40 Fun Facts About Thanos

Which pop star appears as Eros, the brother of Thanos, in a mid-credits scene of Marvel's Eternals?

Harry Styles had been on director Chloé Zhao's radar since his role in the war film Dunkirk. In the comics, Eros is a carefree adventurer who has fought his brother alongside the Avengers.

On which website did a Thanos fan forum ban half of its own members to copy the villain's snap?

Reddit staff approved the random purge of over 300,000 accounts in July 2018, the largest ban the site had ever carried out. One of the directors of Avengers: Infinity War was among those thrown out.

Which Avenger uses the Infinity Stones to turn Thanos and his army to dust in Avengers: Endgame?

Iron Man pays for the snap with his life, ending the villain where he began: Thanos made his comic-book debut in a 1973 issue of The Invincible Iron Man.

In The Infinity Gauntlet comic, Thanos wipes out half the universe to woo the embodiment of what?

Death, known in the comics as Mistress Death, still rejects him after the snap. The films dropped her and gave Thanos a population-control motive instead.

In a 2019 Simpsons couch gag, which family member does Thanos spare when he snaps the rest away?

Maggie is the only Simpson left after Thanos takes the family's spot on the couch and uses the Gauntlet on the rest. The gag opened the season 30 episode The Girl on the Bus.

Which actor, famous since his youth for The Goonies, took over the role of Thanos in 2014?

Josh Brolin signed a multi-film deal and later shot Infinity War and Endgame back-to-back, performing the villain through motion capture.

Which website hid a clickable Thanos Gauntlet that made half the page vanish in 2019?

Google marked the release of Avengers: Endgame with a small Gauntlet that snapped its fingers when clicked, then made half the search results disappear. The icon's Time Stone could undo it.

Which online shooter let whoever grabbed the Gauntlet become Thanos in a limited-time 2018 mode?

Fortnite got the crossover because the directors of Avengers: Infinity War were fans who played it during breaks in production. The Gauntlet dropped onto the island at random.

Which Game of Thrones star plays Eitri, who forged the Infinity Gauntlet for Thanos?

Peter Dinklage plays Eitri as a giant in Avengers: Infinity War, because the Dwarves of the forge world Nidavellir are gigantic. Thanos forced them to make the Gauntlet that holds the Stones.

Which Avenger beheads Thanos early in Avengers: Endgame, about three weeks after the snap?

Thor strikes in a rage once Thanos reveals he has destroyed the Stones so the snap can never be undone. The screenwriters killed the villain early at a producer's suggestion.

Whom does Thanos tearfully sacrifice to win the Soul Stone in Avengers: Infinity War?

Gamora is the adopted daughter Thanos considers his favourite, and the Soul Stone can only be won by giving up a loved one. The filmmakers built his story on that father-daughter bond.

In which fictional country does Thanos snap his fingers at the end of Avengers: Infinity War?

Wakanda is where the Avengers make their stand, hoping its scientists can lift the Mind Stone out of Vision before Thanos arrives. He takes it anyway and completes the Gauntlet.

Which Avenger does Thanos beat in a bare-knuckle fight at the start of Avengers: Infinity War?

Hulk's defeat shows that Thanos is a skilled hand-to-hand fighter even without the Stones. A dying Asgardian then sends the loser to Earth, where he warns of the invasion to come.

Which sorcerer hands Thanos the Time Stone on Titan to save the life of a fellow hero?

Doctor Strange had already used the Stone to view millions of possible futures, seeing only one in which the Avengers win.

Which hero ruins the plan to pull the Gauntlet off Thanos on Titan by attacking him in a rage?

Star-Lord lashes out in grief just as his allies have Thanos pinned and the Gauntlet almost off his hand. The villain breaks free and overpowers them all.

In Marvel Comics, as in real astronomy, Thanos's birthplace Titan is a moon of which planet?

Saturn's moon houses a colony of Eternals in the comics, and Thanos was born there to two of them. The films turned Titan into a doomed planet instead.

Thanos's design was bulked up to resemble which DC Comics villain from Jack Kirby's New Gods?

Darkseid became the model when editor Roy Thomas saw a thinner early sketch and said that anyone stealing a New God should at least take the really good one.

Which Marvel heroine beat Thanos with only her sidekick Tippy-Toe for help in a Christmas special?

Squirrel Girl's victory is played as a joke, and the all-seeing Watcher steps in to confirm she beat the real Thanos and not a clone. Her writer made a running gag of her toppling Marvel's biggest villains.

In Deadpool 2, which character is mockingly called Thanos because one actor plays both roles?

Cable, a time-travelling soldier, reached American cinemas three weeks after Avengers: Infinity War, so one star played two Marvel heavies in a single spring.

In Spider-Man: Far From Home, what name is given to the five years when Thanos's victims were gone?

