I'm Atton. I actually wasn't supposed to make it into the final game, but I was created at the last minute. Blame my agent. I was actually slated for a spin-off to Jedi Knight, but I don't want to talk about what happened there.
"Of all sad words of mouth or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been."
—John Greenleaf Whittier
This is when directors or writers release details about plots, characters, back stories, or other elements they thought about adding to the story at one point but ultimately never did. Unlike All There in the Manual, however, this new information is not released as Word Of God with the intention of being added to the Canon. These elements are only What Could Have Been but never were and never will be part of the story proper.
Some may quickly find a home in Fan Work. Many fans love hearing the possible paths their favorite story could have taken... even while breathing a sigh of relief (or feeling disappointed) that they ultimately didn't come to be.
This can also refer to a Sequel Hook that never got a payoff, alternate casts or directors, or even tantalizing news that the entire story was completely different from the one we all know, when it was first conceived.
Just a few typical reasons for why stories get altered along the way:
The Media Watchdogs or executives said, "No," or at the very least, "Yes, but only if you change this."
Technical reasons: The people who were originally hired to do it backed out, the special effects plans didn't play out in their favor, there was not enough money in the budget to include it.
Story quality — The writers simply decided on something different instead because some ideas, no matter how cool they sound when they first come to you, just have to go (or, in the case of comedies, the joke wasn't as funny as it should have been). Maybe the author realizes the fans wouldn't be too happy about seeing the death of a sympathetic or popular character you originally planned to kill off (not that it stops afewpeople). Or maybe you realize what sounds oh so cool in your head pushes Willing Suspension of Disbelief too far on film or paper. Or maybe it was a bad idea to begin with. In any case, someone eventually had a better idea.
A side effect of Throw It In — Something had to be thrown out in its place. (This apparently happens a lot when you're working with Harrison Ford.)
A bit more subtle than the other examples on this page. Originally, each new expansion of Magic: The Gathering was going to have a new color scheme on the card backs instead of the usual brown and tan — for instance, Arabian Nights would have been orange and magenta, Ice Age would have been two shades of blue. This was nixed when the designers realized this would make it too easy for your opponents to identify the cards you have in your hand by their backs, giving them an unfair advantage, so the card backs have remained unchanged since day one. (Nowadays of course, most people have card sleeves...)
The set "Planar Chaos" focused on the theme of alternate realities. One of the original ideas to express the concept was to present the set as coming from an alternate timeline where Magic has six colors instead of five. The sixth color (purple, by the way) made it quite far in the development process (at least, by the standards of rejected ideas) but was ultimately scrapped. The set was going to feature packaging showcasing an alternate logo style and other changes, though the cardback would have stayed the same.
Another such "what if?" idea went a bit farther back — what if, rather than the theme for the game being magic, it was space? This article is a primer for newcomers to Richard Garfield's 15-year-old trading card game, Magic: The Gathering Space: The Convergence.
Wizards of the Coast kept the final set of the Scars of Mirrodin block a mystery for a time, saying it would be either New Phyrexia or Mirrodin Pure, depending on which side won the war. Eventually it was revealed to be New Phyrexia. This surprised precisely no one, but for the portion player base who liked Mirrodin and disliked Phyrexia, we can only wonder what the set could have been like.
Unfortunately for them, recent articles about the development process reveal that the last set never could have been Mirrodin Pure to begin with—the block was originally going to start with New Phyrexia and go from there! That only changed when they decided it would be more interesting to show the process of Mirrodin gradually being corrupted into New Phyrexia.
Did you know that there was an attempt to make Yu-Gi-Oh! into a card game, before the popular CCG we know and love, today? Bandai's version of Duel Monsters was simplistic, if crammed with rather bizarre rules and effects, and was much farther detached from the card game we saw in the anime and manga than Konami's version was. However, it was reportedly rather popular, so imagine if this was the version of the game we got, instead of Konami's version...
Fan Works
The starting authors of An Entry With A Bang! had to decide whether to go with the Earth of Tom Clancy's 'Verse or the Real Life Earth, settling for the former. Fortunately, the existence of a Non-canon Stories thread allows for a glimpse at the latter. While some of the posts within will indeed come to pass after enough in-universe time has gone by, others will indeed never make the story's canon. The discussion threads, if you dare brave them, also have older versions of posts that made it to the Story Only thread. One of these had The Dukes of Hazzard explicitly show up, but it was rejected in favour of a less blatant Shout Out.
Pro Wrestling
A lot of these are just fan guesses because Wrestling storylines are constantly changing and original storylines rarely are acknowledged by the creative staff, but what the hell:
The Undertaker was supposed to be an actual undertaker instead of a zombie/biker.
Technically he was, when he was managed (briefly) by Brother Love — then Paul Bearer became his manager, and with him came the mysterious urn that was the source of his supernatural powers.
The Undertaker was also supposed to debut as the infamous Gobbledygooker. However, this idea was seen as too ridiculous and The Undertaker persona was born right after the Gobbledygooker gimmick bombed.
Chyna was briefly planned to win the WWE title at Summerslam 1999.
Mr. Kennedy was supposed to be Vince's illegitimate son. Then he got himself a Wellness Policy violation.
Don't forget, this was a substitute angle for the "Who Killed Vince McMahon?" thing. What if THAT angle got to play out properly, instead of being pulled due to the Chris Benoit situation?
