but surely. People are unable to cope with the mass trauma of losing that many people at once, and infrastructure is struggling to cope with the sudden loss of half the world's population.
  • A dark one with Past Thanos when he tells the Avengers of what he has learned from their universe. He realizes that he can't just wipe half the universe's sentient beings without accounting for how the other half will feel in the aftermath and their reaction to it. They will never be "grateful" that they now have more resources on which to live and instead only dwell on that which was taken from them. Those that survive will hunt ravenously for any sliver of hope that it can be undone, which the Avengers found and did. The only way to ensure a universe in balance gets to live as Thanos wants, resource-abundant and thankful that they live without fear of overpopulation, is to eradicate all life and begin anew with no memory of what transpired.
• "The Villain Knows" Moment: The Avengers perform a Time Travel across different eras to retrieve the Infinity Stones (Thanos had destroyed them in the present) in order to bring back all the people who vanished at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. However, when Nebula and Rhodey travel to 2014 to retrieve the Power Stone, the former character experiences an overlap with the memories of the 2014 version of herself, who happens to be with Thanos at that time. Thanos scans the memories with the Nebula who's with him and discovers what the Avengers plan to do in the future. When the present-era Nebula exits the overlap, she realizes to her horror that Thanos discovered the plan and tries to go back to the present, but she's abducted into the Sanctuary II.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Past Nebula suffers this when she sees her sister Gamora siding with present-day Nebula to stop Thanos. Although both try to give her a chance for redemption, Past Nebula violently rejects them since this was the first (and only) time she has ever gotten good grace from Thanos and she's afraid to lose it so soon. When present-day Nebula kills her past self to defend Gamora, a single tear drips from Past Nebula's dead eye.
  • Past Thanos undergoes this during his fight with the "Big 3" Avengers. He initially counters all their attacks calmly and shows sadistic glee when nearly killing Thor. Once Cap wields Mjölnir and manages to land several good hits on him, Thanos becomes completely unhinged, roaring with his attacks before hacking brutally away at Cap's shield. He does it again upon seeing Iron man dust his entire army: he collapses in Stunned Silence, a despairing look on his face, bowing his head once he himself starts to vanish.
• Villains Never Lie: When the Avengers defeat Thanos on the Garden planet, he tells them that he's already destroyed the Infinity Stones. Although the Avengers believe he's lying at first, Nebula confirms that despite everything, Thanos is not a liar. The Avengers thus unceremoniously kill him and return without any way to bring back the fallen.
• Villains Out Shopping: When the heroes go to kill Thanos, we see him just working in his garden, making dinner, etc. This actually makes him seem even worse, as he just murdered half the universe, but is going about his daily routine as normal.
• Villains Want Mercy: After Ronin decimates a whole Japanese Yakuza gang, the leader is quickly defeated in a sword fight and begs for mercy. However, Ronin then drives his sword right in the guy's guts; he's not a merciful type of hero...anymore.

W

• Was Too Hard on Him: Nebula is the first to deduce that Thanos really has destroyed the Infinity Stones, based on the fact that she knows him well enough to know that, for all his faults, he'd never willingly tell a lie. At this Thanos (helplessly at the mercy of the Avengers) looks at her with what appears to be genuine pride, and he begins to tell her how he may have been too hard on her, but is interrupted by Thor.
• We Have Reserves: Played with, since this is a desperation maneuver. When trapped by Wanda, Thanos orders the Sanctuary II to bombard the battlefield, even when warned it would hit his own forces. The Children of Thanos may not actually care about their troops' lives, but they're too pragmatic to throw away good tools lightly. Also, they themselves are in the field of fire, though whether they're actually in danger is questionable.
• We Only Have One Chance:
  • Remember in Infinity War, when Dr. Strange said the heroes have a 1-in-14,000,605 chance to stop Thanos? This is it.
  • On a more immediate scale, every Time Heist team has precisely one chance to grab the Stones from their time periods, as the time-travel method requires using up some of their highly limited supply of Pym Particles, and with the Pym family (who are the only people who know how to make them) gone in the Snap, they can't get more. However, when one team fails to grab the Tesseract, Tony and Steve use their return charge to travel to a time when Hank Pym was alive and producing Pym Particles for S.H.I.E.L.D. so they can steal some more.
