What Could Have Been / Prehistoric Earth

• The story in its current form very nearly didn't exist at all! In fact, due to initially only being able to access Fanfiction.net on his phone (on which he was unable to use the website's 'publishing' features), Luczynski initially was willing to make do by posting the chapters in the review section of another pre-existing story. He managed to utilize this planned posting strategy for an early version of the prologue (which was entitled "More than Just a Couple Pandas" and seemingly described Theodore as a black man instead of the white man he became in the final product) before he later teamed up with Nathanoraptor. He also managed to get ahold of a computer (or similar device on which he could access the website's publishing features) in time for his later fanfiction work.
• The two instances where Nikolai is referred to (and annoyed) by the nickname 'Koli' by Kyle were originally intended to be the first two instances of a running gag that Luczynski had come up with. Nathanoraptor, however, had it scrapped after only those two aforementioned instances since he had no idea why the nickname would be so annoying to Nikolai and also believed that Nikolai worked much better as the straight man reacting to the antics of the explicitly goofier characters than as the butt of a joke himself.
• An 'instrumental theme tune' and narration similar to the kind featured in the original Prehistoric Park series and the stories of the Extinction World mythos appeared in at least one of the earlier missions of phase 1 and were initially planned to be a staple of all future 'episodes'. Nathanoraptor, however, chose to scrap them since, unlike in the aforementioned material, there was neither a camera crew nor the premise of this story being the events of a TV-show. And without these elements around to provide an excuse, the 'instrumental theme tune' proved quite out of place and needless and the narration seemed too much like blatant attempts at breaking the fourth wall (which Nathanoraptor admits to not always feeling very comfortable with).
• During New Beginnings, the initial plan for rescuing one of the anomalocaris involved Drew blatantly pushing Leon into colliding against the anomalocaris, at which point he and the anomalocaris would have both ended up sent through the portal. Leon was also originally planned by Luczynski to be The Voiceless all the way until the very next mission, Devils of the Deep (with what was then intended to be his very first ever line in the whole story being designed to serve as a Lampshade Hanging for this prior status). Nathanoraptor changed this to be the way it is in the final product since, in his eyes, Luczynski's initial plans didn't really work that well or properly do Leon justice.
• Speaking of the anomalocaris, part 2 of Devils of the Deep was initially supposed to end with the female charging at Squishy so that part 3 could begin with the two of them fighting. Nathanoraptor changed this to avoid the risk of it potentially overshadowing the gravitas from the scenes with the orthocones and the scorpion filled finale of the mission.
• Grumpy the megalograptus was initially planned to be amongst the massive swarm featured in the finale. Nathanoraptor chose to have him instead be a single solitary megalograptus that got rescued earlier in the mission due to both Grumpy's initially being planned to be amongst the larger swarm seeming like too much of a Contrived Coincidence as well as Nathanoraptor's considering it much funnier for Kyle to have some experience with a single megalograptus prior to the arrival of an entire larger group.
• Nathanoraptor also originally planned for the Ancient Mariner to have its introduction in Devils of the Deep. If that had happened, then the scenes with the cameroceras would have involved the orthocones in question first finding the planned bait sent down from the boat in the middle of the water (complete with one of the tentacles getting caught on camera gripping the bait in a 'found footage style' scene) before then engaging in a kraken-style attack against the ship. But Nathan himself eventually chose to scrap the planned introduction of the ship when he realized how impractical its use would be in the Ordovician period due to how unlivable the Earth's atmosphere was for anything above the water's surface during that time period.
• Luczynski initially wasn't entirely certain that Jack would be interesting enough to carry a story on his own. Nathanoraptor, on the other hand, had enough faith in the character's ability to carry a story to convince his co-writer to give him a chance.
  • To Luczynski's credit though, Jack was also initially not planned to take the major role that he ended up taking. The initial 'leading trio' was originally intended to be Drew, Leon, and Adrian (due to them being written as close friends). But later on, after Jack's dialogue in "The First Steps" was written, the authors soon came to realize that Jack was a lot more interesting than Adrian. And as a result, Jack ended up getting his prominence in the story significantly boosted while Adrian ended up becoming immensely Out of Focus throughout multiple parts of the story.