Apparently, the night Benoit died the "murderer" was supposed to be revealed as Linda McMahon, who would be arrested at that show. Some weeks later, there was supposed to be an "aired Will reading" by Mr. McMahon himself wherein he would leave the entire WWE in the hands of his "illegitimate son" Mr. Kennedy. This was meant to turn Kennedy into a massive heel and give him a mega-push to the championship. At that point, Stephanie McMahon and Triple H were going to reveal their kayfabe-second, consensual marriage - based on their real one - that would entitle Triple H to combat Mr. Kennedy for the right to own the WWE, culminating in a feud that would push all the way to the Main Event of that year's Wrestlemania. After THAT was finished, in which Triple H would win back control of the company from Kennedy, Vince was meant to come back and reveal that he'd faked the whole thing and setup Linda to take the fall so that way he could give everything to his "true son."
Kennedy's career is full of these non-moments. When The Undertaker suffered a Game Breaking Injury in 2007, Mr. Kennedy was going to use his Money in the Bank contract and capture the World Heavyweight title. However, Kennedy himself would have an injury of his own, so Edge would end up winning the contract from Kennedy in a match (after Edge attacked Kennedy on the ramp, thus not making Kennedy look weak, but doing a short match). What makes this situation really awful is that Kennedy's injury was not as serious as initially thought, as it was a giant hematoma as opposed to a torn triceps, so Kennedy ended up losing a World title run for something that didn't keep him out two months.
The curse didn't stop here as far as the World Heavyweight title was concerned, as Edge would suffer his own injury about a month into what was supposed to be Kennedy's run with the world title. The Smackdown Creative team was so desperate for a Heel champion that they put the title on The Great Khali.
As for Chris Benoit himself, we would had become the new focal point of ECW by winning the title at Vengeance and feuding with CM Punk, building Punk up similar to his feud with MVP.
Also, had Benoit's death not been part of a murder-suicide, would the WWE have milked it for what it's worth, like they did when Eddie Guerrero died?
Kane was supposed to remask in 2008. In December 2011, he finally did, turning this into a 'what became'.
Christian was supposed to be the one behind Jeff Hardy's "accidents" in late 2008.
The disastrous one-year WWE Championship reign of Diesel (Kevin Nash) was originally intended to end at a house show in Montreal... to Montreal native and (kayfabe) Cajun pirate, Jean-Pierre LaFaitte (formerly Carl Oulette of The Quebecers). Executive Meddling on behalf of The Kliq not only prevented this, but went out of their way to bury LaFitte on camera.
In 1999, then-WWF booker Vince Russo abruptly jumped to WCW; this left WWF's creative staff scrambling to come up with resolutions to approaching angles, one of them being the impending wedding of Stephanie McMahon and Test. Russo later admitted that his plan was to have Test turn heel, join D Generation X, and leave Stephanie at the altar.
In a rare case of actually acknowledging what could have been, WWE actually released promotional pictures of Owen Hart as WWF Champion from his aborted 1994 title run. Owen was originally supposed to beat older brother Bret for the title in a Lumberjack Match at a house show in July due to interference from Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, which would lead into their cage match at SummerSlam (a match which did happen, and was a Crowning Moment of Awesome for both men). For whatever reason, this was booked as a Dusty Finish so the WWF invented an instant replay rule that would keep the belt on him (hey, at least it was better than the "not an official ring" excuse he used to keep the Rockers from being the tag team champions).
Similarly: Stephanie McMahon has hinted in interviews that, on the day he died, Eddie Guerrero was booked to win the World Heavyweight Championship in a Triple Threat Match involving an injured then-champion Batista.
Batista later stated in his book that Randy Orton was the one who was going to win the title, and most likely Stephanie's comments were sadness over Eddie never becoming a champion again like he hoped to be.
Chavo's comments after his departure from WWE about him and Eddie used more for building newer talent rather than being given their own pushes give some validity to Batista.
The biggest "What Could Have Been" in wrestling history: the InVasion. After the buyout of WCW, WWE was planning to have WCW run as an entirely separate wrestling promotion (but still be a part of the WWE corporate structure; in essence, the plan was an early prototype of the Brand Extension). Unfortunately, WWE couldn't find a time slot for WCW, so instead, the InVasion angle began. This was intended to move WCW into a primetime slot, with Raw planned to become WCW's show while SmackDown would be WWE's show. However, this plan also fell through, and in the end, the InVasion ended up being one giant bag of suck.
Although Mick Foley has had numerous crowning moments in his career, his first book Have a Nice Day notes that he did end up missing on one that would have been the highlight of his Dude Love persona. In Summerslam 1997 Mankind was wrestling Triple H in a cage match. Mankind was supposed to go through a personality change, rip off his shirt revealing a heart tattoo on his chest and do a dive off the top of the cage as per the fantasy of Dude Love. Unfortunately Mick forgot to get the tattoo done, and he was too bruised up to do a proper dive resulting in many a confused fan.
When WWE wrote off their annual Survivor Series PPV in 2010, THE top candidate for its replacement was a PPV based on WCW's War Games match.
If the writers hadn't pissed off Austin with a last-minute Raw booking in the King of the Ring tournament against Brock Lesnar that would have helped neither of them, he would have continued feuding with Eddie Guerrero.
