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  • The $10,000 Pyramid originally had ten boxes on the big Pyramid, each with a subject the contestant had to identify in 60 seconds (which is what TV Guide printed in their synopsis the week it premiered on CBS). Two nights before taping the pilot, creator Bob Stewart realized that there was no way anyone could get ten subjects in 60 seconds, so he had a 2x4 plank nailed over the bottom four squares.
  • Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to spin off a TV series from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Buckaroo Banzai: Ancient Secrets and New Mysteries got as far as a concept pilot created using CGI (it's available on the DVD release of the movie), but it never got off the ground.
  • An Alien TV series was planned in 1980.
  • All in the Family:
    • The role of Archie was originally offered to Mickey Rooney, who turned it down because he thought the show wouldn't last a season. Carroll O'Connor accepted the role, but didn't think much more of the show's chances.
    • Penny Marshall and Sally Struthers both read for the role of Gloria. Everyone, including Struthers, thought the role would go to Marshall, who did the stronger readings (She was also Rob "Meathead" Reiner's girlfriend at the time). Norman Lear chose Struthers because he wanted Gloria to be a "daddy's girl" and Struthers' closer resemblance to Carroll O'Connor emphasized that better than Marshall (who looked more like Jean Stapleton, Edith's actress).
  • 'Allo 'Allo!:
    • The first choices for Yvette and Maria were Amanda Donahoe and Mary Stavins. However, Donahoe and Stavins didn't have the right union cards. They were replaced with Vicki Michelle (who had worked with David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd in Come Back Mrs. Noah) and Francesca Gonshaw.
    • Before Guy Siner had his way with Lieutenant Gruber's characterisation, he was intended to have been played with the same campness as John Inman did in Are You Being Served?.
    • Richard Gibson originally envisioned Herr Flick as something akin to an evil Inspector Gadget, with all sorts of fake body parts that could be swapped out as needed. However, none of this was feasible with the technology and money available to the show so Gibson had to settle with giving Flick a limp.
    • The female cast was given less glamorous makeup in trials before filming began. Croft was able to have this vetoed, however.
    • The fifth series was unusually long due to a plan for US syndication being in the planning stages. However, the deal fell through and ultimately the series simply wound up on PBS like most other British imports at the time.
  • Andromeda:
    • After the series came to an end, its original producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who was forced out midway through season 2, released a "Coda" on his website detailing where he had planned to take the series in its planned five-year run. To say that his original vision was different to what made it onto screen is an understatement. So is saying that it was better.
    • Tyr would take command of the combined Nietchzean prides, Harper would become the controlling intelligence of the Consensus of Parts (by this time he would have already gotten laid and be over the crude sexual jokes), Rev Bem would become leader of the Wayists, and Beka would take the final action to defeat the Abyss using the Engine of Creation, already being A God Am I by this point due to her prolonged use of the Engine and becoming even more of one when she merges with the Abyss (though this essentially results in both of them disappearing as they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence).
  • Are You Being Served?:
    • The earliest concept of the series only focused on the menswear department of Grace Brothers.
    • Before Wendy Richard was cast, Miss Brahms wasn't a sexy, ditzy Essex girl, but rather was to be a Jewish character played by Sheila Steafel.
    • The Pilot was shelved after it was filmed and only saw the light of day when schedules needed to be filled on The BBC after the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In a similar light, the series wasn't supposed to be picked up for a full run; it only happened thanks to David Croft overhearing that there was a gap in the schedules left by the absence of Till Death Us Do Part.
    • Head of Light Department Bill Cotton wanted Mr. Humphries removed if the pilot was to be given a full series, asking Croft, "Do we have to have the poof?". Croft would have none of this, telling him that if Mr. Humphries left, so would he and half the comedy.
    • In an inversion of the last point, Croft was himself willing to drop Mr. Humphries from the series while John Inman was starring in Odd Man Out, only for the Beeb to knock this idea on the head knowing that Mr. Humphries was the audience's favourite.
    • After Series 8, the Beeb chucked out the sets for the series and told Croft that he wouldn't be able to do a Series 9 after he told them that he had the cast ready to go and (lied about) four scripts already written. Croft managed to get his way, however, as he revealed he had bought the sets himself and stored them in his barn.
    • Near the end of the series, Croft and Jeremy Lloyd had an idea for a replacement series where some of the cast would take a holiday on Young Mr. Grace's yacht and get shipwrecked on an island.
  • After the finale of Ashes to Ashes (2008) aired, producer Matthew Graham gave an interview (and you can consider yourself warned for massive spoilers) where he talked about the three possible endings the writers had considered, and one alternate version to the third they almost shot before going with the version they chose:
    • Ending #1: Alex woke up in 2008, the world of 1981-1983 was all a dream. Discarded because "we didn't think anyone would want that because we didn't want that with Sam".
    • Ending #2: Alex woke up, but chose to "go back" by killing herself, which would have been a repeat of how Life On Mars ended.
    • Ending #3: Alex is dead and has to move on with her existence, which is the one they chose. There was almost a cameo from John Simm, reprising his role as Sam Tyler, which they storyboarded and apparently everyone liked. Sam would have walked out of the Railway Arms at the end, instead of Nelson, and the ending was ultimately discarded because "it would steal all of Keeley's thunder, it would undermine Ashes as a show and also Sam's supposed to be dead, so he should be in heaven. It suddenly made him seem like a superhero – he could go from purgatory to heaven and back again."
  • Auf Wiedersehen, Pet:
    • Caroline Hutchison was set to reprise her role as Dennis' wife, Vera, in Series 2 but was forced to withdraw shortly before filming began after being diagnosed with cancer (which claimed her life a few years later). Her lines were hastily rewritten for Val McLane, who played Dennis' sister, Norma, and her part in the later episodes was rewritten for a new love interest for Dennis, Christine, played by Madelaine Newton.
    • A third series set in Russia was planned during the 1980s but was cancelled due to Gary Holton's death. This premise was briefly used at the beginning of Series 4.
  • In Battlestar Galactica (1978), the plan was to start with three TV movies and then begin the series, but after the pilot, the two remaining movies were shown as regular episodes.
  • Beane’s of Boston, an Americanization of the popular Britcom Are You Being Served?, was developed by series creators Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft in collaboration with producer Garry Marshall. It never got past the pilot stage, and the pilot has never aired anywhere. The cast included John Hillerman (Magnum, P.I.) as Capt. Peacock, Tom Poston (Newhart) as Mr. Rumbold, Alan Sues (Laugh-In) as Mr. Humphries, Charlotte Rae (The Facts of Life) as Mrs. Slocombe and Lorna Patterson (the TV series version of Private Benjamin) as Miss Brahms.
  • Being Human:
    • The series had several cast changes between the pilot and the first series. Mitchell was originally played by Guy Flanagan, Annie by Andrea Riseborough, Herrick by Adrian Lester, and Lauren by Dominique Mcelligott.
    • Initially, the show wasn't going to be made at all. It was one of several pilots aired by the BBC in 2008, with the plan to choose the most successful to make into a full-length series. They went with Phoo Action, a "dramedy" based around futuristic antics, kung-fu, and they fight crime. However, its commission was cancelled when the BBC decided the scripts weren't good enough, and Being Human was then commissioned instead after fans successfully petitioned for it to be Phoo Action's replacement.
  • Benson's eighth season would've featured Gene Gatling winning re-election and Benson moving on to become a senator (it wasn't made clear whether this meant "state senator" or "U.S. senator").
  • Big Brother:
    • In Big Brother 12 US, there was a fourteenth houseguest named "Paula" who quit during sequester and wasn't replaced. It's likely this is why the first head of household competition had to have Andrew sit out as the odd-man out. (He got immunity for the first week, though.)
    • In Big Brother 8 US, Jessica had a completely different nemesis who quit and was replaced with Carol. This nemesis was actually a dance rival of hers; rather than Carol who was an ex friend from high school and not as much of a nemesis compared to the other two. (i.e., Carol's response was just a shrug when she saw Jessica, and Jessica had to think of what they had against each other.)
  • Birds of a Feather:
    • The original concept for the show was that both Tracey and Sharon would enjoy Darryl and Chris' imprisonment and so the two husbands would hire another villain to keep tabs on the girls for them while they spend all of their stolen money. Once the writers realised that Tracey and Sharon were too similar, it was decided Sharon would say the same while Tracey would be nothing but loyal to her husband.
    • Dorien was intended to be a supporting character who would occasionally pop in to deliver the subplot, but she quickly became a Breakout Character thanks to Lesley Joseph's portrayal of her, leading to a rise in Dorien's importance over the show's run.
  • Jim Broadbent was originally slated to play the role of Lord Whiteadder in the Blackadder II episode "Beer", but was unable to do so due to scheduling conflicts. This would have had the pleasing symmetry of all Miriam Margolyes' roles (the Spanish Infantia in The Black Adder episode "The Queen of Spain's Beard", Lady Whiteadder in Blackadder II and Queen Victoria in Blackadder's Christmas Carol) being opposite Broadbent (who played the Infantia's interpreter and Prince Albert).
  • The Big Bang Theory was one of those that had two pilots. The original pilot, which wasn't picked up, was eventually leaked. In it, Raj and Howard are absent. Leonard and (a much more sexually active) Sheldon befriend a Book Dumb but Street Smart girl named Katie, who they immediately take as a roommate. A fourth character named Gilda, played by Iris Bahr, is a Hollywood Homely female geek and fellow physicist who serves as a Love Interest for Sheldon. Some of Gilda's traits, such as her dowdiness, intelligence and blase attitude towards sex, were repurposed in the characters of Leslie Winkle and Amy Farrah Fowler.
  • Blake's 7:
    • The show was slated to continue into a fifth season, with the first episode revealing that the only character to die in the dramatic shoot-out at the end of Season 4 was Blake himself. Everyone else would merely have been stunned (aside from any actors who didn't wish to return) and the season would start with the crew as prisoners of the Federation. However, it was generally felt that the series had gone as far as it could go and rather than face the cost of building new sets (since the crew's starship and base had been destroyed at the end of Season 4) the BBC decided to can the show, although ratings were still decent. As a result, everyone dies.
    • Terry Nation wanted the aliens invading the galaxy at the end of the second season to actually be the Daleks themselves. In fact, the idea of a Doctor Who/Blake's 7 crossover was popular with Tom Baker and some of the B7 cast.
  • Bottom: A fourth series was written in the mid-90s, but rejected by, according to Rik Mayall: "Some fat lesbian bitch" at the BBC. In 2012 Mayall and Adrian Edmondson began writing a Bottom spin-off called Hooligan's Island, which was picked up by the BBC. Edmondson would later pull out after a change of heart. With Mayall's death in 2014, one can only wonder what could have been.
  • There was serious talk of Mike Brady dying if The Brady Bunch had got a season 6, due to Robert Reed's constant conflicts with the producers and writers.
  • Creator Dan Knauf dropped a few bombshells during a convention of how the now-canceled season three of Carnivàle would have started:
    • Both Ben and Justin would have survived their apparent "deaths" from the finale. Ben would have ended up like Management, crippled and surviving on his own magic, manipulating the Carnivale to his own purposes. Justin would have married Sofie, and supposedly had a child with her, though whether he ever found out she was his daughter was not mentioned. He would not have had the power he once had, though: the shrapnel near his heart would have severely weakened him, reducing him to a figurehead and leaving Sofie and Iris as the true powers of the Ministry.
    • Jonesy would also have survived the gunshot wound. He would have returned to baseball to play for the Yankees, and stayed married to Libby.
    • The third season's theme would have been Sofie's internal struggle of her good, human, side and her evil Omega side.
    • The opening scene would have been a small boy of about three, running through the New Caanan camp. He would have approached Justin, flanked by Sofie and Iris, and called him "Daddy". The question of his parentage - Sofie or Iris as his mother, Ben or Justin as his father - would have been a driving plot point.
  • Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: This early article on the series has brief mentions of the head writer's plans for S2. And then S2 got canceled.
  • Late in Castle's eighth season, the producers announced that Kate Beckett would be written out if the show was renewed for a ninth season as a cost-cutting measure. Cue huge uproar from the fans who thought that the show's entire point was Castle's relationship with Beckett. Apparently, the executives at ABC agreed because they decided not to renew the show for a ninth season.
  • On Charmed, the character of Prue was killed off due in part to difficulties Shannen Doherty had with several people on set, including costar Alyssa Milano (Phoebe.) It finally reached a breaking point when Shannen allegedly said "either she goes or I go." How different would everything have been post Season 3 had Alyssa went instead? Phoebe would have died instead of Prue, Piper's character development from mousy middle sister to Badass oldest sister wouldn't have happened, and the Cole storyline would have likely been very different. Similarly, Constance M. Burge left around the same time.
  • The Chosen:
    • Before his role as Andrew was decided, Noah James was asked to audition for multiple roles, including Simon and Matthew.
    • Luke Dimyan originally auditioned for Philip. Though he didn't get the role, he was eventually invited back to play Judas.
  • The pilot for Chuck originally had Natalie Martinez cast as a neighbor and love interest for Chuck Bartowski. The character, Kayla Hart, was dropped because the show's cocreators thought she made the plot too complicated. (They also realized it was unlikely a Nerd Herder would have two women pining over him.) Her photo was released with some early cast promo shots.
    • Word has it that originally the character of Ellie was either conceived as a friend of Chuck's, not his sister OR that Ellie took on some of the lines from removed Kayla, explaining some of the unintentional Incest Subtext in the pilot.
    • Seasons 3 and 4 were both renewed for 13 episodes, and then received late orders for additional episodes. Rather than take the planned story line for each season and rework it to fill a full season, they instead opted to run the back half of each season as if it were a completely separate season. Thus the back 9 of season 3 was the plot planned for season 4, while season 4 consisted of the story planned for seasons 5 and 6. Fans generally agree that this ultimately worked to the detriment of the show, leading to Arc Fatigue since seasons 3 and 4 lacked the stand-alone episodes that offered a breather from season 2's Fulcrum arc, while many plot elements were overly compressed and poorly established (such as the Intersect causing damage to Chuck's mind late in season 3, despite no prior buildup).
  • Control Z:
    • Ariana Saavedra auditioned for both Sofía and Regina. She got the latter part.
    • Patricia Maqueo auditioned for both Natalia and Rosita. She got the latter part.
    • Mauro Sánchez Navarro auditioned for both Gerry and Bruno. He got the latter part.
    • Lidia San José was initially offered the role of Nora, Sofía's mother. However, she turned it down and was instead given the part of Gabriela, the school's biology teacher as well as Alex's secret girlfriend. The former part was passed on to Rocío Verdejo.
    • Ariana Saavedra was originally hired to appear in 12 scenes. The producers were impressed by her skills in front of the camera and discipline that they decided to increase her relevance and screentime on the series.
  • Coppers End: The original five episodes written when Joan Sims was meant to star were completely different to the five that would air when the series made its full run of thirteen episodes in 1971. The last three of Sims' scripts were never filmed.
  • Coronation Street: When the series was planned, certain characters were very different from what they became. For example, Ena Sharples was envisioned as a small woman (at one point the role was offered to Doris Hare) which failed in the test pilots however Violet Carson made the character work as a large tough woman, then Dennis Tanner was planned to be hard nailed but instead Philip Lowrie presented the character as a trickster which suited him better.
  • Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was originally going to be on Showtime rather the CW and thus had more adult elements included. In the pilot, instead of kissing Greg and asking him about Josh, Rebecca was supposed to ask him about Josh while giving him a handjob. And in the second episode, the song "Feeling Kinda Naughty" was originally titled "I Want to Grow a Dick and Fuck You With My Jealousy Dick," before Rachel and the songwriters reworked it.
  • The epic Crisis on Earth-X event was already packed with characters from four shows. However, there could be one more as the original script for part 3 had the team, on Earth-X, meeting this world's version of Laurel Lance, a devout Nazi. One can imagine the effect of Sara seeing a Nazi version of her late sister and a later fight scene with her. However, just as filming was about to begin, Katie Cassidy's father died and she naturally couldn't take part. Cassidy would end up playing Siren-X on a later The Flash (2014) episode.
  • The Culture Vultures was supposed to debut on Comedy Playhouse but was considered good enough to go straight to a full series.
  • Dad's Army:
    • John Le Mesurier was originally approached to play Mainwaring and Arthur Lowe for Wilson, but it was decided they worked much better in the opposite roles.
    • Writer Jimmy Perry wanted to play Walker, but worried that it might cause friction with the rest of the cast. Instead he made a guest appearance as a pierside entertainer in a series 1 episode.
    • Jack Haig was considered for the role of Jones and did end up taking over the role for part of the stage show tour while Clive Dunn had other commitments.
    • The show was to include a character called Private Bracewell as a member of the main cast. He did appear in the first episode, but was cut because the writers felt his character was too much like Godfrey's.
    • Miss King, a character who appeared in the first series, was intended to have had a larger role as the Fanservice character of the cast. For whatever reason, it didn't work out and she vanished after series one, with the fanservice position largely taken over by Mrs Pike.
    • An American adaptation of the show called The Rear Guard was planned, but scrapped when the pilot wasn't successful.
