Let's address the elephant in the room. Avengers: Infinity War recently came out. As such, there are going to be some spoilers in here regarding Loki's fate. If you haven't seen the movie and you intend to read this list, don't be surprised if you get a few "minor" plot points spoiled for you. (They're totally not minor.)

Loki, God of Mischief, was introduced to us in the first Thor movie. He was the younger brother of Thor, God of Thunder. Just looking at his dark-haired and slim build let us know Loki was different from the brawny, golden-haired Thor. He relied on cunning and wit instead of strength, and it was nice to have a villain paired with a hero when they both did not have the exact same powers (I'm looking at you, Iron Man and Iron Monger, Hulk and Abomination).

Before Thanos came tromping along into the lives of our favorite Marvel heroes, Loki held the spot as number one villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No one could even compare to Loki. Not only was Loki charismatic, he was understandable. His motives combined subtle qualities that made him feel realistic, even though he was an Asgardian god, and overblown personality aspects, that made him seem larger than life. It's a contradictory combination, but it makes for a wonderful villain. You sympathize with Loki while you simultaneously regard him as the bad guy. That's not always easy to pull off. However, there are some things about Loki that just don't add up. Read on if you're curious about when and where Loki failed to make sense.

25 Chances Of Survival: Abysmal

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Most movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe tend to resolve the plot by the time the credits roll. A bad guy presents a problem, the hero has to fight him, and then the problem is solved. A huge exception now is Avengers: Infinity War. (I'm still reeling from that ending.) The first Thor movie had a solid resolution. Loki's plan to become the next ruler of Asgard was foiled, and he chose to toss himself into the abyss. As later movies in the MCU show, Loki survived his fall, and later appeared as a servant to Thanos and the head of the Chitauri. Loki is powerful for an Asgardian, but we all thought he was a goner when he dropped into the utter blackness below the ruins of the Rainbow Bridge.

Yet somehow, he survived, and it's never explained why or how he made it.

Loki's powerful, but he's not that powerful. Maybe Thanos and his cohorts plucked Loki out from the ether, and that's how he survived. But if they did that, how exactly did they manage it? By the time Infinity War rolled around, we figured out that Thanos was pretty powerful himself. But nothing revealed about Thanos proved to us that he could have rescued Loki. I'm glad that Loki survived his fall, but that doesn't change the fact that his survival makes no sense.

24 A Means To An End

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Loki must have proved himself useful when Thanos found him. Being resourceful, Loki convinced Thanos that he could retrieve the Tesseract for him. S.H.I.E.L.D. had the Tesseract under observation, and they were trying to figure out if they could make weapons from it. (Because that always works out so well.) Unbeknownst to S.H.I.E.L.D., the Tesseract held within it one of the Infinity Stones, the Space Stone. As we all know now, Thanos has a hankering for those Stones. He must have trusted Loki quite a bit to send him to get the Stone. Not only that, but he gave Loki a special scepter with which to acquire the Tesseract. Within the scepter was another Stone, the Mind Stone.

I understand that having a tool as powerful as an Infinity Stone would help Loki achieve his goal, but it seems kind of counterproductive to Thanos' plan to lend him one. Thanos wants all of the Stones, and he just met Loki. Loki is quite literally the God of Mischief. You do not entrust a God of Mischief with something you desperately want to obtain, even if it is for the purpose of obtaining a second thing that you want. Events prove that big, bad Thanos miscalculated. Loki didn't get the Tesseract, and he lost his scepter as well.

23 Guest Of Honor

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After Odin sprang the existence of a sister on Thor and Loki, he peaced out and turned into ethereal dust. Thor and Loki then had to contend with Hela, Goddess of Death, who only wanted to destroy everything that Thor cared about. Thor immediately picks a fight with her and loses. Loki does the smart (though not necessarily noble thing) and opts out of the fight. Thor is thrown away from Earth, travels through space, and lands on the planet of Sakaar. Sakaar is this gladiatorial planet where this snotty Grandmaster pits champions against each other in a fighting pit.