Or what if Wrestlemania X8 main event was Austin vs. Hogan?
In early 2010, with Eric Bischoff as General Manager and Hulk Hogan as creative consultant, Jeff Jarrett and Dixie Carter planned to launch a whole new generation of the Monday Night Wars by moving TNA Impact to Monday nights and running it against WWE Raw's timeslot. This plan failed spectacularly and the TNA program moved back to Thursday nights, but it would have been really interesting to see which show had proved more popular (especially because they're so different in tone and style).
WWE almost signed New Jack. Although his tryout match with Val Venis was really short and lackluster, his promo skills impressed Vince McMahon and he was well-liked in the locker room. Due to the inevitable Bowdlerization and Vince's concern that New Jack would seriously hurt someone, it didn't happen.
Another almost-WWE signee would be Steve Corino. After leaving ECW for WCW, Corino was released after the WWF bought the latter. Six years later, he wrestled a couple tryout matches but was never offered a contract. He turned down a request from Dusty Rhodes due since he felt he couldn't the short five-minute matches that standard in WWE compared to the 20+ minutes bouts he had done in Japan and elsewhere.
A third would be AJ Styles who turned down a developmental contract to stay and support his future wife's college education.
Other TNA names that had stints or worked dark matches in WWE include Alex Shelley, Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels.
Mark "Marco Corleone" Jindrak was set to be the fourth member of Evolution.
Lex Luger's All American Face push was originally supposed to go to Kona Crush however when the time came to body slam Yokozuna in the stars and stripes challenge the big Hawaiian hurt his back trying to lift him and the show's MC Randy Savage had to improve while they flew Luger on to the ship to body slam him.
There was what appears to be a rather interesting side-effect to Sting turning the offer down; Triple H's entrance included an abbreviated version of the Metallica song For Whom The Bell Tolls. Considering that Sting's entrance music in WCW used to be Seek & Destroy, it's thought that WWE had secured the rights to a play a Metallica track at the event in advance specifically for Sting, and decided to use a different track when he declined the offer.
There were apparently plans to have Wade Barrett vs. Undertaker at WM XXVII quite early on, which appears to be evidenced by the rather sudden beatdown by The Nexus upon The Undertaker in the middle of 2010.
Dwayne Johnson, better known as "The Rock", considered running for President as a Republican in the 2008 election.
What if Magnum T.A. (who was arguably the biggest babyface in Jim Crockett Promotions at the time of his career ending car accident) not had his career cut so short? Magnum was apparently, booked to win the NWA World Title from Ric Flair at the 1986 Starrcade (NWA/WCW's WrestleMania). Would Sting still had gotten to wear he got in the same time span with a healthy Magnum still around? Also, would Jim Crockett still had been forced to sell out to Ted Turner in the same time span despite Magnum still being a top draw?
At the time of his accident, Magnum was feuding with Nikita Koloff. Like Magnum, Koloff's career is an example of What Could Have Been. In 1988, he took a year off from the ring to care for his dying wife. In 1992, a neck injury would result in Nikita's premature retirement.
In late 1993 the WWF decided to revive the previously inactive Women's Championship by bringing in Madusa, under the new name Alundra Blayze, who would win the title in December of that year. A few months later, in 1994, the WWF brought in legendary AJW wrestler Bull Nakano to face off against Blayze and the two would engage in a heated rivalry that lasted throughout the rest of the year and produced good matches. In 1995 the WWF signed Rhonda Sing bringing her in as a vicious yet comedic heel Bertha Faye, the trailer trash girlfriend of Harvey Wippleman. Since Blayze would be out for a few months getting plastic surgery after Fay broke her nose in her debut, the plan was for Faye to feud with Bull until Blayze returned and then build the division up from there. However, Bull was found in possession of cocaine and subsequently fired leaving Faye without a feud and by the end of the year, frustrated with her gimmick and being told she couldn't perform her signature powerbomb as Sycho Sid was using it as his Finishing Move, Sing had left. However at Survivor Series 1995, WWF brought in more women from AJW (Sakie Hasegawa, Chaparita ASARI, Kyoko Inoue, Aja Kong, Tomoko Watanabe and Lioness Asuka) with the intention of building Aja Kong up as Blayze's next challenger as she picked up wins over the next few weeks on Monday Night Raw and was scheduled to face Blayze for the belt at the 1996 Royal Rumble. However Blayze did not like Kong who was notoriously stiff and refused to work with her instead sitting out the last month of her contract and refusing to re-sign while she was still champion. The WWF abandoned it's women's division before bringing it back three years later. It's a story full of what ifs: would the plan to build a solid division around Bull, Faye and Blayze have succeed if Bull hadn't been fired? Would fan interest have continued if the Blayze/Kong feud had gone off as planned and if so would WWE keep the focus on bringing in actual women wrestlers (be it American girls, Japanese joshi or Mexican luchadoras).
Of course, the kicker to all of this was the fact that the day her contract with WWF expired, she showed up on WCW Monday Nitro as Madusa with the WWF Women's Championship belt...which she then proceeded to toss in the trash.
The really painful part? The massive loss of face Vince suffered from Madusa's action is believed to be part of why he pulled The Montreal Screwjob.