  • After Jon Stewart announced his departure from The Daily Show, Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler, and Chris Rock were all approached to replace him. They all refused for various reasons: Amy Schumer didn't want to be constrained by the daily production format, Amy Poehler wasn't interested, and Chris Rock only wanted to host until the end of the then-upcoming 2016 election.
  • If Patrick Duffy had not returned to Dallas, resulting in its "Dream Season" actually happening, these would have been the results of that season's cliffhangers:
    • Pam would have opened the running shower to reveal a dead Mark Graison (this is what Victoria Principal filmed and believed had happened until the season finale with a returning Bobby Ewing actually aired). Pam would have inherited Graison's ginormous wealth, blamed JR for her new husband's death, and come after JR with everything she had.
    • Sue Ellen would have survived the bomb explosion but been blinded. She, too, would have blamed JR for her tragedy and sworn revenge.
    • The Jock Ewing lookalike Ben Stivers would have been revealed to actually BE Jock Ewing: he would have attempted to reclaim his rightful place as head of Ewing Oil, forcing JR out.
  • The short-lived Deception (2018) ended after just one season but the showrunners did a big interview on all the huge plans they had in mind for season 2. The cliffhanger of Jonathan switching places to leave twin Cameron in jail would have been fixed by Cameron easily proving to Kay who he was. But in the 36 hours before his release, Cameron makes several mistakes with fellow inmates that would come back to haunt him through the show. The team would continue on the "case of the week" crimes but also try to hunt down Jonathan and Mystery Woman (whose name would be revealed) with episodes showing them pulling crime across the world.
  • If Defying Gravity had lasted beyond the first season, several plot threads would have been revealed. The team would obtain all of the "fractal objects" (like Beta) over the course of the show. Earth would have been revealed as a very messed-up place. Season three would have taken place either partially or completely on Mars, with two characters (Sharon and Walker) still alive on the planet when the team arrived. Nadia would have been revealed as a hermaphrodite (explaining fan theories) and would have turned into a man because of exposure to the fractal objects, and Goss would have a change of heart and end up helping the team at one point.
  • Degrassi: The Next Generation has a few:
    • Two which revolve around Adam are: He was supposed to be an androgynous lesbian named Zoe, and his birth name was originally not Gracie (it was Chelsea). YMMV on Zoe: only Word of God would confirm it, but that might've been a way for them to audition different girls for the role while remaining tight-lipped about their plans to introduce a transgender character.
    • Heck, if they had stuck with the original concept of Ready, Willing and Wired there'd be no adults with backstories, the Emma character wouldn't necessarily have been product-of-a-teen pregnancy Emma and the setting would've been quite explicitly a tech magnet school, forcing them to stick with the sort of kids who could get into a somewhat selective school...
    • The S11 character conceived as "Noah" was renamed Jake when Justin Kelly was cast in the role note .
  • Desperate Housewives had a weird take on an inversion early on. Throughout season 1, there was subtle build-up to a sub-plot, picked up by many fans, that Tom Scavo is a bigamist. When this eventually went nowhere, creator Marc Cherry went on the record, explaining that they didn't feel it was right for Tom's character to be a cheater. Season and a half later, once the audience dropped its guard, a version of the plot - that Tom had a daughter by a pre-marital one-night stand - was bombarded into the show, taking everyone by surprise.
  • The biggest complaint on the series finale of Dexter is how the title character gets away with all his serial killings with none of the police characters ever finding out the truth about him. Original showrunner Clyde Phillips (who stepped down after season 4) revealed his original ending was always to show Dexter on the execution table, having been exposed, arrested, convicted and sentenced to lethal injection. Looking at the gallery, Dexter would see a collection of all his past victims (including love Rita) silently watching him as he paid the price for his crimes.
  • According to his second autobiography Hail to the Chin, Bruce Campbell had proposed a TV series based on Dick Tracy to Disney. It however did not develop much further due to rights issues involving Warren Beatty (who had directed and starred in the film adaptation).
  • Carl Reiner originally wrote The Dick Van Dyke Show as Head of the Family starring himself. It bombed, but the pilot was retooled with Van Dyke in the lead role and was a hit.
  • Disney at one point was very close to taking control of NBC from General Electric, as part of Disney's massive expansion plan spearheaded by then-Disney-chairman Michael Eisner. However, Eisner's ego got the best of him and demanded total control of the network, and General Electric objected to giving up its stake in the network. Thus, the deal was scrapped and Disney took over the American Broadcasting Company instead (probably helped by Eisner's relationship with that network during much of the 1970s).
  • Doctor in the House:
    • Before Barry Evans, David Jason was wanted for the lead role of Michael Upton. Evans was seen as more "lovable", whereas Jason was viewed as a "knockabout comedian".
    • When Upton is asked how his St. Swithin's interview has gone in "Why Do You Want to Be a Doctor?", he was originally supposed to respond, "I really don't know". Frank Muir had come to watch the rehearsals and thought that being before the commercial break, the line had to be more positive, and so it became "I think I'm in".
  • The original pilot of Dollhouse was quite different and is available as an extra on the last disc of the Season One DVD set. Several scenes from it were placed in episodes 2-5. Interestingly, in this version Saunders almost can't be a doll, indicating that this was not a plot point planned from the beginning. And Topher doesn't approve of altruistic pro bono engagements, whereas he himself is behind one in the aired episode "Briar Rose".
  • The original pilot to Drake & Josh, which has never shown to the public, featured Stephen Furst of Animal House fame as Drake's and Josh's father. He was replaced for the final cut.
  • Arleen Sorkin once pitched an episode of Duet where her character, Geneva the thief, attempted to go straight, only to unintentionally steal a shirt. The showrunner of Duet rejected the idea, but Paul Dini liked it and made it the base of the Adventures of Batman and Robin episode "Harley's Holiday".
  • As much as Coy and Vance Duke were disliked amongst The Dukes of Hazzard fans, the idea of having all FIVE Duke cousins working together would have been pretty cool.
  • Storylines abandoned or changed on EastEnders over the years have included:
    • The storyline surrounding Ronnie switching Kat's living baby with her own dead one was cut short both because of a flood of viewer complaints, and because Ronnie's actress claimed to have hated the storyline.
    • "Mad" May was originally to have kidnapped Dawn's baby Summer, but this was changed due to the then-recent disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Instead, May kidnaps Dawn with the intention of delivering and stealing the baby for herself; but Dawn escapes.
    • In a similar example, an episode that was to have shown Lucas Johnson murdering a prostitute was changed to him kidnapping a random woman from a club, because of the high-profile murders of several sex workers in Ipswich along with complaints that the episode was going to be shown before the 9pm "watershed". He did later murder a prostitute to pass off her corpse as Denise's, but the murder wasn't shown onscreen.
    • A series of special episodes sending the Mitchells to Spain had to have them going to a seaside resort in the UK instead, because it would have been too expensive to film on location overseas.
    • The Ferreira family was going to be the centre of a huge storyline where bullying patriarch Dan was murdered by the rest of the family, who would then have to cover up the death. This had to be changed when Dan's actor (an Indian citizen) ran into problems with his permit to work in the UK, and was forced to leave the show. The others were given a new storyline where when Ronny needs a sudden kidney transplant, the family discovers that their friend Tariq is really their half-brother. This storyline, which fans called "Kidneygate", became very unpopular and contributed to the Ferreiras being written out shortly afterwards. Elements of Dan's planned murder were recycled for Den Watts's death the following year.
    • Barry Evans was to have killed Janine when he forces her onto a cliff to make her confess that she married him for his money. Instead she accidentally kills Barry, who falls and hits his head after she pushes him away.
    • When Suzy Branning's actress departed at the end of 2008, some of her planned storylines for the following year were given to Janine instead, including her being the one to accidentally kill Danielle.
    • A storyline involving Grant Mitchell raping Tiffany at Christmas was dropped because Ross Kemp refused to shoot it.
    • Lorna Cartwright was supposed to have become a prostitute and been gang-raped; but her actress was worried about the effect the public response would have on her young son, and chose not to renew her contract.
    • Peggy Mitchell was planned to have an affair with a much younger man: initially Alfie, but it was then decided to set him up with Kat and have Peggy get together with Dennis Rickman instead. However, the whole storyline was dropped when Barbara Windsor left the show for health reasons.
    • During Mike Gibbon's run as the show's producer there were plans for a massive cast cull which would have included, controversially, one of the show's few characters of colour being killed by an armed robber and several characters dying in an IRA bombing. The BBC feared public backlash and being targeted by the Broadcasting Standards Council, so the scripts were rejected and Gibbons demoted.
    • In the 1980s, there were plans for Nick Cotton to have begun an affair with Lofty Holloway. Nick's actor John Altman felt that this would be out of character, and objected; so the show's co-creator had Nick written out.
    • Peggy Mitchell was the original choice to have been guilty of Archie's murder, but when Barbara Windsor left the show, it was changed to Stacey instead. Several alternate endings featuring different suspects confessing to the murder were filmed, including one with Peggy as the culprit.
  • Young Jeezy, not Saigon, was the rapper originally slated to be managed by Turtle on Entourage.
  • ER: Carol Hathaway was supposed to die from her drug overdose—indeed, dialogue in the episode indicates that chances of recovery are slim—but test audiences liked her character and were intrigued by the hints of a romantic past with Doug Ross, and so, she was revived. The character went on to be one of the show's most popular, Doug & Carol one of its (and TV's) best pairings, and her portrayer received an Emmy. This was even lampshaded by Carol's portrayer, Julianna Marguiles, upon accepting her award, who noted, "A year ago at this time, I was dead."
  • Several different people could've been the host of Family Feud. Geoff Edwards (best known for Treasure Hunt) confirmed on the newsgroup alt.tv.game-shows that he had been tapped to host the original Feud in 1976, but he was committed to a pilot at the time, so Richard Dawson got the job. Dawson confirmed in a 2010 interview that William Shatner got a crack, and it is believed that Jack Narz of Concentration fame was in the running at one point. Joe Namath auditioned for the 1988 revival, which went to Ray Combs. And Dolly Parton auditioned for the 1999 revival, for which Louie Anderson got the nod. (Anderson was replaced by Richard Karn, then John O'Hurley, then Steve Harvey.)
  • Farscape:
    • Chiana was originally intended to have been killed by Durka in her very first episode, but the writers liked Gigi Edgley so much that it was Only a Flesh Wound.
    • Zhaan was originally a male character called Zen.
    • At one point, Scorpius' concept art depicted him as Sebacean, with possibly a metal jaw or other metallic prosthetic facial piece, a badass leather coat, a generally much more militant, soldier-like book with metallic claws on the fronts of his boots and a pair of large combat blades affixed to the back of his coat. In another, he is a bird/insect-like creature with a beak and insect-like arms and was envisioned as an "evil Mr. Spock" on Crais' command carrier rather than the commander of his own base (or at least the shadow operative who's really in charge).
    • At the time of its cancellation, Farscape was contracted for two additional seasons. Part of this would have included the resolution of the Scarran-Sebacean conflict covered by the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries/TV movie. SciFi originally offered the Henson company a 13-episode miniseries to wrap up the show, however the Henson company declined in an attempt to retain the (previously contracted) 5th and 6th seasons, citing 13 episodes was insufficient to wrap up all their outstanding plot-lines. Reported possibilities for the aborted seasons: Return appearances by previous villains Furlow and Natira, and the long-awaited Chiana-centric plot arc picking up on the Nebari and their plan for galactic domination through VD.
    • The original plan for Rygel was that we would see him take back his empire from his traitorous cousin, like he promises to do one day in the pilot. Unfortunately, having just one major Hynerian guest character in the episode "Fractures" caused so many filming issues with the puppets that everyone realized there was no way they could do an episode with a whole planet of them. Luckily, this plot thread did get wrapped up in the comics.
    • The Scarran Emperor was originally envisioned as a gigantic Scarran in the form of the Warrior-Caste but much more massive, not played by a human actor, but a Pilot-sized (or larger) animatronic puppet, most likely.
    • Original concepts for the show included a robotic character that would have levitated like Rygel. Moya went through many stages of design from a small, quick, curvy spaceship with an extendable pod for pilot, to a much larger, space-whale, to a more streamlined "biomechanoid" ship as we know her.
    • Concepts for Talyn included a Peacekeeper-shaped spacecraft in Moya colors (Marauder-like, maybe, or like the Pantak-class Vigilante perhaps?), and a Moya-like ship in Peacekeeper colors (similar to the final design).
    • Another early concept for Talyn included a six-point weapons system with multiple barrels that enabled him to shoot in multiple directions at once. Dialog from his debut episode also indicated his weaponry emplacements were multiple and perhaps originally meant to be more elaborate.
  • Apparently Neil Patrick Harris was considered for the role of Simon Tam on Firefly. That's right, Neil Patrick Harris starring opposite Nathan Fillion, five years earlier. And they'd still be a doctor and a captain! But with Ho Yay!
    • Judging from the shooting script of the first episode, Simon (and possibly, by extension, River) was supposed to have an English accent (Simon uses the word "maths" instead of the American "math"). But, this could also be attributed to show creator and pilot writer Joss Whedon's upbringing and education in the UK.
    • Kaylee was originally going to be an Asian character, but Jewel Staite was cast instead. Understandable, but with the series' issues with Asian representation...yeah.
    • There was a proposed episode (that never made it to air) where the audience learns what was in the needle Inara was toting in the pilot during the flight through Reaver territory. Turns out it's a biological weapon that kills anyone who tries to touch her... which is discovered when Inara is gang-raped. Yikes.
  • Prior to the creation of Rifftrax, former Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Mike Nelson, Bill Corbet and Kevin Murphy attempted to create a Spiritual Successor known as The Film Crew, portraying the three as temp workers working in a warehouse and making fun of bad movies (under the guise of fulfilling their eccentric billionaire boss' "dream" of giving every DVD ever a commentary track). However, Jim Mallon, who originally held the rights to MST3K at the time, forced Shout! Factory to back off, leading to Rifftrax's creation.
  • Before Brian Cooke and Johnny Mortimer were hired to write Foreign Affairs (1966), there was another writer. His original version of the first episode ("The Foreign Body") wasn't considered to be very good and so he was dropped.
  • Forever (2014)
    • Creator Matt Miller revealed several planned developments for the second season.
    • Henry telling Jo about his immortality would be interrupted repeatedly, a running gag, but eventually he'd get to tell her.
    • Lucas would have been the next person to find out about Henry's secret.
    • Adam would have been rescued from his Locked-In Syndrome by another, younger immortal.
    • A "Latin lover" from Henry's past would have made an appearance.
    • The season would have ended with Henry and Jo together in Paris.
  • Forever Knight's writers wanted to take the focus off Nick's redemption in season 3. They tried to write out both Janette and Natalie, but Geraint Wyn Davies threatened to quit if Natalie was taken out. There was also going to be a promotion to captain for Schanke, but John Kapelos turned it down.
    • The ending was originally to have Lacroix saying the last few lines of Romeo and Juliet at the very end, but this was nixed because the producers wanted the show just open ended enough to avoid major hurt in syndication.
  • Formula 1: Drive to Survive: As there is quite a lot going on in any given year for each F1 team and the seasons are only ten episodes long quite a few potential storylines are left by the wayside, even ones fans of the sport are expecting to see covered
    • Two of the top teams, Ferrari and Mercedes, opted not to participate in season 1, so their drivers are only ever seen in the background and there are no interviews with the teams. They both chose to participate in season 2 after seeing the success of the show.
    • In season 2 Claire Williams practically hands the Netflix team storylines to follow with her two new drivers, pointing out Kubica's 2019 return to the sport after his near fatal accident is just the kind of miraculous recovery one would expect from a fictional sports tale, and that he's acting as the experienced vetran who knows their car to rookie and reining Formula 2 champion George Russel. The series then waits until the 9th episode to show this and doesn't even document the fact that Kubica earned the team their single point in the constructor's championship that year.
    • Lando Norris is a particularly camera friendly F1 driver prone to joking whose rookie year was 2019, and his friendship with his teammate Carlos Sainz and interactions with that years other two rookies were an off track highlight for many fans that year. He only gets seconds of screentime outside of his car.
  • Fox at one point had plans to turn MyNetworkTV into an over-the-air version of Fox News. Is it no surprise that this didn't happen?
  • Frasier:
    • Kirstie Alley is the only actor from Cheers to not reprise her role on Frasier, reportedly because Scientology does not believe in psychiatry, and Frasier is a psychiatrist. In the later episodes of Cheers, around the time Lilith and Frasier were going through their separation, Frasier and Rebecca nearly ended up in bed together. Wasting a perfectly good UST plot...
    • Kirstie Alley claimed in one interview that her being a Scientologist had nothing to do with her never appearing on Frasier, and at least one of the show's writers (Ken Levine) said in a radio interview that they never considered having Kirstie Alley on, mainly because they weren't sure how to write her in, as Rebecca and Frasier hardly interacted on Cheers. Alley also said once she auditioned to play one of Frasier's girlfriends of the week, but was turned down, because the producers thought that would be kind of weird.
    • Lisa Kudrow was originally cast as Roz, however after the first few days of filming the producers decided that her quirky humor didn't fit the part and they hired Peri Gilpin instead (according to Kudrow, Gilpin was their first choice, but switched her for Kudrow for some reason, then simply restored order by bringing Gilpin back.) Plus, imagine how this would have affected Friends if Kudrow had remained on Frasier.
