Avengers Infinity War / Tropes N to R

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Avengers: Infinity War provides examples of the following tropes:

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

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• Nanomachines: Tony Stark upgrades his Ironman suit as a colony of nanomachines, which he can materialize at any given moment. Not only does it allow him to shape-shift any part of his suit into whatever weapon he can think of, it can also regenerate itself in case of damage.
• Narrating the Obvious: The film pokes fun at the location titles in the previous installments with an establishing shot of the Guardians' ship floating in space accompanied by the word, "SPACE."
• Near-Villain Victory: Inverted. Thor actually manages to land a killing blow against Thanos by planting Stormbreaker smack dab in his chest and the battle would have been won right there...but it wasn't an instant-kill, allowing Thanos enough strength to snap his fingers and bring his plan to fruition. After that he bails on the battle and presumably heals up using the power of the Stones. Thanos even mocks Thor for wanting to look him in the eye as he died as his ultimate failure.
• Neck Lift: Thanos likes to lift his puny opponents by the neck.
  • First at the beginning with Loki, before snapping his neck.
  • Then with the Collector on Knowhere, at least in the illusion crafted by the Reality Stone.
  • On Titan, Thanos lifts Doctor Strange by his neck when he tries to take the Time Stone from him.
  • During the climax, Thanos effortlessly neck-lifts Vision, and uses his free hand to extract the Mind Stone.
• The Needs of the Many: Subverted and deconstructed. At different points, the heroes have the opportunity to stop Thanos' plan by sacrificing another character, but they either can't bring themselves to do it, or hesitate too long. Indeed, the film goes out of its way to illustrate that anyone who could readily and easily go though with this would have to be an unfettered sociopath like Thanos himself, whose plan to eradicate half the universe's population hinges on this rationale and it's what motivates him to kill his beloved adopted daughter in order to obtain the Soul Stone.
  Steve Rogers: We don't trade lives.
• Never Heard That One Before: Thanos tends to have this reaction to people telling him he's mad. And given the things he usually gets up to, he probably has heard a hell of a lot. At one point he straight-up rolls his eyes when Gamora tries to give him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. It really doesn't help that him getting dismissed as a madman played a big part in his home world being destroyed, meaning that not only has he heard it a thousand times, but it'd be pretty damn offensive to him even if he hadn't.
• Never My Fault: Played for laughs when Peter tells Tony it's technically his fault he went to outer space, despite making the choice himself, infuriating Tony.
• Never Tell Me the Odds!: Out of the 14,000,605 futures Doctor Strange sees, the good guys only win in one of them. It's pretty clear that the movie and its sequel (despite the grim end) are building up to that one future.
• Never Trust a Title: Infinity War and its sequel had the subtitles Part I and Part II removed, and much like It (2017), the main marketing for Infinity War made no mention of the fact that it was the first half of a Movie Multipack. This made Thanos's victory and the Downer Ending far more shocking to casual viewers.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Early footage released at D23 of Thor showed him with both eyes intact. During the finale of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor has his right eye cut out by Hela and wears an eyepatch from then on. Double subverted as Thor gets a replacement eye from Rocket halfway into the movie.
  • As noticed on a social media version of the "Yibambe!" trailer, Thanos has all but one Infinity Stone when he arrives in Wakanda. As such, other shots of the character are deliberately misleading since he's only seen with two in the promotional material.
  • The big heroic charge scene with Steve and T'Challa out in front? Not only does it never happen, but the Hulk never reappears after Thanos beats him into submission.
  • By the same token, the shot of the Hulkbuster armor implies Tony Stark is at the Battle of Wakanda, when it's actually Bruce Banner, of all people in the suit.
  • The trailer shows Gamora explaining to Tony Stark who Thanos is. This is actually a montage of otherwise unrelated scenes. The two of them never even met.
  • "We have one advantage. He's coming to us. We have what Thanos wants, so that's what we use." It sounds as if they will use the Stones of Strange and Vision as baits for some trap, right? No. They are busy trying to keep them away from Thanos.
  • Thanos attacks, Captain America gets in the way, holds Thanos's hand, screams as he struggles, and we cut suddenly to the dark logo and the epic awesome Recurring Riff, interrupting it. Many fans suspected that Steve Rogers was about to die in that scene. Nope. It was not even a key moment: he was simply a distraction for Thanos, who tossed him aside, as he did with others in the way to his true goal.
  • Someone attacks the Vision with a weapon, trying to extract the gem, and he screams in agony. Many thought that he would die at that point. He does die, but at a later point: he survives that specific scene.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Heimdall uses "dark energy" to send Hulk to Earth, something he's never been shown capable of doing before in the movies. However this isn't unprecedented, as Odin used dark energy before to send Thor to Earth after the destruction of the Bifrost. It is briefly mentioned in the dialogue between Thor and Loki in The Avengers and explored in detail in the tie-in comics issued in 2013.
  • Tony's nanite-based Iron Man suit features a vast array of new abilities on top of the ones introduced in previous movies. No matter what the bad guys throw at him, he'll counter it with something you've never seen him use before. Justified, because tinkering with his suit and improving its technology is what he does with his spare time — after all, everybody needs a hobby .
  • When he was last seen in Thor: Ragnarok, Banner indicated without ambiguity that he retains no memories of his actions as the Hulk. In this film, after being transported to Earth as the Hulk and then changing back, Banner retains full awareness of events that occurred on the Asgardian ship while he was the Hulk. He also displays an ability to communicate with the Hulk that has not been demonstrated before (albeit it doesn't work very well).
