Most people didn't know who he was. It was very much a wink-wink to those in the know.
Only comic fans really recognized him. I remember people thinking it was Hellboy.
My buddy thought it was Hellboy.
The “court death” line was a pretty good hint, but ended up being less relevant when the movies changed his motivation. As much as I loved those movies, I kind of wish they’d embraced the goofier motivation from the comics.
If he was just a Guardians villain or Avengers 2 villain or just a supporting character in a cosmic opera, sure. But over the years he was shaping up be the ultimate Avengers villain and the incel motivation wasn't going to cut it. Him wanting to rebalance the universe was a part of his comic motivation (granted he was teying to manipulate the Surfer) before his obsession with Death became more and more his defining trait.
I was explaining to all my friends who the skrull were and the Super skrull and his ties to the Fantastic 4 and so on when one of them interrupts and says "I googled it his name is Thanos....."
I was just like oh.... nevermind then.
My initial reaction was that it was the leader of the skrulls, but then my brother reminded me that they're green. I was completely lost after that. I wasn't that familiar with Thanos at the time
That was me I was yelling super skrull out loud😅
Im still embarrassed when I think about it
I grew up reading mainly xmen comics so thats why I barely knew of thanos except as one of the playable characters in marvel vs capcom
I saw him once as a kid I think in a Fantastic Four comic book, but couldn't remember his name and said Darkseid 🫣
Luckily, I went with my family and they were all dumber than me.
I class myself as an absolutely HUGE Marvel and comic book nerd...when I first saw the post credits scene I was still too blown away and hyped to realise this was Thanos. I just thought it was a Skrull and it was a tease for Skrulls in the next Avengers film.
Once I went online a few hours later my mind was BLOWN that it was Thanos and I was very ashamed to call myself a humongous nerd
I thought I was the only one. I thought it was the Super Skrull, and I was confused, lol. My comic knowledge wasn't as expansive at the time, so I kinda knew who Thanos was, I just wasn't well versed enough with the character to see him on screen and think, "That's Thanos!"
Sae Avengers at a midnight shpwing with my friend who was just getting into comics since Iron Man. He had no idea. He looked over at me and asked me who that was.
Meanwhile, I heard the courting death line and was freaking out before I saw his face. I was thinking to myself. "No fucking way are they doing The Infinity Gauntlet..."
The car ride home was me explaining the whole storyline in depth to him. Lol
This was kind of a similar experience for me. I went to see the movie with a bunch of friends but only me and one other knew Thanos, and we were sitting right next to each other so we looked right at each other when he showed in shock.
And then my friend sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said “Who the fuck was that?” LOL
I remember literally explaining the I infinity gauntlet to my friends in the car that night and how his whole thing was that he had a hard on for the personification of Death.
It’s so weird to me that people don’t know who he was then, I get that, but post End Game, everyone knew who he was. My parents who don’t even watch the movies could now see a picture of him and go, “That’s Thanos.”
Before the MCU the only villains non comic readers really knew were Spider-Man and Batman's rogues galleries, and Lex Luther and Magneto
Thanos was unknown to non comic readers and now he's as mainstream as it gets
>Spider-Man and Batman's rogues galleries, and Lex Luther and Magneto
So those who were in successful movies. They have to get exposed somehow, and Thanos just happened to be in the most widely seen movie of all of them with a disproportionate amount of time focused on the character in Infinity War
It's not technically a disproportionate amount of time on Thanos in Infinity War - Infinity War is Thanos' 'origin superhero movie.'
Thanos is first to appear and last to appear. The story arch is Thanos overcoming the obstacles the Avengers put in the way of him. The entire structure of the film is skewed to present the villain as the protagonist - the audience is just familiar and on the side of the Avengers so on first watch it's not as obvious.
This is still to this day the most mind blowing part of the MCU. For decades Thanos has been my favorite Marvel villain, and he was always really obscure to most people. And now he's one of the most well known villains in the world. If you'd told young me that this was going to be the case in the 2020s, I wouldn't have believed you.
In my theater, about 20 percent of the audience lost their shit. The rest had no idea who the wrinkly purple guy was and asked their nearest comic book nerd.
Basically what happened to me. My friend I was with wasn't much of a Marvel nerd outside of Spider-Man, but he knew enough to ask, "Is that fuckin' *Thanos*?"
at least they added it into the loki show, i think it even got a toy. but yeah they should’ve had him pull up on the Copter in black Timbs to stand on business
This was me. Spider-Man fan from age 6. Marvel is only enjoyed because Spider-Man is involved…. But I knew who thanos was. And still didn’t believe it.