    • Frasier's brother Niles wasn't in the original concept and hadn't been mentioned on Cheers. The inspiration for the character came after the producers saw a headshot of David Hyde Pierce and noted his brotherly resemblance to Kelsey Grammer.
    • There were talks about having Maris make a physical appearance on the show, but the idea was scrapped when they realized that no human alive would be able to fit the bizarre descriptions of the character's appearance.
    • Frasier was originally intended to be a show based around a rich man who owned several journalism companies who was paralyzed by a motorcycle accident, running his empire from his bedroom and having a Hispanic street smart caregiver (with Rosie Perez being offered the role)
      • Other original concepts include a family comedy which would be set in Boston presumably and involved Frasier, Lilith and Frederick, which was dropped after Kelsey Grammer insisted Frasier have no wife or children in the show, and then one based around KACL, which would have been a workplace sitcom
      • After the premise centered around Frasier living with his father and involved the characters we now know, Lilith was again considered to be a main character, although this was dropped after Bebe Neuwirth rejected the idea of that out of fear for pigeonholing
    • Frasier was considered to be set in Denver before Colorado passed an amendment preventing municipalities from enacting anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ people, so they moved the shows setting to Seattle
  • This article describes what the creators of Freaks and Geeks think they would've done with a second season. Among the plans: Sam having to support his alcoholic drama teacher, Kim getting pregnant (with the father not necessarily being Daniel), and Neal in swing choir (though they acknowledge that another show ended up covering similar ground).
  • Gene Roddenberry wrote and produced sci-fi pilots that were never picked up for a regular series. Genesis II had six episode concepts written. Planet Earth, aka Gene Roddenberry's Earth or Battleground: Earth, reused characters and concepts, and was the inspiration for Earth: Final Conflict. Concepts from both pilots were reused for a third pilot, Strange New World. Andromeda is based on notes for those series. A fourth pilot, The Questor Tapes, was the inspiration for Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • At one point in the 1970s, George Lucas approached Gene Roddenberry to ask if the Star Trek franchise was for sale.
    • Early ideas for Star Trek: The Next Generation, from episode treatments and scripts that were ultimately not filmed, and from various early versions of episode storylines, include a very different origin for the character of Lt. Cmmdr. Data. Before the episode "Datalore" as filmed established that Data was a closely human android built by Dr. Soong, a human, his original backstory, according to the unfilmed episode "Terminus" and early versions of "Datalore," was very different: Data had been created by an alien species whose technology the Enterprise would encounter but who would remain mostly mysterious and unseen. The aliens (in some versions of this origin story they were a civilization of machines) constructed Data to resemble humans, whom they admired and tried to preserve whenever they encountered them. He was meant to serve as a repository of the memories of a colony of humans that the aliens/androids had found were being killed by an alien force (eventually developed into the Crystalline Entity). The aliens/androids regretted not being able to save the humans so they constructed Data in human form to save the colonists' memories and knowledge. In other variations of the early "Datalore" story concept, the character that became Data's "brother" Lore started as a female android named "Minuet" before evolving into Data's "evil twin." "Minuet" eventually did show up in the series, but as a holographic love interest for Riker (who was to fall in love with Minuet during a rescue mission) before Minuet was rewritten as a gynoid love interest for Data, before they decided to go with an "evil twin" instead. Data's "evil twin" was an idea itself borrowed from "Terminus," a separate episode concept with some similarities to later, early versions of "Datalore." Also, the Crystalline Entity was initially written as "luring" humans inside and draining them of their neural energy before it was rewritten as a space-dwelling creature that fed by converting mass to energy and stripping entire planets of their ecosystems.
    • Other early ideas for TNG included the Neural Parasites from "Conspiracy' being later linked to the (originally insectoid, not cybernetic) Borg Hive. The parasites would have been the Borg vanguard of advanced scouts. The 1st season would have ended with a joint investigative mission into Borg activity by the Romulans and the Federation, chronicled by a trilogy of episodes which would have formally introduced the Borg. Due to the Writer's Strike, these plans were abandoned although elements were present in filmed episodes; however, the neural parasites' connection to the Borg never became canon and was dropped, with the parasites not making another appearance and the Borg reimagined as cybernetic humanoids instead of an insectoid hive.
    • Elements of an unfilmed TNG story called "The Neutral Zone" (unrelated to the filmed episode of the same name), specifically the Enterprise carrying a wheelchair-bound Star Fleet dignitary on a critical mission, made it into the filmed episode "Too Short a Season". The "Neutral Zone" character, Commander Billings, the wheelchair bound dignitary, was a Star Fleet security officer who had originally rescued Tasha Yar from her hellish failed colony planet. The Enterprise would have carried Billings on a mission to open trade relations with the Romulan Star Empire. Billings was rewritten as the elderly Admiral Mark Jameson and instead of a Romulan trade mission, the Enterprise carried him to a wartorn planet for a hostage negotiation. Instead of Dr. Crusher performing an experimental procedure which involved transplanting Data's spinal fluid in to Billings so Billings could walk again, as in "The Neutral Zone," Admiral Jameson instead came aboard with the mysterious de-aging compound he'd obtained from another planet in "Too Short A Season."
    • Another episode, "Blood and Fire," would have been an AIDs allegory, with Regulan bloodworm infections being one stage in an invasive alien parasites' life cycle. There are many versions of the story of why this particular episode was never filmed. David Gerrold had originally written two gay characters into the story, and was later pressured to remove these characters, and the script was rewritten several times before it was dropped, even after the reference to the two gay characters had been removed.
    • Several episodes that also were unfilmed in the 1st and 2nd seasons as well as several early versions of 1st Season episodes featured the Ferengi either in person or referenced as a much greater threat to the Federation than they actually were as filmed and in canon; the Ferengi were originally an aggressive, expansionist empire and they were meant to be terrifying. References in several episodes would have built up their threat, and appearances in other episodes would have depicted them as warriors who were in a state of "cold war" or even "undeclared war" with the Federation and often competed directly with the Enterprise crew in a role similar to the Klingons in the Original Series. However, with the Ferengi debuting ridiculously and being later retooled as a species of high-tech merchants who could provide comic relief, instead of super-aggressive exploiters with heavy warships, the Romulans gradually assumed the role of the series' main antagonists.
    • Gene Roddenberry originally wanted no aliens from TOS to appear on TNG, and only relented when it was suggested that Worf's presence on the bridge could open up storytelling possibilities now the Federation and the Klingons had made peace. Another unfilmed early episode featured a Romulan crewmember on the Enterprise too, suggesting/implying that the Romulans had "joined" the Federation like the Klingons. See below.
    • Early TNG made several references to the Klingons "joining" the Federation. Later TNG and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine retconned this as being an alliance (the Khitomer Accords, as depicted in Star Trek VI), not UFP membership.
  • There were plans for a sixth series of George & Mildred, which would have been the last, as Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce were afraid of being typecast after playing the characters since 1973 on television and in two films. Joyce's hospitalisation and death put an end to these plans. Thames Television did consider producing a spin-off focusing on George coping with life as a widower.
  • Gilmore Girls: Not only was Luke not originally planned as a major character, originally "he" was going to be a woman named Daisy. Executive Meddling said that the pilot needed more male characters. Luke became more important, and eventually Lorelai's Love Interest, simply because of the chemistry between Scott Patterson and Lauren Graham.
    Amy Sherman-Palladino, on the pilot: I literally just took a character and changed the name, didn’t even change any of the dialogue because I’m that lazy.
  • Not only was Glee originally going to be a movie, it was a bit more dark with actual drug use and a sexual student-teacher relationship. Also there was going to be an Indian character named Ranjit. When Chris Colfer came in to audition, the writers made up a character for him and Ranjit was completely written out. Sure, Chris is great as Kurt, but you can't help wondering what Ranjit would have been like...
    • The original pilot script also did not include Sue Sylvester or any analogous character. She was written in because a higher-up suggested that the story needed an antagonist (a rare occasion of Executive Meddling getting something right?) and was not originally intended to be a regular character until another project of Jane Lynch's fell through.
    • Rumors have it as well that Sam was originally was supposed to be Kurt's football-playing boyfriend, but Ryan Murphy scrapped that idea after it got spread around the web. Eventually Blaine was written in as a potential love interest for Kurt.
    • Another reason the Sam/Kurt story arc was dropped was after Murphy noticed Chord Overstreet's chemistry with Dianna Agron, and decided to pair up their characters instead. So the popular season 2 Quam/Fabrevans ship was never meant to happen at all.
    • Tina was originally meant to be a much bigger character than she turned out to be, with a plan for her to sing "Erotica"/"Justify My Love" in the Madonna special, and for her to have a season 3 adoption storyline with her adoptive mother portrayed by Margaret Cho. It was scrapped.
      • Fans speculate that the writers simply lost interest in Tina and decided to put more focus on Kurt.
    • Fandom-wise: One of Kurt and Blaine's portmanteau couple names would probably have been Burt, if it hadn't been for the fact that that is the name of Kurt's dad.
    • The biggest one right now: What if Cory Monteith lived instead of died, and thus Finn doesn't get killed off?
    • Though this isn't confirmed, it is likely that Glee 5x03 did reveal a bit of what would have happened had Cory lived. Rachel would succeed on Broadway and maybe do a Woody Allen movie, while Finn would become a Teacher, and they would reunite in what would have been a distant finale. Ryan Murphy himself said in a tribute to Monteith this was one of his long-planned endings for the show.
    • The "New New Directions" characters such as Marley, Kitty and others were to have far more storylines to fit with Finn taking on a leadership role. His death forced the writers to cut back on the entire Lima plots and all were weakly written out.
  • The cancelled TV adaptation of the Global Frequency comic book series would have seen storylines and concepts from the source material being adapted (including the Le Parkour one-shot, where a female member of the organization must race across London and stop a madman who plans to infect the city with the Ebola Virus) as well as episodes scripted by heavyweight comic writers, including series creator Warren Ellis.
  • The Gnomes of Dulwich was first thought up as a sketch for Morecambe and Wise, but Jimmy Perry's wife Gilda convinced him that the concept could work as a full series.
  • When Adam Goldberg created The Goldbergs based on his early life, executives told him the show would probably be funnier if his younger self had a brother and sister instead of two brothers like in real life. So, Adam's real life brother Eric became his sister Erica. Although you have to wonder what if they hadn't said anything or Adam chose to Gender Flip Barry instead.
  • Betty White and Rue McClanahan switched roles on The Golden Girls. White was offered Blanche due to playing Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Mclanahan had played a ditzy character named Vivian on Maude which led to her being offered Rose. However, there was fear of Blanche being too much like Sue Ann and Rue didn't feel comfortable with Rose and they swapped.
    • The original iteration might not have had Bea Arthur at all. When the show was first pitched to her, Arthur declined, saying, with her as the Deadpan Snarker, McClanahan as the ditz, and White as the maneater, it sounded too much like "Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens." It was only after they decide to swap roles that Arthur said, "Now that sounds interesting."
    • The series was supposed to be about the three ladies and a gay cook named Coco, with Sophia only supposed to be a recurring Drop-In Character. However, the positive reaction to Estelle Getty as Sophia led to them writing her in as a regular and writing Coco out (hence the reason he disappears without a word after the pilot episode.)
  • Good Luck Charlie:
    • Good Luck Charlie was originally called Love, Teddy.
    • Charlie's name was originally Daisy.
  • Hannah Montana:
    • According to a lawsuit filed against Disney by a writer who claimed the show was his idea, it would have originally featured a male protagonist and was called Rock and Roland. How much of that is true isn't clear, but the possibility is there.
    • In its development stages, the show was to be set in school and involve a movie star, not a pop singer. It was to be called Better Days and be a star vehicle for Alyson Stoner of Camp Rock fame. Joanna "JoJo" LeVesque, Jordan McCoy of American Juniors, and Taylor Momsen of Gossip Girl were also turned down the role. The Better Days concept actually made it to air as a Poorly Disguised Pilot episode of That's So Raven.
    • Miley Cyrus had originally auditioned for the Lilly Truscott role, which went to Emily Osment. And Lilly's last name was to be "Romero".
    • "Anna Cabana", "Alexis Texas" and "Samantha York" were to be the names of the pop singer alter ego, until Miley dubbed "Hannah Montana".
    • The creators early on believed that it would be hard for then 13-year old Cyrus to remember so many aliases, and changed the protagonist's name from Chloe to Miley to make it easier. And it was Zoe before that. The name was changed because it was too close to the name of the titular character in rival network, Nickelodeon's Zoey 101.
    • Billy Ray Cyrus only turned up to offer moral support and help his daughter with her lines at the audition. He did not want to play the dad, but Disney felt his Real Life link with Miley was convincing and entertaining enough for him to get him the role of Robby Ray.
  • Hannibal:
    • David Tennant tried out for the part of Lecter. He didn't get it (obviously), but Bryan Fuller was so impressed by his audition that he expressed the desire to write him a part as a psychopathic serial killer later in the series.
    • Apparently, Fuller initially considered Lee Pace as Will Graham (The Pie Maker as a profiler?) and as Mason Verger, but there's the possibility Pace still might appear in future...
    • Bryan Fuller originally wrote Dr. Du Maurier as an older woman and hoped to cast Angela Lansbury. When scheduling conflicts made this impossible, NBC recommended Gillian Anderson. This modified the storyline slightly; instead of being retired due to age, she left her practice for other reasons.
    • Fuller has stated multiple times (and has extended an offer) that he'd like the incomparable David Bowie to play Hannibal's artist uncle Robert, the only stable parental figure in Hannibal's life after his parents were slain by Nazis. It would have been terrific to see Bowie interacting with Mikkelsen, for sure. Unfortunately, this was made impossible both by the show's cancellation in 2015 and Bowie's death in January 2016.
    • Fuller has mentioned that, assuming everything lined up properly, Chi McBride would be his top choice for the role of Barney Matthews. He has expressed interest in working with a number of actors with whom he has past experience, specifically naming Anna Friel and Kristin Chenoweth. Fuller wanted Friel to appear in Season 2 (likely as Margot Verger), but she had already signed onto an adaptation of The Odyssey at the time.
    • Caroline Dhavernas was offered her choice of Freddie Lounds or Alana Bloom.
    • Tobias Budge was originally intended to be Jame Gumb, a.k.a Buffalo Bill (much as Franklin was supposed to be Benjamin Raspail), but when they couldn't get the rights to the character, they decided to rework him into somebody completely original.
    • Fuller originally intended Beverly Katz to die at the end of Season One instead of Abigail Hobbs, but was so impressed by her actress that he changed the script and story to give her more time for Character Development.
    • The role of Peter Bernadone was originally offered to Patton Oswalt.
    • A relatively minor example, but occasionally minor bits of the script that are missing from the final cuts of the episodes show up in the closed captions.
    • After being impressed with her performance in The Wolverine, Fuller cast Tao Okamoto as Lady Murasaki from the novels. He changed the character to Chiyoh after becoming worried that Tao was too young to be believable as Mads Mikkelsen's aunt. According to Fuller, this worked out for the best, since bringing Hannibal's childhood friend into the plot opened up new storytelling avenues the writers hadn't previously considered.
    • Fuller asked Jodie Foster to direct an episode of Season 4.
    • Fuller actually wanted Zachary Quinto to play another character, but due to Quinto's schedule and desire to work with Gillian Anderson, the role of Bedelia's patient was written for him instead.
  • The original ending of Harper's Island featured Serial Killer Henry Dunn getting away with the murders he commits and winning the heart of the protagonist Abby Mills, who doesn't have a clue. Executive Meddling said no.
  • Hart to Hart: Producer Aaron Spelling originally wanted Natalie Wood to play Jennifer Hart, which would have added publicity to the series since she was the Real Life wife of Robert Wagner. Wood preferred focusing on her theatrical film career instead, though she still did a cameo in the pilot.
  • Heroes: Forget Peter Petrelli's telekinesis. What really saved the world from getting a virus released on it in S2 was the Writer's Strike. As you might have been expecting, a whole section of the S2 DVD/Bluray release is devoted to What Could Have Been without the Strike ("Untold Stories").
    • It's stated that the much-maligned Maya was to play a major role by sacrificing her life, taking the virus into herself to stop it. But when the entire plotline was dropped, the writers had nothing else for her and had to weakly write her out (the showrunners openly apologize to Dania Ramirez for promising her a huge role they couldn't deliver.
    • Peter would have tried to get back to the future to save the girlfriend left stranded there.
    • Elle was supposed to be revealed as Claire's sister... and, of course, yet another damn Petrelli. This was luckily dropped. Though the writers briefly decided to imply that Sylar was a Petrelli for no discernible reason instead. Then it turned out Mama Petrelli lied about that.
    • Being "revealed as Claire's sister" does not mean she would've been a Petrelli - all it required was for them to share a single parent, since they never specified whether the plan was that they be full-blooded sisters or half. As such, Bob Bishop might well have still been intended to be her father, but Meredith Gordon - who is blonde like both Claire and Elle - would almost certainly have been her mother. In turn, if Bob was still her father in this case, it would have made things fascinating if Stephen Tobolowsky hadn't badly hurt his neck and thus had a Bridge Dropped on His Character, instead getting character development regarding his relationship with Elle and her mother that might've seen him Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
    • Let's all breathe a heavy, sad sigh for the proposed Origins spinoff anthology series.