Thor, being a buff and brawny-looking fellow, is slated to be a champion in the pits. He finds out that Loki has made his way onto Sakaar too, and he's been there for weeks. Does Loki help his brother escape when they meet each other? Of course not. He's Loki. He decides to sit back and watch the fight. Thor is delighted to find out he's set to fight the Hulk. Loki, not so much. Last time Loki saw the Hulk, it did not end so well. However, if Loki had been on Sakaar as a guest of the Grandmaster for so long, shouldn't he have known who the Grandmaster's star champion was? Hulk was a famous figure on the planet. People had posters of him in their homes. Loki should not have been shocked.

22 A Warm And Loving Family

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Loki was, for all intents and purposes, raised by Odin and Frigga, both of whom strike me as kind parents. Just look how Thor turned out. He was a spoiled brat, probably because his parents praised him so much. Loki was raised in the same environment, and yet, he turns out so differently than Thor. He ends up being a mischievous little sneak, willing to hurt his sibling and his parents in order to reach his goals. It's reasoned that Loki is the way he is because he felt that he was treated differently because he was adopted. His true heritage is that of the Frost Giants from Jotunheim.

Maybe being part Frost Giant made Loki evil, but when I look at Loki's adoptive family, they seem like nothing but kind people. Odin is the perfect kind of fatherly figure, full of wisdom and generosity. Thor, while a big-headed fool at times, seems like a loving brother. And Frigga, Loki's adoptive mother, seems like the nicest of all of them. She was the one who taught Loki how to use magic. So why does Loki have such a grudge against them? He seems to resent them more than he loves them. It's a constant inner struggle for Loki, whether to give in and accept them or to grow bitter and fight them. I feel like this is a major nature versus nurture debate.

21 Minions

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The action began immediately in the first Avengers movie. The Tesseract that S.H.I.E.L.D. was holding onto becomes active and creates a portal that allows Loki to land on Earth, and the first thing Loki does is take out a room full of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents using blasts from his scepter. Once all the threats are removed from his presence, he decides to create some helpers to assist him with his objective. Still using his scepter, Loki uses its power to mind control some of the humans in the room, specifically Hawkeye and Erik Selvig. Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was also in the room, liable to becoming mind-controlled, but Loki doesn't do it. Why not? As the director, Nick Fury knows a lot of the inner workings of S.H.I.E.L.D.

He would have been a great hypnotized asset.

I mean, don't get me wrong. Just having Hawkeye under his sway allowed Loki to wreak a ton of havoc. But with Nick Fury under his control, Loki would have been a lot more dangerous. Without Nick Fury, the Avengers would not have gotten together. Loki could have won the entire fight if he had just gained control over Nick Fury. But he didn't. Why? Because then there would be no story, I guess.

20 Strange Magic

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Loki learned his cunning brand of magic from his adoptive mother, Frigga. It requires wit and sleight-of-hand tricks. It may not allow Loki to take out dozens of foes in a single stroke, but it allows him to beguile and mystify his opponents. And somehow, with this magic, Loki is able to trick Odin and take over as ruler of Asgard at the end of Thor: The Dark World. But the sucky thing about this isn't that it happened. It's that we didn't get to see it. We always get to see Thor show off with his thunder and his hammer. Why can't we see Loki pull a fast one on the king of Asgard? All we ever see of Loki are his knife throws and his magical parlor tricks.

We want more Loki! How could he have tricked Odin? And once that was done, how could Loki have transported him to Earth unseen, as we find out he did in Thor: Ragnarok? And what's more, how did Loki manage to keep Odin under that spell for around two years? Where is he hiding this kind of magic?! That is clearly some very powerful spell, especially if it worked on Odin ruler of Asgard. Maybe if he had performed that level of magic when he was fighting the Avengers, Loki would have won. Instead, all Loki used against the Avengers was some scepter wielding and illusions.

