Sometimes Team Four Star had some ideas that were ultimately left on the cutting room floor for DBZA. This includes ideas for the main show while it was still running as well the planned adaptation of the Buu Saga, with the latter being canceled after Episode 60. Some of these ideas would eventually see the light of day years later as Buu Bits.
General
- KaiserNeko mentioned they originally planned a bit more dialogue where Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent went to the fighting grounds where the protagonists confronts the Saiyans, and Jimmy telling Clark that everyone knew he was Superman all along, until Clark tells him if they knew, Superman would had made anyone who knew keep quiet about it, then murder Jimmy offscreen. It was scrapped completely because they didn't have footage for it, and they dropped the lines completely.
- LittleKuriboh posted his audition video
revealing that he originally auditioned to play Captain Ginyu. TFS ended up loving the Freeza voice more and requested a second audition tape. Lanipator was originally supposed to play Freeza with a Linda Young impression, but TFS dropped it once they decided to cast LittleKuriboh (it's referenced in Bardock: The Father of Goku, with Lanipator briefly playing Freeza with his Linda Young impression before coughing and switching to LittleKuriboh's portrayal). Interestingly, LK was auditioning for Freeza all along, but knowing that Lanipator was already penciled in for the part, he snuck in his impression by auditioning for Ginyu instead. - During their commentary for Lord Slug Abridged, Kaiser stated that after Piccolo says "Alright, alright, you're not tough", there was going to be a Beat for Dordabo/Wings to process the insult by himself instead of a line from Piccolo and Gohan.
- The breakdown for History of Trunks reveals that there was quite a debate about whether Gohan should actually take Bulma up on her offer, though everyone's happy they wimped out. But just in case you're not happy they wimped out, thanks to a fan edit, you can see an alternate take on the scene, where Gohan accepts Bulma's offer.Gohan: I need an adult?
Trunks: You are an adult. - RWBY creator Monty Oum apparently wanted to voice Future Gohan in History of Trunks, but he sadly passed away before getting the chance. The special was dedicated to his memory.
- History of Trunks was going to have a plot point where Trunks actually died after his solo fight with 17 and 18 and the one who came back was a clone to explain how he ended up surviving that encounter. This was dropped since there wasn't a good place to put it and it felt like it would "cheapen" Trunks as a result.
- The breakdown for Episode 51 reveals that KaiserNeko was originally going to play all three versions of Cell. He however ended up being casted as Trunks instead, with Takahata101's interpretation of Cell being "too much fun to pass up".
- Similarly, during the 10th anniversary livestream, Kaiser said that he initially wanted to give the role of Future Trunks to GanXingba while he played Android 17. However, the rest of the team insisted that Kaiser was better as Trunks (and that Gan was perfect as 17), so they ended up with the roles as they are today. According to Taka's solo commentary of Episode 18, he and Lani had butted heads with Kaiser multiple times over this, as Kaiser was unsure if his performance would be good enough and tried to drop the role to another actor more than once. Lani and Taka wrote in the History of Trunks Call-Forward in Episode 18 specifically to set precedent for Kaiser voicing Trunks in order to convince him to play the character in Season 3.
- Additionally, as revealed by MasakoX in response to a comment on Part 6 of his What If Videl Was A Z-Fighter? video series, had Season 4 not been cancelled, Kaiser was going to voice Buu, with the reason being “He had yet to have played a baddie in the main series other than Garlic Jr.” He would ultimately voice Super Buu in the Buu Bits.
- The original plan for Android 17 was that he would speak in Totally Radical fashion, but this was quickly deemed annoying and dropped. The gag was later used when Cell impersonates 17 to try and convince 18 to let herself be absorbed, with the goofy speech patterns proving that Cell knows nothing about either of them.
- In a livestream after the release of Broly Abridged, Lani said that they wanted to cast Markiplier and JonTron as Broly and Paragus respectively, but it didn't work out because of Mark and Jon's incredibly busy schedules. He also said that they've been speaking with Mark about playing a number of roles, but it probably won't happen for the same reason.
- The 2023 creator commentary videos would later reveal that Trevor Moore of WKUK fame was also approached for the role of Broly, but it never went beyond some brief email exchanges with him.
- During the Movie Marathon, the team mentioned the original idea for Broly Abridged was Paragus trying to get Broly into the Z Fighters group because his son was a massive fan of them. One of the reason this was canned was because the lack of appropriate scenes to make the idea work.
- There was some consideration to skip abridging Broly's movie entirely, likely due to most of the team hating him, but they went through with it.
- A tweet released during the Cell Games shorts seemed to hint at a possible appearance by Yang Xiao Long, but sadly never materialized.
