Avengers: Infinity War Easter Eggs: 20 Comic Nods And Hidden Details In Marvel's Darkest Film

Infinity War opens on a distress call and never really stops moving, which is why so much of its texture goes past unnoticed. It is also the most densely comics-literate film Marvel had made up to that point, borrowing whole character sets and set pieces from Jim Starlin, Jonathan Hickman and Greg Pak. Here is what is genuinely in there.

Straight from the comics page

1. The Black Order

Ebony Maw, Corvus Glaive, Proxima Midnight and Cull Obsidian are lifted from Jonathan Hickman's 2013 Infinity event, where they served as Thanos's Black Order. The MCU renamed one of them: the hulking bruiser is called Black Dwarf on the page. Maw's role as Thanos's silver-tongued torturer is close to note-perfect.

2. Red Skull as the Stonekeeper

The Vormir guardian is Johann Schmidt, last seen being swallowed by the Tesseract in 1945 in The First Avenger. Ross Marquand plays him here rather than Hugo Weaving. His line about Thanos being the 'son of A'Lars' is a deep cut: A'Lars, better known as Mentor, is Thanos's father in the comics.

3. Nidavellir and Eitri

The dwarven forge orbiting a neutron star is Nidavellir, and Peter Dinklage's Eitri is a comics smith. Stormbreaker itself is the axe wielded by Beta Ray Bill on the page, repurposed here as Thor's Mjolnir replacement, with Groot's arm supplying the handle.

4. The Bleeding Edge armour

Tony's Mark 50 nanotech suit is the MCU's version of the Bleeding Edge armour introduced in Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man, a suit stored inside the body and assembled on command.

5. Soul World

When Thanos wakes in an orange void and speaks to a child Gamora, that is Soul World, the pocket dimension inside the Soul Stone in Starlin's Infinity Gauntlet. It is one of the most literal comics adaptations in the entire film.

6. The Iron Spider

Peter's gold-and-red suit with the four mechanical arms comes from the 2006 Civil War comics, where Tony builds it for him. The MCU had it hanging in a case since the post-credits of Homecoming.

7. Hulk crashing into the Sanctum

Heimdall's last act sends Bruce to Earth through the roof of 177A Bleecker Street. Sending the Hulk off-world and having him come back angry is the shape of Planet Hulk, and the Sanctum landing gives Doctor Strange his entry into the plot. There is a lot more hidden in that building, which we catalogue in our Sanctum Sanctorum breakdown.

MCU callbacks

1. The opening wreckage is the Statesman, the Asgardian refugee ship from the end of Thor: Ragnarok. The film picks up minutes after that post-credits scene.
2. Tony's nightmare about a child with Pepper is a plant. Morgan Stark exists in Endgame because of this scene.
3. Bucky is called 'White Wolf' by the Wakandan children, his comics alias and a reference to the adopted-brother character of the same name.
4. Steve's Wakandan shields are given to him by Shuri, filling the gap left when T'Challa's father's death cost him the vibranium disc in Civil War.
5. The Guardians arrive scored to The Spinners' Rubberband Man, continuing the franchise's habit of introducing them mid-needle-drop.
6. Bruce piloting the Hulkbuster is a role reversal of Age of Ultron, where the suit existed specifically to stop him.
7. Peter's plan to rescue Strange is lifted from Aliens, which he describes as a really old movie, and which he had already referenced in Homecoming's tone.

The small details

Infinity War is the only Avengers film that ends with the villain sitting down to watch a sunrise, and the film treats it as a win.

The pager is the cleanest bit of marketing-as-storytelling Marvel has ever pulled off. It arrives with no dialogue, holds for four seconds, and cuts to black on a symbol that most of the audience had literally never seen. Captain Marvel then opened before Endgame to explain it.

Claims we could not verify

Two very popular Infinity War easter-egg claims did not make this list. The first is the frequently repeated idea that Thanos's smile line is quoted from a specific Silver Age comic; we could not source it. The second is a set of readings of the Titan ruins as containing recognisable Eternals architecture, which is a retroactive fan reading rather than anything the production has confirmed. If a detail is not on screen clearly or on the record from the filmmakers, it is not on our lists.

For how all of this pays off, the Endgame easter egg guide covers the sequel's callbacks, and the Endgame ending explained handles the time-travel mechanics that undo the snap.