The defining storyline for Thanos is called The Infinity Gauntlet and it's not too out-there to suggest that we're well on our way to seeing a big screen adaptation of it eventually. The villain himself has been teased as far back as the Avengers but his time to shine has been signposted ever since the first Captain America film, where the first of the Infinity Stones appeared as the Tesseract and/or Cosmic Cube, depending on what you wanna call it. It wasn't identified as such then but it definitely is now, and since then we've been introduced to two more of these mysterious stones: the Aether from Thor: The Dark World, and now the purple stone in Guardians Of The Galaxy. So the thing is with these Stones (otherwise called the Infinity Gems) is that they're crazy powerful, which is why the Asgardians elect to keep them separate and why anybody who touches them with their bare hands in Guardians Of The Galaxy gets immediately annihilated - kinda like Raiders Of The Lost Ark again. In the comics there are six of them, coloured green, orange, purple, blue, yellow and red, and they're both super precious and super dangerous. Each Stone has its own property, affording their owners a certain power of the universe. Green allows the user mastery over people's souls (living or dead), orange time, purple space, blue mind control, yellow reality, and red lets you access all power and energy that ever has or will exist. Individually they can cause some damage, but put together? They let you unlock the God Mode of reality. Which means that when a bad dude like Thanos gets his hands on them, he's gonna mess stuff up. He avoids the fate of so many in Guardians Of The Galaxy by affixing the Stones to a glove, previously glimpsed in Thor, the titular Infinity Gauntlet. In the comics he uses this to wipe out half of existence just by clicking his fingers, and only gets brought down by the combined might of every remaining superhero in the universe, including a bunch of space-based cosmic types. Did you enjoy Guardians Of The Galaxy? Spot any other Easter Eggs for our list? Share your finds in the comments thread below.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