    • The first season had plenty of plans that were abandoned, with Sylar originally being a Paul E. Sylar (and much older than the Sylar that was used), and a terrorist plot involving a character named Amid Halebi (who had a connection to Matt), and countless other differences in the plans...
    • Before the series started, the plan was to have a revolving cast, with only a few characters from previous seasons returning the next. Strangely, that started to happen later in the series, but only with characters who were introduced after season one. Virtually every main character from season one either survived or is survived by a twin, and of now the main cast is still mostly season one alumni and new introductions. Meanwhile, main characters from other seasons, such as Adam, were promptly killed off when their existence wasn't relevant, or like Monica, completely forgotten.
    • The much-criticized first season finale was to be two hours long and boast a huge FX-filled fight with Sylar involving cars tossed around. But at the last minute, NBC cut both the time and budget, forcing them to a far less effective sequence.
    • Emma Stone had auditioned for the role of Claire Bennet.
  • Hi-de-Hi!:
    • Jimmy Perry and David Croft wanted to film on location at Butlins Holiday Camp in Clacton. They sent the script to them, only to be threatened with legal action in response; Butlins were working on modernising and refused to be associated with the old style of holiday camp from The '50s.
    • John Quayle was the first choice for Jeffrey Fairbrother, but he was busy with the National Theatre. Simon Cadell was cast instead and later went on to become Croft's son-in-law.
    • Croft favoured Ronnie Hilton for Ted Bovis, but he wasn't experienced enough to play the role. Perry chose Paul Shane after he had seen him in an episode of Coronation Street.
    • Peggy wasn't in the Pilot at first. It was only when Richard Stone introduced Croft and Perry to Su Pollard that they created the character, as they liked Pollard too much to not have her in the series.
    • Apparently if Joe Maplin had ever shown up on screen, they wanted Bob Monkhouse to play him.
    • When Cadell told Ruth Madoc about his intentions to leave the series after four years, he offered that she could leave at the same time as him, so Jeffrey and Gladys could end the series as a couple.
    • Mr. Partridge was supposed to appear in every episode of Series 6, however early in filming Leslie Dwyer had to pull out due to ill health. As a result, many scenes throughout the series had to be rewritten, either to have Mr. Partridge mentioned to be offscreen (such as when Fred mentions he is back in the chalet near the end of "Together Again"), suspiciously absent (such as when Clive is introduced to the staff in "Ted at the Helm"), or in the most obvious last-minute rewrites, had his lines given to a plumber played by Ronnie Brody (who even uses his "Listen to that silly cow!" Character Catchphrase).
    • Barry Howard (who had been dropped from the series in 1986) was given a chance to return for the finale, "The Wind of Change", but he turned down the offer.
    • There were brief talks of a Spin-Off about Ted and Peggy working in a theatre. It is possible that this inspired the scene in the You Rang, M'Lord? pilot, where Stokes and Ivy (also played by Shane and Pollard) do an act in the music halls.
  • Highlander wanted a spinoff with a new female immortal, and pitched quite a few of them in season six. But none clicked and despite initially not wanting Amanda as the lead, they got her anyway. The Raven title came from a plan to make immortal Alex Raven, from one of those eps, the spinoff lead, but that fell through.
    • The season six plot was originally going to be made as a movie, set 20 years after Richie's death.
    • Methos was originally a short-term character for season 3, but the fans liked him so much he was kept.
    • Tessa's death wasn't originally planned, but had to be written in when Alexandra Vandernoot chose to leave the show.
    • Adrian Paul could have played a re-cast Connor MacLeod. The writers throw this around for a while in the beginning, and even Adrian didn't know after casting whether he'd play the movie character or a new one.
    • Ron Perlman auditioned for the part of Duncan. He did show up in season 5's "The Messenger" as the false Methos.
  • Hollyoaks:
    • It was planned to have Loretta's friend Chrissy arrive on the show and reveal that as children they had murdered another child, and were now living under police-protected identities. This was abandoned because the mother of James Bulger, who died in similar circumstances, objected to the storyline. The whole thing was scrapped, Chrissy never appeared (though her actress was cast in a guest role) and Loretta left the show shortly afterwards.
    • Clare Devine had storylines planned for a longer run on the show, but when her actress quit, Clare was killed off and replaced with her sister Grace, who took over some of the plot intended for Clare.
    • A reported storyline for 2010, which would have involved an intersex character coming to terms with their gender identity and going through gender reassignment surgery, never took place. However, the show introduced its first trans character (Jason Costello) at the end of that year.
    • The idea of Robbie Roscoe raping John Paul McQueen was changed to make Finn O'Connor the perpetrator, since it was felt that Robbie had been introduced too recently to write him out by having him jailed for the crime.
    • Nancy's storyline in the 2010 series of Hollyoaks Later was originally intended for Michaela McQueen, whose actress came into conflict with the producer so her contract was cut short and she was written out of Later.
    • Louise Summers was to have been the one to try to kill Warren Fox in The Loft fire, with the reveal that he hadn't really killed her after all. The producers could not get her actress back, so Clare Devine was used for the storyline instead and Louise was considered murdered by Warren.
    • Emily Lawrence was originally cast as Sienna Blake, but quit the show before the character's introduction, and was replaced by Anna Passey. Early promotional pictures and trailers featuring Lawrence were released before the role was re-cast.
    • A planned storyline involving Ste's affair with a stripper who looks like his old flame Brendan was dropped. Instead, Ste has a one-night-stand with a guy who resembles Ste's late husband Doug; leading to a later storyline where Ste finds out that he caught HIV from this liaison.
    • Charles, Margaret, and Nancy Hayton were originally to have been named John, Andrea, and Zoe. Their original names appeared on Becca's profile on the show's official site, as she was introduced before the rest of the family. Several other characters have had their names changed between the casting and their appearance onscreen: e.g. Grace Black was originally named "Kate" in casting sides, and Lisa Loveday was named as "Lauren."
    • It was announced in early 2015 that Danniella Westbrook would reprise her role as Trudy Ryan for a storyline later in the year; but later confirmed that Westbrook had dropped out before filming. A Trudy Expy called Ashley was used instead.
    • One idea reported to have been considered was that Phoebe McQueen would trace her biological father, who would fall in love with Myra. It never got past the story conference stage.
    • At one point, Amy Barnes was going to die in the Dog In The Pond fire. Her actress announced her exit and a death scene for Amy was filmed; but the character got a reprieve and survived, remaining on the show for another two years.
    • When Lindsey Butterfield was revealed as the "Gloved Hand Killer", executive producer Bryan Kirkwood claimed in an interview that they considered making Tegan Lomax the killer and had discussions about this before deciding to go with Lindsey.
    • Phoebe McQueen was to have died in the "End of the Line" storyline, when Sonny Valentine knocks her out and stashes her in a bathroom to prevent her from telling anyone she saw him; she was to have been trapped and killed during the explosion on the train. Instead, she was found and rescued in time, and lasted until summer the following year when she was murdered by Lindsey.
    • Scenes relating to Cindy Cunningham's flirtation with her daughter's boyfriend Jason were previewed in the press and TV guides (including a scene where she tries to give him a massage), but never aired.
    • A planned storyline would have involved Kathy Barnes returning to the village, being homophobic towards Ste, and then being murdered by Ste's daughter Leah (Kathy's granddaughter.) However, Kathy's actress was too busy to return so this was scrapped. It's possible this was re-worked into a later plot where Nico Blake murders her grandfather Patrick.
    • Ricky Campbell's exit was supposed to involve him leaving town after failing his exams. This was filmed, and preview stills of him tearfully saying goodbye to his friends were released online and in several TV magazines, with members of the cast also speaking about it in interviews. All the viewers knew what was supposed to happen to Ricky - but ultimately, none of his final scenes were ever aired, and he simply vanished from the show without a trace.
    • Due to the departure of Stephanie Davis (who played Sinead O'Connor), Sinead's current storyline involving a Love Triangle between her, Ste and Harry was cut short; and she leaves town after discovering via text messages that Ste has been cheating on her. Davis has stated that she had filmed a different exit that was ultimately not used in the show.
  • House:
    • David Cross, Patrick Dempsey, Denis Leary, and Rob Morrow were considered for Dr. House. Kyle MacLachlan auditioned for the role. He described it as one of the worst auditions of his life.
    • A physical deformity or handicap was always part of the character design for House, but early versions of the show put him in a wheelchair rather than giving him a bum leg; this was thrown out because it limited the character but showed up in the episode "Needle In A Haystack", where House tries to go a week in a wheelchair as a bet. In another early character design, he had a giant scar on his face.
    • Season 8 would've been much different if Lisa Edelstein hadn't left the show due to a pay dispute.
    • Season 8 nearly had Martha Masters brought back to replace Thirteen, and one of the unsuccessful fellowship candidates from back in season 4 (likely either Cole or Dobson) brought in to replace Cuddy. However, the writers felt that they had taken Masters as far as they could, and that Foreman's personality was just too perfect a fit for the Dean of Medicine role to give it to anybody else. In addition, had it been known that would be the show's final season, odds are that Adams would have been limited to appearing in the season premiere (if even that), and Park would have been the only permanent addition to the main cast.
    • Hugh Laurie's best friend and almost perma-collaborator Stephen Fry was in talks of having a role in the series following the Tritter arc but the plan fell through due to Fry's busy schedule.
  • I Dream of Jeannie was originally planned to have Jeannie with — guess what? — light brown hair, mainly to avoid comparisons with the blonde Samantha from Bewitched. However, Sidney Sheldon, the show's creator, couldn't find one, so the role — and TV stardom — fell to blonde-haired Barbara Eden.
  • iCarly: The titular character's name was meant to be Sam, with the sidekick being named Kira. They couldn't get the website address for iSam though. So Sam became Carly and Kira became Sam. With Freddie keeping his name, it has the humorous consequence of swapping around what the Portmanteau Couple Name for the two main couples are. The Just Friends main character/male lead ship would have been called Seddie (instead of Creddie) and the Jerkass sidekick/male lead would have been called Kreddie (instead of Seddie) instead. Funnily enough, the Les Yay ship on the show would almost be the exact same name, except it would be Kam (Kira/Sam) instead of Cam (Carly/Sam).
  • If It Moves, File It: The role of Quick was written with Brian Murphy in mind. John Bird was later cast instead.
  • Had Bill Bixby not passed away due to prostate cancer, there would have been another installment of The Incredible Hulk TV movies following The Death of the Incredible Hulk where the titular creature would have been resurrected, but it would have caused him to gain Banner's intelligence.
  • In the 1980s, there was going to be a TV movie that would unite the casts of Marvel's two biggest live-action shows of the previous decade: The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • Showrunner Rolin Jones liked Sam Reid's short hair, so he told him to keep it for the role of Lestat de Lioncourt, but the actor insisted that the character must have long hair like in the source material because he's a Drama Queen, and therefore Hair Flips are essential.
    • According to producer Adam O'Byrne, Thomas Antony Olajide (who was cast as Jonah Macon) had originally auditioned for the lead role of Louis de Pointe du Lac, and his performance was strong enough that he was asked to do a virtual chemistry test with Sam Reid. Olajide and Jacob Anderson were the two finalists, and the producers ultimately chose Anderson.
    • Jacob Anderson revealed in this interview that the dialect coach wanted him to do a French Creole accent for Louis (which was common in the early 20th century New Orleans), but he wasn't comfortable with it, so he decided to use a New Orleans accent instead, which he learned on his own by listening carefully to the speech patterns of the locals.
  • In 2007, NBC ordered a pilot for an American version of The IT Crowd which failed to get picked up. While unsold pilots are commonplace, the American IT Crowd would have featured Joel McHale in the cast. If the show had gotten picked up and renewed through the 2009-2010 season, who would have played Jeff Winger on Community?
  • It Ain't Half Hot, Mum:
    • Leonard Rossiter was the first choice for Sergeant Major Williams. Rossiter read the script, only to complain that the character was too much of a caricature, and then demolished the script from beginning to end. Windsor Davies was the next choice and was so well-liked that the character was changed from Cockney to Welsh.
    • David Croft considered John Inman to be the obvious choice to play Gloria but thought he was already too well established in Are You Being Served?. Melvyn Hayes was cast in his place.
    • Before it was decided to film exterior shots in some woods near King's Lynn, David Croft thought about filming in Kew Gardens.
    • A Stunt Double was booked for Michael Bates during Series 5, as he was suffering from cancer at the time. He went unused, however, as Bates found the strength to do it all himself.
    • Croft and Jimmy Perry had the idea to do an After Show about the concert party running a theatre after the war. This never got further than discussions, however.
  • The original scripts for It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling... were considered so bad that David Croft was brought in for rewrites so that the Studio Audience would actually laugh. Jeremy Lloyd helped him, but the script editor didn't like their work so they only did the first three episodes.
  • Jeremiah: Theo was originally envisioned as a Drag Queen before Kim Hawthorne showed up and did an Ability over Appearance audition.
  • Once the fans revived Jericho (2006) for a second season, only 7 episodes were allotted it. It was originally going to be much broader, with the story in Cheyenne expanded and a story in New York City as well.
  • In 1965, The BBC was considering a television version of Journey into Space to replace Doctor Who in several years. However, nothing came of it and Doctor Who ran until 1989.
  • Due to Juliana Tatelbaum's online popularity, CNBC wanted to give her her own series, but nothing ever came of it, as other priorities affected their London operations.
  • The TV special Julie Andrews: One Step Into Spring was to get a DVD release by Legend Film Group by April 2013, but it was cancelled for whatever reason. It was initially thought to be postponed to March 2014 to tie in with Muppets Most Wanted (The Muppets were costarring in the special), however, no reason has been given for this sudden cancellation.
  • Keeping Up Appearances: When Patricia Routledge decided to step down from the role of Hyacinth, there was serious discussion of a Spin-Off (Mind Your Manors) which would have featured Onslow, Daisy, and Rose moving onto the grounds of a country manor, where Onslow had been hired as groundskeeper before the death of the Lord who had hired him forces them all to move into the manor home itself to look after it while the estate is in dispute. According to some reports, location footage for a Pilot was shot and actors were approached to play various roles (most notably Su Pollard as Dotty Henshaw, the Lord's cook/housekeeper), and The BBC referred to the planned series in their 1997-98 in-house literature. It is unclear why the show was not commissioned, but it probably would have required the casting of a third Rose (or the character would have to be dropped altogether), as Mary Millar retired from acting in early 1998 due to cancer, which would take her life later that year.
  • The famous Telenovela La Señora de Cárdenas by the late Jose Ignacio Cabrujas was going to end with the titular Mrs. Cardenas going back with the terrible husband she had left, after his presumed redemption; but then, in a strange variant of …But I Play One on TV, many fans began to write and even tell Cabrujas in the supermarket queue "Please, don't make her come back with that Jerkass". Cabrujas then decided to get his protagonist to hook up with another love interest instead.
  • The L.A. Complex was planned as a spin-off of Degrassi following Manny Santos to Hollywood, but they chose to make it a freestanding franchise.
  • Last of the Summer Wine:
    • Roy Clarke was initially 100% against having Bill Owen as Compo. It was only when producer James Gilbert showed him a tape of Owen playing a Yorkshireman that Clarke changed his mind.
    • Compo was supposed to appear in all ten episodes of Series 21, but Owen's death resulted in last-minute rewrites to the final seven to replace Compo with his son, Tom.
  • For Law & Order: Alana de la Garza's pregnancy was going to be written into Season 21. In spite of Law & Order's tendency to give minimal details about the character's personal lives, both Mike/Connie and Lupo/Connie had fanbases.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A plan was scrapped to reveal in the episode "Taken", when Olivia's mother dies, that her mother lied about being raped, followed by Olivia meeting her father. Unfortunately, many fans still haven't gotten the "scrapped" part and think that's All There in the Manual, which must have made for a very confusing Season 8.
  • This happened multiple times to Let's Make a Deal:
    • On the 1984-86 revival (titled The All-New Let's Make a Deal), announcer Dean Goss hosted two deals. According to Goss himself, this was a trial run to see if he had the chops to take over for a retiring Monty Hall should the show be picked up for a third season. It wasn't.
    • Goss himself later said in an interview that he had beaten out Phil Hartman for the announcer role. Hartman's only announcing role ended up being The Pop 'n Rocker Game earlier in the decade.
    • When the show was revived for the third time in 1990, Bob Hilton was chosen as the new host due to Monty Hall being semi-retired (although he stayed on as a producer). Due to poor reception, Hall replaced Hilton near the end of the season with the hopes of seeking a replacement for the following year. NBC had other ideas and canceled the show instead.
    • The 1996 revival Big Deal lasted only six episodes, most of which ended up being pre-empted by football games. The producers sought to bring it back in 1997, but it never happened.
    • Gordon Elliott was chosen to host a revival for the 1998-99 television season, but it fell through.
  • In Leverage, Hardison's arch-rival hacker Chaos was originally going to be played by Zoe Saldaña. Wil Wheaton got the part, but the alternative makes quite an interesting thought.
  • Lexx:
    • Eva Habermann could've been Zev for the entire run; she left because news about season two was taking so long that she had to choose between taking other work or banking on the show getting picked up.
