History WhatCouldHaveBeen / Hulk

* Creator/BillyCrudup and Creator/EdwardNorton were initially approached for the role of Bruce Banner before Creator/EricBana was cast. Norton turned down the offer due to his dislike of the script. Norton would eventually go on to portray the titular character in ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008''.
** Creator/TomCruise, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/SteveBuscemi, Creator/DavidDuchovny and Creator/JeffGoldblum were also considered for Bruce Banner before the casting of Bana. Goldblum would later go on to play the Grandmaster in ''Film/ThorRagnarok''.
* In an early script version, Talbot became the Abomination and fought the Hulk at the movie's end.

* The animation studio originally made Hulk a darker shade of green, similar to how he was later depicted in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse. Ang Lee wanted Hulk to resemble his comics counterpart better, resulting in the brighter green skin shown in the final film.
* The order of the scenes leading up to the dog fight causes a continuity issue: David sends the mutant hellhounds after Betty, then Betty arrives at her cabin, and David calls Bruce. After transforming, Bruce finds Betty without prior knowledge of her whereabouts and somehow finds her before the dogs do. The novel rearranges the scenes correctly: Betty arrives at her cabin first; after David calls Bruce, Bruce's scuffle with Talbot and his second transformation happen simultaneously with David unleashing the dogs. Then the Hulk sniffs the air, using his heightened senses to "pull Betty's scent" from it to find her, like in the illustrated screenplay. Additional materials instead have the Hulk use Bruce's memory of the cabin to guess Betty might be there as her father's men would surround her house.
* An earlier screenplay had slightly more physical interaction between Betty and the Hulk during their two scenes together.

* As storyboarded and shown in concept art, the dog fight would've had the Hulk naked throughout the scene. To keep a PG-13 rating, they kept trying to find ways to [[SceneryCensor cover his modesty with the trees and branches]], but Ang Lee thought it was reaching ''Film/AustinPowers''-levels of silliness.

* Rick Jones appears and is narrowly saved by Bruce at the bomb testing site. Marlo Chandler appears when the pair travel to Vegas and need somewhere to stay.
* The accident plays out much more like the comics version, with a gamma bomb being sabotaged by someone (Edward Leder instead of Emil Blonsky), leading to Banner being irradiated. Leder is also exposed to radiation, eventually turning into the Leader.
* Bruce displays the ability to unwittingly disrupt electronics and cause lights to burst when he's angry, at one point causing a large neon sign to explode above him.

* Bruce and Betty receive an AgeLift, and are both in their 20s instead of their 30s.

* Like in the Turman script, Bruce can cause electronic devices to short out when he's close to Hulking out.

* Bruce, project leader Sterns, and a grad student lab assistant named Curtis demonstrate the gammasphere's capabilities to a group of politicians and military representatives to secure more funding. Unknown to them, one of the senators made a deal with Creel, who attended the demo as an anonymous observer, to move parts of the gammasphere to a U.S. weapons lab.
* Like the film, the accident happens while someone tries fixing a problem with the gammasphere, except this script version is more extended and elaborate. The gammasphere almost overloads during the demo before Sterns tells Bruce to shut it down. They enter the gammasphere on harnesses the next day to check the gas piping. Creel tampers with the security cameras, sneaks into the gammasphere control room, and starts copying data before starting the gammasphere. Bruce tries to help Sterns while Creel attacks a guard who catches him; Talbot hears this over a walkie-talkie, making him rush back into the base. The gammasphere's ceiling supports weaken, making it sway. Sterns falls and gets his head submerged in the liquid computer core, and Bruce falls past the green isotope slab and into the gamma charge cage moments before gamma rays blast him. After he and Talbot enter the room, a gamma blast hits Curtis as he goes to help Sterns. Gamma rays ignite and pour through the computer core fluid, surging through Sterns' eyes and mouth. The gamma blast on Bruce ends, but the isotope slab's broken half falls toward the plexiglass cage without obliterating it. The laser array in the gammasphere goes wild, firing blasts erratically; one cuts a metal girder that falls onto Talbot, knocking him out cold. Curtis leads Sterns out of the room, noticing the gammasphere is about to fall. As Bruce plans to escape the cage, he sees the unconscious Talbot in the path of the lasers strikes, and a flash of green appears in Bruce's eyes. The slab knocks out the cage wall without killing Bruce; Talbot awakens to see laser blasts approaching him, but he can't move. Bruce saves him, and they dive out of the blast door before the gammasphere falls. The four men all escape to safety on the upper levels.