19 Even The Best Of Plans

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One of Loki's best schemes is seen in the first Thor. Jealous of his big brother's popularity and his bee-line towards the throne of Asgard, Loki subtly arranges it so that Thor displeases their father, Odin, and then Odin invariably casts Thor out. It was so ingeniously done. When you watch the movie now, with the knowledge that Loki intends to achieve this, you can see how masterfully he manipulates Thor. There's just one teensy problem with that. Loki is notorious for having a heightened sense of self-preservation.

He runs from a fight if he does not think he has a likely chance of surviving it.

When Thor suggested going to Jotunheim  to seek revenge for the Jotuns' arrogance (pot meet kettle), Loki went along with him since it was all part of the plan. Jotunheim is a dangerous place; the Frost Giants who live there are no joke. Even though Loki intended to go there and he told a guard that they were going there so that they could be rescued, just being on Jotunheim put Loki's life in peril. What if Loki had perished out there on the cold and frozen wastes of Jotunheim while he was still plotting against Thor? His huge brain and big ideas would have been for nothing. I counted at least five times while watching Thor where Loki could have met his end while fighting the Jotuns.

18 Oh My...

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Loki is known, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in Norse mythology, as the God of Mischief. This is meant in a more literal sense in the mythological stories, but it is a well-known fact that Loki in the MCU is a mischievous character. He embodies cunning and chicanery. It's widely acknowledged that Loki is of Asgard and he has the title of godhood to go with it. How is this possible though, if Loki is part Frost Giant? Loki is Laufey's son, and Laufey is king of the Frost Giants. Are the roles of the gods able to be handed out to anyone? If, let's say, Sif had been adopted by Odin and Frigga, would she have become the Goddess of Mischief? How does one get a godhood in Asgard?

If a Frost Giant in disguise could rise to such a status, is being a god just like landing a really excellent job? Loki's true species is never really delved into again after the first Thor movie. Many of the MCU films just make jokes about his relation to Thor by saying Loki is the misguided adopted brother to the God of Thunder. So is getting deified all part of Asgardian adoption? I have so many questions about this, but I feel like none of them are going to be answered in any upcoming Thor movies. (I don't even know if there will be any upcoming Thor movies.)

17 Looking Hela Fine

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Hela, the Asgardian Goddess of Death, makes her appearance in Thor: Ragnarok. Right off the bat, you can tell she is no one you want to mess with. When she first tangles with Thor, she stops Mjolnir in mid-flight and then breaks Mjolnir into tiny pieces. No one has ever been able to do that before, not even the Hulk. It's no wonder that when Loki saw what Hela could do, he decided to make a hasty retreat. Who wants to get on the bad side of someone who can shatter mystical weapons that were forged in the light of a dying star? I am surprised that Loki retreated away from her.

Usually, I feel like Loki is the kind of guy who approaches threatening figures. He pretends to be on their side all along, only to betray them at a later date. Why did he not try this with Hela? Hela's not averse to having followers. She allows a mercenary Asgardian named Skurge to become her minion. I'm fairly certain she would have allowed Loki to do the same if he had groveled at her feet. But he didn't even try. Nope, instead, Loki saves his grovelling for when he meets Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. Let me just say that I really think he would have had a better chance joining Hela than joining Thanos again.

16 Some Allfather

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Odin has many known aliases. One of his most well-known monikers is Allfather. This name stems from the idea that he is the Father to all of the other gods on Asgard. I don't know how this is possible, since, as we found out earlier, Loki, the God of Mischief, is not his biological son. (Godhoods are given to people like party favors on Asgard.) Odin is the God of Wisdom, which, you would assume, means he is wise. I find some fault with that. Aside from mistakes he's admitted to making in the past, Odin is so unwise when it comes to Loki.

He fails to foresee the mischief that his God of Mischief will get up to.