• Newscaster Cameo: In Edinburgh, Vision and Wanda see a report on the fight in New York from STV's Laura Miller.

• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Thanos, without any use of the Stones, endures a beatdown from the Hulk, has a massive chunk of spaceship debris dropped on top of him, shrugs off Iron Man's Macross Missile Massacre attack and walks away from Nebula crashing her ship into him at full velocity. In the end, he is only seriously hurt by Thor hurling Stormbreaker at him, but even that he survives.
  • Tony's newest armor can take a hit from a piece of a moon being dropped on him at high velocity with little issue.
  • Thor proves himself to be one tough customer by being able to survive standing in a burning tunnel made out of the focused atomizing-heat of an entire sun to force open the valves that heat the Uru-melting forges of Nidavellir for an entire minute. It comes very close to killing him, but the fact that he's just dying as opposed to being ash is impressive nonetheless.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Half of all sapient living life in the universe is disintegrated after Thanos completes the Infinity Gauntlet and snaps his fingers.
  • When Wanda kills Vision the first time by destroying the Mind Stone, Vision explodes.
• No Endor Holocaust: Horrifically averted. We see half of the universe disappear, and it is devastating. The Stinger also shows cars and helicopters crashing as a result of their drivers/pilots being dusted. Presumably this repeated across the universe, which means that total casualties were even higher than half the universe's population.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Ebony Maw doesn't flinch when an attack from Iron Man sends Cull Obsidian's body hurtling towards him in New York. Instead, Maw uses his telekinesis to casually redirect the flying Obsidian away from himself and into a parked car.
• Non-Indicative Name: The film only uses the title of The Infinity War, being mostly an adaptation of The Infinity Gauntlet.
• No Power, No Color: When Vision has the Mind Stone torn out of his head by Thanos, he fades from his usual red and green into a lifeless gray. Justified because he's made of vibranium metal, which is naturally gray in its unaltered state.
• No-Sell:
  • Thor hits Thanos with a pipe after Thanos takes down the Hulk. It does nothing.
  • One of the massive Outriders hits Black Panther square across the face, only for T'Challa's vibranium armor to leave him completely unfazed, to the point he immediately knocks the Outrider to the ground with a blow of his own.
  • Iron Man crashes a fragment of Titan's moon into Thanos. Thanks to the Power Stone, though, he easily shrugs it off.
  • By the end, when Thanos has assembled five of the six Stones, not a single Avenger is even able to touch him. Cap catches his fist, but it doesn't last long. Not even destroying the Mind Stone can stop him, as he simply uses the Time Stone to rewind time and take it before Wanda can destroy it.
• Nostalgia Filter: In-Universe. Gamora insists she was happy with her family on her planet before Thanos arrived there. Thanos is skeptical of this, noting her planet was facing an Overpopulation Crisis and asking if she was really happy with going to bed hungry every night and spending each day fighting over scraps of food. Gamora does not deny that those things were the case, implying they're all true.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The movie opens on the usual Marvel Studios logo... except where there is usually bombastic music, there's dead silence. As the logo animation progresses, a Drone of Dread starts up in the background, and a frantic distress call from the Asgardian refugee vessel begins to play. The unusual ominous opening immediately establishes that this movie will be Darker and Edgier than previous MCU entries.
• Nothing Personal: While Thanos dishes out beatdown after beatdown to the heroes attempting to stop him, he makes it clear that he holds absolutely no personal malice or hatred towards any of them — they are simply in the way of him completing his goal. The only time he gets legitimately angry is when he shakes off the effect of Mantis's powers after Star-Lord pistol-whips him. Given that she said he was "consumed by sorrow... and anguish," she might have been inadvertently forcing him to stay focused on the moment when he killed Gamora.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Thanos, when he is talking to Thor and Loki:
    Thanos: I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless. [...] Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same.
  • Thanos tells Tony that they're the same, being "cursed with knowledge." They both foresaw a coming catastrophe and sacrificed their morals in an effort to prevent it. The only difference is that Thanos succeeded and Tony failed.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Thanos was never harmless, but his lethargy over Phase 1 and Phase 2 was not lost on audiences. Here, he gets off his ass, gets his hands on two Infinity Stones in short order by going through the Nova Corps and the Asgardians, and beats the crap out of Thor, the Hulk, and Iron Man with his bare hands. He becomes the first MCU villain to end the film completely victorious.
• Not Worth Killing: When Nebula tells Thanos that he should have killed her when he had the chance, Thanos taunts his least-favorite "daughter" that he didn't want to waste the spare parts.

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• Obi-Wan Moment: Doctor Strange, about to disintegrate into dust, uses his last breaths to calmly reassure Tony Stark that "there was no other way."
• Obligatory Earpiece Touch: Several characters do this during the battle of Wakanda.
  • Right before Thanos arrives, Captain America reaches up to his ear to alert everyone via intercom that "we have incoming".
  • T'Challa does the same thing when warning everyone that the Drop Ships are approaching.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Whatever Nebula did in her assassination attempt, Thanos admits she nearly succeeded at killing him, no small feat given how hard it is to even hurt Thanos.
  • How Gamora found the Soul Stone's location is never clarified, but it's impressive considering nobody else in the Universe knows where it is.