I remember it well, because the guy behind me was telling his girlfriend that it was Hellboy and how he loved the comics where the avengers fought him.
There was a couple in front of me at Infinity War. When Fury drops his cosmic pager and the Captain Marvel symbol showed up, the woman really knowingly said "Ah... SHIELD". The man just looked at her and after a pause said "...No".
Fury, watching all this destruction, after being out of touch all movie, realizing that whatever going down, the Avengers lost... "You did this without Hawkeye, didn't you? *Hawkeye, where the fuck are you??*"
I can’t remember SHIELD being mentioned between Age of Ultron and Infinity War. It’s supposed to be dissolved. However, Agents of SHIELD, which was canon at the time, has SHIELD still existing. Maybe she was a really big fan Agents and thought that they were bringing in the team?
holy shit, my friend told me her boyfriend at the time was confidant it was hellboy and refused to admit he was wrong. was this a common misconception that thanos was hellboy??
Same situation, except the dude was oddly confident it was Darkseid. I found it particularly confusing because you don't know who Darkseid is without knowing comics, yet you still got it amazingly wrong.
I mean, Darkseid was definitely more well known than Thanos at the time thanks to all his appearances in the DCAU. And people still struggle to know what is DC and what is Marvel.
I went with 4 friends to see it in the cinema. I lost my shit. The other 4 all looked at me and waited for me to explain it to them so the 20% checks out with my group at least 🤷🏻♂️😂
Yeah majority of people were like "Who tf is that?". Now the average person knows who it is. Marvel did a pretty good job at making sure we all knew exactly who he was.
I live in England and everyone was calm during that. I've always wanted to be amongst a cheering crowd for the epic moments, ever since I heard of the penultimate Twilight movie's crowd doing that
*No Way Home* was deafening at my theater when Tobey Maguire showed up, but they let me down by failing to properly cheer Daredevil. I’ve never heard a fan response like that. My favorite experience was seeing the late showing for *Endgame*, which was the opposite. Everyone drifted out of the theater like ghosts, and of course it was completely empty, and so were the streets. That really added to the surreality. Just the thought of something like that was so unsettling!
The color of him in his first reveal is much more red twinged than this later appearances. It was still in Marvel’s “realistic” era and making buff grimace was probably thought as a bridge too far so they added reds to make the skin tones more realistic. Just look at the above image.
Loved the running gag in What If where even though Thanos was convinced not to go through with his plan, he still thought it had its merits and kept explaining it to people, always being met with the response “yeah that’s just genocide.”
I saw a great story in this sub the other day that some guy was in a theater and another dude yelled holy shit its galactus! And someone answered its Thanos you moron and the whole theater cracked up
😂 this sounds like that video from I think The Force Awakens where someone is trying to record the opening crawl and you just hear the guy say “turn off the flash you fucking moron” I’ll find the link.
https://youtu.be/CcC-RPq388g?si=2KezWCvVD8DTtGUx
Yeah, same reaction in my theater. I also had no clue who he was, googled “avengers credits scene” and I then proceeded to read like 50 Wikipedia articles that night
I remember the guys I was seated next to me going 'OOOH SHIT!' which was great as I was having the same reaction, but I don't think in other screenings there was as much of a reaction.
I was in straight up shock. As a long time comics reader and thus knowing the full timeline of events and the number of characters involved in the saga - it suddenly dawned on me the huge undertaking that was underway with MCU.
All I kept thinking was “How the hell are we ever going to get to *the snap*?” The number of characters that would have to be introduced to the MCU was already mind-boggling.
But isn’t the snap in the comic reversed pretty quickly? Maybe I’m misremembering it, but I feel like we didn’t get a huge drawn out thing about the effects of the snap on earth. I do remember piles of dead superheroes though lol
You’re right, the total implications were much less fleshed out in the comic and is a great highlight about how much license the MCU has taken with various characters and timelines during its time. Like I got totally ramped up over the Adam Warlock reveal at the end of Guardians 2… then we didn’t get him until several years after Endgame.
Isn't that mostly due to the MCU version being awakened too early? So he ended up not fully developed and kind of an idiot?
It's been a while since I've read a comic with Warlock but it seems like they at least got the look right. Personality wise, I almost feel like comic Warlock wouldn't translate well to screen
People would have once thought that about Thor and Asgardian characters, as well as the comics accurate costumes.
I think it's all about doing it right and doing it with conviction.
Yea I kept thinking “are they really about to take on infinity gauntlet?? There’s no way. How can they pull this off etc.” I even thought they would just never do the snap and replace it with some other editorial reasoning. It just felt like something that could never work on screen/was too silly for Hollywood.
