You might recall that Arnim Zola’s fate in Captain America: The Winter Soldier was rather final, after Hydra dropped a bomb on the digitised doctor’s hidden facility in an attempt to take out Cap and Black Widow. But according to these animated storyboards, that wasn’t always the case.

These are a couple of weeks old, but over the last month animatics artist James Rothwell has been releasing movie storyboards he made with Philip Keller on his YouTube channel, offering some interesting insight into the behind the scenes process of making The Winter Soldier. There’s a few more alternate scenes based on Steve and Natasha’s escape from Hydra agents in the shopping mall, as well as Nick Fury’s car chase and Cap fleeing the Triskelion. But the above sequence where Steve and Natasha discover the digital remnants of Arnim Zola (and the survival of Hydra) at Camp Lehigh is definitely the most interesting — as originally Steve was going to free Zola rather than leave him to be destroyed by the missile.

Could Marvel have intended for Zola to become a recurring thorn in the side of Captain America? Could we have evolved beyond the CRT monitors featuring Toby Jones’ face into the full on classic comic book look for Zola, his face embedded in the torso of a robot? Man, if only. I would’ve loved to have to seen how the MCU got away with doing that and somehow making it look a lot less ridiculous.

You can check out the other Winter Soldier animatics Rothwell has uploaded below:

[Via The Mary Sue]