Following the release of Tim Burton's Batman, one of the biggest superhero blockbusters ever, we got one of the most ridiculous action figures of all-time. Bob the Goon was based on Tracey Walter's character in the film, who was Joker's main henchmen. This just highlighted how terrible underlings typically are in films. The only henchmen of the Joker even notable enough to get his own figure was Bob the Goon! Bob the Goon, people! With that in mind, superhero films have tried to make henchmen and women in films a bit more notable since then, but often it comes down to nameless Chitauri soldiers or Ultron robots instead of any memorable minions.

Avengers: Infinity War, however, decided to buck that trend by making Thanos' underlings notable figures. They turned to Jonathan Hickman's characters from the Marvel Infinity crossover from a few years back, the Black Order. These were Thanos' generals, who were super strong villains in their own right, adapted to the film to be Thanos' underlings in Infinity War. They definitely outmatched the standards for super villain minions, but they also came with a whole lot of mysteries. We will take a look at 10 mysteries about the Black Order that were solved in Infinity War and 10 mysteries that remain unresolved post-Infinity War.

20 SOLVED: WHAT IS THE BLACK ORDER'S DEAL?

In the comic books, the Black Order are Thanos' generals, his specially-selected group of aliens that he uses to raze planets and demand tribute from the survivors of the planets that they raze. They served alongside Thanos as he decided to set his eyes on Earth again, which holds the Infinity Gems (each one guarded by a member of the Illuminati). In the years since, they have been regrouped a few times by different entities to be basically their new minions. However, in the films, they have a different origin.

One of the major changes that the movies had already made to the back story of Gamora and Nebula is that Nebula, like Gamora, was raised with Gamora as the children of Thanos. Gamora and Nebula are constantly set against each other, a competition that Gamora always won, leading to Nebula losing parts of herself every time she lost. The idea of Thanos having a group of children that he raised to become his elite soldiers was a strong one and it was applied in the film to the Black Order, who now refer to themselves as the children of Thanos. They are just less rambunctious as Gamora and Nebula, of course.

19 UNRESOLVED: WHAT ARE THEIR NAMES?

Avengers: Infinity War was a sprawling film, with a staggering 24 different characters featured on the movie poster alone, and that did not even include any of the Black Order! So naturally, time was at a premium in the film and there was little left for exposition. This has been one of the major criticisms of the film, that few of the characters were given much of an introduction, but it seems pretty clear that the makers of this movie were assuming that people coming to watch it had already been familiar with the characters from the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. There are not a ton of people showing up blind to Avengers: Infinity War, despite what The New Yorker might have you believe. However, an area where it definitely played a bit of a problem was with the names of the Black Order.

In the film, only Proxima Midnight and Ebony Maw actually got their names said out loud; even then, Ebony Maw was not specifically called "Ebony Maw," but rather just "Maw," when Thanos finds out that he was killed in his battle against Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Spider-Man. This is especially strange considering that Black Dwarf was re-named Cull Obsidian in the film and yet we never actually got to hear him called Cull Obsidian!

18 SOLVED: WILL ALL OF THE BLACK ORDER MAKE IT TO THE FILM?

This was one that we were pretty sure of before the movie came out, but you never know with movie twists and cameos being so pervasive these days. So, until the movie came out, we were not sure whether the fifth member of the Black Order, Supergiant, would make an appearance in the movie. As it turned out, she did not. We mentioned before, but Avengers: Infinity War was already packed with a ton of characters, so there was just no room to have all of the Black Order in the movie. Heck, as we also noted, there was not time for the members who did make it to get names!

Supergiant was the telepath of the group. In the end of her original appearance in Infinity, she revealed that she actually was raised since she was a little kid by Thanos. However, she grew up to resent Thanos and actually tried to kill him in Infinity. This was not for the reasons that you might expect (like Thanos being physically abusive to her), but because he was not willing to kill her. She wanted the gift of death and he would never give it to her. She later returned in the comics as a being of pure psionic energy.

17 UNRESOLVED: WHERE WERE THESE GUYS BEFORE?

Loki delivers a monologue in Stark Tower

One of the strange side effects of introducing characters retroactively into continuity is the fact that you suddenly have to explain where character X was at major event Y. For instance, if Blue Marvel has been around in the Marvel Universe since the early days of superheroes, where was he during the many different crises that befell Earth over the years? Those are the odd little things that you have to think of when you add a character after the fact.

