Adapted Out / Animated Films

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• The film version of AKIRA excludes Kei's "aunt" Chiyoko and Tetsuo's followers.
• Aladdin, as well as most adaptations of the original story, cut out the Genie of the Ring. Aladdin's mother is also absent.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
  • Disney's Alice in Wonderland adaptation leaves out the Duchess, Fish Footman, the Frogman, the cook, the pig baby, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle (although sequences were storyboarded for those characters) and replaces Pat with the Dodo. The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle were dropped for being "too talkative" (or words to that effect). Earlier drafts omitted Alice's sister.
  • Burbank Films's 1988 Alice in Wonderland has the Dodo show Alice the Mock Turtle as opposed to the Gryphon. Alice's sister is omitted in the film.
• Hamnpork, and most of the named inhabitants of Bad Blintz, do not appear in The Amazing Maurice. Hamnpork, at least, might be to avoid having a main character die ... or at least avoid one dying permenantly.
• In Animal Farm (1954), Mollie and Clover are absent. Benjamin the donkey fills in for Clover, if anything.
• Aouda does not appear in Around the World in 80 Days (Burbank Animation), and is replaced with a random girl who only has a few minutes of screentime.
• Mr. Karate, Lee, and Mickey do not appear in the Art of Fighting TV special, which loosely retells the events of the first game. Because of Mr. Karate's absence, the final battle is instead fought against Mr. Big and King.
• In the film adaptation of Balto, Togo was the lead sled dog in the actual event, but is nowhere in the movie.
• Tim Drake, Onyx, and all mentions of Stephanie Brown are cut from Batman: Under the Red Hood. This was likely due to Onyx and Stephanie and references not being familiar with anyone but existing comic book readers. Additionally, in making it a stand-alone feature, the original story's ties to Infinite Crisis were omitted, including Deathstroke and Captain Nazi. The cause of Jason's resurrection is likewise changed from Superboy-Prime to the more-familiar to Batlore Ra's al Ghul and the Lazarus Pit, and Gotham's police commissioner at the time, Michael Akins, is replaced with the more traditional James Gordon. A flashback to one of Jason's first adventures as Robin uses the Riddler, whereas the comic equivalent used Captain Boomerang.
• The Animated Adaptation of Batman: Year One removes Branden's second-in-command Pratt, with Branden himself (renamed Brendon) being the one Batman punches through a wall. Likewise, the movie removes mentions of Loeb's resignation and his successor, Grogan.
• The Disney adaptation of Bambi removed several characters from the book (most being deer). Old Netta, Karus, Marena, Faline's twin brother Gobo, and Friend Hare weren't in the film. Friend Hare was given an expy in Thumper and some of his traits were given to Friend Owl.
• In the Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, Belle is an only child. In the original fairy tale, she had numerous siblings.
• Silver Samurai and Sunfire do not appear in Big Hero 6, as the film rights to the X-Men franchise were owned by 20th Century Fox at the time, not Disney or Marvel. Not that they would fit in anyway, since the film's world is now a more tech-based sci-fi world, and mutants with superpowers would seem very out of place.
• As the quest for the Great Disks is reduced to a brief montage in BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, the six Matoran who help the Toa find the disks and Ahkmou's whole traitor routine are glossed over. The Morbuzakh plant that served as the catalyst for the Great Disk plot in the comics and books at least makes a couple second cameo but is never mentioned in the dialogue.
  • BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows compresses events from near the beginning, near the middle and near the end of the Hordika arc, and the adventures involving a variety of characters and creatures from the books, comics and online animations are meant to take place between scenes. This time, however, there is no montage where these events could fit in. The film plays out as a seemingly continuous plot and the one montage that does take place is not relevant to the off-screen stories.
• The Black Cauldron cuts quite a bit from The Chronicles of Prydain.
  • Prince Gwydion, who in the books was the only one able to defeat the Horned King. Interestingly, he was alluded to in a deleted scene as the king that once wielded the sword Taran has.
  • Also, Achren and Coll.
  • And almost every supporting character from the book called The Black Cauldron, such as Prince Ellydir and King Morgant.
  • The Cauldron's destruction. In the book it can only reanimate the dead; it cannot animate living beings, because they're already alive, and thus, self-destructs.
• Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie makes an effort to distill the events of the first four books into one movie, meaning Dr. Diaper and the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space had to go. The former only appears in a comic book and is therefore fictional in-universe.
• In the animated adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia adventure The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Father Christmas does not appear. Instead Aslan gives the children their weapons.
• The DC Animated Movie Universe:
  • Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox gets stuff cut off from its source material:
    • Henry Allen, Barry Allen's father. In recent versions of Flash's backstory, Zoom went back in time, killed Barry's mother Nora, and framed Henry for it. This motivates Barry to become a forensics scientist, since he wants to find evidence to clear his father's name and catch the real killer. In this film however, Henry is completely missing and Nora was killed by a random burglar. Zoom's involvement in her death is hinted, but left vague at best.