• Wham Line:
  • After the first Wham Shot of the film, the heroes interrogate Thanos to learn what became of the Infinity Stones. His reply cements that what he did is permanent:
    Thanos: Gone. Reduced to atoms... I used the stones to destroy the stones.
  • An onscreen variant after Thanos is killed. The scene cuts to black, followed by three short words appearing onscreen. For bonus points, it's dramatically revealed word-by-word:
    FIVE YEARS LATER
  • Scott revealing just how much time he spent inside the Quantum Realm before escaping.
    Scott: For me, it was five hours.
  • Exploited twice in quick succession by Captain America:
    • In the elevator in 2012 Stark Tower, how does present-day Steve convince the S.T.R.I.K.E. agents to give him the scepter? By whispering, "Hail HYDRA."
    • Moments later, 2012 Steve has present-day Steve in a hold, believing he is Loki. Present-day Steve tells his past self that "Bucky is alive!" It's enough of a shock that present-day Steve is able to free himself and use the scepter to subdue his captor.
  • The 2012 Ancient One is refusing to give Bruce the Time Stone, citing the responsibility of the Sorcerer Supreme to protect it. A frustrated Bruce then asks a question that completely shakes her to her core:
    Banner: Then why the hell did Strange give [the Time Stone] away?...Strange, he have it gave it away, he gave it to Thanos.
  • Captain America is alone, staring down Thanos and his entire army, armed with nothing but a broken shield and Thor's hammer. He prepares to go down fighting, when suddenly, he hears an old friend on his comm...
    Falcon: Hey, Cap, do you read me? ...Cap, it's Sam. Can you hear me? On your left.
• Wham Shot:
  • After the Avengers curb-stomp Thanos near the start of the film, Thor quickly severs Thanos's gauntlet arm. When Rocket reaches for it, it's revealed the gauntlet's slots are empty.
  • Played for Laughs twice at the end of the first act, regarding two character transformations. Firstly, the initial shot we see of Hulk is... the back of his head, where he's fully-clothed and is speaking with Bruce Banner's regular voice. Later, when Rocket and Hulk run into Thor, they not only notice that he's let his hair and beard grow out to a ridiculous degree, but that he's really let himself go.
  • Thor and Thanos are grappling, and just when it looks like the Mad Titan is about to impale the God of Thunder on the blade of his own axe, we see a discarded Mjölnir getting picked up and thrown at Thanos, then flying back into the hand of its new wielder, Captain America.
  • Later, during the climax, when our heroes are about to be defeated by (past) Thanos, we see many, many portals appearing via Doctor Strange and his allies' powers. Note that at this point, all the fallen people have been revived. Cue every revived hero, heroine, ally and their own armies/allies alongside those who survived the Snap, enter the battlefield.
  • In the middle of the final battle, as Thanos is about to reattach the Power Stone to the Infinity Gauntlet, Doctor Strange locks eyes with Tony... and raises his index finger to show "1".
  • After a struggle with Tony and flinging him away, a smug and triumphant Thanos raises the new Infinity Gauntlet and snaps his fingers... only to get a metallic click. He then sees the gauntlet is empty. Cut to Tony, who discreetly grabbed the Stones from the Gauntlet and holds up his arm as they slide into place on his hand.
• What Does She See in Him?: 2014 Gamora expresses disbelief over her 2018 self coupling with Star-Lord. 2023 Nebula blames it on a lack of alternative prospective boyfriends in her life.
  Nebula: Your choices were him or a tree.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Many, many loose ends are tied up, but a few remain:
  • The 2012 version of Loki got away with the Space Stone, and it is never revealed what he's up to now. His story is continued in Loki.
  • The Soul Stone was destroyed, but it's unclear what this means for Red Skull. Also, he must have encountered Captain America when the Soul Stone was returned to Vormir, but this is left offscreen.
  • Downplayed with 2014 Gamora, who apparently ran away from the battle and isn't present afterward. Star-Lord is shown searching for her as the Guardians prepare to leave Earth. A deleted scene does indeed show Gamora quietly slipping away from the battlefield while the rest of the heroes are mourning Tony's death.
  • The Other is mysteriously absent from 2014 Thanos's army, alongside Ronan and Korath.