  • Thanos obtained the Power Stone from the Nova Corps on Xandar before the film even starts.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Hulk attacks Thanos early on and it looks like he has the upper hand, but he quickly realizes that Thanos matches or possibly exceeds him in strength... And Thanos demonstrates it by taking him down easily, with Hulk not being able to land a single hit on Thanos after Thanos starts fighting back.
  • Proxima Midnight gets one when Steve catches the spear she threw at him effortlessly. She gets another when Thor arrives in Wakanda wielding Stormbreaker.
  • After learning the Soul Stone will only appear if Thanos gives up what he loves most, Gamora laughs, claiming that Thanos has never loved anything in his life and therefore, has nothing to sacrifice in exchange for the Stone. Then she notices Thanos is crying and Red Skull points out that he does have something to give up for the Stone that he loves: her.
  • When Tony Stark sees that Thanos is about to throw a moon at him.
  • Nebula looks like she's trying to avoid vomiting (visible gulp) after she revealed Gamora's fate at the hands of Thanos to Star-Lord, realizing he's about to go off the edge.
  • Vision gets one after the Avengers have just managed to kill off the last of Thanos's children, and the Mind Stone in his head suddenly screeches.
    Vision: He is here...
  • The last line of the movie proper is Cap's very succinct response to half of the universe being erased.
    Steve Rogers: Oh, God.
• Oh, My Gods!: Thor and Heimdall are heard swearing on or praying to "the Allfathers", usually before doing something dangerous/heroic.
  Heimdall: Allfathers, let the dark magic flow through me one last time. [teleports Hulk to warn Earth of Thanos]
  
  Thor: [preparing to withstand the Star Forge] Allfathers, give me strength.
• Omniscient Morality License: Doctor Strange uses the Time Stone to look into millions of possible futures and only sees one where he and his allies win. Later, during the battle on Titan against Thanos, Strange cedes the Stone to Thanos to spare Stark's life. This would later allow Thanos to complete the Infinity Gauntlet and use it to wipe out half of the lives in the universe, including Strange himself. Before he disintegrates, he tells Stark that "there was no other way", suggesting that whatever positive outcome he saw involved letting Thanos achieve his goal first.
• Once per Episode:
  • Defied. Both preceding Avengers movies had the Hulk beat down the main villain. Here, Thanos beats him down, and the Hulk refuses to emerge afterwards. Bruce even lampshades the Hulk's tendency to come out at the last minute to do some asskicking.
  • A straight example is that every film featuring the Hulk involves him/Banner falling vast distances. Here, Heimdall uses his dying action to launch Hulk to earth via the Bifrost to warn the heroes of Thanos's impending arrival, sending him in freefall right towards the Sanctum Sanctorum.
  • Thor once again has his face smashed against the glass (in this case the front of the Benatar) when he enters the Guardians' storyline. This also happened to him in Thor (while being pacified in the hospital; as a bonus he was also hit by the truck in the same film), The Avengers (while falling inside the Glassy Prison after being tricked by Loki), Thor: The Dark World (while sliding along the skyscraper during the final battle) and Thor: Ragnarok (inside the Valkyrie's ship).
    Rocket: Argh! Wipers, wipers!
  • Loki is once again seen lying helpless on his back on the floor, this time dead after being strangled by Thanos. He had the same pose when weighed down by Mjolnir during the final fight with his brother in Thor, after being curb-stomped by Hulk in The Avengers, after being stabbed by Kurse in Thor: The Dark World and after being tasered by Thor in Thor: Ragnarok.
• One Degree of Separation: Thor is the only person connecting the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. When both teams meet on Titan, they actually fight with each other until Thor is brought up, ceasing the fight.
• The Oner:
  • The scene where Tony Stark steps out of the New York Sanctum and witnesses panic from the arrival of Thanos's children on Earth is a continuous 41-second shot from a handheld camera.
  • Most of The Stinger is a single shot of Nick Fury observing the chaos caused by people disintegrating and trying to contact Captain Marvel before Fury himself disintegrates.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted with Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Peter Quill (Star-Lord).
  • Averted at the Battle of Wakanda, with both James "Bucky" Barnes and James Rhodes in the field.
  • Also Averted, quite pleasingly considering the trope name, with Steven "Steve" Rogers (Captain America) and Stephen Strange (Doctor Strange).
• Only a Flesh Wound: After Thanos stabs Tony in the chest, Tony recovers simply by freeze-spraying the wound. Even if no vital organs were hit, Tony would at bare minimum have been in debilitating pain.
• Onrushing Army: The horde of Outriders is barely able to brute force their way through Wakanda's barrier, but because of the risk of them encircling the perimeter and eventually overrunning from all sides, Steve and T'Challa decide that it's better to face the Outriders head-on, deliberately letting them through by opening a small section in the barrier. It's then that T'Challa leads the charge towards the Outriders, with his army and the Avengers following closely.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Bruce Banner has spent his entire adult life trying to keep the Hulk from getting loose, only to fail repeatedly when a threat emerges. After his near-death defeat from Thanos, Bruce tries and fails to summon Hulk for the rest of the movie, only ever responding with a "NO" before retreating back into Banner.
  • Quill's his normal quippy self when Gamora asks him to kill her rather than let Thanos take her until she asks him to "swear on your mother". He realizes how serious she is and agrees.
  • Doctor Strange made it very clear that his top priority is to protect the Time Stone, even if that means letting Stark and everybody else die. And yet, during the fight on Titan, he surrendered the Stone to Thanos, asking him to spare Tony in return. Before dying in the Snap, he mentioned that it was All According to Plan.