** After the gammasphere accident, Bruce goes to Curtis’ apartment to check on him, only to find that Curtis now resembles a "gamma leper" with green boils on his skin. Curtis seems unaware of how bad he looks, playing off his sickness as some sort of cold. Sometime later, while Bruce drives Curtis to the hospital where Betty works, Curtis sees his reflection in the rear-view mirror and freaks out. Half of his body starts hulking out; the script describes him as resembling a mix of Creator/JackKirby Hulk and one Picasso might've designed. He starts screaming at Bruce, claiming that Bruce killed him... and then his skin melts off, and his body turns ''inside out!''

** In his transformation's final stage, Sterns's body looks frail while neural activity makes crackling flashes of energy visible within his skull, and his voice now sounds computerized. And that’s before he uses a transformation chamber to mutate even further, gaining a body as powerful as the Hulk’s to match his enlarged cranium.
** Forced to confront the mutated Creel without access to the Hulk transformation, Bruce spills 24 chemical jars onto him. Creel’s body reacts to them as they mix, with each section of his body mutating differently. A moment later, Creel reappears scarred from the acid, and parts of his body still react uncontrollably to the chemicals. Noticing an odor, Bruce realizes the chemical reactions within Creel are turning him into nitroglycerin. After Bruce baits Creel into striking a wall behind him and dodges at the last second, the reaction inside Creel reaches its flashpoint; he explodes into a massive fireball that blasts through the wall Bruce tried to penetrate, leaving nothing of Creel behind.

** At one point, Bruce partially transforms while still exhausted from a previous change, resulting in a form referred to as the Grey Hulk.
* Edith's death was due to a medical condition made worse by David's abuse, causing Bruce to pursue medical research independently of his scientific projects. David experimenting on himself or Bruce is never mentioned.

* Bruce and Betty have a much more hopeful ending. Bruce is still a fugitive WalkingTheEarth in search of a cure, but he has Betty's support, and she moves into his apartment to conduct her own research.

* Creator/BillyCrudup and Creator/EdwardNorton were initially approached for the role of Bruce Banner before Creator/EricBana was cast. Norton turned down the offer due to his dislike of the script. Norton would eventually go on to portray the titular character in ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk''.

** Creator/TomCruise, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/SteveBuscemi, Creator/DavidDuchovny, and Creator/JeffGoldblum were also considered for Bruce Banner before the casting of Bana. Goldblum would later go on to play the Grandmaster in ''Film/ThorRagnarok''.

** Creator/TomCruise, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/SteveBuscemi, Creator/DavidDuchovny and Creator/JeffGoldblum were also considered for Bruce Banner before the casting of Bana. Goldblum would later go on to play the Grandmaster in ''Film/ThorRagnarok''.
* In an early version of the script, Talbot became the Abomination and fought the Hulk at the movie's end.
* In the script's first two versions, David was called Brian like in the comics.

* Rick Jones appears and is narrowly saved by Bruce at the bomb testing site. Marlo Chandler makes an appearance when the pair travel to Vegas and need somewhere to stay.