    • Pandora and the universe merger were written out.
    • Tawny. Apparently giving the S.H.A.Z.A.M. kids a freaking pet tiger was deemed too random and/or awesome.
    • Element Woman and Enchantress played pivotal parts in the comic, with the former helping the heroes after failing to acquire Superman, and the latter being the reason Captain Marvel became weakened, by turning on her allies). Neither of them show up.
    • Some other notable characters omitted from the original comic event include Wally West, Bart Allen, Booster Gold and the Flashpoint timeline's counterparts to Plastic Man, Outsider and Traci 13.
  • Justice League: War, adapted from the first arc of the New 52, Justice League: Origins, replaced Aquaman with Shazam!. Its sequel, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis would see Aquaman join the League.
  • Likewise, in Son of Batman and its sequels, Jason and Tim are never mentioned. Word of God confirms that in this universe the "Robin" title passed from Dick directly to Damian.
  • The The Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen duology sees Bertron and Mongul written out, instead both being replaced by Darkseid (the former as Doomsday's creator, the latter as the partner to Cyborg Superman). Likewise, the Underdwellers and Cadmus are written out, with Intergang taking the former's place as the Starter Villain and Luthor being Superboy's creator from the get-go. Also, Coast City doesn't get destroyed.
  • Batman: Hush outright omits Jason Todd and Arnold Allnut. Likewise, Killer Croc, Huntress, Tim Drake, and — thanks to their respective deaths in Son of Batman and Batman: Bad Blood, Ra's al Ghul and Talia al Ghul's respective roles are absorbed by Bane, Batgirl, Damian Wayne, Lady Shiva, and Lex Luthor.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid cuts a lot of scenes and characters from the original book. In particular, Collin Lee and Bryce Anderson's roles were taken by other non-white characters to add some diversity: Chirag Gupta takes the role of Collin as Rowley's replacement friend, while Bryce's role as the most popular kid in school is taken by George Deveney (a character who first appeared in the eleventh book).
• Fist of the North Star:
  • The 1986 movie adapts the first 72 chapters worth of story, rearranging the order of events to focus on the more important arcs and characters. Despite this, it still has some notable omissions: Toki, the second of the four Hokuto Brothers, is nowhere to be seen—instead, Kenshiro's fiancee Yuria is the one who is locked away in Cassandra, as her initial captor Shin ends up being mortally wounded in an off-screen battle with Raoh. Likewise, Rei's love interest Mamiya is nowhere either and as a result, Rei dies immediately after his bout with Raoh without ever getting to fight Mamiya's old tormentor Juda.
  • The True Savior movies, while being much closer to the manga than the 1986 movie, still had their share of omissions. The first movie, Legend of Raoh: Chapter of Death in Love, notably omitted Thouzer's backstory with his master Ohgai, removing his entire motivation for building a mausoleum in the first place, while the third movie Legend of Raoh: Chapter of Fierce Fight, removed the entire fight between Raoh and Juza, which is generally considered one of the more iconic fights from the manga.
• When Fluppy Dogs was adapted into an hour-long television movie, there was a sixth Fluppy named Fanci who did not appear in the film at all.
• Frozen is even more "loosely based" on its source, The Snow Queen, than other Disney films. While Gerda, Kai, and the Snow Queen have counterparts in Anna, Kristoff, and Elsa, the Robber Girl and the mirror are missing. Word of God is that Hans works as a counterpart to the mirror while Kristoff has elements of both Kai and the Robber Girl.
• Garfield's Pet Force left out Pooky and Binky the Clown's Pet Force counterparts Compooky and Sorcerer Binky, the latter being replaced by Professor Wally.
• One of the stories in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is an adaptation of the Alan Moore story "Tygers", but leaves out the child Abin Sur rescues in addition to the foretelling of the demise of the Green Lantern Corps omitting Sodam Yat and replacing the Children of the White Lobe with the Sinestro Corps, with Qull left out as well and having his role in the story taken by Atrocitus.
• Green Lantern: First Flight focuses primarily on Hal Jordan and in effect omits the other human Green Lanterns Guy Gardner, John Stewart and Kyle Rayner (the film was released before Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz and Jo Mullein existed).
• The animated film The Halloween Tree omits four of the trick-or-treaters featured in the original book by Ray Bradbury: George Smith (who goes as a ghost), J.J. (who goes as an apeman), Fred Fryer (who goes as a beggar), and "Hackles" Nibley (who goes as Death).
