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Finish Sindri's 'Family Business' favour and you'll walk away with the Shattered Gauntlet of Ages, a relic built from scattered fragments. Fill all three of its enchantment slots and it fires off a purple beam, which is about as subtle a Thanos reference as Santa Monica Studio could get away with.
That brief mid-credits shot of Thanos grabbing the Infinity Gauntlet and grumbling "Fine, I'll do it myself" actually created a small continuity headache down the line. Infinity War later established the real Gauntlet wasn't forged until the dwarf Eitri built it on Nidavellir, and Thor: Ragnarok revealed the one sitting in Odin's vault was a fake all along, so co-director Joe Russo eventually explained this particular scene must be set on Nidavellir itself rather than Asgard.
That gut-punch opening with Hawkeye's family turning to dust was actually written for Infinity War. It got pulled because the editors felt that film was already jumping between too many characters, so it got saved and used to kick off Endgame instead.
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely didn't just sit down one day and bang out Infinity War and Endgame. They started plotting both films years earlier during downtime on the Civil War set, scribbling ideas while the cast was off filming other scenes.
Before either film had a proper screenplay, the writing team had already compiled roughly 60 pages of concepts and possibilities for how the two-part finale could play out. A lot of that never made the cut, but it shows how much was thrown at the wall.
The corridor conversation between Thor and Rocket on Asgard was actually filmed at Durham Cathedral all the way back in April 2017, while the crew was still shooting Infinity War. It's one of the very few Endgame scenes that predates its own production.
