‘Avengers: Endgame’s Mark Ruffalo Reveals Hulk Was Nearly Killed Off in ‘Infinity War’

Mark Ruffalo says Bruce Banner-slash-Hulk was nearly a victim of Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap that obliterated fifty percent of all life in the universe in Avengers: Infinity War.

When promoting sequel Avengers: Endgame, the notoriously loose-lipped Ruffalo told Yahoo he didn’t know Banner’s true fate until he saw the movie. “For one take, I did disappear, and then the other one I didn’t,” Ruffalo said.

“I was pretty sure it was gonna be me,” Ruffalo added. “It’s like Survivor. It’s like, who’s gonna get kicked off the island? And I probably should’ve. … It’s like Project Runway for leakers.”

Despite Ruffalo’s filmed fake-out scene, there’s a reason Banner — and the other still-surviving original Avengers, Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) — survived the Decimation.

“The only thing we’ll say in that regard,” said director Joe Russo, “is that there’s a reason that the original six Avengers survived.”

Though Hulk may have never really been on the chopping block, there was a purpose behind each death and each survivor — a purpose that will become clear in Endgame.

“Joe and I can’t go into too much detail because we’re not gonna talk about where the story goes from here,” Anthony Russo previously told ComicBook.com when asked about the selection process behind the remaining characters going into Endgame.

“All of our choices are based on story. It’s based upon the road that these characters have traveled, in not only this movie, but throughout the entire MCU up to this point because, again, these movies are the culmination. So all we can say is that they are very focused story choices. That’s our motivation for everything. And, again, that’s why we love Marvel so much is they never let the tail wag the dog. The creative choices always lead the process and then they figure out how to pull off the miracle of making it work on a business level.”

Infinity War and Endgame co-writer Stephen McFeely previously explained to Buzzfeed characters who were underserved in the preceding film will feature more in this next Avengers, thanks in part to Thanos halving its sizable ensemble cast.

“We had so many characters in movie one, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation,” he said.

“Some characters were better served in movie two after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in Infinity War] — I’m thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It’s about the story we wanted to tell in movie two, mostly.”

Avengers: Endgame opens April 26.