Drupal 7: Remove the link on a user-picture entirely and render a region in node.tpl.php

node.tpl.php

  /*
  * Render the new user picture
  */
  <?php print '<div class="user-picture"><img src="' . $user_picture . '" /></div>'; ?>

  /*
  * Render the now-available 'below_content' region
  * under the content or wherever you want.
  */
  <div class="content"<?php print $content_attributes; ?>>
    <?php
      // We hide the comments and links now so that we can render them later.
      hide($content['comments']);
      hide($content['links']);
      print render($content);
      print render($below_content);
    ?>
  </div>

template.php

function foo_preprocess_node(&$variables) {
    /* 
    * Pass a region called 'below_content' 
    * as a region to node.tpl.php 
    */
    if($blocks = block_get_blocks_by_region('below_content')) {
      $variables['below_content'] = $blocks;
    }
    /*
    * Take the user picture string and regex
    * the url into $matches. Replace the old
    * string with just the url to pass to node.
    */
    $string = $variables['user_picture'];
    preg_match_all('#\bhttps?://[^\s()<>]+(?:\([\w\d]+\)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/))#', $string, $match);    
    if($picture = $variables['user_picture']) {
      $variables['user_picture'] = $match[0][0];
    }
  }

It would be nice if gists would let you choose the order that files get displayed in. I wrote this thinking people would look at template.php first, so do that if you're confused.