10 Most Brutal Deaths In MCU History

In a film franchise as gargantuan as the MCU, it's hardly surprising that some characters don't make it to the end credits. In the whacky world of super heroics, deaths aren't always as permanent as they should be. Even so, there are some that hit the viewer hard with their shock value. It may be because they were unexpectedly violent, or it might brutalise us emotionally with tragic storytelling.

Heroes, villains and bystanders alike meet their make in unexpected, oft-painful ways that stick in our memory long past the film's end. The MCU initially avoided killing off leading figures in its series, a cautious trend it very noticeably threw to the wind with Phase 3.

Bloodshed has grown increasingly rampant in the normally humorous, all-age friendly saga of Marvel heroes sans the X-Men.

While it would be easy to simply list the countless characters turned to dust at the snap of Thanos' fingers in Infinity War, we will only be counting characters who left remains behind in their wake. These folk have little to no hope of resurrection, regardless of any finger-snapping capabilities.

Despite being the most comedic, family-friendly of all MCU franchises, Ant-Man enjoys a brief diversion into the grim with one of the MCU's gnarliest deaths to date.

Darren Cross, the wonderfully hammy antagonist, finds himself at odds with a Pym Technologies executive by the name of Frank. After years of trying and failing to successfully reproduce Pym Particles, Cross is on the cusp of realising his dream if it weren't for people like Frank blocking it on legal grounds.

Infuriated, Cross whips out a shrink ray and opens fire, failing miserably at safely shrinking Frank. Instead, it turns him into a small, fleshy pile of goo. What used to be Frank is then wiped up via tissue, and never seen again.

Part of what makes this scene so brutal is how oddly human the colouring of Frank's remains are. Another is the thought of how painful it must've been to spend one's final moments getting squashed into nothingness.

To add a little insult to injury, Frank's death is never really brought up again. No one seems particularly fussed as to his whereabouts. This scene was deemed disturbing enough to warrant removal from the made-for-TV version of Ant-Man.