  • Furthermore, Luczynski initially pushed for Cynthia to be made into a secondary main character, particularly for the sake of allowing her and Drew to be people to view Jack and Leon's (respectively) storylines through due to his then low faith in the characters' (especially Jack's) ability to carry a story (mostly due to him allegedly viewing the other characters as 'just side characters'). Nathanoraptor was not amused by this on account of how he had much more faith in Leon and Jack being able to carry a story on their own than his co-author did (particularly since he planned for the story to have more of an Ensemble Cast style focus instead of the clean-cut protagonist surrounded by side characters focus that Luczynski had in mind), and in the end Nathanoraptor got his wish.
• As mentioned above, Jack wasn't originally planned to be the major character he ended up becoming. Rather, he and Alice were supposed to serve as supporting protagonists to work alongside the 'main trio' of Drew, Leon, and Adrian. This was also intended to be highlighted with Jack serving as little more than a comedy sidekick with a penchant for puns. However, a mixture of both Nathan and Luczynski noticing the unexpected level of depth they'd managed to give him alongside the planned penchant for puns, and difficulty in figuring out appropriate puns for Jack to have available for use in every subsequent mission led to them boosting his prominence as described above.
• Judging by how Nathanoraptor has explicitly admitted that he initially wasn't all that certain what to think about Leon and Yolanda before his doing the writing for them in The First Steps caused him to start finding far more appeal in them than he'd initially expected to find, one must wonder just how things would have unfolded in their regard if he hadn't discovered such an interest in them during the writing for this 'episode'.
• Luczynski initially wanted Mia to be the one who ended up having to be rescued from the brontoscorpio, likely because this was intended to tie into his plan to have Nikolai release Hedetet into the tank to scare off the brontoscorpio in time for Leon to safely get her out to safety. Nathanoraptor, however, pointed out that it would make more sense for Yolanda to be the girl that Leon dove into the holding tank to save, as she was the one that he arguably had a much more personal connection with at that point, which would both increase the stakes and make Leon's subsequent first time taking a level in badass more meaningful (not to mention the fact that it would also allow for a logical starting point for what would lead up to their planned Romance Arc later in the story). In the end, Luczynski realized that Nathan had brought up a valid point, and so they managed to reach a compromise by having Yolanda be the one who fell into the tank and that Leon dove in to save, only for both him and Mia (who herself ended up diving in to provide assistance) to end up needing help doing so via Nikolai releasing Hedetet into the tank with them right as they're about to be overwhelmed by the brontoscorpio swarm.
• Nikolai and Kyle were initially planned to have a brief rivalry during the earlier sections of the story. Due to how there ended up being too many different arcs to juggle over the course of phase 2, this idea ended up falling by the wayside (before eventually being repurposed for the subsequent reboot Prehistoric Park Reimagined).
• Theodore was also originally planned to physically appear at the park at the end of The First Steps (and potentially of EVERY mission entirely) for the sake of giving hints for every mission set to follow. For reasons unknown^note  although Nathanoraptor suspects that it was either a result of him and Luczynski considering it too repetitive to constantly have him appear at the end of every episode or them thinking it would ultimately prove too insulting to the readers' intelligence , this was scrapped.
• Alice and Adrian were also initially planned (likely by Luczynski) to end up arriving in time to save Drew while Leon and Jack were still arguing during Life in Transition. Nathanoraptor scrapped this because he felt the idea was stupid and because Leon and Jack needed a proper incident to incite their eventual reconciliation and fire forged friendship.
• Alice and Adrian were also initially intended to have a small amount of Ship Tease between them, with the plan first being for them to be an outright Official Couple. Then this was later initially changed to have Adrian only have a single sided crush on Alice. Ultimately, Nathanoraptor decided to scrap this idea altogether when he realized that the plans weren't really working out and replaced the planned arc between Adrian and Alice with the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Alice and Will. However, the idea of Adrian having a one-sided crush on Alice currently appears to be getting revisited for the subsequent reboot Prehistoric Park Reimagined.