* Like the film, the accident happens while someone tries fixing a problem with the gammasphere, except this script version is more extended and elaborate. The gammasphere almost overloads during the demo before Sterns tells Bruce to shut it down. They enter the gammasphere on harnesses the next day to check the gas piping. Creel tampers with the security cameras, sneaks into the gammasphere control room, and begins copying data before starting the gammasphere. Bruce tries to help Sterns while Creel attacks a guard who catches him; Talbot hears this over a walkie-talkie, making him rush back into the base. The gammasphere's ceiling supports weaken, making it sway. Sterns falls and gets his head submerged in the liquid computer core, and Bruce falls past the green isotope slab and into the gamma charge cage moments before gamma rays blast him. After he and Talbot enter the room, a gamma blast hits Curtis as he goes to help Sterns. Gamma rays ignite and pour through the computer core fluid, surging through Sterns' eyes and mouth. The gamma blast on Bruce ends, but the isotope slab's broken half falls toward the plexiglass cage without obliterating it. The laser array in the gammasphere goes wild, firing blasts erratically; one slices a metal girder that falls onto Talbot, knocking him out cold. Curtis leads Sterns out of the room, noticing the gammasphere is about to fall. As Bruce plans to escape the cage, he sees the unconscious Talbot in the path of the lasers strikes, and a flash of green appears in Bruce's eyes. The slab knocks out the cage wall without killing Bruce; Talbot awakens to see laser blasts coming toward him, but he can't move. Bruce saves him and they dive out of the blast door before the gammasphere falls. The four men all escape to safety on the upper levels.

** After the gammasphere accident, Bruce goes to Curtis’ apartment to check on him, only to find that Curtis now resembles a "gamma leper," with green boils on his skin. Curtis seems unaware of how bad he looks, playing off his sickness as some sort of cold. Sometime later, while Bruce is driving Curtis to the hospital where Betty works, Curtis sees his reflection in the rear-view mirror and freaks out. Half of his body starts hulking out; the script describes him as resembling a mix of Creator/JackKirby Hulk and one Picasso might've designed. He starts screaming at Bruce, claiming that Bruce killed him... and then his skin melts off, and his body turns ''inside out!''

** Forced to confront the mutated Creel without access to the Hulk transformation, Bruce spills 24 chemical jars onto him. Creel’s body reacts to them as they mix, with each section of his body mutating differently. A moment later, Creel re-appears scarred from the acid, and parts of his body are still reacting to the chemicals uncontrollably. Noticing an odor, Bruce realizes the chemical reactions within Creel are turning him into nitroglycerin. After Bruce baits Creel into striking a wall behind him and dodges at the last second, the reaction inside Creel reaches its flashpoint; he explodes into a massive fireball that blasts through the wall Bruce tried to penetrate, leaving nothing of Creel behind.
** Bruce resolves to become the Hulk again, jumps into Sterns' gamma turbine, and burns alive within the gamma energy vortex.

** A news report mentions "Tales to Astonish!", a comic series where the Hulk made appearances.

** Creator/TomCruise, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/SteveBuscemi, Creator/DavidDuchovny, and Creator/JeffGoldblum were also considered for Bruce Banner before the casting of Bana. Goldblum would later go on to play the Grandmaster in ''Film/ThorRagnarok''.

* Creator/BillyCrudup and Creator/EdwardNorton were initially approached for Bruce Banner. Norton turned down the offer due to his dislike of the script. Norton would get cast as the character in [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk the MCU reboot]].
** Creator/TomCruise, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/JeffGoldblum, Creator/DavidDuchovny, and Creator/SteveBuscemi were also considered.

* The animation studio originally made Hulk with a shade of green similar to what he has in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse. But Ang Lee wanted Hulk greener to resemble his comic book counterpart better, as shown in the final film.
* The order of the scenes leading up to the dog fight causes a continuity issue: David sends the mutant hellhounds after Betty; then Betty arrives at her cabin, and David calls Bruce. After transforming, Bruce finds Betty without prior knowledge of her whereabouts and somehow finds her before the dogs do. The novel rearranges the scenes correctly: Betty arrives at her cabin first; after David calls Bruce, Bruce's scuffle with Talbot and his second transformation happen simultaneously with David unleashing the dogs. Then the Hulk sniffs the air, using his heightened senses to "pull Betty's scent" from it to find her, like in the illustrated screenplay. On the other hand, additional materials have the Hulk use Bruce's memory of the cabin to guess Betty might be there as her father's men would surround her house.

* Talbot suffered an originally grislier death, getting himself riddled with bullets after shooting at the Hulk.

* Rick Jones appears and is narrowly saved by Bruce at the bomb testing site.
* The accident plays out much more like the comics version, with a gamma bomb being sabotaged by someone (Edward Leder instead of Emil Blonsky), leading to Banner being irradiated.

