10 Iron Man Fates Worse Than Death

In the fallout of the Civil War and Secret Invasion storylines, Tony Shark is removed by the US government as the Head of S.H.I.E.L.D. due to his StarkTech equipment being infiltrated by the Skrulls. Following this, it's the nefarious Norman Osborn who's tasked with overseeing S.H.I.E.L.D., with Norman presenting himself as a reformed character who is all about fighting the good fight.

Of course, Norman Osborn will forever 'Norman Osborn', and thus this is all merely part of a power-play from the Green Goblin designed to get himself access to the vast records held as part of Civil War's Registration Act.

On that front, access to such records would allow Osborn to know the secret identity of every superhero and supervillain, in addition to offering up all kinds of technological secrets. Realising this, Iron Man executes a virus designed to destroy this information. While that does indeed work, there is one other copy of these deets - that being in the mind of Tony Stark.

With Norman hunting him down, Tony decides that he has to wipe his own memory. In attempting to do this, the Armoured Avenger inflicts brain damage on himself in order to successfully delete this key information from his mind.

A brutal beating of Stark by Osborn would be televised and massively hit Norman's shoddy PR campaign, but the actions of Iron Man here left Tony in a vegetative state and requiring intensive tech care just to stay alive.