This was heartbreaking enough (Picture: Marvel Studios)

We’re still shaken by the heartbreaking ending for Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame, however it’s been suggested his final moment may have been a whole lot more gruesome.

In all honesty, it was hard enough – not sure how our little hearts would have coped with more grief lobbed Iron Man’s (Robert Downey Jr) way.

As he saved the world, Tones pulled the ultimate move and assembled all the Infinity Stones in his gauntlet to snap Thanos (Josh Brolan) and his army into dusted existence.

According to VFX supervisor, Matt Aitken, of Weta digital, they’d gone to Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film, with a range of ideas that included Tony losing an eye.




‘We gave the filmmakers a full range [of looks] to choose from and one of those was where the energy from the stones had acted right up into his face and popped one of his eyeballs out and it was hanging out on his cheek,’ he told Insider.

You don’t mess with Tones (Picture: Rex Features)

‘They didn’t go for that one.’

Hmm, we’re not all that surprised. While the film is action packed, we’re still not sure they’d go all Hostel and pop the poor man’s eye out for its younger audience to digest for years to come.

Marvel VFX producer Jen Underdahl said: ‘We did go several rounds on that guy from grisly to not so grisly to more light of a touch, back to ok this is the spot where we think the audience is not going to get too freaked out, but also really understand that Tony has reached the point of no return.’

What the filmmakers evidently settled on was a depleted Iron Man, who had a slightly-burnt face but nothing that would scare the kidlets into nightmares.

Glad they didn’t go with this (Picture: YouTube)

No Two Face from the DC world, is what we’re saying. (Which was an option, with the artists admitting they did put forward a version where you ‘saw the sinews and you saw them in the teeth and that’.)

They added there was a tool they employed to warn us that Tony may be heading for a grisly death should he snap, with both Thanos and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) sporting injuries and burns after their respective snaps in the film.

Look, eyeball popping and Two Face or no eyeball popping and Two Face, we were still left utterly bereft when Tones bit the bullet.

But good to know we were spared a grisly distraction in one of the most poignant moments in the MCU.

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