  • In the beginning of the film, Thanos is totally fine with wiping out anyone in his path to claim the Infinity Stones. After sacrificing Gamora, his adopted daughter he truly cared about, he stops needlessly killing and tries to reason with the heroes to make them understand his goals. By the time he arrives in Wakanda, instead of using his new powers to simply wipe the heroes out, Thanos slowly marches, giving them a chance to stop him. All this shows that by the end of Infinity War, Thanos now heavily regrets, but is still very committed, to his goals.
  • When the plan to remove the Infinity Gauntlet is botched, Tony is ultimately the only one left to stand up to Thanos. This is the first time we've seen him lose control of the situation. There’s no strategy: Tony is throwing everything he has at Thanos, visibly panicking while he does so.
• Orcus on His Throne: Defied — Thanos finally gets off of it to deal with matters personally in the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, thus setting the events of this movie into play.
• Order Versus Chaos: Thanos believes that life is chaotic and unbalanced, which will inevitably result in extinction, so he puts it upon himself to bring order to the universe by destroying half of all life and thus limiting it. One of his first victims is a self-proclaimed God of Mischief. Thanos also believes in destiny, i.e. predetermined and orderly course of events. By killing Gamora he rejects the chaos of emotions and submits himself to this course:
  Thanos: I ignored my destiny once. I cannot do that again. Even for you.
• Orphaned Etymology:
  • Averted with Thor calling Rocket a rabbit; presumably raccoons don't exist in Asgard.
  • A second aversion is more relevant to the plot: Star-Lord's snarky reference to Jesus makes Iron Man and Doctor Strange realize that he's from Earth like them, ending the fight between the Guardians and the Avengers as they realize that they're all on the same side.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: After being established to exist way back in Thor, the Dwarves of Nidavellir finally make their first appearance in the MCU. In keeping with the Science Fantasy themes of the Nine Realms, Nidavellir is a multi-ringed Alderson disk situated around a neutron star, which is the energy source for its forge. In a twist on this trope, the Dwarves are actually massive, resembling ten-foot-tall humans with dwarfism.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Invoked, though they're not biologically related. Tony being unable to prevent the 16-year-old Peter Parker from getting injured while trying to help him. In the ending, Tony can only watch as Peter turns to ash in his arms, although this likely would have happened even if Peter hadn't teamed up with everyone else based on the way that the Infinity Gauntlet's powers work.
• Overly Long Gag: The scene where Drax watches Peter and Gamora kiss and then claims he can become invisible by standing still and moving slowly enough goes on for half a minute.

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• Papa Wolf: As in the previous movies, Tony tries to keep Peter Parker out of harm's way when pursuing Ebony Maw to save Doctor Strange.
• Paradise Planet: Thanos retires to one of these at the end of the film, an idyllic world where the only settlement to be found is his home.
• Parting-Words Regret: The last thing Thor says to Loki is that he is the worst brother. Shortly after that, Loki attacks Thanos in an attempt to defend Thor, and the Mad Titan slowly strangles him to death. When Mantis later reads Thor's emotions, she lists tremendous guilt among other things.
• Pass the Popcorn: Quill and Gamora have a heartfelt talk and a kiss. They later notice Drax watching with interest, eating snack food.
• Percussive Prevention: On Knowhere, Mantis puts Drax to sleep before the latter can execute his silly plan to attack Thanos.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: Conversed by Thor after Drax responds to him declaring they have to go to Nidavellir with "That's a made-up word!", who succinctly replies that "All words are made up." anyway.
• The Perils of Being the Best: Nidavellir is home to one of the best forges in the Nine Realms and is where Mjölnir was made. Before the events of the film, the dwarves there were forced to create the Infinity Gauntlet for Thanos to allow him to better manipulate the Infinity Stones. Thanos then slaughtered the entire race, save for Eitri, who he let live, but not before pouring molten steel on his hands to ensure that he could never make another weapon again.
• Personal Hate Before Common Goals: Nobody wants Thanos to get the Infinity Stones, but Iron Man still can't bring himself to call Captain America for help because of how Cap defended his parents' killer in Captain America: Civil War. (In Tony's defense, he only had a few minutes to do so before being swept up in Thanos' attack and might have been able to swallow his pride if given more time.)
• Phlebotinum-Handling Equipment: The Infinity Gauntlet allows its user to handle the six Infinity Stones, which even on their own tend to kill anyone who tries to use them.
• Physical, Mystical, Technological: There is a Power Trio with this dynamic. Iron Man is the tech-based Science Hero wearing Powered Armor. Doctor Strange is the Master of the Mystic Arts and the premiere mystical hero. Spider-Man has genetic based powers which includes an assortment of enhancements to his physiology like Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, Super-Reflexes, and agility. He does have a specialized suit provided by Tony himself (which provides his webbing), but most of his powers come from his own body.
• Placid Plane of Ankle-Deep Water: After performing the snap, Thanos finds himself in a shallow pool of water surrounded by orange mist. Before him is a young Gamora and the gate where he first taught her about his crusade, asking if he succeeded (yes) and at what cost (her).
• Playing the Heart Strings: The climax features "I Feel You", full of bittersweet splendor, when Vision allows a tearful Wanda to destroy the Mind Stone keeping him alive as a last-ditch Heroic Sacrifice to stop Thanos, all while the rest of the Avengers desperately try to Hold the Line.
• Playing with a Trope: Tony, Strange, and Peter certainly would have been able to faster counter the Guardians' ambush if Peter had gotten straight to the point and said "My Spider-Sense is tingling."