• Hercules (Pure Magic) reduces the Twelve Labors to just slaying the Hydra (the Mad Boar and Augean Stables also make appearances, although they're just obstacles that Hercules ran into on the way to Lerna).
• Beorn, Bolg, Roäc, and the Master of Lake-town are absent from the animated film of The Hobbit.
• How to Catch a Cold: None of the characters from the original short feature in the live-action short.
• In The Iron Giant, the monstrous Space Bat Angel Dragon who the Giant challenges to save Earth in Ted Hughes' original book doesn't exist, though the anti warfare aesop it embodies is still conveyed. Instead, the Giant's final battle is against the military's increasingly destructive attempts to kill him, and his own deadly alien programming.
• Johnny Corncob leaves out extraneous characters like the Sultan's cowardly son, the Saracen king who saves the hussars from the Tartars, the sentry in the Land of Giants, the lion and bear Johnny fights before facing the dragon, and random people he meets on his journey.
• Speedwagon, Jack the Ripper, Dire, Straizo and baby Lisa Lisa were all removed from the movie adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood (in the case of Speedwagon, he in particular was apparently encountered as a thug on Ogre Street as in the manga but doesn't show up anymore after that); the main problem is that Speedwagon, Straizo and Lisa Lisa play important roles in Part 2, even before you mention the Speedwagon Foundation that supports the Joestar family all the way through Part 6. Making this more confusing, the movie ended with a teaser for an adaptation of Part 2 which featured Speedwagon and Straizo prominently.
• Several characters are taken out of Disney's adaptation of The Jungle Book, perhaps most notably Tabaqui the Jackal, and Buldeo the Hunter.
  • Subverted with Messua and her unnamed husband, as even though they didn't appear in the original film, they did appear in the 2003 sequel.
• Justice League: Doom is based off Mark Waid's "Tower of Babel" story, but omits Aquaman, Plastic Man, Wally West, and Kyle Rayner, and replaces them with Cyborg, Barry Allen, and Hal Jordan. Also Ra's al Ghul was the lead villain in the original story. In the movie, he's replaced by Vandal Savage and the Legion of Doom.
• Justice League vs. The Fatal Five:
  • Despite the fact that her last appearance in Justice League (which this movie is ostensibly a sequel to) ended with her relocating to the 31st century and joining the Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl doesn't appear or even get mentioned.
  • When Jessica Cruz visits the 31st century museum, she finds an exhibit devoted to Earth's Green Lanterns. John Stewart, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner and Jessica herself are all included, but Simon Baz, Earth's other Green Lantern (and Jessica's immediate predecessor) from the comics is inexplicably absent.
• Multiple major and minor Disney Fairies characters were ignored in the film adaptations such as Rani, Bess, Prilla, and Mother Dove.
• Land of Oz:
  • Ozma seems to have fallen victim to this in Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, if the Scarecrow and his friends being in charge of Oz is anything to go by.
  • The 1933 animated short The Wizard of Oz by Van Beuren Studios leaves out every character except Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Wizard and is largely an In Name Only adaptation.
  • The 1974 animated film Journey Back to Oz also skipped Ozma (as well as the Woggle-Bug and the Gump), being a very loose adaptation of The Marvellous Land of Oz with Dorothy in Tip's role.
• The Little Mermaid has a grandmother in the original The Little Mermaid. Ariel has no known grandparents in the Disney adaptation.
• Mulan is an only daughter, while The Ballad of Mulan has her as the middle child, after an older sister and a kid brother (who gets an allusion in that her dog is called "Little Brother").
• Tolkien's Legendarium
  • The Lord of the Rings:
    • Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry, together with the Hobbits' entire "Old Forest" adventure are absent.
    • Glorfindel is absent, his role of rescuing Frodo from the Nazgûl and bringing him to Rivendell is given to Legolas.
  • The Return of the King:
    • Prince Imrahil who plays a major role in The Return of the King is omitted entirely. In the books his role supporting Gandalf's defense of Minas Tirith and his support of Aragorn as King of Gondor are fairly important plot points, as he's the one that figures Aragorn can cure victims of the Nazgûl.
    • Legolas and Gimli are reduced to minor background characters who only appear a couple times without dialogue, while Saruman and Grima Wormtongue don't appear at all.
• Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo was a Japanese-only Pokémon: The Series radio drama that was later adapted into a segment at the start of Pokémon: The First Movie. A large portion of it was cut out, such as everything involving Team Rocket and the backstory to Amber. Jessie's Missing Mom Miyamoto and Giovanni's mom Madame Boss were excluded from the animated version.
• The animated short film of Garth Ennis' The Pro by Titmouse omits the Viewer, the Speedo, the Lime, and the terrorists confronted at the end.