- A couple of days after Plan to Eradicate Christmas premiered, KaiserNeko clarified on Twitter that the special was significantly different from what was originally planned. According to him, rather than being a Christmas-themed parody, it would've been a more straight comical pastiche of Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, with the main gimmick being that it'd repeatedly shift between the 1993 and 2008 versions of the OVA due to Dr. Raichi's machine causing a tear in the space-time continuum. The special was eventually retooled into a Christmas episode both due to time constraintsnote and because of the surprisingly apt timing of its production. The original plan for the special did end up getting an allusion in the form of a brief sight gag when Goku and company encounter Santa Claus and he accuses Trunks of messing with the space-time continuum, and Trunks insists that the continuum is fine — while shifting between the modern and 1993 versions mid-sentence.
- TFS wanted to make an Abridged voice pack mod for Dragon Ball FighterZ, but dropped the idea after Arc System Works patched the game so that mods are disabled during online play, which effectively rendered the entire idea meaningless.
- When the 10th anniversary livestream got to Nappa's scene in the Season 2 finale, Lani and Taka revealed that they considered including lines implying that Ghost Nappa was just a hallucination on Vegeta's part and that he was crazy and doomed to be haunted by hallucinations of ghosts, with Ghost Guru being Ghost Nappa's successor.
- Originally Episode 28 was going to be two parts, with its second part becoming Episode 29.
- The Ginyu Force showing up on King Kai’s planet was originally going to be cut as the team saw no reason to abridge it due to being pointless filler. However, Lani was able to come up with an idea on how to make it short and funny.
- The audience was going to hear muffled screams from Vegeta after Goku finished burying him on Namek, revealing that he wasn’t dead and that he had accidentally been Buried Alive. Similarly, Lani had pitched a joke in Episode 30 that when Vegeta woke up after being revived on Namek, Vegeta would end up dying from suffocating underneath the dirt he was buried under because he couldn't dig himself out fast enough.
- In the original DBZ, Freeza says it'll take five minutes for Namek to explode, which becomes laughable considering how many episodes it takes. Team Four Star briefly considered making the final Goku and Freeza fight actually five minutes long, but quickly realized that would be impossible, even for an abridged series. They compromised by Goku questioning if Freeza even knows how long a minute is.
- The crew mulled the idea of the Cell Jr. fighting Yamcha being noticeably weaker than the others, as a means to explain how Yamcha could hold his own when the others are leagues ahead of him and doing just the same. They eventually just cut that bit when they couldn't figure out how to make it fit.
- The song Cell sings as he dies went through a few permutations. They were all set to make it "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn, but KaiserNeko rejected it and pointed out that Cell and Gohan never really do meet again. (At least not until Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which came out after Episode 60, and even then it was a clone of Cell, not the real thing) Takahata101 was the one to suggest the song eventually used: "My Way" by Frank Sinatra.
- The entirety of Bojack Unbound Abridged is a case of this. Lani blamed it on scripting difficulties, while Kaiser went more in-depth and explained that the movie had so little story and such a boring villain that it was impossible for them to abridge it to their usual quality; all the jokes they could think of were shallow, uninspired, or mean-spirited. Their experience with this was one of several reasons why they decided to cancel the series as a whole after episode 60.
- The DBZ Movie Marathon on Twitch revealed the script for the Broly movie was originally much longer and included things like Goku and Broly's first fight, but they realized that would serve essentially as filler and wouldn't mesh with the characterization of Broly they were going for.
- The team had an argument over what music would play during Piccolo's Big Damn Heroes moment in episode 25, with Kaiser aiming for Magus' battle theme and Lani aiming for Number One. Ultimately, Kaiser won out.
- Originally, Freeza's line about "playing babysitter" in episode 25 was "playing Casey Anthony", which the team found in terrible taste and would get dated quickly.
- Nail's line about how he'd eventually fade into Piccolo's head in episode 25 was an excuse for the writers to write Nail out in case the Piccolo, Nail, and Kami Sharing a Body dynamic didn't work out.
- Taka fought to keep Ginyu alive as he wanted to adapt the filler arc where he took over Bulma's body, since she had so little to do Namek.
- The team thought of making a Krillin Owned Count for the movies, but decided to drop the idea. They later elaborated that they largely did it because they did the movie out of as close as they could do to chronological order. If they had there likely would have been a movie-exclusive owned counter.
- According to the creator commentary, there was going to be a gag in Episode 44 where there were going to be a bunch of picketers outside of Dr. Gero's lab who were protesting to let the fetus Cell live, but was dropped when they couldn't make it work.
- Also in the same episode of creator commentary covering Episode 44, Imperfect Cell was supposed to share the same Talking to Themself gag that Piccolo had due to his instability that would quickly spiral into a sheer Mood Whiplash into pure Nightmare Fuel in that Cell can hear every single person he's absorbed screaming in agony inside of him, but there was nowhere it would have fit or could be implied, so this idea was scrapped.
- In the creator commentary for History of Trunks Abridged, Taka revealed that he was one of the people who auditioned for Future Gohan, much like how Dameon Clarke (voice of Cell) voiced the character in the English dub of the original special. His voice for him would've sounded similar to his Bardock voice, but smoother. The Episode Breakdown of the special notes that at least ten people auditioned for the role, including Ganxingba, Lanipator, TehExorcist, and even Nathan Sharp of NateWantsToBattle.
