Joe and Anthony Russo’s Avengers: Infinity War is mostly a family friendly outing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it wasn’t always going to be that.
It turns out the 2018 movie has one scene that was too graphic for the final cut. Bringing together the first decade of the MCU, Infinity War brought Josh Brolin’s Thanos into the fold and saw the Mad Titan try to take over the galaxy.
From the death of Loki to Thanos collecting the Soul Stone from Vormir, Thor crafting his Stormbreaker axe to Spider-Man flying into space, Infinity War had too many standout moments to count. The Avengers joined together to try and stop Thanos, but ultimately saw their numbers halved during that big finger snap moment.
We’ve already covered how Thanos was going to chuck the decapitated head of Captain America at his past self in Avengers: Endgame, but it turns out the first movie had a pretty gross Cap scene that turned everyone’s stomach.
Speaking to IGN, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely explained the frankly bizarre idea of seeing Steve Rogers bleed into his food.
“There was one scene, it was in Infinity War,” said Markus. “We wrote it, we didn’t shoot it. It was part and parcel of a whole thing where we realized we were picking up the characters too early in their arc before Thanos had gotten to them.”
He continued, “It was a scene of basically Widow and Falcon and Cap in hiding post-Civil War and they’d just been through a big fight with criminals, and Cap was eating mashed potatoes, and Falcon says ‘You’re bleeding into your mashed potatoes.’ He looks at him like…yeah he is bleeding into his mashed potatoes.”
Unsurprisingly, this was too much for MCU overseer Kevin Feige. Markus concluded, “I remember Kevin going ‘He’s bleeding into his mashed potatoes?! I don’t want to see that!’ Yeah, maybe we went a little too…something.”
As fans know by now, there were plenty of scenes that didn’t make it into Infinity War and Endgame. There were also ideas for Doctor Strange’s Mystery Tour with the introduction of the Living Tribunal, the earlier debut of Mark Ruffalo’s Professor Hulk, and even Cap teaming up with Red Skull.
Despite the heart-wrenching moment we saw half our favourite heroes being dusted from existence, Infinity War remained a pretty wholesome film suitable for the whole family. At least there was no blood-covered mashed potato.
[Featured Image: Disney]