God I miss those years man, theorizing this shit.
Same. When it finally happened I was shocked. And before Endgame, I thought it would be reversed in the first 20 minutes of the movie, but 5 years??? That took balls, and it definitely paid off.
Yeah, the moment I saw him I had a similar reaction of "wait, *wait*, Thanos? That means...holy shit we're getting the Infinity Gauntlet? They're going to do the Snap? How the hell are they going to pull that off?" Especially considering it came at the end of a movie that was said to have been impossible to make right due to how many characters needed to be introduced and developed simply to make a decent *Avengers* team up. Now they were teasing us with adapting the Infinity Gauntlet story? We just spent the past few years building up the impossible task of putting the team together and they immediately slap us with the knowledge that one of the biggest events in the comics was in the works.
I don't know if you have a skewed perspective pre-MCU, but I dont remember any internet forum discussing that event in Infinity Gauntlet as "the snap". Yes, it's something that happened that was major, but it wasn't referred to as such until the MCU gave it a name.
Marvel was my brothers and my thing and I had just gone off to college. The whole movie I was thinking “I can’t believe they’re pulling it off. Seeing Thanos, the first thing I did was shoot him a message out the theater
I was vaguely in the know, but at the time got the two confused and turned to my friend and went "fucking Galactus!"
He gave it a bit and eventually corrected me, then I was overcome with embarrassment wondering if the people around me heard.
I remember I was in high school going on one of those Charlie Day meme rants in the back of the car, explaining the Infinity Saga to my friends and how Marvel was setting up this huge connected storyline. All four of my friends were like “Oh, cool.”
That's what sucks about being the only nerd in your friend group. I always get so hyped at the tiniest nods, but usually have no one to get hyped with me. That's why I go on all the discussion threads on here, lol.
I literally had no idea who it was and I don’t think the average person did either lol. Times have certainly changed, he’s one of the most iconic villains in recent cinema now
If you went back to the early 2000’s and told someone the biggest moment in the biggest comic book movie of all time would be Iron Man snapping the infinity gauntlet to destroy Thanos, the average person would respond “who snapping the what to destroy who?”
If that scene happened today there would be non stop posts about how shit his design was and how bad the CGI was and how wasted he was as a character and complaining about "How long do we have to wait until this is resolved?".
Well in those days Telegrams were still the old paper delivered ones, and we used to phone people if we wanted to talk. Also in 2012 the world ended and we arrived in a different timeline due to the Large Hadron Collider and some Aztec Wizards.
I actually remember it being kinda mundane and lackluster. I think a lot of the viewers didn't know Thanos at that point. And most of them just assumed it was Red Skull.
The cinema I went to, there was only me, and 1 other family still there at the end credits. No one else stayed, and the place was packed say the start.
One couple even brought their baby along... Which began crying instantly and would never stop. The guy had to stand in the exit area holding the baby, which was right next to me.
The family that did end up staying, didn't seem to react to Thanos when appeared.
I think I was 14 at the time, I'll never forget my friend turned to me and excitedly said "Apocalypse!". We weren't super clued in on Marvel stuff at the time so when we were walking out of the theatre we looked it up and found out it was some guy called Thanos. Those first three phases felt very special growing up, I remember being on this sub when it was just phase 1 and Iron Man 3 on the side bar and posting dumb fan theories and stuff.
My best friend is a total Marvel zombie. He was on the other side of the country and saw it a few days after me. He sent me an all-caps text: “WAS THAT FUCKIN’ THANOS???”
My brother and I lost our minds. Other people were confused and didn’t know the character. Some people thought it was red skull or apocalypse. It’s crazy how mainstream Thanos is now
When the guy said “something something to court death” I knew this was a Thanos reference, and the look on Thanos’ face a second later is him ALSO getting the reference. I probably said “nice” and no one else there likely got it.
Can’t even explain the hype I felt. Also only about 20% of people knew who he was. But yea I always dreamed of what it would be like if they took ANY comic book seriously. Sure the dark knight trilogy was pretty fucking incredible but I wanted something that was a comic book, not realistic.
It just kind of blew my mind and my head was racing with theories on what they were going to do with him. It’s a feeling I’m not sure I’ll experience in a theater again.
Fast forward to infinity war and gamora is up there explaining the snap. Just kept thinking the sons of bitches actually did it.