  • Did Ava Starr a.k.a. Ghost get fingersnapped, and if not, did she perish during the five-year jump without help from Ant-Man and the Wasp?
  • What was Everett Ross up to during the events of Avengers: Infinity War and this movie?
• What You Are in the Dark: Tony discovers the way to time-travel and then talks with Pepper about it, entertaining the idea that he should simply toss the discovery away and stay in his bed. Although Tony is happy with his family and is reluctant to risk his life for a dangerous mission, Pepper rhetorically asks him if he would be able to rest in his bed knowing he didn't do the heroic thing. The next day, Tony goes to the Avengers. This is especially notable as it is Pepper, who until this point has been a case of Wet Blanket Wife, who does this, showing her own Character Development, her greater understanding of Tony as a person, and how much losing Peter in particular scarred him.
• Where's the Kaboom?: In the climax, Thanos is very clearly thinking this right after he snaps his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet and ... nothing happens.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Producer Kevin Feige mentioned the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "All Good Things..." as a key influence for this film. Given that the movie revisits key points in time during the events of other movies, it's not difficult to spot the episode's influence, since an element of that episode sent the story back to just before the events of the pilot episode.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Meta example. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley have revealed this was literally, if accidentally, how the death of Infinity War Thanos early in the film came about. They were initially struggling to continue the Mad Titan's storyline into Endgame, but felt they'd written themselves into a corner (between a natural conclusion of his character's arc and how repetitive and futile the Avengers going up against a completed Infinity Gauntlet again would be). While venting their frustrations, Executive Producer Trin Trahn said, "God, I really wish we could just kill [Thanos]." After taking a moment to process it, Markus and McFeely realized Tranh was on to something and the rest is history.
  • In-universe, of course, Rhodey asks this very question right before Hawkeye's time jump test run. If the Avengers can actually make time travel work, then why don't they just go back and kill Thanos at a point before the events of Infinity War (preferrably when he's still in his crib and defenseless)? However, Banner nixes the plan between a combination of morality and, more importantly, temporal logistics (their actions will only create alternate timelines rather than changing the main course of history and thus it'll do no good).
• "With Our Swords" Scene: Famously, the climax sees Thor lend Captain America his legendary hammer Mjölnir for the final battle against Thanos. Normally this would be impossible due the hammer's "worthiness" enchantment, but it turns out Captain America is just good enough to be worthy to lift the hammer and gain Thor's powers.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • This is zigzagged when it comes to Thanos. In the first act, the remaining Avengers storm Thanos's home to find him hobbled with the use of a single arm and without the Infinity Stones, easily overpowering him. Past Thanos, however, is everything the galaxy fears, able to overcome Thor, Cap, and Iron Man in combat at the same time, single-handed and without any of the Infinity Stones (though this must be quantified, as seen below). Another angle at this: Thanos had effortlessly won a Curb-Stomp Battle against most of the Avengers in Infinity War. But this time, not only does he lack the Infinity Stones, but this is Past Thanos, therefore he does not know what to expect — nearly even being overpowered by Wanda and Carol simply because he doesn't know who they are.
  • Thor is dispatched fairly easily by Thanos, which makes sense as he's out of practice, had a massive drinking problem up until just recently, and has put on quite a few pounds in body fat. Tony Stark is also not quite the one-man army he normally is, but he's also a little out of practice and his suit gets heavily damaged early into the fight. Steve, already an Empowered Badass Normal but not on Thor's level in strength, manages to hold his own via Mjölnir's blessing but ends up eating dirt in the end anyway.
• World Half Empty: The literal result of the Snap, as half of the population has died. This results in chaotic government and powerful criminals, which the remaining Avengers can barely stop. Many people are also depressed at having lost their loved ones and unable to cope with the loss, with the direct result that the world's economy has been severely set back and that infrastructure everywhere is crumbling.
• The World Is Just Awesome: Tony seems to express this viewpoint regarding the entire Universe in his prerecorded final message to Pepper and Morgan at the end of the film.
• Would Hurt a Child: Played for Laughs. Rhodes proposes to the surviving Avengers that they should just use the Time Machine to go back to when Thanos was a baby and then strangle him with a garrote, complete with pantomiming and making choking noises. Professor Hulk is rightfully horrified by this idea.
