Avengers: Endgame - 13 Best Callbacks To The MCU

While back in the 2012 version of New York, all of which is set during the third act of The Avengers, in his mission to attain the mind stone from Loki's scepter, Cap steps into an elevator full of secret Hydra agents.

In its form, everything about this sequence is deliberately designed to make audiences think of the elevator sequence from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. From the color palette, to the camera placement, to the design of the elevator itself, to the presence of characters like Rumlow and even Rollins. So the audience is primed for a repeat of that iconic scene; to see Cap take all of these people out from within the elevator and take the scepter by force.

Which is what makes it so delightful when instead, the film subverts expectations, with Cap using his brains instead of his brawn. He proceeds to convince the Hydra agents he's actually one of them, having been given direct orders from Senator Pierce to take point on the scepter, by whispering "Hail Hydra".

Not only is this a callback to Gary Shandling's Senator Stern first whispering those words in Winter Soldier, it is also a wonderfully cheeky, in-depth nod to the rather infamous moments from the recent comics, when Cap revealed he had been a Hydra agent for years by saying those exact words.