That is true in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well. The Black Order was not even invented until 2013, a year after the first Avengers film. Therefore, there was no room for them in that film or in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. That's the real-world reason they were not in those films, but in the cinematic continuity, there has not been a explanation given for why Gamora and Nebula never mentioned that they apparently had a whole bunch of "brothers" and "sisters" as the children of Thanos. In addition, you would think that they would have played a role in Loki's invasion of Earth if they were around at the time.

16 SOLVED: WHO WILL VOICE THE ORDER?

In a world where seemingly every casting decision in a superhero movie is national news, it is shocking that Marvel managed to keep the casting of the Black Order secret until practically the week right before the release of the film (with only one casting coming out before then). The only clues that we had about the voices for the characters is that Marvel said that they were going to go with "interesting" names. That led to people assuming super big movie stars. The most famous to American audiences was Carrie Coon, the Emmy Award-nominated star of The Leftovers and Fargo (Season 3), who voiced Proxima Midnight. Interestingly, The Leftovers is a show about people suddenly vanishing from the Earth, as well.

Irish actor Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, best known for the Irish drama series, Love/Hate, voiced Ebony Maw. Famed stuntman and motion artist, Terry Notary, portrayed Cull Obsidian. Notary also did a lot of the motion capture work for Groot in the film, and he had previously done a lot of motion capture work in superhero movies from The Incredible Hulk to Superman Returns to X2. Finally, Corvus Glaive was voiced by Michael James Shaw, perhaps best known to comic book fans as Papa Midnite on the short-lived Constantine TV series.

15 UNRESOLVED: ARE PROXIMA AND GLAIVE A COUPLE?

Another area where the lack of screen time for the Black Order proved to be an issue is with the character development of the villains. The most notable example of this came with Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive. In the comic books, the two are essentially a married couple (although it is unclear if alien villains actually have the specific practice of marriage in their culture).

In the film, however, they are silent on the relationship between the two. It is likely that there is intended to be a relationship between the two, because they are noticeably paired up together in their fight against the Vision and Scarlet Witch (and the Secret Avengers) in Scotland and Proxima sure seems concerned for Glaive when he gets injured in the battle. However, they are silent on whether their concern is a romantic one or not. The change to their backstory that they are both Thanos' children can mean that their relationship is a brother and sister one and not a romantic one. Although, there certainly is a lot more pathos involved if they are a romantic couple to have them attack one of the only other romantic couples in the film, in Scarlet Witch and Vision!

14 SOLVED: HOW STRONG ARE THEY?

The Black Order serves Thanos in Marvel Comics.

Story-wise, one of the areas where Avengers: Infinity War takes the biggest liberties between the comic books and the film is in the power levels of the Black Order. In the comic books, the Black Order are all, if not quite as powerful as Thanos, along the same lines of strength. That is what made them such an imposing force, as they were basically a whole team made up of near-Thanos-level villains.

In the film, however, for them to be a reasonable challenge for the Avengers, the filmmakers had to tone their strength down a lot. Otherwise, the non-super powered characters would have little chance of being able to do anything with them in the movie. It is still very cool, for instance, to see Proxima Midnight fight three heroes at once, but in the comic books, Black Widow and Okoye would have little chance of hanging with Proxima Midnight. She is the type of villain that whole Avengers teams typically have to fight. Similarly, the scene where Black Widow, Falcon and Captain America are able to make Promixa Midnight and Corvus Glaive run away from the fight seems to suggest much less powerful characters than they are in the comics.

13 UNRESOLVED: WHY DOES GLAIVE'S BLADE AFFECT VISION SO MUCH?

The same basic reason for the filmmakers making the Black Order less powerful in the film is likely the same reason that Vision was knocked out for a loop, too, as the Vision at his strongest is one of the heroes who could basically take care of most of the Black Order singlehandedly (at their current film power levels). Notice how easily Thor was taking bad guys out when he showed up with Stormbreaker? Vision is not quite at that power level, but he is pretty darn close. He has much of the power level as Ultron himself, who was able to take on the entire Avengers team.