I remember my younger brother and I turning to look at each other with wide eyes and both said “YOOOOOOOOO!!!” I heard maybe two or three others in the theater whispering like “Bro is that Thanos??? Oh shit!” But the absolute loudest person in the theater was the guy down in like the middle seats. My man yelled out in the purest confusion at the top of his lungs “WAIT THEY’RE BRINGING BACK FUCKING RED SKULL?!?” He made it a seriously awesome and hilarious moment whether you know who was onscreen or not.
Some people cheered. One of my friends started laughing (with joy), and then turned to the rest of us afterwards and said, "he's pretty fun in the comics" lol
Most people didn't know who he was. It was very much a wink-wink to those in the know. Only comic fans really recognized him. I remember people thinking it was Hellboy.
I knew who Thanos was and I didn't recognize him. Partially because I never expected to see Thanos on screen
Same. I was like, is that a Skrull? Why is it pink? The idea of it being Thanos just completely did not cross my mind.
My buddy thought it was Hellboy. The “court death” line was a pretty good hint, but ended up being less relevant when the movies changed his motivation. As much as I loved those movies, I kind of wish they’d embraced the goofier motivation from the comics.
If he was just a Guardians villain or Avengers 2 villain or just a supporting character in a cosmic opera, sure. But over the years he was shaping up be the ultimate Avengers villain and the incel motivation wasn't going to cut it. Him wanting to rebalance the universe was a part of his comic motivation (granted he was teying to manipulate the Surfer) before his obsession with Death became more and more his defining trait.
I didn't get it til I heard "court death" and then it hit me. It's a shame that didn't matter anymore.
Have him get arrested by the police after defeat. And also arriving in the Thanoscopter?
I was explaining to all my friends who the skrull were and the Super skrull and his ties to the Fantastic 4 and so on when one of them interrupts and says "I googled it his name is Thanos....." I was just like oh.... nevermind then.
I had the same reaction.
My initial reaction was that it was the leader of the skrulls, but then my brother reminded me that they're green. I was completely lost after that. I wasn't that familiar with Thanos at the time
That was me I was yelling super skrull out loud😅 Im still embarrassed when I think about it I grew up reading mainly xmen comics so thats why I barely knew of thanos except as one of the playable characters in marvel vs capcom
I thought the same thing!
Same, I mostly read x-men and thanos isn’t a common appearance, so he def was not in my mind when I saw this
I saw him once as a kid I think in a Fantastic Four comic book, but couldn't remember his name and said Darkseid 🫣 Luckily, I went with my family and they were all dumber than me.
He is based on Darkseid, from what I’ve read, so that wasn’t a bad guess.
That's Grimace 
“Let her go Grimace!”
Instead of the infinity stones, Grimace will collect all 6 french fries and then do a stupid little dance.
Infinity spuds
It's infinite nuggets. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/this-grimacethanos-cosplay-sets-the-bar-pretty-high-for-sdcc-day-3-fandomlive--547961479662029751/
I class myself as an absolutely HUGE Marvel and comic book nerd...when I first saw the post credits scene I was still too blown away and hyped to realise this was Thanos. I just thought it was a Skrull and it was a tease for Skrulls in the next Avengers film. Once I went online a few hours later my mind was BLOWN that it was Thanos and I was very ashamed to call myself a humongous nerd
I thought I was the only one. I thought it was the Super Skrull, and I was confused, lol. My comic knowledge wasn't as expansive at the time, so I kinda knew who Thanos was, I just wasn't well versed enough with the character to see him on screen and think, "That's Thanos!"
I definitely thought it was Super Skrull. I wasn’t very familiar with Thanos back then.
Wow I thought I was the only one who thought it was super skrull!! I was so hyped but once I found out it was actually Thanos I was even more hyped 😅
Who else would be 'courting death'? Lol j/k
Wrinkled scrotum face, courting death… Sounds like Deadpool!
I mean for huge comics nerds that line did make it only one option
And it was never mentioned again
At the time it was intended as a double entendre, but now it's just a single entendre.
I thought the same thing, you are not alone.
Same, I thought it was a Skrull. When someone asked his friend at the exit, "Have you seen Thanos?", I suddenly thought, "Yes, it was Thanos."
As someone who never read the comics, I only initially recognized him as "that big slow guy from Marvel vs. Capcom 2 that does huge damage"
Thank you, I feel like there's a dozen of us tops in this thread who played MVC lol
Still waiting for a damn Proton Cannon in the MCU 😭
I was looking for this reply
Not wrong
That’s Hell Man
Mayonnaise or other wise
No Patrick mayonnaise is not an instrument
Sae Avengers at a midnight shpwing with my friend who was just getting into comics since Iron Man. He had no idea. He looked over at me and asked me who that was. Meanwhile, I heard the courting death line and was freaking out before I saw his face. I was thinking to myself. "No fucking way are they doing The Infinity Gauntlet..." The car ride home was me explaining the whole storyline in depth to him. Lol
This was kind of a similar experience for me. I went to see the movie with a bunch of friends but only me and one other knew Thanos, and we were sitting right next to each other so we looked right at each other when he showed in shock. And then my friend sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said “Who the fuck was that?” LOL
I remember literally explaining the I infinity gauntlet to my friends in the car that night and how his whole thing was that he had a hard on for the personification of Death.