According to Kurt Angle, he was considered to end Undertaker's streak at WrestleMania 22 in a match for the World Heavyweight Championship instead of at No Way Out 2006. Undertaker was willing to take the loss because he hadn't had a 5 Star WrestleMania match and the writing team was willing to do it to keep Angle looking strong as champion. If this had happened, would Rey Mysterio Jr have gained the World Heavyweight Championship during the Eddiesploitation angle?
As for the Eddiesploitation angle, would Chavo's career be different if he hadn't turned it down as their original choice?
Scott Hall was going to be part of WCW's Dangerous Alliance in 1992.
He was also supposed to beat Steve Austin in their Wrestlemania X8 match but Austin pretty much shot it down as hard as he could, not wanting to lose to the 'invading' force of the nWo. It pretty much killed the entire storyline dead.
UFC's Mike Goldberg was WWE's original choice to replace Jim Ross in 2005.
Smackdown was pitched as an all divas show.
Similarly, Spike TV briefly considered giving TNA a timeslot for an all-knockouts show. This was at a time when the Gail Kim / Awesome Kong feud was drawing the highest quarter-hour ratings on Impact, so who knows what might have happened with a weekly program dedicated completely to the knockouts?
Had Brian Pillman not died of a overdose, his storyline with Goldust would have ended with him stealing Goldust's wife Terri Runnels.
Triple H was supposed to be revealed as the anonymous Raw GM in summer 2010.
With each passing interview, Paul Heyman makes TNA fans (and even WWE fans that just want competition) more and more wistful every time an interviewer asks him what it would be like if he did sign and book for TNA back in 2010. His goal: take the company public in two years by cutting everyoneover 40 save one for name value, book around the newer talent, plus outright STEAL Daniel Bryan Danielson after his firing and make him an unstoppable submission machine with an eventual showdown with Kurt Angle. Every time a plan is mentioned, thousands of wrestling fans weep.
And Heyman's original plans for the disastrous December to Dismember main event? Use UFC style vignettes to sell that match in the weeks leading up it (they were filmed but never used, the concept was recycled for Wrestlemania 25's opening), then in the actual match itself, start it off with CM Punkchoking out and eliminatingThe Big Show in the first five minutes to insure a new champion (an idea which Big Show liked and Vince hated). A lot better than the attempt to turn Bobby Lashley into the next Goldberg.
Jim Ross was also rumored to run to TNA when his contract expired in April 2010.
Had Edge had not retired, one of the possibilities for Wrestlemania 27 would had been Christian turning on him.
Hulk Hogan was trained by shoot wrestler Hiro Matsuda, and was apparently possessed of actual skill in the ring if his matches in Japan are any indication, especially one 1993 match which saw Hogan pull an Enzugiri on the Great Muta of all people. Hogan states in his first autobiography Hollywood Hulk hogan, that in the US under Vince Sr. he was told to wrestle like a generic power wrestler, and this followed him throughout his in-ring career for the rest of his days in the US, to the point that when he got to WCW, it was so ingrained into wrestling fans to assume Hogan got by only on "mediocre" wrestling skills and an assload of charisma, that he never bothered to show off what he could really do this side of the pacific. One has to wonder how things would have been different if Hogan had been able to use his in ring skills AND the charisma he was so well known for in the US. Interestingly, shortly before his return to the WWF under Vince Jr. he came within a hair's breadth of becoming NWA world champion by going to a draw with Harley Race for the belt just a month, give or take, before the first Starrcade. More questions to haunt the fans on what could have been.
John Cena might have been fired if Stephanie hadn't overheard him freestyling, leading to him dressing and rapping like Vanilla Ice two weeks later on the Halloween episode of Smackdown.
Injuries kept Hogan from entering TNA in 2004, which would had him feuding with Jeff Jarrett for the NWA Championship at the inaugural Victory Road.
The Rock and Edge had custom WWF/WWE Championship belts designed but were not used. The Rock's belt which had been the successor to Austin's Smokin's Skull belt had the Brahma Bull logo but was reportedly lost in the mail. Edge's belt was far different than the Rated R Spinner belt but was scrapped due to time constraints. One could only imagine that Cena Spinner could have been a one off instead of a seven year itch.
If Triple H hadn't suffered his Game Breaking Injury in 2001, he would had restarted his feud with Austin as a face.
The Juniors division of Smackdown was an attempt to relaunch the Cruiserweight Division (considered dark match/B-show material) until a mix up caused the WWE to pick up mostly midget wrestlers.
Had Brock Lesnar not left in 2004, we would had reprised his feud with The Undertaker now back as the "Original Deadman".
Shortly before his death, "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig was considered as a possible contender for Jeff Jarrett's NWA World title.
"Macho Man" Randy Savage's surprise appearance at TNA's first pay-per-view was going to lead to a feud with Jeff Jarrett. However, Hulk Hogan (not knowing that Savage was scheduled to appear) decided to visit backstage since he lives nearby. As soon as Savage saw Hogan, he immediately cancelled all future appearances, save for a tag-team match at the next PPV.
Had the "MSG Incident" not taken place in 1996, Triple H, not Austin, would have won the King of the Ring tournament that year. Of course, Austin's KotR victory speech was where he coined "Austin 3:16" and is looked on as a pivotal moment in his ascent to the top of the wrestling industry, so the face of the business would have looked very different indeed if Triple H had won the tournament.