Therefore, it is bizarre that Corvus Glaive's ax would take Vision out for as long as it did. Don't get us wrong, it is an extremely powerful weapon, and is able to slice things at the atomic level. However, while that would explain how Glaive was able to cut Vision even when he was phasing (as even in his non-corporeal form, there has to be some sort of atoms holding his body together), it does not explain why Vision could not repair himself from the damage for the rest of the film, besides the general "this way the Vision is out of action" reason.

12 SOLVED: CAN THE ORDER TRAVEL THROUGH THE SANCTUM'S PROTECTIONS?

In Doctor Strange's solo film, there was a big deal made about the multiple Sanctum Sanctorums in the world and how much that they are designed to protect Earth from outside threats. This led to some fans wondering whether the Sanctums would serve as protection from threats from alien worlds. For instance, could the Sanctums have any affect upon Thanos and the Black Order landing on Earth?

Obviously, as we saw in the film, it turns out that the Sanctum Sanctorums are only viable protections from inter-dimensional threats, from bad guys like Dormammu. From simply threats from other planets within this dimension, they had no way of stopping them. This makes sense when you take into consideration that the Chitauri attacked New York pretty easily in the first Avengers film despite Daniel Drumm being stationed at the New York Sanctum Sanctorum. Then again, since the Chitauri did seem to be coming in from a dimensional portal, perhaps that is something that the Ancient One's underlings should have been concerned about back in Avengers. In any event, it did not slow the Black Order down in Infinity War (although Wong made sure to go back to monitoring the Sanctum during the battle, in case other villains chose this moment to attack).

11 UNRESOLVED: WHY DIDN'T MAW TURN STRANGE?

In terms of adapting the comic book appearances of the Black Order, only one or two moments really got translated to the screen with any specficity -- the Cull Obsidian moment where Black Panther punched him into the ground stood out, for instance. However, one of the moments that got translated pretty well was Ebony Maw's torture of Doctor Strange. As noted earlier, in the Infinity crossover, the members of the Black Order were each assigned members of the Illuminati so that they could get their Infinity Gems, and Maw drew the assignment of Doctor Strange.

Maw then put Strange through a series of psychological tortures that ended up with Doctor Strange being brainwashed by Ebony Maw. That was what was surprising in the film, then, when Maw needed to have Strange's permission to access the Time Stone that they did not take that same approach when Maw was otherwise torturing him in a lot of the same visual ways that he did in the comic, though using his MCU telekinesis rather than the power of persuasion he has in the comics. In other words, if they were going to follow the comic as closely as they did, it was curious why they didn't go all the way and have Maw at least temporarily turn Strange against his compatriots.

10 SOLVED: WILL THEY BE LOYAL TO THANOS?

Another aspect of Ebony Maw's torture of Doctor Strange in Infinity is the fact that Maw reveals in that same sequence that he is not really loyal to Thanos. As he tells the tortured Strange, he wants what Thanos wants. In the end of Infinity, Ebony Maw succeeds in breaking up the Black Order by turning on Thanos and instead teaming up with Thanos' only living biological child, the Inhuman known as Thane. Thane and Maw turn the tables on Thanos and the other surviving members of the Black Order, and trap them.

Therefore, fans of the comics were likely curious as to see what kind of loyalty that the Black Order owed Thanos in the film; as it turned out, they were a lot more loyal to Thanos in the MCU than they were in the comics. A lot of that likely has to do with the fact that they are his children. You could see it in the voice of Ebony Maw when he spoke of the fear of disappointing Thanos that these are people who have feared him for many years and the wrath that he could bring down upon them if they disappointed him. They were too scared of him to think of betraying him.

9 UNRESOLVED: WHAT HAPPENED TO CULL OBSIDIAN'S HAND?

With the sheer length of Avengers: Infinity War (nearly three hours), it is clear that a lot of the film had to be edited out just to make it even remotely bearable, length-wise. We've already established that one of the things we lost from the film was scenes that introduced the members of the Black Order. Likely, another cut scene was one explaining exactly how Cull Obsidian got another hand, but all we saw before his throwdown in Wakanda was him acknowledging (by way of flexing his new metal fingers) that he did have a new prosthetic.

