The Michael That Might Have Been.

That’s an artist’s photographic rendition, above, from The Daily Mail, of what Michael Jackson, who turned 50 this past Friday, might have looked like today had he not fileted his face, over the past few decades, with what presumably turns out to be weeks of plastic surgery.

It’s hard to believe now: For many of us who’d love the chocolate boy wonder from his earliest moments, his nose job and jherri curl, on the cover of 1982’s industry-redefining Thriller, right, was initially a bit of a shock—a strange bit of Peter Pan-like streamlining for the child-man who’d looked the same from “ABC” to his first solo triumph, 1979’s Off the Wall.

But that was before Jackson decided, for his skin tone, that nothing would rival the color of parchment. Today, most look back to Thriller‘s once confounding face with longing. Who could have guessed, then, that the gaunt ghoul Jackson portrayed, below left, in the landmark, eponymous video would, save for his ashen tone and relaxer-straightened locks, one day so strongly resemble the man beneath the mask?