Tony Stark's Death Was Almost More Gruesome, Near Horror Movie Territory

“Avengers: Endgame” topped off its final battle, the epic culmination of 22 films, with the tragic death of one of its main heroes, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). The shocking imagery of Stark’s charred body is an image forever in the minds of Marvel fans -- but it could have been so much worse.

VFX artist Matt Aitken revealed to Insider that the artists for “Endgame” had something else in mind when it came to the dead body of the beloved superhero character. Apparently, one of the original designs took inspiration from the disturbing look used by Christopher Nolan for Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart) in “The Dark Knight.” The film featured Eckhart’s character burning half of his face off in a gas fire, revealing burnt muscles and an exposed skull.

It wasn’t just for the shock value. The VFX team cited this terrifying and grisly movie villain for a contextual reason.

When Stark defeated Thanos by snapping his fingers with the Infinity Stones intact, an immense surge of heat and radiation pulsed through his body -- enough to permanently injure and scar the competingly undefeatable Hulk and Thanos. Tony’s body, when compared to those two god-like beings, wouldn’t have held together as well.

"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," Aitken revealed.

The look they ultimately landed on, while still rather violent, struck a balance between what was believable in that moment and the fact that it is a Disney movie -- in other words, they wanted it to make sense without scaring kids.