From the NGINX docs:
If a location is defined by a prefix string that ends with the slash character, and requests are processed by one of proxy_pass, fastcgi_pass, uwsgi_pass, scgi_pass, or memcached_pass, then the special processing is performed. In response to a request with URI equal to this string, but without the trailing slash, a permanent redirect with the code 301 will be returned to the requested URI with the slash appended. If this is not desired, an exact match of the URI and location could be defined like this:
location /user/ {
proxy_pass http://user.example.com;
}
location = /user {
proxy_pass http://login.example.com;
}
This is worded a bit strangely imo, but what it is saying is, without the trailing slash or leading =, NGINX will ignore your proxy_pass directive.