WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War, out on Blu-Ray on August 14th

It will still be two weeks until Avengers: Infinity War is out on Blu-Ray, but the Digital HD release of the film has already revealed some fascinating insights in to the making of the film, specifically with regards to why certain characters were chosen to be victims of Thanos' infamous "snappening."

The film ends with Thanos finally putting the full Infinity Gauntlet together. He then uses its powers to give the universe perfect balance by instantly ending the lives of half of the sentient beings in the universe. The Avengers have to watch in shock as roughly half of their friends vanish into dust in front of their eyes. In a behind the scenes feature about the making of the Battle of Wakanda, the film's directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, explain how they picked which characters would die.

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Anthony Russo noted:

"The movie sort of keeps twisting at the end there in ways that you can't believe it's going one step beyond and that the fate of our characters and the fate of our universe are still at play. In terms of our choices of who Thanos would end up eradicating with his snap, it was very story focused. How do we pay off each individual character story most profoundly? The first person to go is Bucky Barnes and it's shot from Captain America's perspective. We're watching Cap go through the experience of watching him go away. We're watching Okoye, whose number one mission it is in life is to protect the king. She watches the king go, in front of her. To see those characters react in those situations is very powerful and resonant."

So, in effect, the characters were chosen for how painful their specific loss would be to the other characters.

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What is particularly fascinating is that the actors in question were not informed that they would be fading out of existence until the day that they filmed the shocking scene. Joe Russo noted how difficult it was to keep the "snappening" a secret, "The audience is so good at predicting stories that even just the smallest clue can tell them where the film is gonna go. So, we worked really hard to make sure none of the secrets of the film leaked. It's about as massive a production as you can mount. About 6,000 crew members working on the film from around the world."

Avengers: Infinity War is out on DigitalHD now and will be out on Blu-Ray on August 14th.

(Via ComicBook.com)