It is safe to say that the Punisher is easily the most brutal antihero in the Marvel Universe, and that extends to the MCU. However, not every one of Frank Castle’s extreme kills is appropriate for the largely family-friendly tone of the MCU, including and especially one in particular.
In Punisher MAX #28 by Garth Ennis and Leandro Fernandez, the Punisher is taking down a sex trafficking ring. In this issue, Frank frees four girls being held in a house after gunning down the men keeping them there. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Freeing those girls was a victory, but there was still the matter of taking down this global organization for good. So, the Punisher ambushes a leader within the organization and attempts to persuade him to reveal the identities of the other top members. How? By ripping his guts out.
The Punisher’s Sickest Kill Wasn’t Actually a Kill At All
Interestingly, this ‘kill’ wasn’t intended to be fatal. The Punisher ripped out this guy’s guts and strung them on a tree to make the man flip on his associates to save his own life. If he had talked, he could have conceivably recovered (provided the proper medical attention).
Of course, this is the Punisher, meaning there’s no way this known sex trafficker would ever walk away alive even if he had immediately spilled his guts about his associates (after the Punisher literally spilled his guts for him).
Therefore, this still qualifies as a kill, even if it was initially meant to be an extreme interrogation tactic, since the Punisher was never going to let him live. But, either way, there’s no way this scene will ever be adapted in the MCU.
The MCU Missed Its Chance to Include This Brutal Punisher Kill
The only way this kill could have been adapted in the MCU would have been in the Multiverse Saga. If the MCU actually explored other universes rather than just using the multiverse for cameos, there could have been an R-rated corner of the MCU where this scene could have existed.
If the MCU went all-in on the multiverse and used it to spawn new continuities, one of them could have given life to a new Punisher franchise where kills like this could have been commonplace. However, the Punisher that exists in the main MCU could never do something this brutal.
The MCU‘s Punisher exists alongside the likes of Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man, meaning there’s no way he could rip out someone’s guts and hang them from a tree to get that person to expose their criminal enterprise.
