About

"A Small Price to Pay for Salvation" is a memorable quote uttered by the character Thanos in the 2018 Marvel superhero film Avengers: Infinity War. Online, people have used a screen capture of Thanos saying the line as a reaction image macro to express sacrifice.

Origin

On April 27th, 2018, the film Avengers: Infinity War was released in the United States. In the film, Thanos (portrayed by Josh Brolin) defends his seemingly malevolent actions by saying, "It's a small price to pay for salvation" (shown below).

Spread

Following the release of the film, people began posting screenshots of the moment online, using the image as a reaction image to various captions about sacrifice. One of the earliest examples was posted on July 9th, 2018 by Redditor ^[1] electric_ocelots who used it as the reaction to thread title "When you post ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ on every post in r/thanosdidnothingwrong in hopes of getting banned" (shown below, left).

Several months later, on January 11th, 2019, Redditor^[2] deathbird37 used it as the reaction to the caption "When Leon is in the shop for 40$" in the /r/Brawlstars subreddit. In about five months, the post received more than 470 points (97% upvoted) and 30 comments (shown below, center).

On May 16th, Redditor^[3] tjf314 posted the meme in the /r/memes subreddit with a joke about the video game Fortnite. Within four days, the post received more than 43,000 points (93% upvoted) and 470 comments (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References