History Main / Pilot

* ''Lupin VIII'' was a potential France-Japan studio teamup featuring the great-great-great-grandson of Lupin III. Negotiations with Maurice Leblanc's estate failed, and Creator/{{DiC}} ended up making ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' instead.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s pilot had a notable title, "Space Pilot 3000". (The second episode was named "The Series Has Landed".)

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''' pilot episode was "Help Wanted", originally produced in 1997, and aired as the series premiere in 1999. The 1997 version has a different opening sequence placed a few minutes into the episode as a [[TheTeaser cold opening]]. The version broadcast on TV and released on home video instead uses the now iconic theme song.

** A similar project called ''The Cartoonstitute'' was planned, but it never got off the ground and only a few shorts were completed. However, ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' was spawned from the failed project. The ''Regular Show'' pilot was {{Re Tool}}ed into the Season 2 episode "First Day". This was followed by ''WesternAnimation/SecretMountainFortAwesome'' and ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'', both of which were birthed from the latter's pilot.

The writing in a pilot can be significantly worse than in regular episodes. Introducing all the characters and setting up the situation in a limited time can be difficult to do in a natural way, and even the best pilots can be privy to [[AsYouKnow clunky exposition]]. In addition, pilots often are slightly differently-shaped than the series that coalesce if the show gets picked up; for example: in the pilot of ''Series/GilmoreGirls'' Sookie is a CuteClumsyGirl (this trait fades away by the fourth or so episode), Lorelai drives a different car, and many of the sets are not the ones used later in the show, as a real street in UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} was used rather than the "Main Street" set at Creator/WarnerBrothers Studios which was used as Stars Hollow for the rest of the series. Pilots may also be filmed on a different stock than the rest of the series; the pilot may look more 'cinematic' in film story and cinematography than other episodes in the series. If it's the ''length'' of a film and presented as such, then it's a PilotMovie. The same rules roughly apply to animation, except that a pilot in that industry usually never exceeds eleven minutes unless it is the aforementioned pilot movie.

** The current Creator/AlexTrebek version, which began in 1984, also had two pilots. Both returned to the original format of straight-up answer-question gameplay that's still in use today. The first (1983) had [[Series/LetsMakeADeal Jay]] [[Series/SaleOfTheCentury Stewart]] announcing with the same set layout and music cues as the 1978 version, including pull-card clues in the maingame and (like the original Fleming era) whiteboards in Final Jeopardy! The second (1984) had an ObviousBeta of the Season 1 set. Both pilots also had much lower clue values — the first used the 1978-79 values of $25-$125 and $50-$150, while the second had $50-$250 and $100-$500.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' had a few of these on ''WesternAnimation/OhYeahCartoons''. These are colloquially referred to as season 0 by fans, as unlike most other pilots these are still considered canon to the show proper.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' had a few of these on ''WesternAnimation/OhYeahCartoons''.