    • On a smaller scale, the original plan for Lyekka Vs Japan was to have Wist from Eating Pattern come back, but the actress was unavailable.
    • "Midsummer Nightmare" was intended to be filmed at Stonehenge, but the location was unavailable due to restrictions imposed during the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK (lampshaded in the show), so they had to settle for the decommissioned Battersea Power Station instead.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
    • Apparently, Peter Jackson was asked to collaborate on the production, but Amazon eventually worked on it without him. Jackson made clear that he doesn't consider this a snub and is interested in watching the show from a "perfectly neutral" perspective. Allegedly the Tolkien Estate demanded him not to be included due to Christopher Tolkien's negative feelings about Jackson's trilogy.
      Peter Jackson: They asked me if I wanted to be involved — [writer-producer Fran Walsh] and I — and I said, "That's an impossible question to answer without seeing a script." So they said, "As soon as we get the first couple scripts, we'll send them to you." And the scripts never showed up.
    • In 2017, the Tolkien Estate decided they were selling TV rights and entertained pitches from HBO, Netflix and Amazon. HBO wanted to retell the Third Age and Netflix wanted to start a Tolkien-universe akin to Marvel's with multiple products, such as a Gandalf series and an Aragorn drama. Both approaches were rejected and Amazon, who wasn't the highest bidder, won not with a specific pitch, but with a pledge of a close relationship that would give the estate a creative seat at the table.
  • The Malcolm in the Middle episode in which the family took a vacation to a water park leaving ear-infected Dewey behind with a babysitter (played by Bea Arthur) was originally going to culminate with the sitter dyeing Dewey's hair black and calling him "Pepe" as they head for the Mexican border. The producers found this too dark and disturbing, so they instead had the sitter die of a sudden heart attack during a dance together.
  • Married... with Children:
    • Originally, Divine (yes, that Divine) was going to play Peggy's mother, but that plan was quashed by his untimely death. This is why we never actually see Peggy's mom on the show; out of respect. It was also planned to be a dual role. Divine in his male persona was going to play Uncle Buck. The family dog being named Buck was also a reference in honor of the role that never was.
    • All four Bundys initially had different actors before settling on the family we know and love, but most shockingly, the role of Peggy was written for Roseanne Barr. She passed on it to produce her own Illinois-based sitcom instead. That's when Katey Sagal was brought in, and it was her idea to play Peggy as a sultry redhead to contrast her Lower-Class Lout personality. All things considered, Roseanne would have probably been a little too real in that role.
  • In the beginning, Saban's Masked Rider was supposed to be a very different show. Several big differences included Edenoi exploding, no Ferbus, a different Albee and Molly, different voices for Chopper & Magno, no original villain footage... Yet, Ted Jan Roberts is still Dex. As seen in this pilot.
  • Due to original host Gene Rayburn being retired, the 1990 revival of Match Game was to be hosted by Bert Convy, who had hosted several other game shows and was a regular panelist on the 70s version. Although he taped a week of pilot episodes, he could not commit to the series after being diagnosed with a brain tumor (from which he would die in 1991), thus leading to him being replaced by Ross Shafer.
  • Men Behaving Badly: In 2002 it was revealed that Simon Nye and the cast had agreed to revive the series for three further specials the following year, in which Beryl Vertue wanted the show to focus on how Gary and Dorothy were coping with parenthood. The idea was shelved the following year after Caroline Quentin became pregnant.
  • In a DVD Commentary for Merlin one of the writers mention that they were going to try and bring back Guinevere's treacherous-yet-sympathetic hand-maiden Sefa back for an episode. They didn't manage it, and she became an example of What Happened to the Mouse?.
  • Michael Jackson's 1995 Primetime Live interview, the first he granted after his 1993 child molestation scandal, could have been a lot different if all of his ideas for it were used. According to Esquire, Diane Sawyer wouldn't have been the only person interviewing him — she would have been joined by Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, Oprah Winfrey (who interviewed him before the scandal broke), and Howard Stern! Vanity Fair noted that Jackson also appealed to the Royal Family to have Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth II make appearances — the former to support his complaints on the tabloid press and the latter to knight him for his charity work.
  • Mimpi Metropolitan:
    • An early photo from the assistant director and a behind-the-scene recording show that Alan's wig was originally pink, before being changed to black like how it is in the series.
    • According to one of the production assistant, Bambang and Prima's names were swapped early in the production. In that version, Bambang was nicknamed Bams, likely because would be the artist-wannabe there.
  • Sherman Hemsley or Ol' Dirty Bastard as Mister Ed?
  • Michael Richards was offered the starring role in Monk but he turned it down.
  • Most of the cast of Moonlight was different in the original pilot. Josef was supposed to have been played by Rade Šerbedžija and have a more older-and-wiser look (plus an Eastern European accent fitting an Old World vampire), rather than Jason Dohring's snarky young-looking businessman with a Gordon Gekko feel. To be fair, though, Dohring does a good job nonetheless. Also, Beth and Coraline were originally played by Shannon Lucio and Amber Valletta, respectively, before being replaced by Sophia Myles and Shannyn Sossamon. Alex O'Loughlin is the only main actor to avoid being recast.
  • Mortal Kombat: Conquest was supposed to resume for a second season after the "Everybody Dies" Ending (which would have been All Just a Dream), but money ran out suddenly and they couldn't make it.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000:
    • Tom Servo was originally envisioned as "Beeper", an Unintelligible Silent Partner to Crow, making the robot pair a lot like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
    • Another early idea was for the show to be about an alien who watched bad movies as a way of understanding Earth's culture.
    • Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was originally conceived as an origin movie, revealing how Joel got to space and built the bots. However, the executives funding the movie wanted little to no riffing and it would lead to Joel's departure from the show.
    • Now, that's an interesting What Could Have Been there - how the series could have gone if Joel didn't leave!
    • The last episode for season 6 was originally planned to be Master Ninja III, but a combination of being unable to get it and it being Frank Conniff's last episode led them to use Samson vs. the Vampire Women instead.
    • Before Comedy Central cancelled the series, they offered the crew the idea to reformat the show to make fun of TV shows under a thirty minute time-slot.
    • Jerry Seinfeld could have been the host, but when Joel Hodgson pitched it to him, he turned it down as he was in the midst of making his own series.
    • Movies attempted to get but couldn't include the John Travolta and Lily Tomlin "romance" film Moment by Moment (which had the rights yanked at the last minute), the Elvis Presley western film Charro! (which was planned to be aired in Season 4) and the Leonard Nimoy pilot movie Baffled! about a race car driver turned psychic occult detective.
    • These◊images show some unused concepts for the revival; Bill Hader was considered as the new host, for example.
  • There were originally plans for a second season of The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg called Mystic Knights: Battle Thunder, but Saban cancelled it in favor of putting its budget towards Power Rangers Lost Galaxy.
  • When Nashville was being set up, the original idea was for Juliette Barnes to be much more of The Rival to Rayna Jaymes, to the extent of her being the Big Bad of the series. But after Hayden Panettiere was cast, the producers liked her sympathetic reading of Juliette so much that she was changed from being an antagonist to being joint lead with Connie Britton.
  • In June 1980, NBC had six game shows on its daytime schedule and then-CEO Fred Silverman (who openly hated game shows) placed three on the chopping block in favor of a David Letterman talk show. The victims wound up being Chain Reaction, High Rollers and the fourteen-year Long Runner The Hollywood Squares. Among the three survivors:
    • Card Sharks: If Jim Perry's version ended early, would we have eventually seen Bob Eubanks, Bill Rafferty or even Pat Bullard?
    • Password Plus: This would have been Allen Ludden's final show anyway as he would permanently retire in October that year. If this show went, we wouldn't have seen Tom Kennedy take his place. Super Password may never have come to pass.
    • And perhaps the biggest example, Wheel of Fortune which had been airing for five and a half years by that point. Believe it or not, Wheel escaped cancellation twice during this time due to the hemorrhaging ratings of Letterman's show. Silverman eventually reduced Another World from 90 minutes to 60 and later gave up on Letterman altogether. The questions still remain: Would Wheel had ever been proposed for syndication? Would the world ever be introduced to Pat and Vanna? Would there have been another syndicated smash after Family Feud?
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: According to Devon Werkheiser, a pilot was shot in 2008 about a sequel series in High School. It wasn't greenlit, with the actors quickly moving on from Nickelodeon. Given the series' Present Day setting with the characters' graduating middle school in 2007, they would've graduated high school in 2011.
  • The Noddy Shop:
    • The Do-Wop Penguins were supposed to be a group of singing nutcrackers called the Nutcracker Chorus.
    • As seen at the beginning of the promotional music video "Special", Johnny was supposed to have different-looking eyes and slightly different clothing that showed his stomach.
    • The entire series was supposed to be released to home video in North America, but instead, just the Noddy segments, with music videos played in between the stories in a similar fashion to Strand's releases of Thomas & Friends, were released.
    • According to an interview with Rick Siggelkow, the show's working title was Noddy and Friends, which ironically enough was used for one of the BBC video releases of the show. Several other sites, as well as an Australian TV guide, also use this working title.
    • Quality Family Entertainmentnote  was the original producer of the show.
    • If one of Susan Sheridan's showreels is to be believed, a British version of the second season was planned, with her redubbing all of Noddy's lines. It wound up being left unaired, and the first 40 episodes continued to be rerun in the UK instead.
  • In 1980, Stephen J. Cannell and Glen A. Larson joined forces to create, write and executive produce a pilot about night workers called Nightside — imagine if J. J. Abrams and Joss Whedon collaborated on a TV series and you'll get how awesome this prospect was. Unfortunately the pilot, though made, didn't sell (Cannell: "It was funny as hell, but it just didn't work").
  • NUMB3RS: Speaking after the cancellation, producer Tony Scott said that his dream story for the show was an episode where "everything fell into the margin of error that Charlie always supplied." Scott explained that in giving his mathematical solution, Charlie would always leave a margin of error, no matter how small, saying things like "there is a 99.8 percent probability." The proposed episode would have the ultimate solution fall into the 0.2% probability, thus living it to actual police work to solve. It never went anywhere, however.
  • Odd Squad:
    • According to an article regarding the pilot for the show, the show was initially going to be set in "small-town anywhere America", and while still being an Edutainment Show, it was going to be a "funny, fast-paced" drama rather than a comedy. Filming for the show was also going to take place in New York rather than Toronto.
    • Olive, Otto and Ms. O were going to be respectively portrayed by Isabela Moner, Jaden Michael, and Taliyah Whitaker before Dalila Bela, Filip Geljo, and Millie Davis were brought on board to play the roles. Oscar and Polly Graph were also cast with different actors, although it's currently unknown who.
    • Inner Dog Productions (whose creator, Koyalee Chanda, is known for directing episodes of Blue's Clues) and 400th Town Productions originally were the go-to studios for the show. It's unknown what led to Sinking Ship Entertainment and Fred Rogers Productions working on it instead.
    • Olive and Otto were going to be the two main characters of the show, instead of having a core cast of four.
    • The show was originally going to air on the PBS Kids GO! block since it was catered to older audiences. However, when the block was discontinued in 2013, the show aired on the regular PBS Kids block instead.
  • The sci-fi series Odyssey 5 was supposed to end up with humanity changing into human-AI hybrids, which is certainly bold. Given the uneven writing of the show, I'm not sure if they could have pulled it off. Anyway, it was cancelled after one season.
  • The Office (US):
    • Several actors auditioned for parts, including Seth Rogen as Dwight, Eric Stonestreet as Kevin and John Cho as Jim (which was later referenced by one of Jim's pranks). It's also worth noting that two actors who ended up on the Quietly Performing Sister Show Parks and Recreation, Adam Scott and Kathryn Hahn, also auditioned. Zooey Deschanel was offered a role in season 8, but turned it down to star in New Girl.
    • Bob Odenkirk was the runner-up for the role of Michael Scott, and, since first choice Steve Carell was already committed to another sitcom, Odenkirk actually had the part of Michael when the producers submitted their cast list to the network. But before production started, Carell's sitcom was canceled and he became available, so he got the part. This was referenced later as a Mythology Gag after Carell left the show - Pam interviews for a job and finds out her boss (played by Odenkirk) is Michael's Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
  • On the Buses:
    • While Reg Varney was the first choice to play Stan, Ronnie Barker and Bernard Cribbins were also given as possible backups.
    • Before producer Stuart Allen met Stephen Lewis when he was acting in Mrs Wilson's Diary, Dudley Foster was the first choice for Blakey.
    • Michael Robbins nearly missed out on playing Arthur when he received an offer for The Dustbinmen the same week he was offered this series.
    • In 1990, there were plans to revive the series as Back on the Buses, and the original cast appeared on Wogan to promote the new series. However, although a pilot script was written, it wasn't made. It was to feature Stan Butler, having run his own business for some years and made some money, starting his own bus company in the newly deregulated market, and hiring Jack to work with him. As they attempt to get the company off the ground, they discover a rival company has set up in the town, owned by none other than Blakey. The comedy in the series would have come from the conflict between the two businesses, and how Stan and Jack attempted to battle Blakey's bigger and more professional company.
  • In 2021, On the House was considered for a DVD release by Network (a company known for releasing obscure TV series), but nothing ever came of it. After Network ceased trading in 2023, a DVD release is very unlikely to happen.
  • The producers of Once Upon a Time originally wanted to cast Lady Gaga as the Blue Fairy, but her management never replied back to them. The role went to Keegan Connor Tracy.
    • The Sheriff was meant to be Sherlock Holmes, and his curse in Storybrooke was that there was no mystery to solve. The plan fell through due to an issue with acquiring the rights. Not to mention the fact that there are already two Sherlocks on TV at that point in time.
    • Speaking of the Sheriff, they wanted him to return in Season 3, which fell through because Jamie Dornan was filming Fifty Shades of Grey. If they'd gotten to do it, he'd have appeared in what was described as a Peggy Sue Got Married moment in the season finale — Emma would have seen him while trapped in the past, but been unable to reach out because doing so would have wrecked the timeline.
    • Ariel and Aladdin were planned for the second season, but their appearances got "pushed back" for unknown reasons. Ariel showed up in Season 3 and Aladdin in Season 6.
    • Early drafts of the pilot episode had Charming killed off. This was changed after Josh Dallas auditioned and "blew them away" with his performance, prompting the creators to expand his role, although they later claimed that Executive Meddling made them spare him (and that they agreed with the meddling, saying the executives were right.)
    • Early drafts also had Regina with three children instead of just Henry, but the identities of the other two are not yet known.
    • The final draft of the pilot as it was sold, before the show was picked up and more changes were made, has many differences, most notably Emma being named Anna.
    • Hook was supposed to have a larger role in the second half of Season 2, but it had to undergo a major rewrite due to Colin O'Donoghue breaking his leg. The writers had to cut almost all of Hook's scenes.
    • Regina and Henry's relationship from Season 2 onward is only a result of Lana Parrilla (Regina) pushing the writers for it. The same is true for Regina and Robin's relationship, somewhat... she only pushed for a romance for Regina, the choice of Robin Hood for the love interest is the writers' doing.
    • Belle was originally intended for only one episode, but she was brought back by popular demand. Similarly, Anton the Giant was originally going to only be in his nameless debut, "Tallahassee", but the staff liked him enough to bring him back and expand upon him in "Tiny" and "Lacey". Another similar case is Blackbeard, whose death in his debut, "The Jolly Roger", was later retconned because the writers really enjoyed what Charles Mesure brought to the role and thus wanted to use the character in more stories.
    • Captain Hook was originally supposed to appear in Season 1, but the writers were unable to acquire the rights to Neverland in time.
    • Dracula was considered as a character for Season 1, but they went with Dr. Frankenstein instead.
    • Ruby had more plots planned but the ever-increasing character load in Season 2 left them no way to feature her. Season 5 reintroduces her.
    • Amy Manson claims she was offered to make Merida a series regular. She declined, not wanting to move to Canada to work exclusively there.
    • Sean Maguire stated that if Season 5 had been the final season and the show not been renewed, then Robin Hood wouldn't have been killed off, since that was done to kick off a plot for Season 6.
    • Season 6 would have had an episode of Henry narrating stories from the book that tied up dangling plot threads of Mulan, Maleficent and Lily, Will Scarlet and others. Sadly, the producers couldn't get as many of the actors as they wanted and it was dropped.
    • Jennifer Morrison claims she was offered the chance to remain a series regular for Season 7. She turned it down but agreed to make a guest appearance in its second episode and then later Back for the Finale.
    • Originally, Maleficent and Lily's story was to reveal Lily's father as Zorro. Unfortunately, the writers couldn't obtain the rights to the Zorro character, despite him appearing in a Disney TV show in the late 1950s, so, instead, Regina mentions it in passing in the series finale.
  • Once Upon a Time in Wonderland:
  • Only Fools and Horses:
    • Jim Broadbent was John Sullivan's original choice for the role of Del Boy. While failing to get the role, he did still appear within the show as DCI Slater, who made three appearances - all highly memorable.
    • Enn Reitel, Robin Nedwell, and Billy Murray were also considered possible candidates for the role of Del Boy Trotter, before it went to David Jason.