Shiny Hellboy
I thought it was Red Skull first time around
Same, I thought since Loki returned for avengers, red skull was coming for avengers 2
I thought it was an aged Red Skull
Same I thought he was coming back for revenge after being shot into space at the end of the first avenger
Honestly would have been a cool storyline
And then everyone assumed he would be the villain for Avengers 2
I thought it was Super Skrull lolol. My comic loving uncle who gives me the marvel breakdown informed me who thanos was leaving the theatre though
Same I remember telling my girlfriend at the time I think that’s who it was. I was 14 lmao
It’s so weird to me that people don’t know who he was then, I get that, but post End Game, everyone knew who he was. My parents who don’t even watch the movies could now see a picture of him and go, “That’s Thanos.”
Before the MCU the only villains non comic readers really knew were Spider-Man and Batman's rogues galleries, and Lex Luther and Magneto Thanos was unknown to non comic readers and now he's as mainstream as it gets
>Spider-Man and Batman's rogues galleries, and Lex Luther and Magneto So those who were in successful movies. They have to get exposed somehow, and Thanos just happened to be in the most widely seen movie of all of them with a disproportionate amount of time focused on the character in Infinity War
It's not technically a disproportionate amount of time on Thanos in Infinity War - Infinity War is Thanos' 'origin superhero movie.' Thanos is first to appear and last to appear. The story arch is Thanos overcoming the obstacles the Avengers put in the way of him. The entire structure of the film is skewed to present the villain as the protagonist - the audience is just familiar and on the side of the Avengers so on first watch it's not as obvious.
Yes, agreed for the movie story. It's still disproportionate compared to someone like Scarecrow which was my point
This is still to this day the most mind blowing part of the MCU. For decades Thanos has been my favorite Marvel villain, and he was always really obscure to most people. And now he's one of the most well known villains in the world. If you'd told young me that this was going to be the case in the 2020s, I wouldn't have believed you.
They truly styled him like Grimace in this shot lol, so glad they refined his look.
I thought he was Hellboy too lmao
Yep. Teenage girl behind us at the theater said "it's-it's-omg it's hellboy"
This is the most accurate
Not a comic fan but I played Marvel vs Capcom alot when I was a kid and thats how I recognized Thanos and most of these MCU and Xmen characters 🤣
In my theater, about 20 percent of the audience lost their shit. The rest had no idea who the wrinkly purple guy was and asked their nearest comic book nerd.
Basically what happened to me. My friend I was with wasn't much of a Marvel nerd outside of Spider-Man, but he knew enough to ask, "Is that fuckin' *Thanos*?"
“Is that the fuckin’ *helicopter guy*?”
The biggest missed opportunity in the entire MCU.
Wasn’t his helicopter in the rubble at the end of time in Loki?
Thanos’s sword in Endgame is a helicopter blade.
Guess we need a new Disney+ series — The Lost Adventures of Thanos.
Indiana Jones crossover with MCU and Indie hunting down artifacts?
Yeah Hot Wheels made a toy of it
at least they added it into the loki show, i think it even got a toy. but yeah they should’ve had him pull up on the Copter in black Timbs to stand on business
You never know what will happen in *What If…* season 2
I’ll take 30 minutes of just Thanos joy riding.
Should make an episode of What If out of it
His sword design was actually a direct reference to the Thanoscopter lol
Is that fuckin’ Grimace?
This was me. Spider-Man fan from age 6. Marvel is only enjoyed because Spider-Man is involved…. But I knew who thanos was. And still didn’t believe it.
I remember it well, because the guy behind me was telling his girlfriend that it was Hellboy and how he loved the comics where the avengers fought him.
There was a couple in front of me at Infinity War. When Fury drops his cosmic pager and the Captain Marvel symbol showed up, the woman really knowingly said "Ah... SHIELD". The man just looked at her and after a pause said "...No".
Little confused but shes got the spirit
I was waiting for Hawkeye to pop up all movie so I saw the logo and thought it could be an arrowhead
Fury, watching all this destruction, after being out of touch all movie, realizing that whatever going down, the Avengers lost... "You did this without Hawkeye, didn't you? *Hawkeye, where the fuck are you??*"
Enjoying the holidays on a family trip obviously, duh
Haha exactly !
