MCU Easter Eggs

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The Avengers (2012)

Release (US): May 4, 2012 | Director: Joss Whedon | Runtime: 143 minutes

Nick Fury pulls Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye into one uneasy team when Loki steals the Tesseract and opens the door to an alien invasion of New York. It is the film that closed Phase One and showed a shared movie universe could actually work.

Source: Wikipedia: The Avengers (2012 film)

Hidden Details & Easter Eggs

The shawarma scene was shot the day after the world premiere

The quiet scene of the team eating shawarma was not on the shooting schedule. Robert Downey Jr. hinted at it during an April 12, 2012 press event, a day after the world premiere, saying the cast would get back together that same day to film one last bit. That makes it one of the very few MCU scenes filmed after the movie had already premiered.

Source: Collider

Chris Evans hides a fake jaw behind his hand while the others eat

By the time of the shawarma shoot, Evans had grown a beard for Snowpiercer. To hide it, he was fitted with a prosthetic jaw, which Joss Whedon compared to the oversized chin in Dick Tracy. That is why Captain America rests his hand over his face and doesn't eat anything in the scene.

Source: CinemaBlend (Whedon on the Marvel Directors' Roundtable)

A shawarma shop was planted behind Tony's crash landing

Once the post-credits scene was added, the editors went back and placed a shawarma restaurant near the spot where Iron Man crash-lands earlier in the Battle of New York. Look behind Tony after he flies through the Leviathan and tumbles into a bus stop. Co-editor Jeffrey Ford described the fix in an oral history of the battle.

Source: Thrillist: The Battle of New York, an 'Avengers' Oral History

Putting Thanos in the credits scene was Joss Whedon's idea

Kevin Feige told /Film that the Thanos tease came from Whedon, a lifelong fan of the character. Whedon pointed to Jim Starlin's 1970s Avengers Annual and Marvel Two-in-One Annual stories, and said someone had to be pulling Loki's strings, so it had to be Thanos. Marvel said yes, years before Thanos became the center of the Infinity Saga.

Source: /Film: Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige explain the origin of 'The Avengers' post script

The shawarma scene grew out of a night after filming Angel

At San Diego Comic-Con in 2016, Whedon traced the scene to the day he filmed Fred's death in Angel season 5. After that exhausting shoot, he went for drinks with Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, and the three of them just sat there in tired silence. He said that memory became the Avengers tag. Denisof also plays the Other in this film's mid-credits scene.

Source: CBR

Coulson's death scene twice earned the film an R rating

Kevin Feige said the first cuts sent to the MPAA came back rated R two times, and Marvel had to make changes to get a PG-13. In the US version you never see the tip of Loki's scepter come out of Coulson's chest. A version shown mostly in Europe did show it going through.

Source: Digital Spy

This Hulk is modeled on Mark Ruffalo, down to his teeth

ILM built this film's Hulk around Ruffalo's own look and performance instead of a cartoon design. Visual effects supervisor Jeff White said the Hulk draws on Ruffalo's motion capture and on-set work, right down to his eyes, teeth and tongue.

Source: Animation World Network: Getting Animated Over The Avengers

The film was shot under the working title 'Group Hug'

To keep a low profile during production, The Avengers was made under the code name 'Group Hug.' The sequel later used 'After Party,' and Infinity War used 'Mary Lou.'

Source: Screen Rant

Credits Scenes

Mid-credits

The Other, the Chitauri's go-between, reports to his master about the failed attack on Earth, and the master turns toward the camera. The film never names him, but Kevin Feige talked about the moment 'when Thanos turned around', and Joss Whedon said putting Thanos there was his idea.

Source: /Film: Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige explain the origin of 'The Avengers' post script

Post-credits

After Tony's earlier suggestion to go and get shawarma, the team sits in a shawarma restaurant and eats in tired silence. Whedon pitched it late, it was filmed after the premiere, and co-editor Jeffrey Ford said he cut it in on the back of a camera truck just in time for theaters.

Source: Thrillist: The Battle of New York, an 'Avengers' Oral History

Deleted Scenes

8 scenes cut from the film and released as home-media extras. See them all →

Setups and Payoffs

Moments in this film that pay off later, or pay off something earlier. All callbacks →

Characters in This Film

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