• Nathanoraptor wanted to call the mesothelae spider megalorachne, but he and Luczysnki eventually decided to just call them mesothelus in this story for the sake of simplicity. On a similar note, Pumpkin was originally planned by Nathanoraptor to be named Neith (after the Egyptian goddess of the hunt) as suggested by Flameal 15 K when the spider was planned to be the animal partner for a character Flameal 15 K had suggested for inclusion in Prehistoric Earth. Luczynski, however, made her be named Pumpkin instead (after a character from one of his favorite anime, Akame ga Kill!).
• Originally, Leon and Jack's efforts at getting a comprehensible translation for the French animal husbandry manual were intended to be much longer and comedically exaggerated. Nathanoraptor, however, felt that this would have dragged out the story too much, and subsequently streamlined it instead.
• The dynamic between Jack and Nikolai hinted at during the end of Alien Empire was originally intended to be further explored (complete with Nikolai playing a prominent role during Jack and Colette's mutual arc together). Unfortunately, due to behind the scenes strife and the story's internal upheaval brought about by the introduction of Cynthia, this ended up never happening.
• Speaking of Colette and Nikolai, the scene where Colette, Jack, and Leon get comically 'attacked' by Pumpkin was originally intended to both only involve Colette getting 'attacked' and be more karmic in nature against her. Specifically, Luczynski had wanted her to blatantly startle a keeper handling the arthropods into accidentally getting himself cornered by them simply for shits and giggles before Nikolai stepped in and stared the arthropods down into submission as he does in the final product, followed by Pumpkin jumping upon Colette and sending her running out of the Carboniferous bug house screaming in fright. Nathanoraptor changed this to its current form in the final product because, in his eyes, this would have been a 2nd time that Luczynski had tried to turn her into the resident bitch when she was explicitly supposed to be the resident Action Girl instead (while also being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at the very worst).
• Spiny the dimetrodon was originally intended to act like a dog for both Rule of Funny and for the sake of promoting a separate fic. Nathanoraptor thought this would be too cliche and unrealistic, and also believed that Spiny the way Luczynski planned him to be was both a blatant ripoff of Dino and an embodiment of the All Animals Are Dogs cliche (a major pet peeve of his), and had Spiny (alongside the other dimetrodons) altered to behave more like a cat or tegu lizard instead. Luczynski was not pleased with this change. Furthermore, Nathanoraptor also initially planned for the scenes with Spiny, Lubbock the petrolacosaurus, and Howler the hynerpeton to play out more similarly to a Tweety and Sylvester short (with Spiny chasing Lubbock around the park ala Tweety and Sylvester, only for Spiny to end up encountering and getting scared off by Howler similarly to how the bulldog in Looney Tunes tended to do the same to Sylvester). Nathanoraptor also even planned for multiple other such shorts of a similar nature involving different newly rescued animals to occur over the course of the story. Luczynski, however, vetoed this idea and chose to have the scenes with the three critters in The New Rulers instead play out in a very different fashion that he felt would be more conducive to the plans he had at the time of allowing the scene to be a means of promoting his then upcoming separate fic Dinosaur King Retold; something that he has probably forever regretted since due to how Spiny ended up having no more reason to be a prominently featured character as a result of his short-sighted vetoing of Nathanoraptor's idea. Furthermore, Nathanoraptor himself came to develop a scathing hatred of Spiny, Lubbock, and Howler's subplot due to his (in his mind) arguably superior idea getting shot down.
• Speaking of said subplot, Squishy the anomalocaris was initially intended to be in a tank in the back of the jeep that Spiny, Lubbock, and Howler ended up accidentally hijacking, but the writers couldn't figure out a convincing reason for him to be there, so his involvement got scrapped. Considering how the fall off the cliff and crash that the jeep ended up taking in the final product could have likely killed Squishy^note  by virtue of either Squishy getting expelled from the tank and onto dry land, or the tank getting shattered, this is probably for the best.