The Blip caught on: later Marvel series such as WandaVision and Hawkeye use it for both the vanishing and the return, though a tie-in novel had called the event the Decimation.

On which barren planet does Thanos find the Soul Stone, kept by an old Captain America villain?

Vormir's shrine had been found years earlier by one of Thanos's own agents, who destroyed the map and lied to him about it. He was never fooled.

Which Asgardian fakes loyalty to Thanos, then dies trying to stab him, in Avengers: Infinity War?

Loki had just surrendered the Space Stone to save his brother's life. His actor said the scene was there to show how powerful Thanos is before the heroes ever face him.

Which alien army does Thanos lend out for the invasion of New York in the 2012 film The Avengers?

The Chitauri came with a sceptre that secretly held the Mind Stone, so Thanos gave away one Infinity Stone in a failed bid to win another.

Which hero nearly kills Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, until he orders his own ship to open fire?

Scarlet Witch is avenging Vision, yet this Thanos has arrived from 2014 and has never met her. He saves himself by ordering his warship to rain missiles on the battlefield.

On which mining colony, built inside a giant severed head, does Thanos seize the Reality Stone?

Knowhere is the severed head of an ancient Celestial and home to the Collector's museum. By the time the heroes get there, Thanos already has the Stone.

Which future Guardian of the Galaxy was created in the comics purely to kill Thanos?

Drax began as Arthur Douglas, a human whose car Thanos attacked; the entity Kronos put his spirit in a powerful new body. Both characters debuted in the same 1973 comic.

Which writer-artist dreamed up Thanos in a college psychology class before his 1973 comic debut?

Jim Starlin squeezed the character into the one issue he had been offered, doubting his comics career would last more than a few weeks. He was still writing Thanos stories four decades later.

The name Thanos echoes Thanatos, a self-destructive drive described by which psychoanalyst?

Sigmund Freud set this drive against Eros, his name for the instinct toward life. In the comics, Eros is also the name of Thanos's fun-loving brother.

Thanos looks unlike his fellow Eternals because he carries the gene of which monstrous cousin race?

The Deviants gave Thanos a look that so shocked his own mother that she tried to kill him, until his father stopped her.

In The Infinity Gauntlet comic, which self-declared granddaughter of Thanos steals the Gauntlet?

Nebula takes it while Thanos has left his body behind to become one with the cosmos, then banishes him to drift through space. He ends up helping the heroes win it back.

Which lab-made hero emerges from the Soul Gem to turn Thanos to stone in a 1970s comic saga?

Adam Warlock had been killed by Thanos earlier in the same story, so the blow comes from beyond the grave. The two later became uneasy allies.

At the end of the comic The Infinity Gauntlet, the defeated Thanos is found living quietly as what?

A farmer on an unnamed planet is what Thanos becomes, saying he has given up his quest for power. The films echoed the idea by retiring him to a green planet called the Garden.

The MCU's Thanos actor modelled him on Marlon Brando's rogue colonel in which Vietnam War film?

Apocalypse Now gave him Colonel Kurtz, whom he described as elusive and insane, yet a man whose words make sense and sound poetic.

Who stood in for Thanos on the Avengers: Endgame set, wearing a cardboard cut-out of his head?

Joe Russo, one of the film's two directors, filled in for a few scenes when the star was unavailable, dressed in his ordinary clothes under the cardboard headpiece.

Which actor was the first to play Thanos in live action, in a brief cameo in the 2012 film The Avengers?

Damion Poitier thought he had been hired to play a shape-shifting Skrull and learned his real role only in the make-up chair. The part was recast two years later.

Which vehicle bearing Thanos's name lies among the comic-book junk of the Void in a Marvel series?

A helicopter called the Thanos-Copter sits in the Void beside other comic-book in-jokes, including the giant head of the Living Tribunal.

In the 1998 Silver Surfer cartoon, which figure does Thanos serve because of broadcast rules?

Lady Chaos replaced his comic-book love interest to satisfy Fox's broadcast standards. The same series recast another comics hero as an alien super-soldier bred to fight the Kree.

In the 2013 comic event Infinity, Thanos invades Earth to find and kill which secret son?

Thane is half Eternal and half Inhuman, fathered in secret by a villain who had already murdered his other children. The grim demand Thanos made of the Inhumans was a cover for the hunt.

In The Infinity Gauntlet comic, which demon advises Thanos while plotting to steal the Gauntlet?

Mephisto nearly brings Thanos down with advice alone, persuading him to limit his own power in battle to prove his devotion to the woman he loves.

Before he chased the Infinity Gems, Thanos came to Earth in his 1970s debut storyline seeking which object?

The Cosmic Cube made Thanos omnipotent, but he then discarded it, and the Kree hero Captain Marvel defeated him by destroying it.