Roleplay
There are several ideas in the discussion thread of We Are Our Avatars, some of them did eventually come to fruition, others didn't, at some point, it was decided Andros and Enker would be in the Revenge of the Spark arc, ultimately, they didn't end up becoming part of Lucrezia's army.
Silver was planned to appear during the Incarnates Arc as a personification of Lust, possibly going to levels of Complete Monster that would almost rival Apos. Daionus decided he did not want to play as that sort of character, and declined.
Also, in the same arc, Catherine was planned to appear as a personification of Gluttony, and the present Catherine had to be killed in order to defeat her. It didn't happen, but it ultimately proved to be an example of Tropes Are Not Bad.
Etheru states that he planned on Joey and Catherine acting as foils for one another, but arcadiarika's decision to refuse developing the character any longer shoots this possibility down.
At one point, in revulsion of the fact that nothing was happening, Lemurian at one point thought up the "Ghost Town arc", where the characters would be dropped in a desolate town without food, water, or their powers for a week, the arc was discarded when a player pointed out that the arc wasn't proving anything, because it was pointed out to be almost exactly like the complaint: Nothing happens.
Midna, at one point, took a break, to try and get his mind off the game for a while, but was banned during the break, due to this, it makes one wonder if he really would have improved, or just kept up his bad habits.
Tabletop Games
When designing 4th edition D&D, the designers decided they wanted to do a Shout Out to Narnia and the intelligent animal fantasy concept. So originally, the Dragonborn race from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons was originally supposed to be a race of non-anthropomorphic talkinglions based on Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia. The idea was dropped because of questions of how they would handle equipment and they were at first altered into dragons (since they believed Dungeons & Dragons should actually have dragons as a playable race) and then later into humanoid dragons called Dragonborn. (Of course, they weren't called the Dragonborn in the original concept.)
Of course, if they ever want to revisit the idea, they could always make the Mascot Mook Displacer Beasts / Coeurl a PC race since they're anthropomorphic (occasionally) sentient big cats but with tentacles that could double as hands.
Or, they could just use one of the many different talking animal motifs they already had, including possibly converting one of the talking wolf species (Worgs and Winter Wolves) into a good race rather than an evil one.
Before sales declined and their license to print Ravenloft 3E products reverted to Wizards Of The Coast, Arthaus had planned a thirteen-sourcebook run for their Gazetteer series. The narrator S would have traveled to Clusters and Islands, some of them from on board a hired ship crewed by supporting characters. Each book would've included a different half-fiend scion of the Gentleman Caller. Eventually, Azalin's intentions for them and for S would have been revealed, as would the Caller's plot to father a new and unstoppable Dukker on a youthified Madame Eva.
There was actually going to be a 4th Edition version of Ravenloft released in 2011, but it was canceleld due to the fact that they couldn't get it quite right.
Games Workshop once found itself having to get rid of one of two unpopular armies: The Squats or the Tyranids. By the time Third Edition rolled around, the Tyranids were redesigned and the Squats were eaten by the Tyranids. One can only wonder what the grim darkness of the far future would be like today with a civilization of dwarves in the mix...
While reception for the Starship Troopers miniatures game wasn't perfect, it was a pretty solid game and had some great miniatures. However, before it was discontinued, Mongoose Publishing had made some pretty big plans such as the introduction of two new races that were also going to appear in the second edition of the RPG, which was also intended to include more rules for playing Skinnies (The original edition only had one short section and a single Skinny class, with the promise of more later on). Since they lost the licence, none of this is likely to happen.
Speaking of Mongoose Publishing, the creator of Infernum, Gareth Hanrahan, actually said on his twitter that there were formerly plans for a second edition using the D&D 4th edition system, but now says it isn't going to happen.
Theme Parks — Disney
The Haunted Mansion went through several different ideas. Early concepts included a hangout for horror-themed Disney villains, like the Lonesome Ghosts and the Headless Horseman, having a Raven narrate the ride (abandoned when it was decided the Ghost Host would work better), and a Hatbox Ghost which carried around a severed head as a character (ditched due to the Imagineers deciding it didn't look good enough). Other concepts from the 1950s included several much darker walkthrough attractions, a version where Walt himself narrated, and several very long illusions including a ghost flooding a room.
There were many locations Disney was going to originally build Disneyland before he decided to locate in California. One of the places he really had his heart set on was none other than... Flagstaff, Arizona (no, really). He loved the weather the place got during the summer, but then he came and visited during the winter, felt the harsh snowy weather, and subsequently changed his mind.
At Walt Disney World in Florida, the Western River Expedition was intended as the Wild West version of Pirates of the Caribbean and was to be exclusive to the park, thus making the California park the only one with the pirates. But early visitors to the Magic Kingdom were upset that Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't included in the lineup, so getting a Florida version of Pirates up and running became top priority, and the new ride never came to pass.
Several more countries were considered for Epcot's World Showcase, including a country from Africa. This one was scrapped because the only country willing to back it was South Africa, which was under apartheid in the 1980s. Two years after the park opened, Morocco was added to the lineup.
Scrapped attractions for World Showcase included boat-based rides for Germany and Italy. Meet the World, an Audio-Animatronic show retelling the history of Japan, made it as far as its show building going up — but since it glossed over World War II Disney executives feared it would offend Americans (especially veterans). The show did successfully make it into the original Tokyo Disneyland lineup.