He could not tell when Loki arranged to have Thor go to Jotunheim and make a mess of things. Odin could not tell that he was the one who had sneaked Frost Giants into Asgard. And he could not prevent Loki from casting a spell on him and smuggling him away to Earth. If Odin is the Allfather he claims to be, then he should really claim responsibility for Loki's actions. He should have put a stop to Loki's evil machinations from the beginning, not let them run rampant. I'd like to think that Odin sees the good in Loki, and has glimpsed the future benefit of having him around Thor. Still, Loki's caused so much trouble, I bet Odin is sitting in Valhalla filled with doubt.

15 More Than Meets The Eye

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Loki has a strange collection of powers that are never fully explained. He can make illusions that appear to be real even though they are incorporeal. He's extremely skilled with a knife, and he can disguise himself so that he's not who he appears to be. In Thor: The Dark World, Loki spends the beginning of the story locked in a prison for his crimes in The Avengers. Even though he can make illusions in this cell, it's protected by magical barriers around the walls so he can't escape. However, when he finds that Frigga, his adoptive mother, was slain by Malekith, Loki expresses his rage by demolishing the furniture in his cell with his mind.

That's right, Loki has telekinesis. If you did not see The Dark World, or if it's been a while since you've seen it, you might have forgotten Loki's ability to move things with his mind. I definitely forgot he had telekinesis because he never uses it when he really needs it. He could have used this telekinesis to grab the Tesseract away from Nick Fury. He could have used his telekinesis to win the fight against Thor on Stark Tower. Seriously, telekinesis could be the strongest power in his arsenal. You don't keep your most powerful weapon in its sheathe when things get dangerous. You pull it out and use it. Gah!

14 The Ultimate Snub

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Loki is not having a good day by the end of Thor. His plan of getting his father's love and respect fails when everything he's done to try and earn it is basically evil, and his father rejects him. (Okay, so Odin did not say he rejected Loki in so many words, but that's the gist of what he meant.) I can understand why Loki might have been feeling pretty down. His brother Thor had won the day again. I think that might be part of the reason Loki has such a dislike for Thor. Thor was always the "winner" in their childhood. If I had to be subjected to Thor's smug face every time he bested me, I'd be a little irked too. And at the end of Thor, Thor has won the final competition; the question of who is going to be the ruler of Asgard was answered.

So at the end of the film, Loki's scheming was for naught and he's now dangling at the edge of a precipice over an eternal abyss. Clearly, Loki is in emotional turmoil. I still would have thought that Loki's sense of self-preservation would be intact. Instead, he chooses to release his hold on life and he lets himself fall into the abyss. All he needed to do to survive was take Thor's hand. I would not have pegged Loki for the kind of guy to throw his life away after one bad situation. But I guess having your whole family essentially disown you is a bit demoralizing.

13 A Fool's End

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Here's the big spoiler from Avengers: Infinity War, so if you still have not seen it yet, now's the time to skip this entry. One of the reasons Loki makes no sense some times is that he is a bundle of contradictions wrapped up in one character. He hates Thor, but he loves Thor. He despises his adoptive father, but he wants his father's attention. One of the biggest discrepancies within his character is that he is supremely clever and yet, he can make the most idiotic decisions. One of those horrible decisions occurs at the beginning of Infinity War. Thanos arrives on the ship that both Thor and Loki are on.

He threatens both of their lives, so Loki thinks to outwit him.

Loki offers Thanos his services, while secretly planning to stab him in the neck with a hidden knife. As soon as I saw that Loki was going to attempt to do this, I wanted to gnash my teeth together and scream at him. Come on, Loki! You should properly fear Thanos after spending some time working for him. He promised Loki he would regret failing him the first time he worked for Thanos. Thanos does not offer second chances. And Loki had just seen Thanos take out the Hulk. A secret knife was never going to do the trick. This attempt on Thanos' life cost Loki his own.