• Speaking of the dimetrodons, Linda's scene in The New Rulers in which she and the other vets perform a surgery on the injured mother dimetrodon wasn't originally present in the 'episode' at all. Nathanoraptor ended up adding that scene in himself due to wanting more focus on the injured mother dimetrodon (and likely a chance to actually show off Linda in her element doing her job and actually being competent at it as well).
• Furthermore, Drew's angst over failing to save the mother dimetrodon that got killed would have been considerably more prominent, and he would have been cheered up and reassured by Cynthia in a way that would have led to a reportedly immensely unsubtle moment of Ship Tease. Nathanoraptor, however, didn't like how Anvilicious the planned moment of Ship Tease was and also felt that Drew's angst as Luczynski had planned it to be came across too much as Wangst, so the Ship Tease was removed, the angst was downplayed, and more focus was placed on the injured mother dimetrodon's recovery and the dead mother dimetrodon's eggs hatching.
• Kyle's "I've just had to round up a herd of giant reptiles. Black rage doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling at the moment," statement was initially planned to be shouted before Nathanoraptor decided to instead have him state it in a sarcastic fashion. Unfortunately, even this change wasn't enough to prevent him from regretting having Kyle say this at all in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Percival von Grimm initially didn't even exist in the story. More specifically, Luczynski initially planned for Theodore (of all people) to turn out to be Evil All Along and end up cutting the funding for the park due to the staff falling behind schedule. To his credit though, Luczynski eventually realized that this motive was too flimsy and stupid to justify Theodore pulling a Face–Heel Turn, and also that Theodore cutting the funding also felt more like a case of Poke the Poodle than a true act of villainy, and so he created Percival von Grimm to serve as the Big Bad instead.
• Luczynski also originally planned for Cynthia to go so far as to get Drew's head shoved in between her breasts over the course of their first meeting. For obvious reasons, Nathanoraptor had this part cut, due to being disturbed by how the scene was portrayed (basically portraying sexual assault as a funny thing when it's a girl doing it to a guy). Given the #MeToo scandal several months later, this was probably a correct decision.
• Drew was initially planned to be a deconstruction/parody of characters like the Prehistoric Park version of Nigel Marvin. Specifically, his reckless tendencies (which were present in Nigel and very common in all characters similar to him) were to be explicitly portrayed as capable of achieving desired results, but also immensely dangerous and capable of bringing great harm to himself and other people. Appropriately, he was also intended to have a very brave, charming, and charismatic, yet also abrasive, stubborn, and bull-headed personality that would chafe at being told no. And furthermore, the arc Nathanoraptor planned for him to have was to discover how his reckless tendencies were in fact not ok. Unfortunately, when Luczynski ended up first projecting some of his own real life personality traits (that didn't match up with Drew's planned characterization) onto the character, and than later started trying to further change Drew into more of a straight equivalent of Nigel both before and after Cynthia's introduction, the subsequent clashes between the writers resulted in the character instead having a weird mishmash of both the deconstructive traits that Nathanoraptor had wanted as well as the more 'straight up Nigel' traits that Luczynski had wanted.
• The original reason Cynthia was even created in the first place technically qualifies as this. Specifically, over the course of reading through the plans Nathanoraptor had in mind for the characters, Luczynski ended up misinterpreting Nathanoraptor's attempts at having Drew, Leon, and Jack form a Kirk-Spock-McCoy style trio as an attempt to have Drew Demoted to Extra in favor of extra focus on Leon and Jack (whom Luczynski personally considered 'just side characters'). Therefore, in an effort to ensure that Drew (the supposed main protagonist) would still be able to have a decent amount of the spotlight focused on him via him having something to work with himself in regards to the plot and arcs, he created Cynthia with the plan for her to be a 'crazy girlfriend that would drive him insane in dealing with her'. Unfortunately, as described elsewhere on this page as well as under related entries on the main trivia and YMMV pages, these efforts both proved badly timed and ended up coming across as having less than ideal intentions in regards to other story elements that would have potentially suffered from the original plans involving Cynthia; which resulted in Nathanoraptor causing them to get heavily changed for the sake of salvaging the story.