Japan was also originally going to have a ride of some sort. Possibilities include a Mt. Fuji roller coaster (supposedly scrapped because of Fuji Film, and Kodak sponsoring other rides...seriously), and a Circlevision (similar to what Canada and China has) train ride which would've possibly been attacked by Godzilla.
Plans for Disney's Hollywood Studios (then Disney-MGM Studios) included some Who Framed Roger Rabbit-themed attractions (cancelled due to legal issues), a Muppet version of The Great Movie Ride (cancelled due to Jim Henson's death) and a Dick Tracy ride (cancelled due to the film's underwhelming box office).
Originally, much more of The Great Movie Ride would have been based around The Wizard of Oz — riders would be "swept away" by the tornado to Munchkinland, and the final room would be the Wizard's chamber, in which he introduced the closing Montage of great film moments. Because Ted Turner (the movie's rights-holder) stipulated that only so much time could be given over to Oz scenes, the tornado was replaced by a Fantasia segment, and the final room became nondescript.
There would have essentially been a Muppet-themed land had Henson not died in the early years of the park's creation. It would have been centered around the courtyard where the Muppetvision 4D theatre currently is.
Animal Kingdom was originally going to have a land called "Beastly Kingdom" (or perhaps "Kingdomme") based around mythical animals, but budget cuts forced that to the back burner; the space Camp Minnie-Mickey now occupies was intended for this.
Rumor has it that the designers of the Beastly Kingdom land jumped ship to Universal and took some of their ideas with them. Specifically, Dueling Dragons (now the Harry Potter dragon coaster) would have been a major thrill ride for Animal Kingdom.
What Could Have Been for Walt Disney World Hotels:
The Boardwalk Inn & Villas and their adjoining actual boardwalk were salvaged from plans for a mini-park that would have recreated seaside amusement parks of the early 20th century.
Disney's Pop Century Resort was originally going to cover 1900-1949 with a second set of buildings on the other side of Hourglass Lake, but the September 11th attacks happened shortly before the completed first set (1950-99) was to open, causing a tourism slowdown that delayed it to 2004. The second set had the building "shells" put up, but there was never enough demand for rooms to complete them; the current plan is to revamp them into Disney's Art of Animation resort.
WestCOT would have been Disneyland Anaheim's answer to Epcot in Florida. It would have had its own version of Spaceship Earth, a World Showcase based on the individual continents, and a Spiritual Successor to Adventure Thru Inner Space. Alas, the whole thing was scrapped in 1995, and Disney built the California Adventure park instead. (And it's too bad, because the concept art◊ for WestCOT looked really cool.)
Disney announced in 2009 that they would try to compete with/catch up to Universal Studios' Wizarding World of Harry Potter by expanding Walt Disney World's Fantasyland with immersive meet-and-greets for Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, and Tinker Bell. However, they later realized this expansion might not have an audience beyond little girls. They later decided to keep the most gender-neutral parts of the expansion, move the meet-and-greets into one of the pre-existing Fantasyland buildings, and use the newly opened space to construct a (hopefully universally-appealing) roller coaster through the Seven Dwarfs' mine.
Theme Parks — Other
Graphic artist and designer Roger Dean, best known for his work on album covers and stage designs for the progressive rock band Yes, designed several theme park attractions with his brother Martyn which were never used. The sketches appear in his book Magnetic Storm.
Peter Pan's Neverland, a park Michael Jackson came up with the initial concept for in the late 1990s. (Scroll down the page to see the article.)
Toys
Mel Birnkrant has done a ton of toyline pitches that could be listed in this category on his YouTube page, most notably the second wave of Outer Space Men, a line called Invasion that is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a neat take on the Rock Em Sock Em Robots concept called Gladiators, cool little bobbing toys called Its Alive, the aborted Maxx FX figures, a toy called My Pretty Pony that was beat to the punch by My Little Pony; but actually is far better designed, and most notably his Creatures line, which sorta got produced but has a lot of cool figures that never got made. All so damned cool, a shame that none of them were ever made.
My Pretty Pony did come out. My Little Pony was actually a brand extension that proved much more popular.
While most Transformers fans know about the unproduced Unicron prototypes from the G1 and Beast Wars Neo lines, you probably don't know about this weird guy over here, apparently a prototype for some sort of spinnoff for transformers, that I can literally find nothing other than that link about. I really want to hear more abotu this strange, aborted branch of the Transformers line, so can anybody help me out?
Speaking of unreleased Alien figures, a ToyFair article on Stan Winston Creations' then-upcoming Aliens figures mentioned a figure that was scrapped (for obvious reasons) that would've had an actual Biggus Dickus. I wish I was joking, here; a 6" Alien figure with a phallus reaching to its chest. Imagine if that had managed to get through...
The traitorous Matoran and servant of Teridax Ahkmou from BIONICLE was originally meant to have a new set coming out in '08, as a Shadow Toa. Plans were quickly scrapped, thus his only set remains his Matoran form from '04. He never became a Toa in the story either. Nuparu Mahri's set was also supposed to come with a so called Aqua Blaster Blade, and it was even written into the books, yet the final model didn't include it.