Early in the film, Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw take on Doctor Strange, Iron Man and Spider-Man in New York City. The villains initially tried to wrest the Time Stone from Strange, before Ebony Maw decides to instead capture and torture the magician until he gives it up. In the battle, Cull Obsidian was teleported away by Wong and the teleportation ring collapses around the villain's arm, cutting it off. Later, though, Cull Obsidian shows up in battle with two arms. There is no explanation in the movie as to where he got another arm. It is probably a cybernetic replacement, but that's never explained in the film at all.

8 SOLVED: THE END OF THOR: RAGNAROK

The sequencing in the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe can be very confusing at times. This is based on the fact that the scenes shown in the post-credits sequences don't always follow in a chronological order. In other words, when we see Strange meet Thor at the end of Doctor Strange, we don't realize that the scene takes place in the middle of Thor: Ragnarok. Similarly, the scene at the end of Thor: Ragnarok was confusing, considering that people knew that Thor was going to run into the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Therefore, when a giant spaceship shows up on the Asgardian vessel at the end of Thor: Ragnarok (where Thor has just been made the king of Asgard), it is unclear who that was, exactly. Was it the Guardians? Was it the Black Order? Was it someone else entirely? However, the opening scene of Infinity War makes it clear that the giant ship was, in fact, the Thanos and the Black Order attacking the Asgardians. This, of course, is awful news for the innocent Asgardians, who thought that things couldn't get any worse than seeing Asgard be destroyed by Surtur, or seeing a lot of their loved ones killed by Hela.

7 UNRESOLVED: HOW DID THE OTHER ASGARDIANS SURVIVE?

There were a number of major characters from the end of Thor: Ragnarok who seemingly did not show up at the beginning of Infinity War, including Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie and Taika Waititi's Korg. This led fans to wonder whether these characters were essentially killed off-screen. Eagle-eyed viewers were scouring the bodies on the floor of the beginning of the film to see if they could find any characters that they recognized. However, they were not there.

The answer is likely referenced later in the film when someone notes that half of the Asgardians were killed. You see, Thanos' deal throughout the film is that he tries to bring balance to the universe by killing half of the people on each planet that he comes across. It appears that he did the same thing here. The problem, though, is that the Black Order destroy the ship after they get the Space Stone from Loki. So how, exactly, did they let the other half of the Asgardians survive? Did they lend them a ship? It is a rather confusing situation to find themselves in, but at least it means Valkyrie and Korg are still alive (and probably Miek, as well).

6 SOLVED: WHICH STONES DID THEY FIND ALREADY?

A lingering mystery coming into Avengers: Infinity War is exactly how far along Thanos would be on his quest for the Infinity Stones. We got the answer fairly early when we learned that Thanos already had the Power Stone and was just now adding the Space Stone. The fact that Thanos had the Power Stone meant that he and the Black Order had razed Xandar -- home of the Nova Corps -- to retrieve it from under their guard.

This, of course, might have solved the problem of where they got the Power Stone, but it does not explain what happened the Nova Corps. Did our old favorites from the first Guardians of the Galaxy film make it out alive, like John C. Reilly's Rhomann Dey or Glenn Close's Irani Rael? Meanwhile, how did the Black Order defeat the Nova Corps, exactly? They haven't exactly shown themselves to be all that  powerful, all things considered. Then again, with their ships filled with Outriders, perhaps it was not a matter where the Black Order had to be all that impressive themselves, so long as they were carrying with them an army of feral monster-like aliens. Either way, Scenic Xandar is probably not so scenic anymore.

5 UNRESOLVED: IS EBONY MAW REALLY DEAD?

Ebony Maw hushing Doctor Strange in Avengers

One of the areas where not spending a lot of time on the characters in Avengers: Infinity War has an impact on the Black Order is the fact that we really don't know what the capabilities of all of its members are. We know that they are a lot less powerful than they are in the comic books, but what does that mean in certain contexts? For instance, when we saw Ebony Maw sucked out of Thanos' ship as part of Spider-Man's Aliens-inspired plan, we know that he could not keep himself from being pulled out of the hole in the ship. But what else do we know?

