According to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Avengers: Infinity War almost showed Captain America eating bloodied mashed potatoes. After the fallout between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark/Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War, the Super Soldier and his allies were forced to operate underground as the government had dubbed them vigilantes. It wasn’t until the threat of Thanos became imminent that he emerged to assemble with the rest of MCU to stop the Mad Titan.

Captain America spent most of his two years in hiding carrying out covert operations, as revealed in the tie-in comic book for Infinity War. However, most of his adventures during that time didn’t have any link with the larger MCU. By the time Infinity War caught up with them, Cap and his crew were trying to help Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), after they were ambushed by Black Order members Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight during their hunt for the Mind Stone. Interestingly, though, the film’s directors Joe and Anthony Russo, as well as Markus and McFeely, originally considered showing viewers what Cap and the others had been up to before the Thanos crisis began.

There was an early version of Infinity War, apparently, that even showed Captain America, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) fresh off one of their missions. Markus and McFeely told IGN the details of the cut scene, which involved Rogers eating mashed potatoes - unaware that he was dripping blood on them.

While it would’ve been cool to see Captain America, Black Widow and Falcon during their Secret Avengers days, this bit was decidedly too much to show. It does emphasize the idea that Rogers, like always, was so keen on getting his missions done that he’d often forget the physical toll these operations were taking on him. But Infinity War could’ve effectively expressed the same idea without this particularly unpleasant visual. In hindsight, it was the right call to scrap this idea and go on with what ended up in the film’s theatrical cut, instead.

“There was one scene, it was in Infinity War. 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. 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. I remember Kevin [Feige] going “He’s bleeding into his mashed potatoes?! I don’t want to see that!” Yeah, maybe we went a little too…something.”

Still, had the Russos, Markus, and McFeely pushed forward with this scene after all, it might’ve been interesting to see how it changed the overarching narrative structure of Avengers: Infinity War. As the writers said, it was too early in the two-year gap to include, which means either they were planning on picking up with that scene before jumping to the movie’s ominous opening, or the film’s overall timeline was different early on in development. In any case, it’s probably for the best this didn’t make it in.

More: Why Captain America’s Costume In The Avengers Is So Cheesy

Source: IGN

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