And as revealed by German and Russian documentaries on LEGO, the Toa from the Mistika line had gone through a couple changes as well before finalization, mostly in the color scheme department. Official people have also mentioned that their prototypes resembled their original '02 sets closer than the final models. There was much complaining.
The sets and story originally planned for '10 and '11 (which is four waves, containing about 40-50 sets altogether). They scrapped all of this in preparation for the line's abrupt Cancellation, and released a wholly new line of merely 6, small-sized sets instead. That means no Element Lords, no shapeshifting assassin robots, no cyborgdinosaurs (although the basic setting has been recycled in Hero Factory), and no not-so-crappy sequel to that crappy movie that ends on a Cliffhanger.
They had vastly different plans for the '06-'11 storyline originally too. '08 would have seen the continuation of the "Jaller and his team try to save Mata Nui's life'' arc (wrapped up in '07), followed by a multi-year story of the Toa Nuva trying to awaken him. The latter arc got compressed into '08, and instead of the originally planned happy ending, had a shocking Downer/Gainax Ending.
But you're forgetting about a bigger What Could Have Been, in which Kenner in 1986-87 put together a massive pitch to, in essence, create the Expanded Universe five years before there WAS an Expanded Universe so they could make more toys.
Monster In My Pocket had a slew of products that were due to come out included unreleased monster figures, a Haunted House play-set, and a collector fan club that would issue 1 free figure each month, all of these were unrealized dreams.
Palisades, the company behind those awesome Muppets toys, got the license to do Sesame Street toys in the same style. The figures (barely) got into production, but then Palisades had a major shake-up and folded. No one from the company was even 100% sure what stage the toys were in: if the toys had made it onto the boat from China, they'd be able to sell them; if not, they were dead forever. That means that at some point in late 2005/early 2006, there were entire shipping containers full of the most amazing Sesame Street collector toys imaginable, but they legally couldn't be shipped or sold, and were most likely destroyed.
Web Comics
8BitTheater was originally meant to parody multiple 8 bit games, such as Metroid, or River City Ransom. But the comic didn't go that route, and stuck to parodying Final Fantasy.
Tom Siddell mentioned in an interview that Gunnerkrigg Court is actually a Lighter and Softer take on his original idea. If you read much of the comic you'll realize this is saying something.
"Gunnerkrigg Court was originally going to be more adult when I started working on it, but by the time I finished the first chapter I realized it would work better if I made it more accessible to a wider audience."
Part of the final storyline in Bob and George summarizes what would have happened if the original hand drawn comic had run its course: a fairly unoriginal superhero comic.
An early storyline had George mention some "pesky aliens" that might have followed him to the Mega Man Universe. This was a plotline from the hand drawn comic that Dave intended to intergrate into the sprite comics about alien body snatchers replacing people, but it was simply never gotten to. The original idea in the hand drawn comic involved one character getting replaced, then the alien slowly Becoming the Mask. The other characters find out, but the one who was replaced was such a jerkass that no one cared.
The sequence in The Order of the Stick where Roy wears the Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity was originally envisioned as Roy putting it on to engage in "girl talk" with Miko before discovering he couldn't remove it. However, as Rich Burlew wrote Miko, he discovered that her character didn't really mesh with "light romantic comedy", so the sequence became much more dramatic.
Dinosaur Comics originally had a different template, where a Maiasaurus was a fourth character — she appears in the first two panels instead of the T. rex. Additionally, the pixel art on the characters in the remaining four panels were slightly different, resulting in small yet undesirable details. You can see this early version here◊.
Oglaf describes itself thus: "This comic started as an attempt to make pornography. It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately." It could have made some good porn.
Still is, really.
In an early strip of Something Positive Davan takes Monette to a lesbian bar and winds up annoying one of its patrons. Originally that lesbian was going to be a recurring character named Rochelle whom Davan would develop feelings for; the author wound up scrapping the idea and gave the Incompatible Orientation gag to PeeJee==>Jhim instead.
In Get Medieval,Ironychan stated that she originally intended for Neithe to be the main character and Asher to be her foil/sidekick. Asher turned out to be more fun and interesting to write for, so she went in that direction.
In Dominic Deegan, Mookie himself stated that he intended for Luna to die at the end of the Maltak arc, but realized that Luna's death would pretty much destroy Dominic, so altered things so that Luna is saved at the last moment by Jacob.
Web Original
Glenn Rubenstein has told people various plots that he intended to incorporate into lonelygirl15 (such as Elizabeth Avery being the woman behind OpAphid), but he left the show due to "Creative Differences," taking the rights to the OpAphid characters with him.
The first RP of Darwin's Soldiers was planned to feature an interdimensional battle but it was scrapped after the creator, Serris, decided that the potential for narm outweighed the potential for coolness.
Spoony'scommentary for Kickassia reveals that during the fight over who would rule Kickassia, Spoony, who had turned into Doctor Insano and "got better", originally grabbed the hat, gave a That Guy-style speech about how pointless the fighting was - and then put the hat on and ran off, because he was still Insano. It got cut because they ran out of time to shoot it. In a related note, LordKat's role was scaled back after Jason twisted his ankle during filming of the invasion of Molossia.
Spoony also proposed a scene in which Santa Christ after being resurrected would give Jew Wario a look, as if to show that he knew Jew Wario didn't believe in him. This was nixed pretty quickly.