• Plot Armor:
  • Subverted for the heroes. When Thanos uses his Badass Fingersnap to wipe out half all life in the universe, most of them do not stay alive like they might in some other stories. In fact, we see 10 major good guys survive it (the original Avengers ^note sans Hawkeye, who is not in the film, War Machine, Rocket, Nebula, Okoye, and M'Baku) and 12 die from it (Bucky Barnes, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Groot, Mantis, Drax, Star-Lord, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury), as well as leaving the statuses of several more characters unknown. In addition, Loki, Heimdall, Gamora and Vision are all killed onscreen in more mundane ways.
  • Played straight for Thanos himself, as he must survive to be the Big Bad once again in Avengers: Endgame.
• Plot-Demanded Manual Mode: In order to restart the forge on Nidavellir so that they can make the Stormbreaker axe, Thor has to hold the forge's lens open because the mechanism was crippled during the last use. Eitri notes that taking the full force of a Neutron star would be a suicide mission but Thor is willing to take the risk because facing Thanos without the axe is just as much of a suicide. Needless to say, Thor succeeds.
• Pocket Dimension: The Soul Stone has one. From what little is seen of it, it can only hold those that own it and whomever they sacrificed to attain the Stone. In this case, those happen to be Thanos and Gamora.
• Pokémon Speak: Groot as usual only says "I am Groot." When he talks to Steve, Steve responds with a confused but polite, "I am Steve Rogers."
• Portal Cut:
  • When Doctor Strange sends Bruce Banner to safety, he inadvertently sends half of a nearby taxi along for the ride. It nearly lands on top of Bruce, much to his alarm.
  • Wong gets rid of Cull Obsidian by sending him through a magic portal to the Arctic. When The Brute tries to reach back to him, Wong closes the portal, severing Cull Obsidian's arm in the process.
• Power at a Price: The only way to get the Soul Stone is by giving up the thing you love the most. This stopped Red Skull from ever getting it, as the thing he cares about most is himself. Thanos, meanwhile, has to give up Gamora — the one person who, despite his twisted worldview, he truly loved.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: Despite Thanos being an utter beast in this movie, he's still a bit underpowered compared to his comic book counterpart.
  • Without the Gauntlet, Comic!Thanos has power blasts he can shoot from his hands/eyes, which this version does not display. His resistance to most forms of mind control/psychic attacks is somewhat lessened, as Mantis in this version can, with humongous effort (by comparison, disabling Ego came off as being less straining), weaken him to the point the other heroes can restrain him.
  • With the Gauntlet, there is frankly no reason Thanos simply can't will his victory over the heroes into existence with a thought, since he already has 4-5 Stones by the time he starts actively going after the heroes, which his comic book counterpart would have done. Since that wouldn't make for a very exciting movie, Thanos mostly uses flashy applications (like transforming a piece of debris into a hurricane of bats, or turning the Hulkbuster intangible), rather than just freezing time, using Mind Control, or any of the other Story-Breaker Power abilities he should already have at his disposal.
• Power Crystal: The Infinity Stones, six gemstones that can control all aspects of Time (the Eye of Agamotto), Space (the Tesseract), the Mind (Loki's staff), the Soul, Power incarnate (the Orb), and Reality itself (the Aether).
• Power of the Void: Thanos hurls what looks like a black hole at Doctor Strange during their fight, essentially using the Space Stone to open a door to space and then throwing it.
• Powers Do the Fighting: One of Thanos's Children, Ebony Maw, possesses such advanced telekinetic powers that he rarely needs to exert himself. In most of his fight scenes he's standing completely relaxed while fighting more physical opponents with his mind. To boot, he's a Soft-Spoken Sadist.
• Power Trio: When the Secret Avengers show up to save Vision and Scarlet Witch on both Token Trio and Chromatic Arrangement. Captain America (White Male Lead, blue costume) Falcon (Black friend, red costume) Black Widow (White Supporting Actress, yellow by her newly dyed blonde hair).
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Much like Civil War, Infinity War takes significant liberties from its source material to accomodate the changes between the MCU and the comics. Namely,
  • As the original Civil War event took place after the original Infinity trilogy, the Avengers were still an active team at the time of the Infinity Gauntlet comic. However, as Captain America: Civil War took place before Infinity War, the Avengers will, of course, have to band together (again) to defeat Thanos in this film.
  • As the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises were, at the time of Infinity War and Endgame's initial announcement, held by 20th Century Fox, and were not returned to Marvel until after production for Infinity War wrapped up and Endgame began filming, their respective characters were not featured in either film. To compensate for this, Infinity War gave existing characters — like Bucky Barnes, Black Panther, War Machine, and the Guardians of the Galaxy — larger roles even if they were either not present or had smaller roles at most in the original Infinity trilogy.
  • Furthermore, some of the characters who appeared in the original Infinity saga that Marvel does have the film rights to were Adapted Out, partly due to the changes in the MCU's continuity, and partly to keep the film from getting too crowded.
  • The Thanos Quest, the prelude to the original Infinity Gauntlet story, involved Thanos traveling solo across the universe and stealing the various Infinity Gems, with the focus entirely on him. Infinity War keeps that same basic premise, but adds the Black Order and the Outriders from the later Infinity crossover, and has them attempt to claim the Infinity Stones that are on Earth while Thanos goes after the ones on other worlds. This gives the heroes someone to fight and an excuse for the narrative to focus on Earth while Thanos is off doing his own thing, as an Avengers movie where the Avengers are Demoted To Extras and don't do anything for most of the runtime is probably not something most of the audience would be interested in.