* This version of Talbot is friends with Bruce instead of a rival for Betty's love. He genuinely wants to help Bruce cure himself, even objecting to Ross’ orders to form a strike team to go after the Hulk.
* Samuel Sterns becomes the main antagonist, The Leader, and experiments on Carl Creel, turning him into the Absorbing Man, the secondary villain.
* Bruce displays the ability to unwittingly cause electronic devices to short out when he’s close to Hulking out.

* Edith’s death was due to a medical condition made worse by David’s abuse, causing Bruce to pursue medical research independently of his scientific projects. David experimenting on himself or Bruce is never mentioned.

* AgeLift: Bruce and Betty are in their 20s instead of 30s.

* This version of Talbot is friends with Bruce instead of a rival for Betty's love.

* Like the film, the accident happens while someone tries fixing a problem with the gammasphere, except this script version is more extended and elaborate. It almost overloads during the demo before Sterns tells Bruce to shut it down. Hence, they enter the gammasphere on harnesses the next day to check the gas piping. Creel tampers with the security cameras, sneaks into the gammasphere control room, and begins copying data before starting the gammasphere. Bruce tries to help Sterns while Creel attacks a guard who catches him, which Talbot hears over a walkie-talkie, making him rush back into the base. The gammasphere's ceiling supports weaken, making it sway. Sterns falls and gets his head submerged in the liquid computer core, and Bruce falls past the green isotope slab and into the gamma charge cage moments before gamma rays blast him. After he and Talbot enter the room, a gamma blast hits Curtis as he goes to help Sterns. Then gamma rays ignite and pour through the computer core fluid and Sterns's eyes and mouth before Curtis leads him away. The gamma blast on Bruce ends, but the isotope slab's broken half falls toward the plexiglass cage without obliterating it. The laser array in the gammasphere goes wild, firing blasts erratically; one slices a metal girder that falls onto Talbot, knocking him out cold. Curtis leads Sterns out of the room, noticing the gammasphere is about to fall. As Bruce plans to escape the cage, he sees the unconscious Talbot in the path of the lasers strikes, and a flash of green appears in Bruce's eyes. Then the slab knocks out the cage wall without killing Bruce as planned. Talbot awakens to see laser blasts coming toward him, but he can't move; Bruce saves him in time. They hurry and dive out the blast door before the gammasphere falls, and the four men escape to safety on the upper levels.
* BodyHorror
** Curtis's fate. He gets exposed to gamma radiation like Bruce and Sterns during an accident at Gamma Base. Going to his apartment to check on him, Bruce finds Curtis resembling a "gamma leper," with green boils on his skin, and Curtis seems unaware of how bad he looks. Sometime later, while Bruce is driving Curtis to the hospital where Betty works, Curtis sees his reflection in the rear-view mirror and freaks out. Half of his body starts hulking out, resembling a mix of Creator/JackKirby Hulk and one Picasso might've designed. Then his skin melts off, and his body turns ''inside out!''

** Sterns blasts concentrated gamma energy at the Hulk with a futuristic bazooka-like weapon, gradually weakening the Hulk. His musculature seems to be melting off his body until he looks 200 years old.
** In his transformation's final stage, Sterns's body looks frail while neural activity makes crackling flashes of energy visible within his skull, and his voice now sounds computerized.
** Bruce makes 24 jars filled with chemicals fall onto the mutated Creel, whose body reacts to them as they mix, with each section of his body mutating differently. A moment later, Creel appears scarred from acid, and parts of his body still react to the chemicals uncontrollably. Bruce realizes the chemical reaction within Creel is turning him into nitroglycerin. After Bruce baits Creel into striking a wall behind him and dodges at the last second, the reaction inside Creel reaches its flashpoint; he explodes into a massive fireball that blasts through the wall Bruce tried to penetrate.
** Bruce resolves to become the Hulk again, jumps into Sterns's gamma turbine, and burns alive within the gamma energy vortex.
** An enhanced Sterns uses his telekinetic ability to close the Hulk's windpipe and cut off his air supply as they fight.