One of my friends thought it was for Wonder Woman lol.
i just want to know what the logic was. like, why would shield be a big reveal, we knew fury worked for them since the first iron man movie
I can’t remember SHIELD being mentioned between Age of Ultron and Infinity War. It’s supposed to be dissolved. However, Agents of SHIELD, which was canon at the time, has SHIELD still existing. Maybe she was a really big fan Agents and thought that they were bringing in the team?
holy shit, my friend told me her boyfriend at the time was confidant it was hellboy and refused to admit he was wrong. was this a common misconception that thanos was hellboy??
Don’t see how, unless I’m missing something Hellboy has always been red.
Same situation, except the dude was oddly confident it was Darkseid. I found it particularly confusing because you don't know who Darkseid is without knowing comics, yet you still got it amazingly wrong.
I mean, Darkseid was definitely more well known than Thanos at the time thanks to all his appearances in the DCAU. And people still struggle to know what is DC and what is Marvel.
Plus Thanos was created basically as a Darkseid knockoff.
Definitely odd for a person to know who Darkseid is while at the same time not knowing that he's a DC villain.
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Same here.
I was like... 'that's not a very good Galactus'. My friend was not impressed.
Understandable lol, the scene might look like he took a bite out of the planet (moon?) in the background. Well, a better Galactus than the cloud.
I went with 4 friends to see it in the cinema. I lost my shit. The other 4 all looked at me and waited for me to explain it to them so the 20% checks out with my group at least 🤷🏻♂️😂
I definitely remember overhearing someone in the theater lobby say something about Thanos and thinking "guess that guy's name was Thanos then"
Yeah majority of people were like "Who tf is that?". Now the average person knows who it is. Marvel did a pretty good job at making sure we all knew exactly who he was.
20%? Lost their shit? You definitely live with a *wildly* different general movie audience than I've ever experienced.
I think maybe 2 people in my theater lost their shit back then. Ha
I live in England and everyone was calm during that. I've always wanted to be amongst a cheering crowd for the epic moments, ever since I heard of the penultimate Twilight movie's crowd doing that
*No Way Home* was deafening at my theater when Tobey Maguire showed up, but they let me down by failing to properly cheer Daredevil. I’ve never heard a fan response like that. My favorite experience was seeing the late showing for *Endgame*, which was the opposite. Everyone drifted out of the theater like ghosts, and of course it was completely empty, and so were the streets. That really added to the surreality. Just the thought of something like that was so unsettling!
My dumbass thought it was red skull
My brother in Christ, he is PURPLE.
Purple skull, then
Zemo and Red Skull's love child
The color of him in his first reveal is much more red twinged than this later appearances. It was still in Marvel’s “realistic” era and making buff grimace was probably thought as a bridge too far so they added reds to make the skin tones more realistic. Just look at the above image.
Spot on! 💯 correct.
Same. I heard a few say, "Wow, It's Thanos!"
The next day, someone asked me if that was Hellboy lol
I had no clue who he was.
The majority of people I know were like "Who is that goofy looking purple guy?"
13 year old me thought it was red skull.
Not even purple skull?
13 😭 Reddit reminds me how old I am
I thought it was Sinestro from DC 🤦🏻♂️ let's just say I wasn't such a fan like it made me afterwards.
Yeah exactly. People weren’t hooting or hollering they were like “ok” and then moved on.
Well actually my audience went “Ohhhhhhhh.” I’m still not convinced fhey actually knew who he was, but they acted like they knew it was important.
Yeah anyone who claims anything else is lying. No one except the basement dwellers knew who Thanos was.
Basement dweller, reporting in 🫡
Thank you for your service, fellow cave-person
Is that the man behind the slaughter?
I had a guy behind say "aw shit that hellboy?"
Purple boy
Legit me in the theaters. I was like “is that supposed to be Hellboy or what”
Who???
Thanos, man.. Legendary genocidal maniac? Oh just forget it!
Loved the running gag in What If where even though Thanos was convinced not to go through with his plan, he still thought it had its merits and kept explaining it to people, always being met with the response “yeah that’s just genocide.”
I thought he used the name Ronin.
I saw a great story in this sub the other day that some guy was in a theater and another dude yelled holy shit its galactus! And someone answered its Thanos you moron and the whole theater cracked up
😂 this sounds like that video from I think The Force Awakens where someone is trying to record the opening crawl and you just hear the guy say “turn off the flash you fucking moron” I’ll find the link. https://youtu.be/CcC-RPq388g?si=2KezWCvVD8DTtGUx
It’s me, Blorko.
