"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, 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 of the 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 Jack Ryan universe 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.
The author originally planned for Veis instead of Vili to join Clan Gully in The Tainted Grimoire. Also, Vili didn't exist in the original plan. The original plan was scrapped and Vili was created because cuttingmoon57 didn't like the idea of altering important canon clans.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fanfic, "Toward the World's End" apparently was - in the final instalment of its seccond series - to feature a confrontation on an alien world where the protagonists became stuck in the crossfire of an alien war, ending with an alien commander appearing, who happens to look exactly like protagonist Arthur's long dead childhood friend
The Nuptialverse: Word Of God has listed multiple changes that were made to the series from the original plan as time went on:
Chapters for both Queen Chrysalis and Princess Cadance were written for Post Nuptials, but the author felt they would have detracted from the subject of Twilight's friends walking out on her. They have since been released as the standalone stories "Metamorphosis" and "Honeymoon", respectfully.
Post Nuptials:
The author decided against shipping Rarity with Fancypants and Fluttershy with Iron Will, because both seemed unnecessary and his readership was against them.
Shining Armor's chapter would have had him speak with Cadance instead of Twilight.
The story would have ended with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie moving Applejack and Rarity into the same bed as a prank. A similar ending showed Twilight's friends finding Octavia and Vinyl Scratch sleeping in Twilight's bed while Twilight slept with Celestia. Both were nixed to keep the story friendlier for younger audiences.
Families:
The story was planned to be focused only on Spike, and went as follows: Spike learns of a magic pool that will let him see anything asked of it. He wants to see his parents, but Twilight forbids him from going, so he runs away. As Twilight searches hopelessly for him for a month before finally giving up, Spike finds the pool guarded by a character who would become the main story's Keeper. He asks to see his mother, and what does the pool show him? None other than Twilight.
Betastuck: In-Universe, what the Horrorterrors essentially were, a group of bosses that would have been fought throughout the game. They were sealed off in the far edges of the game so you shouldn't have been able to interact with them.
Chapter 7 of Sonic Generations Friendship Is Timeless, which represents Sonic Adventure, uses the Lost World and Windy Valley stages. The author claims he was considering adding Twinkle Park, and one scene he had in mind involved the Hall Of Mirrors Amy goes through in her playthrough of the stage, where Sonic and Tails would have seen their classic selves in the mirror and the ponies and Spike would have seen their G1 counterparts instead of their normal reflection (which could have led to a joke about Twilight's mother looking similar to G1 Twilight). This idea was scrapped because, according to the author, it "wasn't as good an idea".
The God Empress Of Ponykind: The author had said that he originally wanted to conclude Celestia's purge of Changelings from Fillydelphia with a scene where a young Chrysalis (who by Word Of God was in the city during the battle), found Queen Metamorpha's body and swore revenge. The idea was scrapped because it would have made the chapter needlessly long, and that he wanted it to be ambiguous if Chrysalis was simply missed by Celestia's forces—and implicitly would have been killed if found—or spared for being a child.
The first fight with Discord would have ended with Celestia delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Discord, and later Celestia and Luna would face off against Discord and his army of Changelings with the first of the Legionnaires.
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.
Leonard, who is basically The Hero by now, had initially been planned as an Expy of Lezard Valeth. The only vestige of this still remaining is his Dark Magic type and last name, Valenth.
It was initially planned to have Khaos and Vicelogia as the main villains. Then Khaos was retooled into a more benevolent being, and Vicelogia was written out entirely.
There had been a plan to have Reitt turn evil and become an expy of the Obsidian Lord.
Matthew Streika was initially intended to be a student. He became a well known hero instead, given the time frame the RP was set in.
And who knows how the story would've gone had the GM not changed...
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.)
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 Dukkar on a youthified Madame Eva. There was actually going to be a 4th Edition version of Ravenloft released in 2011, but it was cancelled 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...
Somewhat of a Common Knowledge example rather than a true example of the trope. Several races, not just Squats and Tyranids, were selling around the same level. The Squats were dropped because no one wanted to fix the awful fluff just to create yet another army that was functionally almost identical to the Space Marines. Of course, given the Unpleasable Fanbase, this has blossomed into all sorts of theories even though multiple designers active at the time have all confirmed the exact same thing. Squats were not removed by random chance or due to sales figures, so there was no possibility of them continuing.
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.
Gareth Hanrahan, the creator of Infernum, 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.
When Geist The Sin Eaters was still in development at White Wolf, there was still debate about what the next game line for the New World Of Darkness was going to be. One idea in the running was to make a game about angels, with the angels in question merging with the souls of human hosts. They decided to go ahead with a ghost-oriented line, but kept the idea of gestalt entities.