  • Like in the original story, most of the heroes end up dead in the first half, either by Thanos's hand or his elimination of half of all life in the universe. Notably, in a marked contrast to the original story, the list of casualties includes characters like Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange, while excluding Iron Man and Captain America. Given that the film is the conclusion of the story told up to this point in the MCU, it only stands to reason that the characters who began it would be at the centre of the climax.
  • Thanos is portrayed very closely to how his creator Jim Starlin wrote him with one major exception: his main motivation for wanting to cull the universe. In the comics, the main reason Thanos wants to do it is his fanatical obsession with the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death itself. In the film, he believes overpopulation is destroying the universe, and while this motivation is brought up in the comics too, it still ties in with his efforts to impress Death. Presumably, this realignment was done so that the general audience would be more willing to understand his motives and thus engage in his character arc.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In addition to Rule of Drama and not ending the movie too early, some of Thanos's actions can be explained by him being pragmatic. Since his goal is simply to obtain the Stones, snap his fingers and retire, his army's tactics in Wakanda are more about causing chaos to distract the heroes than they are gaining a political, social or economic foot hold on or over Earth, for instance.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Several examples across the movie.
  • Loki announces the first action sequence of Infinity War with:
    Loki: Well, for one thing, I'm not Asgardian. And for another... we have a Hulk. [cue Hulk leaping from nowhere to attack Thanos].
  • Scarlet Witch's "Hands off!" before attacking Corvus Glaive on the church rooftop.
  • On Titan, Doctor Strange faces off Thanos and argues a little about Thanos's philosophy.
    Thanos: The hardest choices require the strongest wills.
    Doctor Strange: I think you'll find... our will... equal... [activates both of his mandalas in each of his hands] to yours.
    Thanos: "Our"? [cue Iron Man crashing a whole building debris into Thanos]
  • During the battle of Wakanda, Thor makes a spectacular entrance with the Bifrost and Stormbreaker plowing through some Outriders to save the Avengers, then he fully appears, runs toward the enemy army with a single order: "BRING ME THANOS!" before using lightning to decimate the Outriders.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Although unintelligible to the audience, Groot's response to getting chided for playing video games non-stop is treated as one, with the other Guardians reacting with shock.
  • When Peter Parker needs to leave the school bus without other students finding out he's Spider-Man, his friend Ned creates a distraction by exclaiming, "Oh, shit! We're all gonna die!" and running to the back of the bus.
  • Nick Fury finally gets to say his actor's favorite word as he disintegrates: "Motherfu—"
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  • When Loki pretends to pledge Thanos his "undying fidelity" only to attempt to stab him, Thanos scoffs "'Undying?' You should choose your words more carefully" before starting to strangle Loki and eventually snapping his neck, killing him.
  • Iron Man and Spider-Man blow a hole in Ebony Maw's ship, sending him to space in a deliberate Shout-Out to Alien. Stark makes a Shut Up, Hannibal! quip preceding the spacing.
    Ebony Maw: Your powers are inconsequential compared to mine.
    Iron Man: Yeah, but the kid's seen more movies.
  • Bruce cheerfully quips "See ya!" as he launches Cull Obsidian into Wakanda's shield, killing him spectacularly.
  • Thor stabs Thanos in the chest with Stormbreaker, which doesn't kill him. Before snapping his fingers, Thanos says:
    Thanos: You should have gone for the head.
• Product Placement:
  • The billboard sign that Ebony Maw sends at Spider-Man lands face-up to reveal a Rocket Mortgage ad.
  • In the post-credits scene, Nick Fury and Maria Hill are riding in an Infiniti.
• Profane Last Words: Right before turning into dust, Nick Fury mutters "Motherf—".
• Profile View Gag: When we first see Nebula floating in the air, bound by magnetic anchors, she seems whole. But as Gamora turns around her, we get a side view, and realize Nebula's cybernetic body has been dismantled, with the pieces elegantly disposed around her like a machinery display.
• The Promise: Gamora extracts one from Peter Quill. Acting upon it is a major breaking point for him:
  Gamora: If things go wrong... If Thanos gets me... I want you to promise me... you'll kill me.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: A given for Thanos, as all of his previous MCU appearances before Infinity War have been uncredited cameos where he served as the Man Behind the Man for Loki and Ronan's quests for the Tesseract and the Orb, respectively. Here, Thanos is finally gathering the Infinity Stones himself, so it makes sense that he would be included in the main cast.
• Psychotic Smirk: Thanos wears that smirk several times throughout the movie, for example while he's killing Loki.
• Punch Catch: Captain America intercepts a blow from Thanos — while the latter is wearing the Infinity Gauntlet with all but one of the Stones in his grasp, preventing him from using any of the Infinity Gauntlet's powers in the process. After the initial shock of a mere human being able to match the strength of just his fingers, Thanos is more annoyed than anything and just punches him with his other arm.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...:
  • At the start of the film, the Hulk bum-rushes Thanos and manages to get some good shots in on him. But once pinned to the wall, Thanos regains himself and starts pushing back against the Hulk who, for the first time in the series, elicits a Oh, Crap! before Thanos proceeds to beat him down.
  • During the fight on Titan, Spider-Man uses Doctor Strange's portals to teleport-spam Thanos with flying kicks. Only for Thanos to grab him out of the air and choke-slam him to the ground.