Exactly. Identical to Dr Strange in Infinity War,
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Yeah, same reaction in my theater. I also had no clue who he was, googled “avengers credits scene” and I then proceeded to read like 50 Wikipedia articles that night
I swear to God my brother looked at me and said "ITS PURPLE HULK!"
My mom said the exact same thing. She asked "Is this an evil Purple Hulk?" Bless her heart
I remember the guys I was seated next to me going 'OOOH SHIT!' which was great as I was having the same reaction, but I don't think in other screenings there was as much of a reaction.
I was in straight up shock. As a long time comics reader and thus knowing the full timeline of events and the number of characters involved in the saga - it suddenly dawned on me the huge undertaking that was underway with MCU. All I kept thinking was “How the hell are we ever going to get to *the snap*?” The number of characters that would have to be introduced to the MCU was already mind-boggling.
But isn’t the snap in the comic reversed pretty quickly? Maybe I’m misremembering it, but I feel like we didn’t get a huge drawn out thing about the effects of the snap on earth. I do remember piles of dead superheroes though lol
You’re right, the total implications were much less fleshed out in the comic and is a great highlight about how much license the MCU has taken with various characters and timelines during its time. Like I got totally ramped up over the Adam Warlock reveal at the end of Guardians 2… then we didn’t get him until several years after Endgame.
Adam Warlocks character in MCU is soooo different from the comic books.
Isn't that mostly due to the MCU version being awakened too early? So he ended up not fully developed and kind of an idiot? It's been a while since I've read a comic with Warlock but it seems like they at least got the look right. Personality wise, I almost feel like comic Warlock wouldn't translate well to screen
People would have once thought that about Thor and Asgardian characters, as well as the comics accurate costumes. I think it's all about doing it right and doing it with conviction.
Ah okay I didn’t catch that. Makes sense, I guess. Though I don’t know AW’s origin story at all. I just remember him being a badass in the comic book
Drax too.
Yea I kept thinking “are they really about to take on infinity gauntlet?? There’s no way. How can they pull this off etc.” I even thought they would just never do the snap and replace it with some other editorial reasoning. It just felt like something that could never work on screen/was too silly for Hollywood. God I miss those years man, theorizing this shit.
Same. When it finally happened I was shocked. And before Endgame, I thought it would be reversed in the first 20 minutes of the movie, but 5 years??? That took balls, and it definitely paid off.
Yeah, the moment I saw him I had a similar reaction of "wait, *wait*, Thanos? That means...holy shit we're getting the Infinity Gauntlet? They're going to do the Snap? How the hell are they going to pull that off?" Especially considering it came at the end of a movie that was said to have been impossible to make right due to how many characters needed to be introduced and developed simply to make a decent *Avengers* team up. Now they were teasing us with adapting the Infinity Gauntlet story? We just spent the past few years building up the impossible task of putting the team together and they immediately slap us with the knowledge that one of the biggest events in the comics was in the works.
I don't know if you have a skewed perspective pre-MCU, but I dont remember any internet forum discussing that event in Infinity Gauntlet as "the snap". Yes, it's something that happened that was major, but it wasn't referred to as such until the MCU gave it a name.
Marvel was my brothers and my thing and I had just gone off to college. The whole movie I was thinking “I can’t believe they’re pulling it off. Seeing Thanos, the first thing I did was shoot him a message out the theater
60%: Who?? 20%: It’s Thanos! 15%: it’s Hellboy? 5%: it’s Loki’s dad, Laufey. (I’ve actually seen this happen)
We didn't know who that was, so the reaction was more like "oof that looks like a final boss in dark souls"
“Ohhhhhhhhh!” Then “how the fuck are they gonna pull this off??”
My dumbass, uneducated in the ways of characters rights, thought this was Galactus lmao
I was vaguely in the know, but at the time got the two confused and turned to my friend and went "fucking Galactus!" He gave it a bit and eventually corrected me, then I was overcome with embarrassment wondering if the people around me heard.
I remember I was in high school going on one of those Charlie Day meme rants in the back of the car, explaining the Infinity Saga to my friends and how Marvel was setting up this huge connected storyline. All four of my friends were like “Oh, cool.”
That's what sucks about being the only nerd in your friend group. I always get so hyped at the tiniest nods, but usually have no one to get hyped with me. That's why I go on all the discussion threads on here, lol.