- During the creator commentary for Super Android 13, Kaiser paused at the joke about Goku excreting over the edge of Korin Tower as a child to reveal that the earlier drafts of the script had Upa and Bora making a cameo where Upa asks his father what is falling that casts a shadow on his face and the scene cutting away before it lands.
- The creator commentary for Episodes 51 and 52 revealed that Cell's Perfect Form transformation and Gohan's Super Saiyan awakening was supposed to take place at the same time in the same episode for symbolism's sake, but the crew ran into a road block when they discovered that trying to fit both into the same episode would drastically undermine their impacts, and Gohan's transformation was too important to leave as The Stinger, so they settled on making Perfect Cell's introduction be Episode 51's closing and Gohan's ascension Episode 52's opener, but they still stated that in the canon of their series, both happened around the same time despite the split in episodes.
- The creator commentary for Episode 56 reveals that Lani was penned for the longest time to play Mr. Satan, since his Chris Rager impression was spot-on. Since Lani was already playing both Vegeta and Piccolo, once the series got closer to Satan's debut, Antfish was casted instead (though Kaiser notes that if Lani wasn't playing both characters, he'd been perfect as Mr. Satan). Lani's Rager/Hercule performance would however be repurposed for one of the voices for the Future Warrior 2/Time Patroller 2 custom characters in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2.
- In the creator commentary for the Broly movie, Team Four Star reveals that a scene for Emperor Pilaf was planned for the Cutaway Gag of Goku going through his whole Rogues Gallery to find out who destroyed South Galaxy instead of an offhand message, in which it is revealed that Pilaf is considered by Goku to be his Arch-Enemy due to the fact he was his Starter Villain that framed what a "bad person" is to him starting out despite massively falling off the totem pole early on and becoming a recurring Laughably Evil villain that's Comic Relief on his best days due being a Butt-Monkey. The resulting scene was heavily laced with Black Comedy of Goku being uncharacteristically cruel to a PTSD-ridden Pilaf as he practically cries in anxiety seeing practically his worst nightmare show up on his doorstep again. Sadly, this was cut for a combination of budget, pacing, and the time crunch the whole special was falling into, demanding its removal despite being fully voiced and edited into a standalone scene beforehand.
- The commentary for Episode 58 talks about how the Call-Back to the Arlians was actually planned to be the consequence to Vegeta's Final Flash against Cell in Episode 52, but it didn't sell well with the context of the episode and was shelved until The Stinger for the aforementioned episode where it is instead recontextualized with Cell managing to destroy New Arlia with a stray Kamehameha instead.
- In the commentary for Part 3 of Episode 60, KaiserNeko talks about a brief consideration to make the conversation between Gohan and Goku during his beam clash with Cell entirely an Imagine Spot from Gohan's own mind rather than actually talking to Goku in the afterlife to facilitate this Character Development from actively resenting his father for his issues to reaffirming his love for him by changing his own mental image while talking to him—Lanipator called out the problems this would introduce with the Father-Son Kamehameha and would actively undermine Goku's own Character Development into at least considering how his actions affected his son by just making the whole conversation he needed to hear a figment of Gohan's imagination, therefore he overruled Kaiser's idea and the moment was played straight like the show.
- According to their Budokai 2 playthrough, TFS's initial script for the Buu Saga had Mr. Satan as a Conspiracy Theorist who, rather than stealing the credit for defeating Cell, was desperately trying to convince the world that the Alien Superbeings who did so are real.
- Gohan was planned to model his superhero persona on Superpower Lottery winners like Superman, and Videl would provide a contrast by being a Badass Normal like Batman or the Question.
- They weren't exactly sure of how the characters would react to Saiyaman, but one idea was that Vegeta would be completely taken in by the identity and not be able to figure out that Gohan and Saiyaman are the same person.
- As revealed in their playthrough of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Mr. Satan would have attempted to rebrand himself as "Hercule" to be more "family-friendly", reflecting the original's Dub Name Change for the same reason.
- The team considered continuing the series in the style of Dragon ShortZ to get around YouTube's notoriously strict copyright rules, but that would have required even more time and expense than the previous seasons, and they were already dealing with some serious burnout. They were also concerned that such an Art Shift would negatively affect the series' quality.
- As mentioned above, KaiserNeko was penned to play Buu, and ended up at least voicing Super Buu.
- Both Megami33 and Hnilmik were planned to play Kid Trunks and Goten respectively, to compliment the idea of their mother's voice actors also playing their sons.
- Vegeta's decision to give himself over to Babidi would be portrayed as a Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis, triggered by his growing frustration at getting "domesticated" by life on Earth.Vegeta: I thought about inviting Krillin over! Krillin! For a barbecue! What happened to me, man?! I used to be cool!
- Takahata revealed that one of the plans for Yamcha would be to pay off the jokes about him being a loser by having him doing super well financially and socially by the time of the Buu Saga. The idea of Yamcha getting a win was repurposed into one of the Dragon ShortZ.