Earlier in the movie, Thor survived an explosion that destroyed the Asgardian ship and managed to keep himself alive in outer space until the Guardians of the Galaxy were able to find him. So it is possible to survive in outer space, depending on who you're talking about? Sure, Thor is a god, but for all we know, Ebony Maw is the type of person that could survive in the vacuum of space. So we can't count Ebony Maw out just yet... although it certainly did not look good for him, especially because who even knows where in space he is!

4 SOLVED: WHY WERE THEY IN WAKANDA?

The trailers for Avengers: Infinity War made it pretty clear about one thing: there was going to be one epic battle in Wakanda and, naturally, the Black Order were going to be involved in this battle. The question that was on everyone's mind, however, was why everyone was in Wakanda for the great battle. The most common theory involved the idea that the Soul Stone, the most mysterious of all of the Stones, must have have been hidden in Wakanda somewhere.

However, as it turned out, it was the fact that the Avengers came to Wakanda to have Black Panther's sister, Shuri, operate on the Vision so that they could safely remove the Mind Stone from his body so that Scarlet Witch could destroy it. In other words, the Wakanda battlefield was a coincidental backdrop in the grand scheme of the film. Of course, in reality, the battle taking place on Wakanda owes its origins to the comics, where the Black Order invaded Wakanda due to Black Panther possessing one of the Infinity Gems. Just like in the movie, by the way, Black Panther was able to handle Black Dwarf (Cull Obsidian's comic book name) just fine when he tried to invade Black Panther's home.

3 UNRESOLVED: IS CORVUS GLAIVE DEAD?

Yet another area where the power level of one of the Black Order is so ill-defined that it is difficult to tell where the character stands at the end of the film is whether Corvus Glaive was actually killed by the Vision impaling him on his own blade. You see, Corvus Glaive's blade is an especially powerful weapon. Not just the aforementioned ability to cut things at the atomic level, but specifically the fact that the blade and Glaive have a symbiotic relationship with each other.

So long as his blade is intact, Glaive literally cannot be killed. It certainly appears as though the blade is intact in the movie, so it would seem to suggest that Glaive survived the Vision's attack. However, that assumes that his power levels are the same in the film as in the comics, and as we have already seen, that is not the case for most of the members of the Black Order. So it might just be that Corvus Glaive's connection to his blade is a whole different story in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it does not need to be destroyed for him to die. We simply do not have enough information to come up with a good answer to this question.

2 SOLVED: HOW MUCH DOES THANOS TRUST THEM?

We already know that the relationship between Thanos and the Black Order is such that he does not have to worry about their loyalty. Unlike his daughters, Nebula and Gamora, it is clear to Thanos that by this point in time, none of the Black Order is rebellious enough to break free from him or try to betray him. So he knows that he has their complete loyalty. This opens up the question, however, of whether that loyalty is reciprocated or not.

As it turned out in the film, Thanos does seem to trust his Black Order... to a point. He gives them total freedom to come up with a way to take the Time Stone from Doctor Strange and the Mind Stone from the Vision. However, in both instances, it ended up coming down to Thanos himself getting the job done (echoing his Post-Credits exclamation a while back: "I guess I'll have to do it myself"), which would suggest that Thanos felt it was a very good chance that they would fail in their missions. It does seem, though, as if he trusted them to at least give them the full responsibility for taking the first crack at the problem.

1 UNRESOLVED: WILL THEY BE PART OF THE FUTURE?

Coming into Avengers: Infinity War, it was an open question of whether the Black Order would continue to be Thanos' underlings for both this first movie and also for what ever the next Avengers movie is called. Well, in this film, pretty much every member of the Black Order is killed. Ebony Maw got sucked into space, Cull Obsidian got torn apart by a Wakandan force field, Proxima Midnight was killed by the Scarlet Witch and Corvus Glaive got impaled by his own blade. That would seem to show that they are not going to be part of the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, right?

However, when you are dealing with a guy who just made half of the universe disappear in an instant, nothing is impossible. In the comic books, the Black Order have been killed and then brought back to life a couple of times, so it is possible that they might be resurrected by Thanos in the next movie to serve as his underlings once more. The issue is that it seems like Thanos might have blown his Infinity Gauntlet out by using it on something as universal as wiping out half the universe's population, so he might not have the ability to bring them back any more.