12 Puny Guy

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While still the best villain Marvel has offered us, Loki plays the dastardly bad guy in The Avengers. He does all the usual villain things like making long monologues and going about his work in a roundabout way, so as to allow the good guys time to catch up. He shows a lot of smarts when he runs the heroes around in circles, but he never feels like the awesome threat he could have been. Don't believe me? Look at the final fight in New York City. Loki has one duel with Thor, then he just cruises around with the invading Chitauri army. He doesn't do much. And when he comes face to face with the Hulk?

He doesn't even try to outsmart the green behemoth.

He just yells curses at him, and then gets grabbed by the ankle and smashed around the room. Bruce Banner is an intelligent man. The Hulk? Not so much. Loki knew of the Hulk and his abilities. He even allowed himself to get captured and placed on a helicarrier so that he could goad Banner into transforming into the Hulk, which would then destroy the carrier. Loki knew all of this, and yet he thought screaming at the Hulk was the way to combat him. Honestly, Loki let himself get bested by the Hulk in Avengers. He has no one to blame but himself.

11 A Weeklong Vacation

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The concept of time sometimes decides to go off the grid during Marvel movies. Marvel will eventually need to release a timeline of all the events that have gone on during every film in their universe so that we can keep track of everything that has happened. One question that presents itself occurs during Thor: Ragnarok, when Thor is bested by Hela in a fight and sent to Sakaar, a planet known for being a trash heap and a living space for a gladiatorial fighting ring. When Thor is sold to be a gladiator to the planet's Grandmaster, he finds out that Loki is a guest of the Grandmaster, and has been a guest for about three weeks.

Time took a swing at me there. Loki abandoned the fight between Thor and Hela, I understand that. But how did he end up on Sakaar so much earlier than Thor? Thor appeared to end up on Sakaar almost by accident. Did Loki plan to go to Sakaar? Was it unintentional? I might have missed something while I was watching Ragnarok. Regardless of what I missed, it doesn't explain the time leap that happened between Thor and Loki confronting Hela on Earth and them meeting each other again on Sakaar. (You guys wouldn't happen to know if Marvel really has released an official timeline of their movies yet, would you? After Infinity War, I'm definitely going to need one of those.)

10 The Walls Have Ears

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Odin and Thor grew closer after the events of Thor. During his first movie, Thor was a bit of a brat. I think we can all agree on that. He was cocky about his prowess in a fight, and he had this smug expression on his face that made you want to punch it. I think that was part of the reason people so easily sympathized with Loki over Thor in that film. Thor just felt so unlikable. However, by the end of Thor, Thor has undergone a dramatic change in character. He's nobler, and he cares more deeply for the feelings of others. When we see Thor in Thor: The Dark World, he can have a quiet conversation with his father about the future of Asgard without sounding like an arrogant child.

What's so strange about this conversation isn't just the display of Thor's newfound personality. It's the fact that Loki, locked away in his prison cell, somehow overheard it. At the end of The Dark World, Loki disguises himself as Odin and secretly replaces him. So when Thor has a conversation with "Odin" at the end of the movie, it's actually a conversation with Loki. For some reason, this disguised Loki references that conversation that Odin had had with Thor privately earlier in the movie. How would Loki have been able to know what was being said if he was in prison?

9 Gone Baby Gone

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Loki is the son of Laufey, king of the Frost Giants. Way back when, in the early history of the world, Asgard was at war with the Frost Giants. From the way Odin tells it, it sounds like a long and and arduous battle that lasted for centuries. By the time it was over, Odin was short one eye and Laufey was short one son. When Odin reveals the story of Loki's upbringing to Loki, he just makes it sound like he found an infant Loki on the battlefield and decided to pick him up and take him home.

But there are so many things about this scenario that don't make any sense.