• According to Nathanoraptor, if Luczynski had had his way, just about all the other members of the rescue team would have potentially had their prominence downplayed and relevance reduced by virtue of Drew and Cynthia assimilating several of the traits that had been previously assigned to Jack, Alice, and Leon.
• Luczynski initially never wanted Will and Matt to be included in the story at all and wanted their introduction scene at the beginning of "Passport to Hell" to be a scene that would have supposedly allowed for Cynthia's character to be better developed. In fact, Luczynski's original plans for the chapter regarding Cynthia would have allowed this chapter to basically be her Day In The Lime Light in which she got her personality and relationships with the other characters properly established after her introduction. Nathanoraptor swapped the intended character development for Cynthia (which he also claims to have been more of a case of Character Shilling than of proper character development) out for introducing Will and Matt partially out of reader demand and partially out of their importance to Alice's character later in the story. Furthermore, as described below, the way Luczynski tried to execute his plans ultimately proved problematic in regard to how other characters would have ended up getting treated.
• For further context on the Cynthia scene that got scrapped for the sake of Will and Matt's introduction, Cynthia was initially intended to be in the jeep with Jack during the scene where Jack is in a jeep for the sake of feeding the dimetrodons^note in the final cut, the person in the jeep with Jack is just a random nameless keeper. In the version of the scene that would have included Cynthia, Jack would have said something along the lines of "I never knew you were this amazing!" immediately after they'd finished their work with the dimetrodons, to which she would have responded, "A lot of people say that about me." Luczynski's intentions for this scene were for both a chance to start work on establishing her personality and relationships/dynamic with the other characters, and also to show Cynthia as being, in his own words, 'another role model for Jack'. Unfortunately, as Nathanoraptor explains, Luczynski's execution of this idea fell flat because of how the trait that Jack would have ended up expressing for the sake of establishing Cynthia as a new role model for himself^note his tendency to latch onto any positive comment or action a person of higher authority than him sends his way and try desperately afterward to get himself in said person's good bookswas explicitly intended to be one of Jack's biggest character flaws^note as this action was planned to be a result of his low self confidence. Therefore, the secondary reason behind Nathanoraptor changing this scene (the primary one being the one involving Will and Matt) was that he felt that it sent a bad message for allowing a display of one of Jack's flaws he needed to move past to be seemingly shown as a sign of Cynthia having a positive impact on him. Furthermore, he also felt that Cynthia needed to earn her prominence rather than immediately have it handed to her as well as that Jack's planned comment to her about 'being amazing' was (as described above) more of a case of Character Shilling than of genuine Character Development.
• On the continued subject of Cynthia, Nathanoraptor also initially considered having her actually be Drew's girlfriend in the past prior to their work at Prehistoric Earth, which would have resulted in an explanation of their seemingly already knowing each other before Cynthia's introduction in The New Rulers, as well as an info dump on the fact that one of them broke the other's heart prior to their work at the park. Nathanoraptor, however, chose at the time not to include this idea because he felt it would be too much of a coincidence. He has since regretted putting too much thought in that idea and now considers the reason behind his decision not too include it as being too much of a nitpick.
• Part 2 of Passport to Hell was initially planned to start with Cynthia's argument with Kyle and Nikolai after learning about her being on thin ice so soon after her initial hiring actually being 'shown' to the readers before cutting to the scene in the final product where Matt, Colette, and Jack are seen together (which would have also, in the version of it that had followed Cynthia's planned scene, involved Matt openly subjecting Jack to some good natured teasing about Jack's crush on Colette). Nathanoraptor, however, had the scene involving Cynthia's argument cut since he felt that the scene appeared to be trying to make Nikolai and Kyle look in the wrong despite the both of them bringing up immensely valid points against Cynthia, and also because he felt it would help the story better for Cynthia's troubles to be shown to the audience through her actions than told to the readers by Kyle and Nikolai.
