When box office totals are discussed or written about, the domestic box office total is often what is referenced, as opposed to the worldwide total.
Why is that?
For example, in the image below you can see that when Rotten Tomatoes refers to the box office total for The Avengers it is only referencing the domestic total (both domestic and foreign are shown on Box Office Mojo, as well as the worldwide total). This would seem to be wildly misleading, especially for blockbuster movies.