Doug Walker was originally going to do a Critic episode where he compared the old and new versions of "War of the Worlds". He nixed the idea as he decided that neither of them were all that good.
The Nostalgia Critic had also announced plans to review movies such as Drop Zone and Newsies, but he later replaced them, with one reason being that other TGWTG reviewers were going to review them. And shortly afterwards, The Nostalgia Chick indeed reviewed Newsies as part of the Dark Nella Saga.
Linkara was also guilty of planning reviews and then replacing them (In his case "The Wanderers" #5, "Syphons" #1, and "Q-Unit" #1).
He also scheduled the Howard The Duck Christmas Special as part of his 2010 X Mas series.
Likewise, he originally was going to do a review of Arcomics Premiere #1, but was replaced with one for The Backstreet Project #1.
Doug Walker was originally going to do a Nostalgia Critic review of Matilda but when he first announced he would, he got so much flak he just couldn't do it. Matilda would resurface later as part of Doug's List of Movies He Hates But Everyone Else Loves in 2011.
The Cinema Snob planned to do a Kung Tai Ted episode about The Room until he heard Tommy Wiseau was taking down videos for copyright infringement (including The Nostalgia Critic's review) so he made a Brad & Jerrid sketch where they reenact scenes from the movie.
Benzaie's short movie, "Students," was originally supposed to a feature length cross between Clerks and Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return. He was only able to make the first ten minutes and an English dub.
In Linkara and Iron Liz's commentary, Liz mentions that the original script for Suburban Knights was much longer. One thing she mentions specifically was a female zombie named Mildred who would bite Phelous. This would lead to Phelous becoming progressively more zombie-like, only for the same end reveal (he was perfectly fine and was just being in character). According to Linkara, most of Mildred's role was replaced by the Good Witch of the Wood.
There were actually two ideas for the third anniversary special: One that would eventually become Suburban Knights and another idea called Ninjas vs. Pirates that was not used. In this video, Doug Walker explains what the special not chosen would have been like.
A few dropped ideas where mentioned in the cast commentary. Among them:
Apparently there were original several working titles for Suburban Knights, including "Flights of Fantasy" and "Dungeons and Critics".
Angry Joe had a line where he lampshaded how the Critic continually tricks them into showing up for his mad schemes.
Bennett had a much more prominent running gag where he would try to say something epic and bungle it.
Luke and Film Brain had a more extensive scene, where Luke's "inners" from his Film Conscience reviews came into play.
When the Critic refused to go along with Linkara's plan to write a musical number for their adventure, there was a cut scene where Linkara would call someone (possibly Andrew Lloyd Weber) and say that the Critic didn't go for it. Linkara would they say "What do you mean 'who is this'?"
Way back when Channel Awesome was in its infancy and the Nostalgia Critic was their only feature, site execs Mike Michaud and Bhargav Dronamraju planned a Paranormal Investigation series in the vein of Ghost Hunters.
The first season of Red vs. Blue, and by extension the entire series, was originally supposed to unfold in a dramatically different fashion than the finished product. DVD Audio Comentary for the first season reveals that, as originally envisioned, the entire project would only have been six to nine episodes in length, which had all been very loosely planned in advance. Additionally, the format of the first two episodes (The Reds talking at their base while the Blues observe them through the sniper rifle and make snarky comments) was supposed to be maintained until the end. However, by the third episode the expanding script had already pulled the Blues to their own base, and when they reached the tenth episode the writers realized they had not gotten to almost any of the jokes they had planned for the "final" ninth episode (Specifically, putting Donut in the pink armor). The episodes continued to be written until the immediate story was completed, with a total of nineteen episodes which were subsequently billed as "Season One." Continuing the leftover plots points from those episodes lead into four more seasons, as well as several sequel series, and are still ongoing.
The characters themselves were also supposed to evolve differently, and their portrayals in their first appearances (Even throughout the entire first season) contrast heavilywith their final forms. Caboose, the Breakout Character legendary for his severely warped mind and personality, was originally a rather bland character who was introduced to the series simply to serve as a catalyst to get Church angry. Donut, who became almost as widely known for his armor-induced personality, was one of the "normal" characters of the series, and as a whole the entire cast was saner and more likely to at least notice the Idiot Ball, even if they could not quite let go of it. Fan reaction to individual points of personality that each character showed lead the writers to magnify and focus on those points, which eventually resulted in the insanity of the series itself.
Pops up from time to time in Survival of the Fittest as a result of either an Aborted Arc, handlers scrapping the idea, characters' deaths before the idea could be executed, mods disapproving, and other causes. Examples noted on the wiki include Blood Boy getting a facial reconstruction in pre-game, a lot of things about Cillian Crowe that were planned but never carried out, Adam Dodd Taking the Bullet for Amanda Jones, Walter Smith being an Evil Counterpart to a character that never made it into the game, and others.
YouTube was originally conceived of as a dating site. Indeed, the site was originally called "Tune In Hook Up", and would have essentially been a video version of HotOrNot.com (the original site layout was also designed with this in mind). The site creators redeveloped the site, however, and launched it in 2005...and history was made.
Chaos Fighters: Cyber Assault-The Secret Programs is supposed to be span eight sub-arcs, but cancelled as it was too ambitious to begin with. It's summary can be read here.
thread at Television Without Pity, the Original Vid Junkie's "Never Got Made" files
