With the help of his adopted children, Thanos fights against the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and their allies, in the Infinity War, succeeds in assembling the Stones, and disintegrates half of all life in the universe in an event that is known as the Decimation.

After escaping to the Garden and destroying the Stones, he is found and confronted by the surviving Avengers, and promptly killed by Thor once he reveals that his act is irreversible.

[5][6][3] He forges alliances with the Other and Ronan the Accuser, and adopts orphan children from planets he invades, including Gamora and Nebula, considering the former to be his favorite.

[6] In 2015, Thanos arrives on Nidavellir and forces the native Dwarves to forge the Infinity Gauntlet to hold all six Stones,[3][7] planning to collect them himself.

[3] Arriving on Titan expecting to meet with one of his children, Thanos encounters Stephen Strange and learns his child is dead.

[3] Thanos then teleports to Wakanda on Earth and encounters resistance from the Avengers - Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, James Rhodes, and Natasha Romanoff -, Bucky Barnes, T'Challa, and Groot.

[9] Thanos's actions have a universal impact, with the surviving Avengers working to mitigate the damage until undoing the Blip five years later in 2023.

[10] Ajak, leader of the Eternals, informs Ikaris that the Blip delayed an apocalyptic event called the Emergence, saving many planets from destruction.

In an alternate reality, Star-Lord T'Challa convinces Thanos to join the Ravagers by persuading him there are other ways to preserve resources.

[16] Jim Starlin conceived Thanos during a college psychology course and introduced him as a villain in The Invincible Iron Man #55 (February 1973).

The character possesses abilities common to the Eternals, and is able to demonstrate invulnerability and superhuman strength, speed, and stamina, among other qualities.

[32] Ironically, Whedon found Thanos the hardest character to write due to being the least relatable, suggesting his cameo appearance as a "lark".

Under the impression he would play Super-Skrull due to rumors that the film would include the Skrulls, Poitier was first informed of his true role while getting makeup applied and his face sculpted, as Marvel Studios was secretive about his part to avoid spoiler leaks.

[38] Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely stated that Thanos' previous appearances in the franchise helped legitimize him as a threat prior to Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

[43] Despite leading the cast in screen time in Infinity War[44] and being considered the main character of the film by many, Thanos had a secondary role in Avengers: Endgame (2019).

McFeely explained "we had to give ourselves permission to backseat the villain [...] You're rolling around in the loss and the time heist, and you think it's sort of Avengers against nature".

"[52] The Russos felt that the necessary time to introduce Death would be better spent on Thanos and the film's already large cast, with Anthony Russo expressing his conviction that adding a character whom the audience did not know about and having to explain her backstory with Thanos so the audience would care about her and find her interesting did not help to carry forward the story as it had been set out.

Whedon enjoyed the approach the writers and Russos took in Infinity War, giving Thanos "an actual perspective and [making] him feel righteous to himself", since the Death storyline would not necessarily translate well.

[61] The design of Thanos took into account the versions that appeared in previous films but were adjusted more towards Brolin's features, which also helped with matching his performance to the digital character.

However, this changed in Phase Three with well-received villains such as Killmonger and Vulture, culminating in Thanos, whose "repudiation of the MCU's narrative worship of its heroes creates a deep uncertainty in our expectation that follows through each encounter toward the inevitable, horrifying conclusion".

As a result, Brolin's performance almost makes Thanos seem likable or reasonable, at least until "the utter horror" of him accomplishing his goal sets in.

[68] Similarly, The Washington Post declared Thanos Marvel's most compelling villain due to his "deep, reflective intelligence" as well as his "profound adherence to his belief system".

[65] Some publications criticized Thanos' portrayal in Endgame, feeling that the 2014 variant of him was more openly villainous than the characterization established in Infinity War, and saying that he ended up "swapping his unusual plan of balancing the population with a less evocative idea of destroying then reforming the galaxy".

[79] Screen Rant felt that once Thanos learns of the Avengers' plot to reverse what his older self had done, he "regresses by falling back upon a one-dimensional aim to just destroy the universe wholesale", which made him seem more like a "generic big bad" in the film.

The reviewer argued that Thanos' lack of history with the Avengers resulted in the nuances and connections being lost, notably when he is confronted by Maximoff after having killed her lover, Vision,[3] but which in 2014 had not yet occurred in his life.

[82][83] One Reddit user who participated described the ban as embodying "the spirit of the Internet" with people "banding together, en masse, around something relatively meaningless but somehow decidedly awesome and hilarious".

[86] After the film was released and proved the theory wrong, Christopher Markus revealed that due to the strong nature of the Titans, Ant-Man would have been unable to expand himself as he would be crushed by the walls of Thanos' rectum.

[45] In 2022, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed that a character introduced in season three, Termite, was a parody of Ant-Man, and his actions of killing people by shrinking to enter their bodies and expanding was partially inspired by "Thanus".

The researchers found that on a macroscopic level, someone would need a large amount of energy to control matter, similarly to the Stones.

The researchers were able to make billions of colloidal particles with changeable responsiveness, patchiness, shapes, and sizes by manipulating them using triggers, including temperature, pH, and light.