    • John Sullivan intended for Chas & Dave to sing the series' theme song due to the success from their "Rockney" style of music (a mixture of rock 'n roll and cockney). However, they were unavailable having just recorded their hit record "Ain't No Pleasing You", so Sullivan was persuaded by Ray Butt to sing the song himself, which he did.
    • The episode "From Prussia with Love" was originally meant to open Series 4 and featured Grandad. It was postponed until Series 5 due to Lennard Pearce's death, and his role was given to Uncle Albert.
    • In 1986, David Jason told John Sullivan at a dinner that he wanted to leave the show and further his career elsewhere, so the fifth series finale "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" was written as the final OFAH episode, and would have seen Del leaving England with his friend Jumbo Mills to run a car business in Australia. A spin-off entitled Hot-Rod was planned, which would've been all about Rodney running Trotters Independent Traders with Mickey Pearce. However, Jason changed his mind and decided to stay on, and Sullivan rewrote the ending to show Del rejecting Jumbo's offer.
    • In the first chapter of the early 2000s Christmas trilogy, "If They Could See Us Now" (2001), The BBC wanted to get the rights from ITV to use the actual Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? gameshow with a special guest appearance from Chris Tarrant, but ITV refused because a plot point was that Del gave a correct answer and the quizmaster said it was wrong due to an error. They ended up with a blatant expy called Goldrush, hosted by Jonathan Ross.
  • Our Miss Brooks: The Retool in the fourth season of the television program, where Miss Brooks and Mr. Conklin find new jobs at Mrs. Nestor's Private Elementary School, wasn't the doing of the creators but purely the result of Executive Meddling. Had this not occurred, the fourth season would have been based at Madison High School as usual, and Walter Denton, Harriet Conklin and Mr. Boynton would have remained major characters. It's also probably that Our Miss Brooks would have gone on for a fifth season. As it was, in the 1955-56 broadcast year, the radio show was still broadcasting new episodes set at Madison High School under the show's old format. Moreover, The Movie Grand Finale was released resolving the show's storylines in line with the previous continuity. So, really, What Might Have Been? was, at least on the radio and in the movie, just not on television.
  • The Patty Duke Show:
    • Patty Duke mentioned in a number of interviews that had ABC been able to convince United Artists to invest in transitioning The Patty Duke Show from black & white to color (an expensive process in 1966-67), the series would have likely carried on for one or more extra seasons, as it was still pulling in high ratings. The next season very likely would have concentrated on the Patty Lane/Richard Harrison relationship had it been produced.
    • The series would also have likely been entirely produced in California rather than New York, partially as a result of Patty's handlers Bob & Ethel Ross wanting Patty to avoid seeing the much older cameraman Harry Falk Jr., whom Patty married and soon divorced, partly to escape the domineering handlers' clutches. Patty Duke still fired the Rosses on her 18th birthday.
  • Peep Show was originally conceived as a "live action Beavis and Butt-Head" with Mark and Jeremy commenting on clips from various TV shows, never leaving their front room and using point-of-view shots to show their view of the TV set. After a pilot was made, Mitchell and Webb wanted to get more from the characters, which led to writers Armstrong and Bain opening up the world away from the sofa and turning the idea into a sitcom - but keeping the POV shots.
  • Please Sir!:
    • Before the series was written, one of John Esmonde and Bob Larbey's other ideas for a sitcom was a series about a failed actor and his faithful valet.
    • The series was first offered to The BBC, who turned it down due to the corporation taking offense to Dennis being "educationally subnormal".
    • Robin Askwith was considered for Duffy before Peter Cleall was cast.
    • The final three episodes of Series 3 were supposed to be filmed in colour, but had to be done in black and white due to the ITV Colour Strike.
  • Police, Camera, Action! had some things that were planned, but due to Real Life Writes the Plot and Executive Meddling, the ideas did not work. In chronological order:
    • The episode "Don't Look Back In Anger", which aired in November 1997, was meant to have been longer, more about the history of police cars and policing as a Framing Device, and included some clips unique to the episode and not been a full Clip Show (the episode was later more or less a de facto example of the Clip Show trope), but they had not fully negotiated from the rights-holders such as Rigspolitiet Denmark and other police forces (who were credited in the Closing Credits as "Police Camera Action would like to thank"). In the same episode, a Special Edition Title was planned, with a festive blue-and-red color scheme, but the idea was scrapped due to no consensus.
    • The episode "On The Buses" (which aired 6 January 1999) was meant to be 60 minutes long (with commercial breaks), but in the end the episode was reduced to a 30-minute runtime. To compromise, they had to compress the clips they wanted to narrate over to a voice-over with Alastair Stewart saying "And finally, police cameras capture .... " with EMF's "Unbelievable" playing over the end credits.
  • Por Estas Calles: A Venezuelan example.
    • The (in)famous early nineties Soap Opera originally was, and was promoted in the pre-air sales as, a typical pink soap named "Eva Luna", about a Wrongly Accused girl who had to hide and change her name, taking the titular name for herself. They even had filmed several chapters when the 1992 coup attempt against the president happened and suddenly there wasn't the right atmosphere for a "normal" soap. Then the head writer decided to retool the story to take place in The Present Day instead of the atemporal Soap Opera Time, and go for realism and cynicism, expanding the cast and introducing many characters. The Executives loved it so much that they immediately ordered the erasure of the already filmed chapters. The only things that survived from the original were the already cast actor, and the plot about the heroine being wrongly accused and changing her name while hiding, now made gritty and dark.
    • One of the characters of Por Estas Calles was "El Hombre de la Etiqueta" (The Tag Man), a ex-policeman turned vigilante Serial Killer after the murder of his son, going for common crooks and placing a morgue tag with the word "Irrecuperable" ("unreedemeable") on his victims. Despite being the main enemy of the heroine (whom he mistakenly believed the real murderer of his son), the character gained a Misaimed Fandom of his own. Had the soap not had enough Executive Meddling to make the original head writer resign, he would have had a Redemption Equals Death destiny, instead of the Karma Houdini ending he eventually got.
  • After Powerpuff, the live-action relaunch of The Powerpuff Girls was announced to be retooled and its original pilot dumped, the pilot’s script was leaked online, leading fans to realize why CW actually said "try again". In this version, it's revealed that the animated series is actually a whitewashed, kid-friendly version of what really happened. Mojo Jojo is actually a human who was the creator of the Powerpuffs. Professor Utonium (here with the first name "Drake") uses the girls for merchandising rights while they save Townsville, forced to remain in their trademark outfits into their teens for branding purposes. When Mojo Jojo is supposedly killed, the Powerpuffs are banned from protecting Townsville. Blossom (who supposedly killed Mojo) disappears into an elite college and lives a normal life, Bubbles becomes a failed movie star and Buttercup is a firefighter who lives out of her truck while Utonium squandered the money and has an on-off relationship with Sara Bellum. Mojo's son, now the mayor, decides to reunite the girls to bolster his reelection campaign. The girls are reunited, save the day, expose the mayor and are welcomed back with open arms. The pilot ends with the suggestion that Mojo is still alive inside an actual monkey and the implication that Utonium is behind the monsters they faced so long ago.
  • The Price Is Right has several examples.
    • Dick Van Dyke was asked to try out as host for the original Price in 1956. He turned it down saying he saw no entertainment value in a show where people spend a half hour guessing the price of things, so the job went to Bill Cullen.
    • A new element was tried out on the daytime show in 1957. After an IUFB was shown and described, Bill would read a price but it wasn't the item's price. The contestants made their bids based on whether the actual price was higher or lower than the one Bill read. Needless to say the element never took afterwards but the basis of it wound up being repurposed for the Bonus Game on the CBS show.
    • On the CBS version (1972-present):
      • After announcer Johnny Olson died in 1985, the show held on-air auditions with Gene Wood, Rich Jeffries, Bob Hilton, and Rod Roddy. Bob Hilton was apparently tapped to take the role, but he was committed to hosting a pilot, so Rod got the job instead. Given that Hilton was three years younger than Roddy, he could have easily held onto the role for quite some time instead of retiring from television in 1991 (for comparison, Rod held the job until dying of cancer at age 66 in 2003). Phil Hartman supposedly auditioned as well, but unlike the others, his auditions were not on-air.
      • Another round of auditions ensued in 2003 after Roddy's death. One was a radio news anchor named Art Sanders, whom Bob Barker (then both host and executive producer) was said to have liked so much that he almost hired on the spot. Two of the other substitutes during this timespan were Burton Richardson and Randy West, both of whom had also covered for Roddy when he was ill; Richardson had also done the short-lived nighttime syndicated version in 1994, and West was a close friend of both Roddy and Olson. It was ultimately former weatherman and Florida Lottery host Rich Fields who got the nod. While Fields was very divisive, and most fans agree that West would have been a fantastic choice given his legacy, how would Richardson or Sanders have fared?
      • After host Bob Barker's retirement in 2007, the list of successors was long. Many of them had hosted shows before, most notably Marco Antonio Regil (formerly of the Mexican adaptation Atínale Al Precio) and Doug Davidson (who helmed the 1994 incarnation). Other experienced hosts such as Todd Newton, Mark L. Walberg, Marc Summers, John O'Hurley, and Mike Richards were also considered. Drew Carey got the part, owing at least somewhat to his success on CBS' short-lived prime-time game show Power of 10. Richards ultimately wound up becoming executive producer about a year into Carey's tenure.
    • Both Rosie O'Donnell and Tom Bergeron (Dancing with the Stars) were considered as well, but production would have had to relocate to New York for either one of them.
    • The producer's first choice for Barker's replacement? Dan Patrick, who turned the job down. He would later host Sports Jeopardy! on Crackle.
  • The DVD commentaries for mid-90's show Profit have co-creators David Greenwalt (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and John McNamara (Lois & Clark) talking about their plans for the Season Two arcs:
    • Joanne would never have survived that trip to Ireland; the phone booth she was in during her last scene in "Forgiveness" would have been targeted by an IRA bomb - arranged by Jim Profit, of course.
    • Pete Gracen would have been a senator, then he and Nora would have eventually divorced.
    • Jim Profit, a full 10 years before Don Draper, would have been revealed to have pulled a Martin Guerre, and gone back to kill the man whose identity he stole.
    • Jim would have engineered the poisoning of Chaz Gracen (who also would have still been married to Bobbie), and convinced him that his father was trying to kill him. He would then have eliminated Gracen Senior, thus reconciling Chaz and Pete.
    • David Greenwalt wanted Jim to reappear in Angel as an employee of Wolfram and Hart, but because of Adrian's schedule and rights issues, this was scrapped.
  • For Pushing Daisies, the character of Olive Shnook was originally planned as a lesbian and a former pop-up book maker before becoming a waitress and former horse jockey. The pop-up book creator concept was actually used with a minor character from the episode "Smell of Success" who had written some very bizarre pop-up books.
  • Originally, the British panel game QI was to be hosted by Michael Palin, with Stephen Fry and Alan Davies as team captains. Fry would have captained the "Clever-Clogs" team each week while Davies would have been captain of the "Dunderheads".
  • In an early version of the script for the Quantum Leap episode that introduced Alia, the "Evil Leaper", the major difference from the aired version occurred at the end. Alia has a gun on Sam, and is being ordered to kill him. Sam talks her down, appealing to her better nature, and gets the gun from her. Then, Sam points the gun at Alia! He tells her that he can't let her go, that the "stakes are too high." Al is very encouraging of this development, and Ziggy even says that Sam has to shoot her to protect the timeline. Alia, needless to say, feels a tad betrayed. Then she Leaps out. One can only presume that sanity prevailed, because this out-of-character display of hypocrisy never made it to air.
    • The producers planned to have Sam leap into Thomas Magnum for the season four finale, but the plan was nixed by reluctance from Tom Selleck (who apparently hadn't been in on the idea until late) and rumors that a Magnum P.I. movie was in the works, so they might not be allowed anyway.
    • Had the show gone on to a sixth season, Al would have started leaping himself in search of Sam.
  • Rome had plans for five full seasons. If not for the cancellation at the end of season 2, the second and following seasons could have depicted history with the same eye for details as the first one. To quote creator Bruno Heller:
    "The second [season] was going to end with the death of Brutus. Third and fourth season would be set in Egypt. Fifth was going to be the rise of the messiah in Palestine. But because we got the heads-up that the second season would be it, I telescoped the third and fourth season into the second one, which accounts for the blazing speed we go through history near the end."
  • According to Dwight Schultz, he read for the role of Dr. Wayne Fiscus on St. Elsewhere. However, before he went in to read, he ran into producer Bruce Paltrow, who had several years earlier gotten into a fight with Schultz because of their disparate politics, and Paltrow told him in no uncertain terms that "there's not gonna be a Reagan asshole on this show." Thankfully producers of The A-Team didn't care about Schultz's politics.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures: Had Series Five been completed, the final three stories would have included one where Mr Smith (Sarah's alien computer) became human, one that involved a secret thirteenth floor at Rani's work experience, and a big finale that would have revealed Sky's true identity and written out the Trickster permanently. Beyond that, had there been a Series Six, Russell T Davies wanted to bring Ace back for a story (as with the Brigadier and Jo previously). This story would possibly also have seen a cameo from the Seventh Doctor, as it would have depicted how Ace eventually left the TARDIS.
    • After Elisabeth Sladen had been diagnosed with cancer, the production team considered a Halloween special to help maintain the series' presence (at first wanting something interactive, then deciding to do an animated adventure).
    • A lot of ideas were considered for Series Four which never came to fruition. Half of Doctor Who Magazine's "The Sarah Jane Companion: Volume Three" is devoted to what might have been for the series one way or another.
    • However, the production team never considered continuing the series without Lis, or replacing her.
  • Supposedly Scrubs initially planned, if the show wound up being canceled after or during its first season to do a reveal in its final episode that the Janitor was actually a figment of JD's imagination; as a result, they tried to avoid having him interact with anyone else. The show resolutely failed to get canceled, and eventually the actor playing the Janitor begged the writers to let him interact with other people, so this idea was dropped.
  • Seinfeld:
    • At one point, there were plans for the Grand Finale to end with a scene where the Main Characters, after spending a year in prison, would gather at the coffee shop, Kramer having become a religious freak, Elaine having a mohawk and piercings, and George wearing a dress, before Jerry walks in, looking completely ordinary, sits down and says cheerfully, "Well, that was tough."
    • During the summer of 1993, when Jerry Seinfeld was answering fans' questions on the Prodigy bulletin board system, someone asked who had won the infamous Contest. Jerry notes that it was George, and that he and Larry David were tempted to have a scene early in the next season where George would discover that the contest had ended a year earlier and no one had bothered to tell him.
  • Matthew Daddario auditioned for Jace Wayland on Shadowhunters. Cassandra Clare saw his audition and said he would make a better fit for Alec Lightwood.
  • The 1987-89 syndicated series She’s the Sheriff; per an ad in the November 10, 1986 edition of Broadcasting magazine was originally titled "Suddenly Sheriff" and had former Three's Company cast member Priscilla Barnes in the lead role. By the time the series began airing in the fall of 1987; it had acquired the official title and Barnes was dropped in favor of fellow Three's Company alumna Suzanne Somers.
  • Sliders:
    • The idea was thrown around of revealing that Maggie's biological parents were Colonel Rickman and her universe's version of Wade (this would have meant Maggie's universe was in the future compared to ours).
    • There was a proposed episode that would have shown what happened to Wade after she was taken to a Kromagg breeding camp without Sabrina Lloyd having to return to the show, via the gang coming upon a device that made them experience past events from the perspective of other people. Maggie would have been Wade, Diana would have been Mrs. Mallory, Mallory would have been a Humagg soldier in love with Wade, and Rembrandt would have been a sympathetic Kromagg scientist.
  • So Weird underwent a major retooling brought on by Executive Meddling in its third season, becoming much Lighter and Softer (making it more like a Disneyfied version of Goosebumps) compared to the first two seasons, which were much Darker and Edgier than the other shows airing on its parent network and even other shows in its vein such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Not only that, but the Myth Arc that was being built up in the first two seasons was also abruptly cut short. The writers have been open about the original plans for the story of Season 3 and how it would've concluded the plot.
    • Firstly, instead of "Avatar", there would have been an episode called "Chrysalis", which would have had a similar Fi-lite adventure in which Carey would have turned out to have an alcohol problem alongside playing host to a parasitic caterpillar, and Jack would have helped him out. At the same time, the title character from the first season episode "Rebecca" would have returned, where she was going to make contact with Molly through email and Molly's backstory as an alcoholic would have been explored. This was all to be set up for Rebecca's role in the original Season 3 plans.
    • The second season finale episode "Twin" would have had Fi's father Rick reveal to her that she had some special destiny and would have ended with the wraith taking him out, leaving the threat of an evil alliance out there and giving Fi the motivation to investigate it to rescue her father.
    • In Season 3, Jack would have been revealed as the reincarnation of some ancient heroic knight, thus explaining why the dragon was afraid of him in "Strangeling", and why a shot of him fades into an O’Siannon suit of armor in "Banshee". Rebecca would have shown up to explain who Jack was in this past life, having known him personally. With that, Jack would have joined Fi to fight the evil alliance.
    • The aliens, who never really did much in the first two seasons past being mysterious, would have played a bigger role later on, revealing that Fi had some special genetic quirk that made her and various other beings like her throughout the galaxy specifically qualified to help people. She also would have befriended an alien girl like herself whose father was stolen by the forces of evil and would have helped her with information throughout the season.