  • The entire fight on Titan is one long string of this. Everyone gets hits off but can barely stagger Thanos.
  • Once it comes down to Tony in a one-on-one with Thanos, he uses his armor to actually get some heavy hits in, including managing to make him bleed. However, it's not enough to stop him and ends with Thanos ripping the blade from Tony's armor and impaling him with it.
• Put on a Bus: Hawkeye and Ant-Man don't appear because, as Cap explains, both refused to be broken out of the Raft and decided to remain on "house arrest" next to their families. A scene with the former that was originally shot for Infinity War downright opens Avengers: Endgame.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The events of both Age of Ultron and Civil War left not only the original members of the Avengers disbanding, but their replacement team as well. Both the original and new members end up reuniting in order to combat Thanos. Notably, this doesn't really happen; while several pro- and anti-Accords heroes wind up fighting together at Wakanda, many others do not, and Tony and Steve never have a single scene together.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Although Thanos achieves his goal and is content at the end of it, he nonetheless lost everything he cared for in the process. Immediately after performing his Badass Fingersnap, he has a vision of child Gamora asking him what it cost to realize his goal, to which Thanos replies it cost him everything. Even the Infinity Gauntlet itself is shown to be severely damaged by the act of killing half the universe, though it's still functional enough to transport him away from Earth.
  Gamora: Did you do it?
  Thanos: Yes.
  Gamora: What did it cost?
  Thanos: Everything.

R

• Race-Name Basis:
  • Thanos to Loki at the beginning:
    Thanos: Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian.
  • Thor appreciates Rocket and Groot, but nonetheless calls them by what he thinks they are. Understandably, he calls Groot "Tree", but humorously calls Rocket "Rabbit", or "Sweet Rabbit".
• A Rare Sentence: When Tony fills Peter Parker in on the happenings of the first twenty minutes of the film, he sounds like he's fully aware of the ridiculousness of the situation.
  Tony Stark: He's from space, he came here to steal a necklace from a wizard.
• Rash Promise: Peter Quill is guilted by his lover Gamora into swearing on his mother's grave to kill her if she ever is captured by Thanos. Such a situation does arise and Peter nearly has a breakdown as Gamora begs him to kill her and Thanos taunts him for lack of courage. Eventually, he forces himself to pull the trigger... only to reveal Thanos sabotaged the gun. Quill is wracked by guilt, anger, and confusion for the rest of the movie, so much so that he ruins the Avengers plan to stop Thanos and dooms the universe.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: Thanos gains all of the Stones and succeeds in killing half of all life in the universe, including several of the heroes who also count as some of their heaviest hitters. As a direct result of this, though the Infinity Gauntlet is damaged, Strange is implied to have set things in motion to undo Thanos's work, and Fury manages to recruit some much-needed assistance from Captain Marvel.
• Reality Warper: The Reality Stone lets Thanos change reality to his liking, such as generating extremely realistic illusions, causing objects to evaporate, or turning people to cubes or ribbons.
• Real Joke Name: Peter Parker tells Stephen Strange his name, but upon hearing the other man present himself as "Doctor Strange", Parker says, "Oh, we're using our made-up names? Then, I'm Spider-Man."
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gamora delivers one to Thanos about him having never loved anything in his life after finding out that the only way Thanos can get the Soul Stone is by sacrificing something that he loves. She is quickly proven wrong on this point though.
  Gamora: You kill and torture and you call it mercy. The universe has judged you. You asked it for a prize, and it told you no. You failed. And do you wanna know why? Because you love nothing. No one.
• Redemption Equals Death: Loki is killed after teaming up with Thor in Thor: Ragnarok and then trying to stop Thanos before he attacks Earth.
• Red Herring: Many things point out to Tony Stark's death against Thanos, including a heartwarming moment of him planning to have kids with Pepper, followed with an ominous loss of radio contact with her, and one grueling duel against Thanos, who stabs him in the gut. Tony casually heals the wounds with his nanomachines and is even one of the rare superheroes to survive Thanos's Badass Finger Snap which erases most of the cast.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Tony Stark, billionaire playboy genius philanthropist (Red), and Dr Stephen Strange, neurosurgeon, polymath and Master of the Mystic Arts (Blue), are this to each other; their outfits are even Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
• Reduced to Dust: Though in the original comic book they simply disappeared, in Infinity War, half the population of the universe disintegrates into dust, including about half of the heroes, after Thanos snaps his fingers.
• Related in the Adaptation: Corvus Glaive, Proxima Midnight, Ebony Maw, and Cull Obsidian are dubbed "The Children of Thanos". While clearly not his biological children — they appear to belong to four different species, and Glaive and Midnight are married — it's indicated that this designation is to be taken seriously and that the quartet are the "other siblings" of Gamora and Nebula who were alluded to in the first Guardians film. Their comics counterpart, the Black Order, had no such relationship to Thanos (in fact, their first story involved them tracking down a child of his).
• Relationship Upgrade:
  • Vision and Scarlet Witch are now shown to be meeting up for romantic holidays, after only seeming to have been good friends with a slight hint of Ship Tease before they joined opposite sides of the Accords fight when we last saw them in Civil War.
  • Peter and Gamora have become an Official Couple in the four years since their first two adventures together, and Thanos explicitly refers to Peter as Gamora's "boyfriend".
    Peter Quill: I prefer the term "Titan-killing long-term booty call."
