POTD: Elijah Wood's Frodo Had He Kept The One Ring

"The ring is mine." Frodo Baggins' chilling line in the heart of Mount Doom at the end of The Return of the King is one the most shocking moments in Peter Jackson's trilogy. After three movies and over nine hours to get to this exact spot, Frodo (Elijah Wood) decides he doesn't want to destroy The One Ring. He wants to keep it.

So what would have happened had Frodo kept the ring? Well, odds are Sauron would have just killed him and taken it for himself, turning all of Middle Earth into a world of darkness. But had Frodo decided earlier to break off from Sam and the Fellowship and keep the ring himself, he too would devolved into a terrible creature, much like the hobbit named Smeagol did oh so long ago. Before Smeagol became Gollum.

All this is leading to a photo that's recently come online showing a make-up test Elijah Wood did while filming the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's a test for a scene that showed what would have happened to Frodo had he kept The One Ring. Check it out below.

Thanks to Movie Ramblings (via Comic Book Movie) for the image.

According to other sites, such as IO9, the image was from a scene in the original script of The Two Towers where Faramir had a vision of what would happen to Frodo had he kept the ring. Reportedly, these images below are even from the scene which is seen briefly on the extended edition of The Two Towers, but never made any cut of the movie.

Pretty creepy stuff. Thankfully, it didn't come to this for old Mr. Frodo.