• Though he still appears in a supporting role, Toji is replaced by Asuka as the pilot of Eva Unit 03 in the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. Gaghiel is also replaced by an unnamed, clock-like Angel. And due to the condensed nature of the movies, a lot of the Angels were either omitted or made into Composite Characters.
• Rumble: As this film is an adaptation of the graphic novel “Monster On The Hill” by Rob Harrell, the film’s overwhelming amount of Adaptation Decay leaves a lot of characters on the cutting room floor.
  • Charles Wilkie, the graphic novel’s protagonist is written out and replaced in the role by original character, Winnie Coyle.
  • The Murk, who is the Big Bad in the novel is nowhere to be seen in the film as the film chooses to subject Noodles, A.K.A Tentaculor to Adaptational Villainy, place him in the role the murk had, and change his name to “Tentacular”.
  • Timothy, the young street urchin is also nowhere to be seen, as he is seemingly replaced by a villainous counterpart named Jimothy Brett Chadley III.
    • Other characters also cut out include Noodles’ intern Kongor as well as Wilkie’s wife Edna. Minor characters that are cut from the film include Arthur, his wife and kids, Town Father Hawthorne, Shelley, and Stevenson.
• Son of the White Horse is an adaptation of two tales that share broad similarities: Son of the White Mare and Treeshaker, Irontemperer, Mountainroller. From the latter, the film omits the angry landlord who tries to kill the protagonists with his boar, bull and buffalo. It also combines many characters for the sake of simplifying the story's world and changing the characters' relationships. Thus the town the heroes visit doesn't exist in the film either, and the town's king pleading for his daughters' rescue is replaced with the heroes' own father.
• The Suicide Shop was given an animated film adaptation in 2012, which had two notable omissions from the original novel:
  • Alan being sent to join a suicide bomb squad by his parents in hopes of dispelling his optimism is left out, which results in the suicide bombers being omitted.
  • Because the film ends before we see Marilyn marry her significant other and get pregnant, the film does not feature her unborn child mentioned in the original book.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie:
  • Peach's steward, Toadsworth, was considered for an appearance but was adapted out for the final movie, his place being taken by a more generic, glasses-wearing Toad.
  • Spinies appear as soldiers in Bowser's army, but not the Lakitus, who throw them around in the games.
• The Animated Adaptations of the first two arc of the Superman/Batman comics present examples:
  • In Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, the adaptation of the Public Enemies (2004) story arc, the future Superman, Pete Ross, the John Stewart Green Lantern, the Super- and Bat-families, the Michael Holt Mister Terrific and the original Flash and Green Lantern were all omitted from the comic. While some were minor (Mister Terrific, Jay Garrick, and Alan Scott only appeared in a scene that led with a fight Superman and Batman had with Captain Marvel and Hawkman), three are notable: the future Superman since he figured into the sub-plot to destroy the Kryptonite meteor, Pete Ross because he was Luthor's Vice President, and John Stewart because he was the only member of Luthor's Super Team not to appear.
  • In Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, based on The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Bernadeth, a member of the Female Furies didn't appear, though in the comic, she spent the Furies' fight with Wonder Woman and Big Barda sitting on the sidelines with Granny Goodness. The Justice League, JSA, Teen Titans, and The Outsiders were also omitted from the scene at the end when Superman introduces Kara as Supergirl.
• Superman: Doomsday, wrote out every non-Superman character. Because of its nature as a Direct-to-DVD animated movie and legal issues with Superboy, the replacement Supermen are also replaced by a clone (like Superboy) with elements of Cyborg-Superman and the Eradicator. Jonathan Kent is also written out.
• Ultimate Avengers:
  • Hawkeye is absent from both movies, despite being a major character in The Ultimates, the series the films were inspired by.
  • Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were absent from both films as well, and were replaced by Black Panther in the sequel.
  • Black Panther's father, King T'Chaka, was killed by Klaw in the original comics, but in Ultimate Avengers 2 T'Chaka is instead killed by Herr Kleiser.
• Watership Down: Mainly due to Adaptation Distillation, rabbits not appearing in the film of the book include:
  • Those Two Guys (three actually) Hawkbit, Speedwell and Acorn
  • Plucky Comic Relief Bluebell
  • Strawberry, a refugee from Cowslip's warren
  • Hyzenthlay's friend Thethuthinang and Nelthilta, the turncoat doe
  • Plus the mouse Hazel rescues from a hawk on Watership down, who is actually the character in the book that informs the rabbits that the Efrafans have gathered below the down and are planning to attack.
• The movie of X1999 removed Tokiko Magami, Kyogo and Sayo Monou, Hokuto Sumeragi and Hien and Souhi considering the short time of the movie. Kakyou didn't also appear considering he didn't made his appearance yet in the manga when the movie was released. His spot in the Dragons of Earth is filled by Canon Foreigner, Shogo Asagi.

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