• Resigned to the Call: Banner, before he tries to turn into the Hulk to fight Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw in New York:
  Tony Stark: Hey, Banner, want a piece?
  Bruce Banner: No, not really, but when do I ever get what I want?
• Retcon:
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora was described as the last of the Zehoberei people. However, as shown in a flashback in this film, only half of them were massacred on Thanos's orders — we see his Chitauri forces dividing the Zehoberei people into two groups and gunning down one of them. He also tells Gamora that, in contrast to her childhood where her family struggled to get enough to eat, the people on her planet now live comfortably. During a Q&A, The Russo Brothers refused to admit it was a retcon and instead asked: "Who do you believe? Do you believe Thanos or Gamora?"
  • Given that Hela instantly recognized the gauntlet in Odin's treasure vault as a "fake" despite having been locked away for millenia, it was previously implied that the Infinity Gauntlet was an ancient artifact. However, the movie makes it clear that Eitri forged the Gauntlet at Thanos's explicit request, after which Thanos massacred the dwarves. For Asgard to have been unaware that this had happened, it would have had to have occurred only recently, so the Gauntlet must now be a recent creation. That being said, the MCU has toyed with the idea that there are multiple gauntlets before, so Thanos might have simply requested that Eitri fashion him a new one based on a pre-existing idea.
  • Infinity War continues to retcon Iron Man 3, which saw Tony throw his arc reactor into the sea to prove his love to Pepper, but immediately begged the question of how he was going to be Iron Man without it. This is the first film since that one to have Pepper address the point, and Tony having an answer (her absence from Age of Ultron and Civil War was chalked up to them fighting over it).
• Retired Monster: After wiping out half of all life in the universe with the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos retreats to a farm on a peaceful-looking planet, having fulfilled his life-long mission.
• Revenge Before Reason: After hitting Thanos in the chest with Stormbreaker, Thor taunts Thanos (who killed Heimdall and Loki) instead of immediately killing him while he's weak. This leaves Thanos (who himself calls Thor out on this) enough time to snap half the universe into oblivion.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Vision takes this facet of his character a step further and adopts a human appearance while in Scotland with Wanda. It's only temporary, as when Corvus Glaive surprise-attacks him, he loses the disguise and remains that way for the duration of the film.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: None of the main characters ever seriously disputes that the results of Thanos's plan would be as good as he claims. Their primary objection seems to be that Thanos's plan is too heartless, and this is what makes him evil and mad, rather than pointing out the serious practical question of whether simply halving the universe's population would actually solve resource shortages and pollution.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Thor is single-minded in killing Thanos after Thanos kills Heimdall, Loki, and half of the Asgardian refugees.
• Rocket Punch: An odd example, as it is not intended by the "puncher". Bruce sticks Cull Obsidian's hand into the shorn-off Hulkbuster hand and then activates the rocket. Cull dies from doing a Rocket Punch into the deadly Wakandan force field.
• R-Rated Opening: The first ten minutes of the film are dark even by its own standards, both figuratively and literally. Bodies of dead Asgardian children are on display, and while the camera shies away from showing anything but Heimdall's face as he is stabbed through the chest, Loki is strangled on-screen in a realistic and graphic fashion, with his eyes bulging out of their sockets so hard they turn bloodshot and start bleeding, as well as his face turning pale and veins bulging out of his forehead. Thanos finishes him off by snapping his neck and tossing his corpse at his brother's feet. The movie is PG-13.
• Rule of Drama: Assuming the Infinity Gauntlet here is just as capable as it is in the comics, a lot of Thanos's encounters would have been much shorter if he was more creative and ruthless with it. However, we wouldn't have a lot of the more dramatic moments of the movie then.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Thanos shattering the Tesseract to acquire the Space Stone inside. The MacGuffin was the very first Infinity Stone we were introduced to (at least in terms of the MCU's release order rather than chronological). It served as a driving engine for the second half of Phase One and the repercussions of Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Loki's attempts to acquire it have continued to reverberate well into Phases Two and Three. So, the Tesseract's destruction, more than anything, symbolizes the beginning of the end of the Infinity Saga.
  • Thanos directing the Black Order to recover the Infiniy Stones still on Earth and to bring them to him on Titan. While it's not explicitly stated in-story, the intent clearly is to complete the assembly in the ruins of his homeworld, thus figuratively and literally ending Thanos's quest for universal balance at the place where it began all those years ago. (With an added bonus of posthumously sticking it to the people who'd called him a madman.) The plan is ultimately subverted, though, as Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight's failure to acquire the Mind Stone from Vision before the rendevous forces Thanos to go to Earth himself to complete the Gauntlet.
• Rule of Three:
  • Thanos gets three of the Stones by threatening a character in front of the character guarding it (or its location).
    • The Space Stone from Loki by threatening Thor.
    • The Soul Stone's location from Gamora by threatening Nebula.
    • The Time Stone from Strange by threatening Stark, although this time it was not Thanos's intent.
  • Three times someones snaps his fingers: First Gamora, to demonstrate Thanos's plan to the other Guardians and Thor. The second time Thanos, when he tells Doctor Strange on Titan of his plan. The third time, Thanos eventually snaps his fingers with the completed Infinity Gauntlet to carry out that plan.
• Running Gag:
  • As in each of his film appearances, Thor collides face-first with a glass pane. This time, it's the windshield of the Benatar.
  • As in Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, most people have no idea who the Guardians are, much to Peter Quill's annoyance.
    Thor: Who the hell are you guys?

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