• The discussion in which Jack manages to get the idea on how to solve the dilemma involving the carnivore feedings was originally planned by Luczynski to be between Jack and Cynthia. It was also planned by him for the comment that gets Jack to have his "Eureka!" Moment be Cynthia very explicitly saying something about the jeep not having any people inside it. Nathanoraptor changed this in two ways to how it is in the final product. For starters, much like when Luczynski had originally wanted Mia to be the one that Leon and Hedetet helped rescue from the brontoscorpio, he changed his mind and let Nathanoraptor have Jack's discussion be with Colette due to the two of them having an important Romance Arc between them in the future. Nathanoraptor also changed the comment that granted Jack his "Eureka!" Moment to something that he felt would be more subtle.
• Rey the gorgonops was originally planned to have much higher prominence in the story. She was planned to play an especially important role during Phase 2 in particular. Unfortunately, for multiple reasons (one of which may have been an inability to figure out how best to include her without feeling shoehorned in), she ended up very rapidly Demoted to Extra.
• Alice's line at the gorgonops testing sight originally involved her saying that she was told by Drew about Cynthia being a wreck when she came to Jack for help. Nathanoraptor changed this line so that Alice was talking about Jack getting criticized instead since he felt it would make more sense for her to be focusing more on her brother getting criticized as opposed to focusing on criticism against someone she'd only known for about a week or so.
• The sandstorm in Passport to Hell was originally going to be much longer. However, Nathanoraptor shortened it to only a couple hours when he learned that real life sandstorms actually do tend to only last about a couple hours or so at most.
• The description about the remote-control buggy was originally going to be given by Jack. Nathanoraptor chose to have it instead be given by an Flameal 15 K suggested original character named Darrell since Darrell was explicitly planned to be a technician type of character and it would have made more sense for a technician to give an in-depth description of something machinery based.
• Furthermore, the ending of Passport to Hell was intended by Luczynski to be much more focused on Cynthia. Nathanoraptor, however, felt it would be much more fair (and sensible) for it to be focused on Jack since he was the one who'd successfully helped solve the problem that had arisen at the park and he wanted Jack to be treated with all due credit and respect for as much.
• Luczynski originally wanted Drew to blatantly explain to Jack about euparkeria being believed to be a direct evolutionary ancestor to dinosaurs during Life and Death Promised. Nathanoraptor, changed it to have Jack mention the fact write as Drew was working on mentioning it because Nathanoraptor felt that Jack would be in character to be smart enough to already know this information. Luczynski also originally wanted Jack's line before Leon's successfully distracting the therocephalians and leading them through the portal to be "What do you want us to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?'' Nathanoraptor changed this to "What do you want us to do? Douse ourselves in steak sauce and dress as a chew toy?" because he felt that this line would be much funnier (and more subtle), and the originally planned line was a little too much of a gratuitous (and pointless) Shout-Out.
• Luczynski initially wanted Drew to kick Leon in the shins when Leon was about to correct him at the end about them having just done a mission in the Mesozoic Era at the end of Phase 1. Nathanoraptor changed it to Jack politely dragging him aside and whispering not to ruin the moment since he felt that would be funnier and also because it would have helped establish a planned character trait for Leon that ended up getting dropped.
• Kyle was initially planned to say "We're gonna need a bigger pen," as a Shout-Out to Jaws when he saw the massive herd of lystrosaurus gathered in the holding pen. Nathanoraptor changed it to Kyle saying something about their being a lot of lystrosaurus present before then engaging in a Face Palm, as he felt this would be more in character for him.
• Luczynski initially wanted modern animals to be present in Drew's office similarly to Nigel Marvin in the original Prehistoric Park. But then he changed his mind for reasons he chose not to disclose.