** Bruce's full name.

** A news report mentions "Tales to Astonish!" a comic series where the Hulk made appearances.
** The Grey Hulk appears in one scene.
* TurnOutLikeHisFather: Bruce admits to Betty that he's afraid he inherited his abusive father's temper.

* The animation studio originally made Hulk with a shade of green similar to what he has in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse. But Ang Lee wanted Hulk greener to better resemble his comic book counterpart, as shown in the final film.
* The order of the scenes leading up to the dog fight causes a continuity issue: David sends the mutant hellhounds after Betty; then Betty arrives at her cabin, and David calls Bruce. After transforming, Bruce finds Betty without prior knowledge of her whereabouts and somehow finds her before the dogs do. The novel rearranges the scenes correctly: David calls Bruce first, so Bruce's scuffle with Talbot and his second transformation happen simultaneously with David unleashing the dogs. Then the Hulk sniffs the air, using his heightened senses to "pull Betty's scent" from it to find her, like in the illustrated screenplay. On the other hand, additional materials have the Hulk use Bruce's memory of the cabin to guess Betty might be there instead of her house as her father's men would surround the latter.

* Like the film, the accident happens while someone tries fixing a problem with the gammasphere, except this script version is more extended and elaborate. It almost overloads during the demo before Sterns tells Bruce to shut it down. Hence, they enter the gammasphere on harnesses the next day to check the gas piping. Creel tampers with the security cameras, sneaks into the gammasphere control room, and begins copying data before starting the gammasphere. Bruce tries to help Sterns while Creel attacks a guard who catches him, which Talbot hears over a walkie-talkie, making him rush back into the base. The gammasphere's ceiling supports weaken, making it sway. Sterns falls and gets his head submerged in the liquid computer core, and Bruce falls past the green isotope slab and into the gamma charge cage moments before gamma rays blast him. After he and Talbot enter the room, a gamma blast hits Curtis as he goes to help Sterns. Then gamma rays ignite and pour through the computer core fluid, and Sterns's eyes and mouth before Curtis leads him away. The gamma blast on Bruce ends, but the isotope slab's broken half falls toward the plexiglass cage without obliterating it. The laser array in the gammasphere goes wild, firing blasts erratically; one slices a metal girder that falls onto Talbot, knocking him out cold. Curtis leads Sterns out of the room, noticing the gammasphere is about to fall. As Bruce plans to escape the cage, he sees the unconscious Talbot in the path of the lasers strikes, and a flash of green appears in Bruce's eyes. Then the slab knocks out the cage wall without killing Bruce as planned. Talbot awakens to see laser blasts coming toward him, but he can't move; Bruce saves him in time. They hurry and dive out the blast door before the gammasphere falls, and the four men escape to safety on the upper levels.

** The Gray Hulk appears in one scene.

* Creator/BillyCrudup and Creator/EdwardNorton were initially approached for Bruce Banner. Norton turned down the offer due to his dislike of the script. Norton would get cast as the character in [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008 the MCU reboot]].

* As storyboarded and shown in concept art, the dog fight would've had the Hulk naked throughout the scene. To keep a PG-13 rating, they kept trying to find ways to [[SceneryCensor "cover up" his modesty with the trees and branches]], but Ang Lee thought it was reaching ''Film/AustinPowers''-levels of silliness.

** Concept art shows the Hulk-Dogs as slightly larger than in the film.
* James Schamus began work on the script for the sequel before the release of ''Hulk'', and early drafts featured the Gray Hulk. Schamus also considered the Leader and the Abomination (who was still Talbot) as the main villains. The Leader eventually became the BigBad of the video game sequel.

** Curtis, a colleague of Bruce and Sterns, gets exposed to gamma radiation like them in an accident at Gamma Base. Eventually, Curtis resembles a "gamma leper," with green boils on his skin. Sometime later, half of Curtis's body hulks out, described as resembling a mix of Creator/JackKirby Hulk and one Picasso might've made. Then his skin melts off, and his body turns ''inside out!''

* Creator/BillyCrudup and Creator/EdwardNorton were initially approached for Bruce Banner. Norton turned down the offer due to his dislike of the script. Norton would get cast as the character in [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk the MCU reboot]].