  Rhodes: It's Thanos!
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • Thanos's sword carves out chunks of Captain America's shield. After the battle, Steve either gets it repaired or gets a new shield, both feats of which are simplicity itself considering his personal friendship with the King of Wakanda, to whose country Vibranium (and the technology to shape and forge it) is a casually available resource.
  • Wanda soon wrecks Thanos's sword with her powers. Unfortunately, she gets taken out by a missile barrage from Sanctuary II before she can totally destroy it, which allows Thanos to later use the ruined sword to destroy the Quantum Tunnel before the Infinity Stones could be sent through.
• Written by the Winners: Discussed. Thanos from 2014, when he arrives in 2023, notes that his deceased future counterpart made a mistake not to write the history after he won, neglecting the emotions, reactions, and sentiments of the defeated who were left alive to stew, act, and overwrite his "plan", while also claiming the narrative of the "Decimation" as an act of injustice rather than the fresh start he believed he was giving the universe. He resolves to correct this the second time around:
  Thanos: You could not live with your own failure. And where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive. But you've shown me, that's impossible. And as long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist.
  Tony Stark: Yep. We're all kinds of stubborn.
  Thanos: I'm thankful. Because now, I know what I must do. I will... shred this universe, down to its last atom... and then, with the Stones you have collected for me, create a new one. Teeming with life, that knows not what it has lost, but only what it has been given. A grateful universe.
  Steve Rogers: Born out of blood.
  Thanos: They'll never know it... because you won't be alive to tell them.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: When Rhodey and Nebula look into the temple on Morag where the Power Stone is kept, Rhodey thinks it'll be filled with Raiders of the Lost Ark-style traps. As already seen in Guardians of the Galaxy (where Quill actually likened it to the Ark of the Covenant), it isn't, and the two are able to safely saunter up to the display holding the Orb (which does have the flesh-searing barrier, but that's in plain sight).
• Wrong Time-Travel Savvy: Scott and Rhodey believe in such things as Never the Selves Shall Meet and other time paradoxes, but more because they've seen Back to the Future and other movies rather than actually studied what would happen in case of time travel.

Y

• Yank the Dog's Chain: Pepper and Tony finally get married after the Decimation and have a child. They're happy despite everything and Tony is an excellent parent who loves his adoring daughter. Tony finally also buries the hatchet with Steve during the Time Heist and even gets unexpected closure with his father, realizing that he's a flawed parent who nevertheless loved him. With the resolution of Tony's character arc and emotional conflict, audiences could see his death coming.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: Despite the five-year Time Skip, Ant-Man is only trapped in the Quantum Realm for five hours because time works differently there.
• You Are Fat: Several insults and jokes are made about Thor's weight gain, such as Rocket calling him melted ice cream and Frigga telling him that he should eat a salad. Though most of these are in the context of how Thor let himself go out of despair rather trying to hurt his feelings.
• You Are Not Alone: With Stark and Thor laid low by Thanos, Captain Rogers prepares to die on his feet alone against Thanos's entire army. In this Darkest Hour, every hero saved by The Avengers from oblivion suddenly come to his aid through portals summoned by Strange, including an army of practically every single heroic force in the films.
• You Are Too Late: The Avengers defeating Thanos early on is rendered meaningless when he reveals that he had destroyed the Stones, leaving them with no way of restoring the universe.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Peter Parker always calls Tony "Mr. Stark", befitting a kid who deeply respects and admires his hero and mentor. The only time he calls him by his first name is when Tony is dying.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Said by Steve when he runs into his past self, right after he has gotten his hands on the scepter and is about to leave Stark Tower without incident.
• Your Little Dismissive Diminutive: When talking to Steve about what's he's about to do to Earth, Thanos refers to it as "your stubborn, annoying little planet".
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Hooray, the big plan that the Avengers risked everything to accomplish worked! ...But there's one problem: 2014 Nebula just summoned her timeline's Thanos, his entire army, and Sanctuary II into the present. Whoops.
• You Should Have Died Instead: This is the reason Hawkeye snapped and became a mass-murdering vigilante wiping out the cartels, the yakuza and other gangsters around the world. He can't fathom why these scum get to live while his family was wiped out.

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