• There was originally going to be a line blatantly making clear the fact that someone had mysteriously deleted a message Drew had sent to Kyle and Nikolai during Degrees of Greatness. Luczynski suggested that Nathanoraptor remove this line because it looked too unsubtle, and Nathanoraptor agreed that his co-writer had a point.
• For unexplained reasons, Luczynski initially wanted Adrian to be seen speaking in what Nathanoraptor describes as a very weird street lingo over the course of this chapter. Nathanoraptor changed it so that Adrian would speak normally because he felt that Luczynski's idea involving the 'street lingo' looked too weird.
• Luczynski also originally wanted the cymbospondylus to be much more obviously close in resemblance to dolphins (likely due to popular imagery of ichthyosaurs as resembling dolphins). Nathanoraptor, however, felt that cymbospondylus much more closely resemble crocodiles and eels than they do dolphins, and so he changed the cymbospondylus description accordingly.
• Luczynski initially planned for the attack against the cynodonts by the coelophysis to be relatively low key. Nathanoraptor chose to crank it up and make it more intense since he felt that would be a good way to remind the readers and characters that, despite their size, coelophysis were still deadly predators in their own way.
• Luczynski also didn't originally specify who was talking on the communicators to Nikolai and Kyle after they'd successfully gotten all the peteinosaurus in their aviary enclosure. Nathanoraptor chose to let Jack be explicitly the one talking to them at that time since he saw no reason not to do so.
• Luczynski initially planned to include a line of exposition that would have mentioned 'giant reptiles not being something that Linda would have been all that familiar with'. Nathanoraptor calmly told him that postosuchus were within the same size range as many modern-day large crocodiles (which, alongside komodo dragons, Linda would have logically been expected to have worked with in the past before being hired to work at Prehistoric Earth).
• There was initially a line that explicitly concluded that the coelophysis in this fanfic would be cannibalistic the way they were in the original Walking with Dinosaurs series. However, due to how the original 'evidence' for this trait had been proven inaccurate to the original idea of them being cannibalistic long before the story started getting written, this line was removed.
• It was initially going to be implied during All Great and Precious Things that the coelophysis had escaped a very large number of times. However, due to the context in which the escape in this chapter had occurred, Luczynski felt that this idea would be too unsubtle a form of evidence of the sabotage going on behind the scenes. So Nathanoraptor deleted the line with the implication of multiple escapes and allowed the idea of multiple escapes from a group of small dinosaurs to be refitted for Prehistoric Park Reimagined^note albeit, with compsognathus instead of coelophysis.
• The Colorado team in All Great and Precious Things was initially planned to bring back one ornitholestes first before bringing in the rest after a failed attack attempt against the apatosaurus herd. Nathanoraptor, however, changed this because he felt that the Colorado team had far too little to do in the episode at the time, that the diplodocus hatching scene needed to be longer, and that it made no sense for the ornitholestes to try to go after animals like apatosaurus that could so easily kill them with hardly any effort.
• The Colorado team was initially supposed to actually be present to watch one of the female diplodocus laying her eggs. Nathanoraptor changed the scene to unfold in a way that he felt would make the scene play out in a more weird and mystical fashion that he felt would be more appropriate.
• As described below, Cynthia was originally only intended to be a Red Herring for the sabotage. When this was still going to be the case, the 'sabotaged lock' was originally intended to just be a result of the lock being faulty and in need of replacement. But when she was later changed into being a mole (albeit, one working for the good guys against the bad guys), the faulty lock was likewise changed so that it had indeed been sabotaged by Duncan.
• Nathanoraptor originally wanted the baby allosaurs found in ''All Great and Precious Things' to explicitly be Balerion's offspring. He and Luczynski even ended up getting into some disagreements over the matter. Eventually, the baby allosaurs were made unrelated by blood to Balerion, and Balerion herself was made to instead adopt them rather than be their biological mother.
• It is also suspected by Nathanoraptor that Luczynski initially wanted Cynthia to be Russian. Nathanoraptor, however, chose to write her as if she were British instead, and the new nationality for her ended up sticking.
