[Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame below.]
Avengers: Endgame did exactly what it was meant to, closing the Infinity Saga and bringing our favorite heroes together one last time while making a stupid amount of money. And, at a whopping three hours, it made ample room for a ton of Easter eggs, some you probably caught and some you definitely didn’t.
Mr Sunday Movies, a channel focusing on trailers, deleted scenes, theories, and Easter eggs in film, posted an 18-minute video on every reference and minute detail he could find in Endgame. Of the countless mentioned, one of the biggest ones is that hammer-clanging sound that replaced Marvel’s customary post-credits scene. Endgame’s been advertised as not having a stinger, but it’s worth sticking around—as the video states, the sound echoes Tony Stark when he’s making his initial Iron Man suit in the first Iron Man film. The screen also shows the Marvel Studios logo, so it’s a very fitting tribute to the now-deceased Tony Stark (R.I.P.), the one that started it all back in 2008. The video does state that it could represent a rebuilding of sorts, possibly signaling a comeback of some kind for Stark (possibly in A.I. form), while other online theorists connect it to the film’s time travel motifs.
Speaking of time travel, Mr Sunday Movies does a pretty good job of breaking it all down while also recalling a moment in the film when the characters drop pop cultural references to time travel. One of the movies mentioned is Hot Tub Time Machine, which is of note due to it starring a current MCU actor, Sebastian Stan, otherwise known as the Winter Soldier. As Mashable thoroughly outlines, does this mean the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its heroes coexist in a universe with their actor counterparts? Are they all super nonchalant about having doppelgängers out there?
There’s plenty of other Easter eggs to dig into in the clip. There’s one about the “Nuff Said” bumper sticker on Stan Lee’s car during his cameo, another on how Ken Jeong and Yvette Nicole Brown’s cameos harken back to the Russo brothers’ time on Community, and yet another on Bruce Banner eating a Hulk-themed Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor. It’s a lot to take in, but if you’re capable of swallowing three dense hours of mind-bending superhero lore, you’re more than equipped for this.