If Loki was Laufey's son, that would make him next in line to be the king of the Frost Giants. I find it hard to believe that Laufey would just leave his child, his heir, lying around in the middle of a battlefield. Secondly, if Loki was just abandoned there, was Odin's reasoning for taking him home to Asgard really related to forming a peace between Asgardians and Frost Giants? Would Laufey have recognized a peace made between his biological son that was raised by his enemy? Would Odin have been okay with a Frost Giant eventually ruling both Jotunheim and Asgard? I understand Loki's own frustrations about Odin's purposes in rearing him. They're inexplicably nonsensical.

8 The Usual Suspect

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I wasn't a huge fan of Thor: The Dark World. The villain felt contrived, which meant his goals also felt contrived. I mean, Malekith the Dark Elf? No one looks at him as an example of a great Marvel villain. And Thor was never really my favorite Avenger. What really made The Dark World marginally enjoyable for me was Loki's involvement in the story. Every time Loki appeared on screen, I sat up a little straighter and paid more attention to what was going on. The dynamics of his personality are so magnetic, they kept my eyes riveted to the screen. So when he got impaled by Kurse (no one remembers Kurse either), it was actually one of those rare moments when a Marvel movie got me in the feels.

Marvel movies are usually about a good time. They're about super-heroes. Their objective is not to make you cry. Their objective is to make you enjoy yourself. Loki's farewell to Thor after he was mortally wounded was just one of those moments that caught me right in the emotions. It ended up being a trick, but I've got to ask, how is that possible? Faking his own demise is totally up Loki's alley. But how could he have faked that? It couldn't have been an illusory image of himself. Thor actually held Loki as he fell, and one of the things Loki has shown us is that his illusions are intangible. So how was that done?

7 Love Me, Daddy

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Let's review Loki's plan in the first Thor movie. First, let some Frost Giants into Asgard in order to ruin Thor's big day. Once Thor's day is ruined, ruin it even further by manipulating him into getting banished. Then, once he's gone, yell at your father about your place in the world so much that he slips into a coma from the stress. Then, let some more Frost Giants into Asgard so you can get rid of them in front of your comatose father so that when he wakes up, everyone will be able to tell him how brave you were. That's it. Loki's grand scheme, even though it eventually involved freezing the Gatekeeper Heimdall, sending a Destroyer to Earth, and lying to his brother about the situation back on Asgard, was all about impressing Odin.

He went to all of that trouble and fuss to accomplish something he could have done simply by being a nice person. I don't know what to believe about this situation. Either Odin was an absolutely terrible father to Loki, constantly making him feel like a lesser being than Thor, or Loki just had no clue what he would actually need to do in order to impress his dad. Whatever way you look at it, it makes no sense. It's a testament to Tom Hiddleston's acting ability that he can make the hot mess that Loki can be an absolute delight to watch.

6 Escape Into The Hole: Part Two

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Thor's big plan to escape Sakaar when he is trapped there with the Hulk, Valkyrie, and Loki is to steal the Grandmaster's space ship and fly it through one of the largest space portals that hover over the planet. Thor plans to return to Asgard to fight Hela and reclaim his home. It's a dangerous journey through the portal, so when it comes time for everyone to book it from Sakaar, Loki decides it's the time to betray Thor once again. Problem is, Thor is expecting this betrayal, so for once, he gets the drop on Loki. He paralyzes him for a brief time, so only Thor travels with Valkyrie and Hulk to Asgard. Thor and company get into trouble on Asgard, so imagine their relief when Loki arrives there with some back-up from Sakaar.

It was a semi-touching moment in an otherwise comedic movie.

Loki had a change of heart and decided to risk his life in order to help out his brother. However, how did Loki manage to get to Asgard? Did he use the same portal? (This portal is inappropriately named, so no, I'm not going to name it.) And everyone on Thor's ship, when they passed through the portal, was knocked unconscious. There's no way that Loki, with all of the people he brought to assist Thor from Sakaar, could all have arrived as fresh as a daisy from the exact same experience that Thor, Valkyrie, and Hulk underwent.