The Comic Book Easter Eggs in Avengers: Endgame Revealed

Now that Avengers: Endgame is available for digital download, there’s been a bunch of fresh material thanks to the bonus features. Bloopers? Check. A glimpse at Robert Downey Jr.’s screentest to nab the role of Tony Stark in 2008’s Iron Man? Yes. How the Endgame team created Chunky Thor? Yup. And now Marvel has released a brand new video revealing some of the comic book Easter eggs that were sprinkled throughout Endgame‘s 3-hour runtime.

[Spoilers ahead!]

In the video, This Week in Marvel‘s Ryan Penagos speaks with VFX supervisor Dan DeLeeuw about some of those Easter eggs. Now if you’re a true comic book aficionado, perhaps you caught some of these while you saw the film. Not us. We were not aware, for example, that “Secret Wars #4” inspired the moment in Endgame when Hulk literally help up the Earth to save his fellow Avengers. This moment during the chaotic battle with Thanos at the end of the film was pulled directly from the pages of that comic. DeLeeuw explains that before he starts working on a new Avengers film, he’ll go through the comics and make a folder of all the panels he likes.

One of the film’s most iconic scenes is when Captain America wields Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. This, it turns out, has happened a few times in the comics. DeLeeuw says that the moment was all but guaranteed after the scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron when several Avengers, Cap included, try and fail to lift Mjolnir. Yet Cap has wielded Thor’s mighty hammer many times in the pages of the comics.

Penagos and DeLeeuw also single out one of the film’s funniest moments; when Cap says “Hail Hydra” on an elevator packed with bad guys in order to walk off with the Tesseract. This, too, came straight from the comics. As did the time-traveling plot which allowed to Cap fight Cap. Apparently, he’s fought himself a few times on the page.

Another epic moment that was pulled from the comics was when Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts arrives during the Battle of Upstate New York in her full Rescue armor. Watching Iron Man and Rescue fight side-by-side, (and back-to-back) was first glimpsed on the page.

“You do a deep dive and then you find the pieces that are going to play the best for you,” DeLeeuw says. It seems that Endgame had a whole bunch of pieces that played for the filmmakers.

Avengers: Endgame has one more release date to go—it arrives on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on August 13th.

Check out the video here:

Featured image: Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: ENDGAME. L to R: Captain America (Chris Evans) in b/g Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman). Photo: Film Frame. ©Marvel Studios 2019