For various reasons, due in part to the nature of the roleplay, plotlines and characterization on the SMP often do not go as planned, or would have been entirely different due to chance events and unexpected intervention, both in the roleplay and in real life.
General
- According to Owen
, some rejected pirate faction names include Kingfishers, Puffins, Penguins, Seagulls, and Pigeons. - Sausage originally had some large-scale builds planned for the series, including his own house, but ultimately never gets around to building much at all due to how expensive and time-consuming obtaining the blocks to do so would be.
Characters
- According to his post-canon "writer's room" livestream, Acho states that in a different continuity, his character would be so consumed by revenge for Mahara that star would have repressed all emotion other than anger, and joined the Kites as a result. The idea was ultimately scrapped because he didn't want to play such a character in the end.
- A post-canon Q&A livestream states that in an alternate storyline, after finding out about his brother's Deceptive Legacy at age 9 instead of 16 through a letter in the basement, Kuervo — nicknamed "Proto-vo" in this livestream — would have stumbled across a rogue pirate crew in a tavern and tried to join up with them for having the camaraderie the Armada lacked, only to be rejected for being a child but be able to actually join up about three years later for being loyal and holding on to the promise that they'd come back. He would then adopt his current name and later be appointed captain upon the last captain's death, and eventually join a faction with said captain's advice.note This idea was later discarded for a lack of Character Development potential. He would also have been naturally blond in this continuity, with his hair being dyed black after joining up with the rogue crew and adopting his new identity.
- The earliest plans for Scott's character were that he would be a mer pretending to be human, but the idea of archetypical mythological creatures existing in the Pirates universe was eventually phased out. cc!Scott later recycles the idea in Limited Life instead, gradually going from human to full-on Fish Person as time passes by.
- There was a considered romantic subplot between Will and Caer, a character from his backstory, but it didn't work out with the established worldbuilding. Other scrapped plotlines include a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Graecie and a betrayal that causes a rift between the Nightingales and another faction.
- Several of the other characters could have been in different factions from canon:
- One of Acho's alternate storylines involved star joining the Kite faction, as opposed to just choosing between Herons and Nightingales as in canon, with further elaboration on the circumstances leading up to this in his "writer's room" stream. The same livestream also states that star was originally envisioned as a Heron, hence the coat design.
- Eloise could have become a Nightingale had her backstory been played out slightly differently, though how exactly is unknown.
- In the same alternate storyline discussed above, Kuervo would have been a Nightingale instead of a Kite. Despite the rewrite, even in his current incarnation, there were plans for Kuervo to join the Nightingale faction to recruit them for his revenge crew, but he didn't receive an offer from them on Day 1 and thus decided against it, though he is still considered an Honorary True Companion in canon for hanging out with them.
- An alternate plotline would have involved a much more embittered Will switching to the Herons in search of his "real" family and being a self-destructive Legacy Seeker.
- One of Acho's alternate storylines
- What Martyn's stream chat manifested as came from the result of a poll; they are canonically his boot rats, but the other option in the poll was parrots.
- One Hermitcraft livestream reveals that Rendog received an invitation to join the SMP but declined it.
Plotlines
- The Denholm brothers:
- The canonical sibling dynamic and subplot was written in response to comments stating that the two characters' coats looked similar during the cast announcements.
- The brothers' parents were likely originally slated to make appearances in the series proper, as seen by them having had Minecraft skin designs ready to go for months, but scheduling conflicts mean a lot less character lore is explored and any potential appearances from them in the series' original run-time had to be shelved.
- Apo originally had other lore plans for the bounty on him, but Kyle went through with the bounty on Day 33 (August 31) before he could act on them.
- According to MrMadSpy in Martyn's chat on Day 124, the mangrove "mother tree" found in the Northeastern Seas was meant to be the setting of a now-cancelled event.
- After the Kangacrew crashed the server in the finale on Day 134, cc!Scott originally wanted to keep two of them on the battlefield with him for Take Two of the battle, but cc!Owen vetoes this on stream, not wanting to risk another server crash.
- From cc!Acho's post-canon Q&A "writer's room" livestream, on the battle on the Faction Isles in the finale:
- Claud's death was supposed to happen in front of Shep, but that point, the island was in such a chaotic state that it was deemed unfeasible.
- The Enchantress' death was supposed to occur as Sausage rushes up to declare they can be together as Acho "lost the rivalry for her hand" in death, only for cc!Acho, playing Ohca the Cultist, to kill her. This ultimately doesn't come to pass as planned, as the characters did not act as expected in the chaos of battle.
- cc!Oli wanted his character to die in the battle, enforcing Retirony as his character was just about to sail home from being stranded into piracy, but cc!Acho decided against it so that Oli could participate in the rest of the finale.
- According to cc!Water in his stream chat, her character's ending had to receive an on-the-spot rewrite because all her NPC friends died in the battle, so her character's original ending most likely involved them somehow, though how exactly is unconfirmed.
- Since the SMP's ending is chosen by Audience Participation vote, the alternate ending for if the stream chats chose differently is posted on POWCreations' Patreon: instead of a Bittersweet Ending where half of the cast manages to survive to see both Iris and Ivy's defeat and the Ice Walls' fall, it would have been a Downer Ending.