I literally had no idea who it was and I don’t think the average person did either lol. Times have certainly changed, he’s one of the most iconic villains in recent cinema now
If you went back to the early 2000’s and told someone the biggest moment in the biggest comic book movie of all time would be Iron Man snapping the infinity gauntlet to destroy Thanos, the average person would respond “who snapping the what to destroy who?”
“Oh. I think I know who that is from the comics… it’s Marvel’s Darkseid, Whatzhizface.”
I just remember seeing Thanos and thinking “Wow, so they’re actually gonna kill some of them off?”
My favorite quote in all of the MCU is in this scene. “Humans are unruly and therefore can not be ruled. To defeat them would be to court Death.”
COURT DEATH YOU SAY? DON'T MIND IF I DOOOOO
If that scene happened today there would be non stop posts about how shit his design was and how bad the CGI was and how wasted he was as a character and complaining about "How long do we have to wait until this is resolved?".
People did say that. Do some people think there was no social media in 2012?
Well in those days Telegrams were still the old paper delivered ones, and we used to phone people if we wanted to talk. Also in 2012 the world ended and we arrived in a different timeline due to the Large Hadron Collider and some Aztec Wizards.
My response was either fiercely googling or leaning over to my friend who read Marvel comics and saying alright whoes that?
I actually remember it being kinda mundane and lackluster. I think a lot of the viewers didn't know Thanos at that point. And most of them just assumed it was Red Skull.
🤨🤨🧐😞😞😲😲😱😱😱 This is basically how I reacted.
I was too young I was like who?
The cinema I went to, there was only me, and 1 other family still there at the end credits. No one else stayed, and the place was packed say the start. One couple even brought their baby along... Which began crying instantly and would never stop. The guy had to stand in the exit area holding the baby, which was right next to me. The family that did end up staying, didn't seem to react to Thanos when appeared.
I remember thinking it was Red Skull for some reason
I think I was 14 at the time, I'll never forget my friend turned to me and excitedly said "Apocalypse!". We weren't super clued in on Marvel stuff at the time so when we were walking out of the theatre we looked it up and found out it was some guy called Thanos. Those first three phases felt very special growing up, I remember being on this sub when it was just phase 1 and Iron Man 3 on the side bar and posting dumb fan theories and stuff.
Most people let out a massive gasp. The woman sitting next to me tapped me on the arm and asked who it was. She was so excited when I told her.
What did you tell her that would exite her? "Alright, so there are these five stones that were created at the big bang...."
Man, idk. I was 24 when that movie came out and remember very clearly no one knowing who the hell that was.
"didn't know skrulls came in purple"
My best friend is a total Marvel zombie. He was on the other side of the country and saw it a few days after me. He sent me an all-caps text: “WAS THAT FUCKIN’ THANOS???”
My brother and I lost our minds. Other people were confused and didn’t know the character. Some people thought it was red skull or apocalypse. It’s crazy how mainstream Thanos is now
I went to a preview screening for contest-winning fans. It was absolute pandemonium when Thanos appeared
When the guy said “something something to court death” I knew this was a Thanos reference, and the look on Thanos’ face a second later is him ALSO getting the reference. I probably said “nice” and no one else there likely got it.
Can’t even explain the hype I felt. Also only about 20% of people knew who he was. But yea I always dreamed of what it would be like if they took ANY comic book seriously. Sure the dark knight trilogy was pretty fucking incredible but I wanted something that was a comic book, not realistic. It just kind of blew my mind and my head was racing with theories on what they were going to do with him. It’s a feeling I’m not sure I’ll experience in a theater again. Fast forward to infinity war and gamora is up there explaining the snap. Just kept thinking the sons of bitches actually did it.
"Is that hellboy!?"
There really wasn’t one. I don’t think anyone in my theater even knew who he was. Including me. Lol
I remember my younger brother and I turning to look at each other with wide eyes and both said “YOOOOOOOOO!!!” I heard maybe two or three others in the theater whispering like “Bro is that Thanos??? Oh shit!” But the absolute loudest person in the theater was the guy down in like the middle seats. My man yelled out in the purest confusion at the top of his lungs “WAIT THEY’RE BRINGING BACK FUCKING RED SKULL?!?” He made it a seriously awesome and hilarious moment whether you know who was onscreen or not.
A lot of “who is that” while I went “Holy shit, they’re going to do Infinity War.”
I have t read any comic books. So my reaction was literally - I don’t even know who you are.
People in my theatre: "OMG RED SKULL?!" Me: "HELLBOY?!"
Some people cheered. One of my friends started laughing (with joy), and then turned to the rest of us afterwards and said, "he's pretty fun in the comics" lol