    • Molly's witch powers would have also been explored further, with the reveal that some of her songs are prophecies.
    • Bricriu would have possessed Fi herself, and Molly’s priest brother would have exorcised her. Bricriu would ultimately switch sides because he doesn’t like being in a hierarchy.
    • The series would have ended with Fi traveling into Hell, defeating the evil alliance, and rescuing her father. Because the alliance took Rick before his time, he would have been allowed to stay on Earth with his family. This was all foreshadowed in the theme song "In the Darkness".
  • Did you know that Jaws and Dolly from Moonraker were supposed to have a sitcom(!) based on them trying to live a normal life in suburbia? It was to be called "So What Do We Do Now?" and had been green-lighted by Cubby Broccoli and everything - then the 1981 Writers Strike happened, and it got stuck in Development Hell, never to be seen again.
  • Sonny with a Chance:
    • The show was originally intended to play up a Nico/Sonny/Chad love triangle. For example, the pilot doesn't include Chad, and has Nico kissing Sonny's hand. A few hints of the Nico/Sonny side of the triangle survived into the 1st season scripts, but on the whole the show is only ever going to be Sonny/Chad.
    • Before that, the series was going to be called Welcome To Mollywood, and Sonny was originally called Molly.
    • It was also briefly Welcome to Holliwood with Demi Lovato's character being named Holli (yes, it was spelled with an "i") before they settled on the final show title.
    • The episodes that were going to be filmed after the Camp Rock 2 Tour were going to deal with the damaged Sonny/Chad relationship, but then Demi had a breakdown and assaulted a dancer on the tour and ended up going to rehab so the episodes were retooled to focus more on the sketches because it's not really Sonny With A Chance without Sonny. Originally, Demi was supposed to go back to work after rehab, but they decided to focus on their personal problems and their music career so the entire show was retooled into a defictionalized version of the Show Within a Show, So Random!. Unfortunately, it seems as though we're never going to get to see Sonny and Chad get back together.
    • Dan Schneider has implied that he believes that Sonny with a Chance was based on an idea he created and pitched to the Disney Channel a long time before that show actually aired. Had he ended up doing his version of the show he would probably still be working for Disney, it probably would have stopped him from making Drake & Josh, and that would have ended the successor shows iCarly, Victorious, Sam & Cat and Gibby. That would have left gaping holes in Nick's schedule, torched the finances (as iCarly was an unexpected mega-smash hit) for at least 5 years and would likely have killed the careers of Miranda Cosgrove, Victoria Justice and Jennette McCurdy before they ever got off the ground.
    • One other potential alternate future would've been Dan making Sonny With A Chance, but still doing Drake & Josh, just on Disney. Which would have meant Cosgrove (who was an accomplished singer even back then) becoming a Disney starlet around the same time Disney were trying to figure out what to do with Development Hell project for what eventually became Hannah Montana.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand: It's now really difficult to watch the first season without wondering what the rest of the series would have been like if leading man Andy Whitfield hadn't died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in September 2011. His performance in Season 1 is also so commanding and sympathetic that you have to wonder how his career would have turned out had he lived. Liam McIntyre did a fantastic job stepping in as Spartacus, especially considering the circumstances, but Author Existence Failure is never fun.
  • The Stargate-verse has a lot of confirmed potential different versions.
    • Stargate SG-1:
      • The show would have gone down a very different road if the writers had their way. Originally it was planned to end after the fifth season, and be continued with a theatrical film which in turn would lead to a sequel series, and if that wasn't picked up, another film. Another plan was to have a series of SG-1 theatrical films run alongside the sequel series to allow it to have its own characters and plots. The series was cancelled by Showtime, but the Sci-Fi Channel picked it up and gave it a sixth season. The writers then planned that season to be SG-1's last, but the ratings were so strong, MGM and Sci-Fi decided to give it another season and axed their plans for the film. So their script was then reworked into a grand series finale, which would lead to the sequel series. The seventh season ended up doing even better than the sixth, and the series was renewed yet again. So finally the script had to be reworked into the two part season finale "Lost City" with the same basic plot of the film, but a lot trimmed out and removed. The ideas and plot elements written for the sequel series were used to create Stargate Atlantis.
      • "Lost City" originally was going to have Sam and Jack kiss, when it was planned to be the series finale, as a nod to all the shipping requests and theories among fans, which wouldn't have been the first time. The irony is they were never intended to be a couple, as this was pure fan speculation/wishes, and in fact they had separate love interests intended for them but both characters were eventually axed.
      • Originally the entire Goa'uld fleet would have been destroyed at the end of "Lost City" as Anubis would have conquered the entire Goa'uld empire and sent a fleet of hundreds of ships to attack Earth, essentially ending the Goa'uld plotline with a bang. After an 8th season was confirmed, the writers decided to extend the Goa'uld story to the end of that season (which they believed would finally be their last).
      • Anubis's original plan was to create an army of near-ascended beings to do battle with the Ancients. Khalek in the episode "Prototype" was to be the first of these Mashur, but the idea was cut.
      • The DVD movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum were to be followed by a third DVD movie, Stargate: Revolution. O'Neill would be the main character, and the story would finally have the Stargate program revealed to the public. Originally greenlit in April 2009, it was repeatedly delayed amid financial troubles from the Global Recession and the collapse of the DVD market, and finally cancelled two years later.
    • Stargate Atlantis:
      • The original press information for Stargate Atlantis included a scientist called Dr. Benjamin Ingram, intended to be African-Canadian. David Hewlett read for the part, having already guest-starred as the very similar character of Dr. Rodney McKay on SG-1, and upon getting the part he basically proposed "Why don't we just bring my SG-1 character back instead of having me play a different character?" The producers agreed.
      • Stargate: Atlantis was not conceived originally as a spin-off series, but as a sequel to SG-1. The idea of Atlantis being a lost city of the Ancients was an idea the writers had for a long time, and its discovery was supposed to end SG-1 and move the franchise forward. Atlantis would have been discovered under Antarctica, rather than in a distant galaxy, and the Stargate would have become public knowledge. The SGC would have been relocated to Atlantis, with the teams and command being less military in orientation and international in membership. Contact with new alien races and travel between galaxies would have been more commonplace, and the major villains would have been the Replicators alongside rogue androids the Ancients built (probably an inspiration for the Asurans) rather than the Wraith. Most of this was axed when SG-1 kept getting renewed for new seasons by the Sci-Fi Channel, and the basic premise had to be reworked into a spin-off that ran alongside SG-1.
      • Similarly to the SG-1 DVD movies, Atlantis was to be followed up by its own DVD movie titled Stargate: Extinction. Originally greenlit in late 2008, after years of delays it was confirmed cancelled in 2011.
    • Had it continued into a third season, the narrative of Stargate Universe might have jumped a few weeks, a few years or a few hundred years into the future. The writers also didn't intend to leave Park blind forever.
    • Other franchise possibilities:
      • Tok'ra characters were planned to have a much larger role in the franchise. Lantash was also originally planned to be a main character in Stargate Atlantis, and start a romantic relationship with Samantha Carter, which is hinted at in SG-1, but was cut short after the character was killed off. Anise, another Tok'ra, was planned to be SG-1's answer to Seven of Nine and be a potential love interest for Jack O'Neill, but after it was discovered the character had no impact on SG-1's ratings, the writers happily dumped the character.
      • In 2019, MGM invited Brad Wright to write a pilot script for a revival of Stargate on television. In 2022, Wright revealed that the revival was dead due to delays from the COVID-19 pandemic and executive turnover at MGM.
  • Steptoe and Son:
    • When Wilfrid Brambell left the series in 1965 to star in the Broadway musical Kelly, Galton and Simpson toyed with the concept of killing off Albert in order to continue the show without having to await Brambell's return. The character would have been replaced with Harold's illegitimate son, Arthur (a part thought to be intended for actor David Hemmings). This idea was detested by Harry H. Corbett, who thought it ridiculous and was abandoned when Brambell returned when Kelly closed after just one performance.
    • There was talk of reviving the series in 1981 but it never happened.
  • Stranger Things:
    • The series was originally going to be called Montauk, and would have been based on the conspiracy theories around the eponymous real-world town rather than the fictional Hawkins.
    • At one point Will and Mike were named Benny and Elliot, respectively.
    • Steve was originally supposed to be more of a typical Jerk Jock Domestic Abuser, pressuring Nancy into sex and eventually dying. It turned out that Joe Keery's acting made the character seem too nice, though, so those aspects kept getting toned down until they were gone.
    • Eleven's death at the end of the first season was originally much less ambiguous, with it being made clear that she made a Heroic Sacrifice to kill the monster. However, once the series was renewed for a second season the creators decided to make it a case of Never Found the Body, with Hopper leaving frozen waffles—Eleven's Trademark Favorite Food— in a box in the woods, hinting to the audience that she is Not Quite Dead. Her survival is confirmed in the next season.
  • St. Elsewhere:
    • Ed Begley, Jr. auditioned for the role of Peter White but Terence Knox was cast instead. His performance impressed the producers and he was cast as Victor Ehrlich.
    • Bonnie Bartlett auditioned for the role of Helen Rosenthal but Christina Pickles was cast.
    • In 2003, Walden Films announced that it was planning to produce a film adaptation. However, nothing came of it.
    • Originally, the Series Finale "The Last One" was intended to take place in 2017 and feature futuristic medical equipment and costumes. Dr. Daniel Auschlander, by now a centenarian, would have been kept alive using bionic implants. In one respect, this would have been turned out to be Accidentally-Correct Writing as Norman Lloyd was still alive in 2017 and ultimately lived to the age of 106.
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Selena Gomez was cast in a spinoff called Arwin, following the misadventures of the Manchild repairman. A pilot episode was filmed, but the show was not picked up.
  • The Sunny Side Up Show: Chica was originally going to be a purple hen and a dancing turkey until Victoria Ellis made the final puppet.
  • Back when Supernatural Law was a print comic and titled Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre, a television series based on the comic was said to be produced by Lorimar for FOX and set to air in Fall 1993 in a bio on creator Batton Lash that appeared in the first issue of Satan's Six, which included a Wolff & Byrd strip as backup material. The television series ultimately never saw the light of day, with the reason for cancellation remaining a mystery.
  • While looking for the infamous lost pilot Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon, a completely different unknown pilot was discovered. Team Angel is a late 1990s American Magical Girl show by Bandai America that is only known from its short promotional video. Produced in 1998, it's about four female angels that save people. The pilot never went anywhere and it was never heard from until it was discovered in 2018.
  • Teen Wolf had several of these, mostly changed thanks to actors being unavailable or becoming unexpectedly popular.
    • The Alpha Pack was meant to have come to Beacon Hills for the Kanima, but due to Jackson's actor leaving very abruptly in between season, they had to hastily write him off along with any prospective plots.
    • Isaac was meant to die in the finale of Season 2, but his unexpected popularity with fans caused him to live on.
    • Erica and Boyd were meant to have a storyline of their own which included them becoming a couple, but Erica's actress leaving along with contract issues with Boyd's actor led to them both being killed off, Erica especially abruptly.
    • Kate Argent's return was meant to happen earlier, but along with the actress being unavailable the writers decided season 2 was packed enough as it is.
    • Chris Argent and Isaac Lahey were meant to develop a father-son bond in the fourth season, but thanks to Isaac's actor leaving that isn't happening. There is potential for it to happen at a later date since his actor specifically asked to be written off in a way that allowed him to return.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:
    • Cameron getting caught in a jeep explosion at the end of the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was supposedly written in case Summer Glau wanted to leave the role at the end of the series. If she had, the resolution would have been that Cameron had her skin burned off in the fire and regrew a new one for the new actress, either like Cromartie did early in the series or by having similar abilities to the T-X of the third film.
    • One vocal part of the series detractors was that the series was set in the present day, instead of being set in Future War as basically Band of Brothers with cyborgs. The season two cliffhanger indicates this is what the third season would actually have been. But, of course, Fox...
    • Thanks again to the Writer's Strike, the whole plot for Season 1 had to be dropped and canceled. The Jeep explosion was supposed to be the halfway point. Remember that blonde chick, Cheri Westin who was mysterious, "broken goods" (as Morris called her) and seemed like she'd play a big part, but then suddenly vanished in Season 2, never to be mentioned again? Yeah, she was supposed to have a sub-plot about being the victim of blackmail from the same person who made Jordan Cowan (the cheerleader who killed herself near the beginning) commit suicide. Because John got to know her, he unwittingly got dragged into a similar type of situation where his identity would be compromised. Guess we'll never know who made poor Jordan kill herself, or what dark secrets Cheri had…
    • In 2018, Josh Friedman, the show's creator, released pitch documents for both seasons via a Twitter thread. Notably, both seasons went through major changes compared to their original pitches (for example, the character who eventually became John Henry could have been introduced at the end of S1, as an entirely evil proto-Skynet in an entirely functional Terminator body, named Daedalus), with the general tone of both seasons becoming more morally-ambiguous compared to their pitches. The really big revelation, however, was that the show was intended to have four seasons, with a complex Stable Time Loop personal timeline for John incorporating his death as described in T3.note 
  • Terry and June:
    • Doris Hare was due to appear in a small scene in one episode, but Terry Scott had her sacked for forgetting her lines.
    • A movie was in the production stage for a little while but was never released.
    • A tenth series was considered, with several scripts in consideration, but was never put into production as the show ended after 9 series.
  • In 1969, The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly-Joe) filmed a pilot episode for a TV series called Kook's Tour, which would have featured the "retired" Stooges traveling around the world, with every episode filmed on location. Larry Fine, however, suffered a stroke in 1970, that killed his acting career and plans for the TV series. Larry died in January 1975 after a second stroke that left him in a coma. Moe planned to continue The Three Stooges, with Emil filling in for Larry, but Moe died in mid-1975. As a result, the pilot episode of "Kook's Tour" is the last Three Stooges short.
  • The version of Three's Company we know was actually the third iteration of the concept. The first (set in New York City) was scripted but never filmed. The second got as far as a pilot episode (set in North Hollywood and starring John Ritter as "David", along with Valerie Curtin as "Jenny" and Suzanne Zenor as "Samantha"), which the American Broadcasting Company passed on. The intro for the second pilot can be seen on YouTube.
  • Till Death Us Do Part:
    • Warren Mitchell was actually the third choice to play Alf. Producer Dennis Main Wilson wanted Peter Sellers initially, but writer Johnny Speight knew that Sellers would inevitably get much better-paying film offers and would leave the series. Leo McKern was the second choice but was away sailing on the recording dates.
    • Head of Light Entertainment Tom Sloan initially refused to have the series broadcast on BBC1, only changing his mind when he heard that BBC 2 were interested in it.
    • In the original Comedy Playhouse pilot, Alf's surname was Ramsey. This was changed to avoid confusion with the then-manager of the England football team.
    • Johnny Speight had been contracted to write eight episodes for Series 3, but only delivered seven.
    • The original final episode of Series 3 involved Else meeting an old lover who was the exact opposite of Alf. This had to be changed when Dandy Nichols fell ill with bronchitis and had to be used sparingly, leading to the creation of the episode "Aunt Maud".
  • Had Titus not been Screwed by the Network, the fourth season would've featured Dave and Tommy in their own Neutral Space episodes, as they did with Papa Titus in season 2, and with Erin in season 3.
  • Top Gear:
    • In 2001, Jeremy Clarkson originally wanted to make a separate car program that had nothing to do with Top Gear, under the working title Carmageddon (no relation to the video game), which would've been a scaled-down version of Clarkson's direct-to-video movies, focusing on supercars, stunts and risque content, while Top Gear would've focused on road tests and news about the latest car models. Some elements of Carmageddon later found their way into the 2002 revival of Top Gear, such as mute racing driver the Stig (originally called "The Gimp") setting the fastest lap times at an airfield.
    • The presenter originally planned for the Vampire rocket-car segment was James May. He had to back out due to a schedule conflict and Richard Hammond did it instead. The car crashed at 288 mph and nearly killed him. The car not only went off the track but rolled over and did an extended slide upside down. Hammond's height, generously listed as 5'7" and for which he is frequently made fun of, may have saved him from being decapitated. May is five inches taller. On the news segment where they watch the footage, notice Clarkson is doing most of the talking; you can see that May knows exactly that fact... his expression says it all. On the other hand, the bulk of the filming had been completed around 5 pm, but they had use of the track for another half hour. Hammond opted to take the rocket-car out one more time, leading to the crash. Had he done the segment, the cautious May (compared to the risk-taker Hammond) might never have taken it out for one last run.
  • Torchwood:
    • Torchwood: Children of Earth was originally going to have Mickey and Martha from Doctor Who on the team, but this was unfortunately scrapped due to actors' scheduling conflicts. It's widely assumed that the original character Lois Habiba replaced Martha, and that Martha would have played much the same role in the plot.
    • Leaked casting calls for Miracle Day revealed that Rex was originally intended to be white and Esther African-American, with Esther having an unrequited crush on Rex that was played down in the finished season.
  • Tracker (2001) was originally written with Mel and a younger sister, but the sister was replaced by Jess.
