What Did It Cost? Everything — Close-up of Thanos with the subtitle 'Everything.' from Avengers: Infinity War

What Did It Cost? Everything

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Published October 5, 2026

What Did It Cost? Everything is an exploitable image macro pulled from Avengers: Infinity War, in which Thanos tells a young Gamora the price of his victory. Starting in May 2018, Redditors began relabeling the two characters and swapping the dialogue to describe the costs of grinding gacha games, hoarding skins, and other obsessive hobbies, turning the solemn Soul Realm exchange into one of the most reposted Infinity War reaction formats.

thanos memes exploitable templates dialogue edit memes marvel object labeling

Overview

What Did It Cost? Everything is an object-labeling image macro built on a two-panel screenshot from Avengers: Infinity War. The top panel shows young Gamora asking "What did it cost?" and the bottom panel shows a weary Thanos answering "Everything"4. Editors either rewrite both lines so the exchange describes a different kind of sacrifice, or they slap labels directly onto Gamora and Thanos so the two characters stand in for a person and the thing they lost everything to.

The joke works because the film plays the scene completely straight, with Thanos admitting the Soul Stone cost him his daughter. Dropping that gravitas onto something trivial, a mobile game pull, a Wikipedia donation, a video game character grind, flips the moment into deadpan comedy. The relabeled Thanos is almost always the villain of the setup: the thing demanding time, money, or sanity from the labeled Gamora.

Origin & Background

Platform
Avengers: Infinity War (source) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2018

The source scene comes from Avengers: Infinity War, released April 27, 2018, in which Thanos meets a child version of Gamora inside the Soul Realm after using the Soul Stone4. Marvel Studios produced the film; the meme format itself was created by anonymous Reddit users rather than anyone connected to the movie.

The earliest documented exploitable edit was posted on May 3, 2018, by Redditor jugghound in /r/FireEmblemHeroes, framing the exchange around finally pulling the character Lyn in the gacha game Fire Emblem Heroes; the post picked up more than 1,100 upvotes1. Four days later, on May 7, 2018, Redditor daster96 ran the same template about League of Legends champion Irelia in /r/IreliaMains, drawing over 200 upvotes4.

How It Spread

Through mid-2018 the format kept bouncing between gaming subreddits, where the Thanos/Gamora pairing was an easy fit for jokes about grind, loot boxes, and gacha disappointment1. By the end of the year it had jumped into general-purpose meme feeds, especially /r/dankmemes, where the setup could be aimed at anything from charity prompts to internet habits2.

Two late-2018 and early-2019 /r/dankmemes posts pushed the format past its gaming-niche beginnings. On December 13, 2018, a version riffing on Wikipedia's recurring "please give $3" banner pulled in more than 57,000 upvotes2. On January 12, 2019, another Thanos-labeled entry on the same subreddit cleared 47,000 upvotes3. After that run, the macro settled into the standard Infinity War meme rotation alongside formats like Thanos Impossible and Perfectly Balanced4.

Timeline

2018-04-27

Avengers: Infinity War releases, containing the Soul Realm scene with Thanos and young Gamora that becomes the source image.

2018-05-03

Redditor jugghound posts the earliest documented exploitable edit in /r/FireEmblemHeroes, drawing over 1,100 upvotes.

2018-05-07

Redditor daster96 posts a League of Legends Irelia version in /r/IreliaMains.

2018-12-13

A /r/dankmemes post pairing the format with Wikipedia's $3 donation prompt passes 57,000 upvotes.

2019-01-12

Another /r/dankmemes Thanos labeling post surpasses 47,000 upvotes, cementing the format as an Infinity War staple.

Frequently Asked Questions