Before the games were originally cancelled, there were several books planned. For Trinity, there was "Asia Ascendant", covering the telepathic Ministry and the Asian continent; an aliens book covering the Qin, the Chromatics, and the Coalition, as well as rules for making them all playable, along with info on other minor alien races of the setting; and "Bright Continent", the Africa book. Of these, "Asia Ascendant" was so close to release when cancellation hit, lacking only layout and art, that it was released as a free pdf with White Wolf's permission. For Aberrant, there was "Brainwaves", the guide to super-intelligence, and "Aberrant: Nexus", covering various crossovers with Trinity. Like "Asia Ascendant", much of "Brainwaves" had been written by cancellation, and it too was released as a free pdf.
Following "Bright Continent", the plan was to revise Trinity - advance the timeline, clean up some of the mismatches with Aberrant, etc.
Long-time TU fan Ian Watson entered the picture a while later with plans for an unofficial Trinity adventure series resulting in the creation of a new Prometheus Chamber, which triggered all eight Aptitudes, and the creation of a new psi order from the disenfranchised of the original orders.
Another idea Ian had was to reboot the whole TU New World of Darkness-style, with a corebook outlining the setting, then supplements on playing Novas and Psions (Daredevils could have been included in the core or given their own supplement). This actually got greenlit by White Wolf, but it didn't come to anything due to their merger with CCP.
Several years on, Ian ended up overseeing the official reboot. Initial signs suggest it's going in a different direction...
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 or a simple "Equatorial Africa" pavillion. 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. Possibilities included 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 might have been attacked by Godzilla!
For more on the original plans for World Showcase, which also included Israel and United Arab Emirates pavillions, see this article featuring a 1978 press release.
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 King Features Syndicate taking Warren Beatty to court).
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; those eventually opened in 2004. The second set had the building "shells" put up, but there was never enough demand for rooms to complete them. Disney ultimately made the shells the basis for the Art of Animation Resort, which opened in 2012.
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.)
In the early 1990's, Disney planned to open a theme park devoted to American history called Disney's America near Manassas, Virginia. The plan fell through in 1994, due to vehement opposition from people worried about the impact on traffic and the potential for damage to key historic sites (the Manassas National Battlefield, site of two major American Civil War battles, is located very close to the site that had been proposed for the park), not to mention concerns about the company that named the trope Disneyfication presenting a whole park built around Real Life history. The idea was revived a few years later when Disney considered purchasing Knott's Berry Farm, but once again came to nothing. Some elements of the proposal were finally incorporated into Disney's California Adventure when that park opened in 2001.
Myst almost had a Disney World attraction — Disney owned the company that published the Myst book series — which would have been set up on the island that once hosted the Discovery Island wildlife mini-park. (That attraction shut down in The Nineties, but its name was subsequently given to a pavillion at Animal Kingdom.)
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.
Speaking of Harry Potter, Disney was actually the first company to acquire the franchise's theme park rights. The rights were unfortunately picked up during a turbulent time at Disney, and were partly motivated by then-CEO Michael Eisner's desire to show Hollywood that he still knew what he was doing in the wake of the Disney-Pixar breakup. But then Eisner was ousted and replaced by Bob Iger, who felt that mending Disney's relationship with Pixar (along with fixing Disney's own studio) was at that moment more important to the company's long-term growth than any other deals that Eisner had made with outside companies, which included the Harry Potter theme park rights. J. K. Rowling eventually got tired of waiting for Disney to sort itself out, and went to Universal.
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.
From The Nineties onward, Michael Jackson conceived several theme park projects for various locales; some were formally announced but none went forward. These were:
Back in 1992, there were once plans to put in a full size replica of the Enterprise from the original Star Trek series in Las Vegas. And it almost happened: everyone involved loved the idea, from the development company, to the city, to even Paramount themselves. The only reason it was scrapped was because studio chairman Stanley Jaffe feared that if a Star Trek movie flopped, the attraction would make Paramount look bad, and scrapped it. Read the entire account here
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 spinoff for Transformers, that I can literally find nothing other than that link about. I really want to hear more about 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 sequel to that 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.
Back in the late 80's/early 90's there was Europa, an ultimately cancelled Lego theme based on Europe in the 18th century, canned due to being too similar to Castle and Pirates.
Monster In My Pocket had a slew of products that were due to come out including 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 awesomeThe 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.
Revell-Monogram's Masters of the Universe toy line took up enough of the product development budget that another project had to be cancelled. A planned 1/25 scale Dodge Diplomat sedan was thus cancelled - a Headdesk moment for '80s cop show fans.
Back when the Gundam franchise was still active, there were plans to release figurines of the Mobile Suits from the second half of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and figurines were planned for Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (including a Zeta Gundam figurine that could turn into its Waverider form). However, the oversaturation from the release of the Mobile Fighter G Gundam figurines and the relative failure of the SD Gundam Force figures killed this.
In the mid nineties Playmates had a line of action figures based on The Addams Family cartoon show. They featured the whole family except for Wednesday, Cousin Itt, and Thing. These figures were pictured on the back of the other figures' packaging, however, with a small blurb saying that they were "coming soon". They never came. It's a shame too considering that those three are usually the most popular characters.
