people like to draw sal without his prosthetic so i figured id compile some pics to help people form headcanons
his eyelids still exist and can still close
his right eye is also prosthetic (its in that little cup on his night stand. confirmed by steve) so there might still be damage around that part of his face
his eyes arenât looking in the same direction in this screenshot, so his glass eye either doesnât move or has a limited range of movement (prosthetic eyes can actually move well if theyre fit properly and the inside nerves of the eye socket are intact, it could be that his eye socket was damaged but his eyelids didnât scar too badly, or maybe his father couldnât afford a custom fit one. they seem to have financial troubles.)
the rest is just speculating based on my small amount of medical knowledge really, but here we go:
-sal and his father obviously donât have a lot of money
-exposed muscle and fat will /always/ be either sutured closed or have skin grafted to cover it. itâs super unlikely sal just has exposed muscle under there, because that carries a life threatening infection risk. parts of his face might be discolored or the skin may be a slightly different texture, though, and depending on the quality of the surgeon and whether there was any resulting infection, there could be very minimal or very noticeable and dark scars around the areas skin was grafted.
-it is possible that parts of his cheeks, lips, and nose are torn away. those are not always possible to salvage and if he has a prosthetic at all, it means that at least parts of his face are not there. you might be able to see his teeth through his cheek, but if it was just a straight across wound they probably would have just sewn it back together, so if his cheeks are damaged very badly then those pieces may have been completely ripped away
-he might have a full-face prosthetic because it was less expensive than getting a personalized one scultped for him to replace specific pieces of skin/his nose/etc
-his lips were probably either left intact, sewn back to a useable state, or meticulously reconstructed. i say this because other characters donât seem to have trouble understanding his speech, so he either is able to speak normally or with only mild difficulty
-if it was in fact due to a dog attack, dogs often test bite a few times before they really clamp down on something they are attacking. due to the glass eye on that side, and the fact itâs more heavily obscured when sal wakes up from his nightmare, im gonna guess most of the damage is to the right side of his face. probably thatâs when the dog decided to really clamp down and he has marks elsewhere where there isnt as much damage
-his face is still completely covered in blood in the flashback dream of him as a child. whether this is just to obscure his face or because he has at least some damage on every part of his face is your guess, pals.
-dogâs jaws are strong, by the way. and people with facial prosthetics often have damage to their very bone structure. if you wanna get real creative, parts of his cheeks and where his nose probably used to be might be concave, where they had to remove shattered bone fragments.
-scars donât all heal the same. some deep scars puff up, some even deeper ones are concave and seem etched into the skin, if a person is prone to keloid scarring or thereâs a massive infection, scars might get thick and rough as they heal.
-skin grafts might not fit his exact skintone, even after years of healing.
i feel like i could speculate more, but this is already long. have at it, friends