  • Transparent was originally intended to end with a fifth season, but sexual harassment allegations directed towards Jeffrey Tambor, who played the titular trans parent Maura Pfefferman, resulted in Tambor being dropped from the show and the production team having to work around Tambor's absence by instead wrapping up the series with a Finale Movie titled Transparent: Musicale Finale, which involved Maura being killed off and the rest of the family reacting to her death.
  • The Trouble With You Lilian:
    • When Patricia Hayes first hoped to move the series from radio to television, she had hoped The BBC would be involved, but when they weren't interested, she moved to LWT.
    • Beryl Reid was asked to play Madge after playing her on the radio series, but she wasn't available and Dandy Nichols was cast in her place.
    • When the series was first publicised in January 1971, it was stated that there would be seven episodes and that Mark Stuart would be the producer. Come July of that same year, only six episodes were produced, and by Howard Ross, who was also the director.
    • The whole series was intended to be filmed in colour, however, due to the ITV Colour Strike, only "The Presence" was filmed in colour, and the rest of the series went out in black and white.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • The original plan for the ending of Two and a Half Men, according to Chuck Lorre's vanity card, was to have Charlie show up at the doorstep of the beach house and ring the bell, before giving the audience a speech on drug abuse. He then goes on to rant that the moral does not apply to him, seeing himself as invincible, only for a grand piano to fall on him and kill him (as the Central Theme of the finale is that nobody gets out alive). Charlie Sheen disagreed with the gag, wanting the episode to end with a hook for a Sequel Series called The Harpers. The episode ended up featuring the intended ending, but with a Fake Shemp and no speech.
  • Ultra Series:
    • Originally, Eiji Tsuburaya intended to pitch a series named WoO, which starred the eponymous Plucky Comic Relief alien and his friend Joji Akita the photographer, and followed their adventures in fighting monsters and avoiding the armed forces. However, executives at Fuji Television backed out of the project when it got too expensive, so Tsuburaya went to Tokyo Broadcasting System to pitch a different concept — Ultra Q. The WoO concept was eventually revived in 2006 as Bio Planet WoO.
    • The producers of The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Outer Limits (1963) planned on an English dub of Ultra Q to be aired on American television, but nothing ever came out of this, hence the show's obscurity outside of Japan compared to its American counterparts.
    • Ultraman was originally named Bemlar, and he was to be in the final episode of Ultra Q as a villainous bird-like alien. But when it came time to create Ultraman, Bemlar the bird-man was reused to be the starring hero, who would be the Superpowered Alter Ego of Sakomizu, a member of a top-secret kaiju-fighting organization where only the captain knew his Secret Identity. However, executives voiced concerns that children and casual viewers wouldn't be sure who was the good monster and who was the evil monster once the fight rolled around, so Eiji Tsuburaya and his team decided to create a more humanoid being to fight the monsters. Also, Sakomizu was renamed Hayata and Science Patrol was made into a publicly visible organization with Captain Muramatsu unaware of Hayata's identity as Ultraman.
      • As popular as it was when it aired, Ultraman only ran for 39 episodes. There were plans for the series to run for an additional 13 episodes, as well as get a movie with the Baltans and a never-before-seen monster called Morugo as the villains.
      • Ultraman's mouth was supposed to be able to move when he talked, but the result was very unsatisfying to Tsuburaya and his crew (and can be seen in the first cours where Ultraman's face is Off-Model). Additionally, Ultraman's movable mouth would have allowed him to breathe fire.
      • Although one of Ultraman's defining traits, the Color Timer did not exist in the original concept for the show. It was a last-minute addition by the writers (the first episode had already started filming when they came up with it), who felt that Ultraman needed a weakness to create some tension for the fights. This can still be seen on the rising model used in Ultraman's Transformation Sequence.
      • Zetton is well-known for being the final opponent of Ultraman, as well as being the one who killed him in the end, but did you know that he was originally meant to be a side monster in the finale, with the main showdown being against a lizard-like quadruped called Saigo. However, the production crew decided that Zetton's design was far too good to waste, so they gave Saigo's position to him. As for Saigo? He was reduced to a side monster for a Monster of the Week named Kiyla and Science Patrol to kick around. Ouch.
    • The first idea for Ultraseven was The Ultra Garrison, which was about a team of astronauts and their Robot Buddy who fought off alien invaders. It was changed at the request of the executives for being too similar to another show called Captain Ultra, so it was eventually changed to Ultra Eye, which was very much like the final concept except that Seven was Ultraman Jr., having merged with the son of Hayata and Fuji to battle evil space monsters with the help of friendly Earth monsters. A few more tweaks (notably changing Seven's colour from blue to red), and the rest is history.
    • Despite what the title suggests, Return of Ultraman does not actually star the original Ultraman, but a different hero named Ultraman Jack. This can be traced back to the fact that Eiji Tsuburaya had decided to make a Sequel Series where Ultraman would return to Earth and remerge with Hayata to continue their monster-fighting career. However, he died before it could come into full fruition, so his son Hajime Tsuburaya rewrote the idea a bit to feature a slightly different hero with a different host.
    • Ultraman Leo: Many fans are frustrated with Dan's behavior in the series compared to how he was in his own show. That's because Kohji Moritsugu's character was not meant to be Dan in the first place, but a normal human captain named Tetsutaro Kawakami. This was changed because Kohji voiced concerns that viewers would confuse his new character with the better-known Dan Moroboshi.
    • The 2000-2001 Direct to Video series Ultraman Neos was originally meant to be the TV series that would resurrect the franchise for the Heisei era, rather than Ultraman Tiga. This was due to the desires of executives to see a fresher take on the Ultra Series rather than the back-to-basics approach of Neos. And since Tiga proved to be a runaway success, Neos ended up fading into obscurity and got lukewarm reception by the time it came out.
    • The Ultra N Project (Ultraman Nexus and Ultraman: The Next) was intended to be a complete, Darker and Edgier Deconstructive reboot of Tsuburaya Productions's Ultraman, which was having older audiences as their target demographics similar to what they used in Ultra Q Dark Fantasy. However, with Nexus getting Screwed by the Network, the project abruptly ended and this led to the development of more family-friendly Ultraman Max, and Tsuburaya wouldn't make another adult-oriented Ultra show until three years later while Nexus would end up being abandoned completely. The failure of the Ultra N Project also led to Ultraman Nexus getting cancelled early, with a 12-episode story arc centered on Nagi becoming the new host of Nexus, Big Bad Dark Zagi becoming a One-Winged Angel called Dark Lucifer, and even a movie being completely scrapped.
    • Ever wonder why Kotaro Higashi is the only Showa human host not to appear in Ultraman Mebius? Well, the producers wanted his actor Saburo Shinoda to come back, but unfortunately, he was too tied up with the death of somebody close to him to take time to return to the Ultra Series.
    • There have been at least two attempts to make an Ultraman movie in the west:
      • Ultraman: The Jupiter Effect, penned in 1978: The plot has the alignment of all the planets in our Solar System cause major disasters around the world, causing monsters to invade. Ultraman (whose host would have been a NASA astronaut) appears to save the planet. Things would have gotten so tough that the other Ultramen from the franchise would have to show up.
      • Ultraman: Hero From The Stars, proposed in 1983, would have involved highly evolved dinosaurs attacking the Earth after years of waiting, forcing Ultraman inhabit the body of an Earth Defense Soldier to fight back.
    • Believe it or not, American studio Winckler Productions proposed a Foreign Remake of Ultraman 80 in 1987, similar to Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956) and Battle of the Planets, that would have starred Adam West as a space captain who was Earth's first line of defense against alien invaders.
      William Winckler: Adam was willing to do it, we were several years before Saban’s Americanized Power Rangers, but the project never happened. Years later I saw Adam backstage at a taping of the Tonight Show at NBC, and he said to me, ‘Billy, Power Rangers stole your idea!’ We laughed! That’s showbiz!
    • Similarly, according to a Tweet made by Ultraman Gaia's head writer Chiaki Konaka, a Foreign Remake for Gaia was proposed in the early 2000s by Oliver Stone. For better or for worse, nothing came out of it.
  • Unnatural History had ended after only one season, possibly (hopefully only temporarily delayed instead of) canning these plots and plot threads: "the Gobi adventure ... involving both the tomb of that most famous of all Mongolians and the rumored Mongolian death worm ... followed up by a Rashomon 'what I did this summer' reflection ... the triangular relationship between the boys and Maggie gets increasingly more complicated, Henry's long thought-to-be-dead g.f. reappears (someone with more skills than he's got and anger issues) — as well as Jasper's mother."
  • The Untamed:
    • The series was implied to have originally featured a romance between Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing. But after severe backlash from the fans, the script was rewritten almost completely.
    • Several of the actors initially auditioned for different roles:
      • Most notably, Xiao Zhan, Song Jiyang, Wang Zhuocheng, Ji Li, Guo Cheng, and Qi Peixin originally auditioned for the role of Xue Yang. They were cast instead as Wei Wuxian, Xiao Xingchen, Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang, Lan Jingyi, and Jin Ling, respectively; although Song Jiyang managed to briefly play Xue Yang when he was pretending to be Xiao Xingchen.
      • Zhu Zanjin, Yu Bin, and Cao Yuchen auditioned to play Lan Sizhui, Nie Huaisang, and Lan Xichen, respectively. They were ultimately chosen to play (in the same respective order) Jin Guangyao, Wen Ning, and Jin Zixuan.
    • The filming crew originally planned to have Wang Haoxuan wear fangs since Xue Yang has canine-like teeth, but the idea was scrapped because he ended up looking too vampiric, and it got in the way when the actor would speak his lines.
    • According to Zhu Zanjin, Fatal Journey was originally going to be about the Venerated Triad, but the idea was scrapped because any plot they had in mind was too large to be covered in a movie's runtime.
  • V (1983):
    • The original plan was for a mini-series every year for the foreseeable future. NBC decided that they wanted the story to conclude in the second mini-series; Kenneth Johnson countered with a proposal for a TV series, which NBC turned down. While making The Final Battle, after Kenneth Johnson left for creative reasons, they decided they wanted a TV series after all. However it now took place after the Visitors had been defeated, and even though it was walked back in the first few episodes the menace was gone since they'd lost their foothold on Earth and no one trusted them, leading to a perpetual guerilla war occurring off-screen.
    • Kenneth Johnson's novel V: The Second Generation was based on his proposal for a sequel miniseries that ignored the events of The Final Battle and the tv series.
  • On The Vampire Diaries, a deleted scene reveals Kelly Donovan, Matt's mother, as a succubus.
  • Had Veronica Mars gotten a fourth season during its original run, the plan was a Retool into "Veronica Mars: FBI Trainee.". The new season would fire everyone except Kristen Bell and go with an all new cast. A short was included on the Season 3 DVD set. The movie notes this with a character saying he'd heard lawyer Veronica was in the FBI and she shrugs "maybe in another life."
  • VR Troopers was originally titled Cybertron. It would have starred Jason David Frank in the same role Brad Hawkings would play later on. The karate master would have been the one to give Jason's character the Cybertron powers and Jason's character would have been bothered by a Bulk and Skull-type duo. The villain Grimlord would have still been there. However, the popularity of Jason's role as Tommy on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers would lead him to return to the series and Brad Hawkings would take his role. Cybertron's theme song ended up being reworked as the MMPR theme "Go Green Ranger Go" and Cybertron itself would be renamed to the well-known VR Troopers after Hasbro complained.
    • When VR Troopers reached their third season, Saban realized they were running out of Metal Hero series and picked up the more recent Juukou B-Fighter. However, Saban got cold feet about doing a major retool with VR Troopers and decided, in the end, to cancel VR Troopers and turn B-Fighter into Big Bad Beetle Borgs.
    • Before picking up B-Fighter, Saban was reportedly looking at using Blue SWAT as a third season of VR Troopers, which would've tied up all the loose endsnote . However, as Power Rangers Zeo hadn't happened yetnote , Saban didn't know if changing the costumes would alienate the kids, and this, combined with the aforementioned note about B-Fighter, led them to create 'Beetleborgs''.
  • Jared Padalecki revealed in an interview with TV Guide that the initial plan for his series Walker was that he would only executive produce and his Supernatural co-star Jensen Ackles would play the lead.
  • In the late nineties, there was talk of resurrecting the cult Channel 4 gameshow Wanted with celebrities as a one-off tie-in for Comic Relief- instead, we got the first Celebrity Big Brother.
  • The West Wing:
    • Aaron Sorkin and company originally had Sidney Poitier in mind for the role of the President. One can easily imagine the line, "They call me Mister President ..." However, Poitier's agent quoted a salary figure that was so massive Sorkin figured it was a backhanded way of saying "not interested," so they turned to Martin Sheen instead.
    • The original plan was for the President to be more or less a supporting character, appearing for only a scene or two each week. This idea died as soon as Martin Sheen knocked his first scene right out of the park.
  • The early discussions of The Watch were very different from the series that was actually created. Back when Terry Pratchett was alive, the idea was that it would be a fully in-continuity Elsewhere Fic, starring a new recruit at one of the secondary Watch Houses, set roughly concurrent with the most recent books, with the Pseudopolis Yard characters only appearing on occasion. There would be a Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot arc, in which our protagonist would slowly realise he was Working the Same Case as Vimes and Carrot, mixed with one-off stories including — Sir Terry strongly hinted at a convention — A Day in the Limelight for Constable Haddock, albeit one that would leave him as some form of undead, asking Whodunnit to Me?
  • Wheel of Fortune:
    • One of the first things that comes to mind when one mentions is longtime hostess Vanna White — she was ridiculously popular in the 1980s, and no doubt helped entrench it as one of the longest-running game shows ever. One wonders how things would've panned out if original hostess Susan Stafford hadn't quit. (Interestingly, Wheel was not originally intended to have a hostess. The board was supposed to be mechanical and self-revealing like the original Concentration board, but they didn't have time to finish it before taping of the pilots, so they simply brought Susan in to turn the letters.) Furthermore, host Pat Sajak took over from Chuck Woolery about a year prior; one wonders where the show would've ended up today had Chuck stayed.
    • From 1981-89, Sajak was hosting the daytime (NBC) and syndicated nighttime versions concurrently. He stepped down from daytime to host a talk show for CBS which didn't go anywhere. Merv Griffin had several worthy candidates in mind for daytime host: tennis players Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, actor John Gabriel, sportscaster Roger Twibell, ESPN sports reporter Tim Brando (who reportedly did so well that Merv stated, "[Tim] could host the show tomorrow.") and then-announcer M.G. Kelly auditioned with Vanna reportedly turning the job down. Merv went with the completely inexperienced Rolf Benirschke, a former place kicker for the San Diego Chargers who was completely out of his element. After a mere six months, the daytime version hopped over to CBS with new host Bob Goen (John Davidson, Bob Eubanks, Pat Finn, Chuck Henry and Marc Summers also auditioned). While daytime game shows as a whole fell out of favor in the early 1990s, one can't help but wonder what would happen if a more capable name had helmed the last few months of NBC Wheel.
  • The Wiz Live!:
    • The producers originally intended to adapt The Wiz as a The Wonderful World of Disney TV special, starring Anika Noni Rose as Dorothy Gale. However, rights issues with Universal, the studio that distributed the 1978 movie of The Wiz, caused the project to fall through. The producers eventually obtained the rights to have the musical performed on NBC, except Noni Rose had become too old to play Dorothy by then. A talent search for a new lead resulted in then-19-year old Shanice Williams landing the role.
    • NBC approached Beyoncé to play Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, but she turned the offer down. The part ended up going to Uzo Aduba instead.
    • Aduba's Glinda originally sported blonde curly hair, as shown in early promo pictures and videos. By the time the special aired, she boasted brunette braids instead. According to Shanice Williams, the crew decided that letting Aduba show off her natural hair color would provide a stronger expression of African-American beauty.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place:
    • Justin was originally meant to be a friend of Alex, and not her brother. This isn't mentioning the thousands of Jalex fics, a fandom that supports this incestuous pair in a children's show, a bunch of viewers who obtained unwanted No Yay, and two teenage actors who can't help their UST.
    • Prior to starring in Wizards of Waverly Place, Selena Gomez would have been cast in a Lizzie McGuire spin-off series called ''What's Stevie Thinking?" as the titular Stevie, Miranda Sanchez's sister a pilot episode was filmed, but not picked up.
  • The X-Files:
    • The episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" was supposed to end with the CSM killing the Lone Gunmen for discovering his identity; the ending was changed because the writers wanted to leave it ambiguous how much of the story was true. In reference to this, one scene has the Cigarette Smoking Man read a story that he had published to a magazine and then complain that the ending had been totally changed.
    • According to Mark Snow, the Songs In The Key Of X tie-in album could have included original songs by Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and Seal, all of whom were fans of the series and unimpressed some interest, but could not commit: Petty was in the middle of a tour, Springsteen could not appear on the album for contractual reasons, and Seal was "snowboarding in South America or somewhere".
  • In 1985 ABC had a pair of relatively unknown comedic actors whom they were very high on and were looking for vehicles for. They also had two comedic pilots who needed a male lead. They were going to give one of them each show but considered both actors for both shows. One of those actors was Bruce Willis, who got Moonlighting. The other was Alan Thicke, who they cast in the other show, Growing Pains. But it very easily could have been Willis cast in Growing Pains and Thicke landing in Moonlighting.

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