Robert Downey Jr. is the reason the Avengers shawarma scene exists

In the final moment of the original script for The Avengers, Downey’s Tony Stark wakes up and asks, “What’s next?”, but Downey felt there needed to be more to give the audience a sense of closure. He asked for more, and Whedon obliged, turning one line into three pages of potential lines. A joke about grabbing some shawarma before returning to work inspired both by Whedon’s seemingly long-standing love of shawarma and a particularly rough day of filming on Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off series Angel. Actor Alexis Denisof told EW that after filming the season five episode “A Hole in the World,” the cast and crew all went out for drinks and sat around in exhausted silence, which directly led to the Avengers having their own moment of delicious downtime.

Ironically, the scene was shot after the film’s premiere but before it hit theaters, when the Avengers cast were probably feeling just as tired and exhausted as their superhero counterparts. Some had even already started new projects, like Chris Evans, who had to hide his “Snowpiercer” beard under a strange prosthetic that he partially covered with his hand. Combined with the fact that Thor’s Chris Hemsworth actually eats on camera, it creates a level of authenticity that makes them all seem more lovable.