In the late 90s, McFarlane Toys released the "3D Animation from Japan" figurine series, featuring characters from popular anime. In the second series, the figurine for Tenchi Muyo!'s Tenchi Masaki had a stand that had two grooves on one end. Seeing as the stand for the first series Tenchi representative, Ryoko Hakubi, fits in perfectly in those groves, it meant that a third figurine was planned, but nothing was revealed if it was possibly Princess Ayeka or another character from the series.
Web Comics
8-Bit Theater 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 I.
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.
Roy was also originally intended to be the party wizard, with Belkar being the warrior of the five-man group. Vaarsuvius only came into being because Rich needed someone to serve as the know-it-all character, and it would limit the jokes if Roy did that because he could hardly be his own straight man.
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.
Davan was almost made Rory's biological father, after a bunch of fans straight up told Randy Milholland that he couldn't do it. Randy realized that he'd be acting just as stupid as the readers who pissed him off, so stuck with his original "not Davan" plan.
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.
He also said he originally didn't want to, but thought it might make his story stand out more and be more "dramatic." He then decided that a good writer doesn't need to kill important characters to be a good writer, and went back to his original plan. A rare case of What Could Have Been turning around and becoming What Was instead.
Originally, the comic after Problem Sleuth would have been a Midnight Crew comic. In the universe of Homestuck (the actual comic after Problem Sleuth), MS Paint Adventures actually is doing a Midnight Crew comic. Alternate Universe versions of the Midnight Crew appear in Homestuck, and eventually the actual Midnight Crew is revealed to be in an Alternate Dimension themselves.
Homestuck was originally supposed to be drawn entirely in Flash. This was cut due to Flash being difficult to use. The original all-Flash Beta edition of Homestuck can still be seen on the website.
Dave's Inventory Management Puzzle with the hash modus was originally supposed to lead up to a hash-rap battle with his Bro. This was changed to a sword fight and Dave later Lampshades this afterwards. But much later we get an actual hash rap battle.
Rose's battle with Bec Noir was supposed to be a full blown Flash, but the author decided that it would be a waste of time in an already long-running arc. So in-story, the disk of Homestuck gets scratched, reducing the events of the battle to a few panels.
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.
Rollo T has also mentioned that as a tie-in to the Second Anniversary, he and Lord Kat wrote a skit paying Homage to The Usual Suspects, with the pair of them attempting to interrogate several of the site's personalities (including Paw, who would have had the line, "What, are you guys like fat cop,fattercop?"). Chris says he still regrets that they never got the chance to do it, as the material was rather funny.
Doug Walker was originally going to do an episode of The Nostalgia Critic where he compared the old and new versions of "The 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.
Eventually, the chick would review it.
The final Nostalgia Critic episode was going to be a review of Small Soldiers. While Doug saw the movie and personally thought it was bad, he didn't feel there was enough material for a full review, so he reviewed Scooby-Doo instead.
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: a fantasy epic, which eventually became Suburban Knights, and another idea called Ninjas vs. Pirates that was ultimately rejected. In this video, Doug Walker explains what the special not chosen would have been like.
A few rejected ideas are mentioned in the cast commentary. Among them:
Apparently there were several working titles for Suburban Knights, including "Flights of Fantasy"*
(which appears in the chorus of the theme that plays over the closing credits)
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.
Obscurus Lupa had plans to review more of Scott Shaw's Zen films after Max Hell Frog Warrior. But when Shaw and his lawyers forced the video (as well as a positive retrospective on him) taken down, Lupa realized that wouldn't happen.
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.
Grif and Sarge were originally supposed to be friendly to each other! When Tex headshots Sarge, Grif revives him with CPR (don't ask) and Church, who'd already have been dead, convinces Sarge to lay off of Grif. However, they decided it wouldn't work out in the end and, when Sarge is revived, he berates Grif for his means of reviving him.
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.
In the second season proper there would have been three villains: the first would have been a guy named Adam Jaguar, who would've become Chad Belmont's rival; the second would have been a game programmer gone insane, named Tobias; the third would have been the resurrected Game Genie. Nigel Edmund Silverman would have returned as a member of a third faction, neither good nor evil, called "The Third Party", led by the third defender of the X-Code, the Gypsy who sold the Genesis cartridge that turned Chad into Captain S. The final episodes would have been completely set in Videoland.
The Brian And Jill Show was created after negotiations fell through to continue its predecessor morning radio show, The Mark & Brian Radio Program, with Jill Whelan taking over as Brian's co-host following Mark's retirement.
Right before personal issues and a nasty divorce forced Jack Butler into shutting down the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, there had been annoucements and development for three more storyline avenues, including one which would explore the history of the world during the 50s and 60s, one which would have moved a team of heroes into space, and a third supernatural horror story that would delve into the mystic and magical aspects of the world.
thread at Television Without Pity, the Original Vid Junkie's "Never Got Made" files