• Leon was originally intended by Luczysnki to not have a very good start in his allosaur training. Specifically, the very first day of his allosaur training efforts was supposed to constantly go wrong, as a homage to Tadashi and Baymax in Big Hero 6. Nathanoraptor, however, thought it dragged out the story. As a result, Leon's training of the allosaurs went much more relatively smoothly from the very beginning and was played entirely seriously. On a similar note, Luczynski also originally wanted all five of the young male allosaurus to be on the 'squad'. Nathanoraptor, however, felt that it would be more workable for only three of them to be on the squad, and so the squad was whittled down to Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal.
• Speaking of the allosaur squad training, Luczynski also originally planned for the initially planned hijinks to basically be the allosaurs chasing Leon around in a Yakety-Sax style sequence similarly to something from a Benny Hill comedy sequence due to believing that this would serve as Author Appeal for Nathanoraptor. Nathanoraptor, however, didn't think this worked due to both the pacing issues mentioned above and the fact that, despite Benny Hill being British, modern Brits actually feel embarrassed about being associated with him and largely prefer Monty Python style comedy over him (though to his credit, Nathanoraptor chose not to tell his co-writer about this latter detail).
• Luczynski also initially planned for Colette to be at the Allosaurus paddock watching Leon do the training instead of Nikolai (as he'd wanted for Colette and Leon to have a rivalry). Nathan, however, felt that this plot point would be too much of a repeat of Jack and Leon's rivalry from earlier in the story (though he wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea being given a shot in the subsequent reboot Prehistoric Park Reimagined).
• Alice was initially planned by Luczynski to be accompanied by Drew when she went diving under the ocean during The Cruel Sea. However, due to a miscommunication, plus Nathanoraptor's unwillingness to try to edit something too often after it's already posted and the fact he believed that the scene as it ended up accidentally turning out helped increase the tension, Alice ended up going down under the water alone. The lost communicator in that same mission was also originally intended to be the work of the mole; but then Nathanoraptor chose to instead have this be a rare case of the communicator genuinely ending up accidentally misplaced due to Duncan having never had the chance to be on the Ancient Mariner and steal the communicator that got lost.
• Luczynski also initially wanted Thanatos to be at least twice as big as he ultimately ended up in this story, if not twice the size he was in the original Walking with Dinosaurs episode he appeared in. He conceded with grace not to go through with this idea, however, when Nathanoraptor pointed out that such a massive size simply wasn't workable for the animal. Furthermore, Thanatos was also originally intended to have a much more prominent role in the story, but ended up getting Demoted to Extra instead when Nathanoraptor realized that, if Thanatos had gotten the prominent role originally planned for him, Drew would have ended up looking too much like The Ace as a result of him also having already bonded with the similarly massive and powerful Zira the T-rex and Lightning the Argentinosaurus (who himself was also initially intended to have a more prominent role than he ultimately ended up having in the final product).
• Luczynski originally wanted the male postosuchus to be named Kenge, after the male monitor lizard from The Lion Guard. Nathanoraptor vetoed this idea due to it leaving no immediate corresponding appropriate name available for the female, and so the two ended up named Rojo and Rosa instead.
• During the scene immediately before Leon finally shows off his progress in training the allosaurus squad in The Cruel Sea, Jack was initially supposed to tell off Cynthia for her lack of faith by saying "Just give him a fucking chance, alright?!" Luczynski, however, forced Nathanoraptor to tone this rebuttal down due to him feeling that it was too uncharacteristically mean for Jack to say.
• There was initially consideration during Age of Giants for Adrian, Jack, and Alice to be turned into a 'B Squadron' for the rescue team while Leon, Cynthia, and Drew served as the obvious 'A Squadron'. But Nathanoraptor eventually chose to drop this idea due to a then upcoming lack of ''all hands on deck' style missions for the rescue team as well as their not truly being a need for the rescue team to be split into A and B squadrons.
• Speaking of which, Luczynski also originally wanted Drew and Leon to be teamed up with Adrian and Cynthia to be teamed up with Jack and Alice. Nathanoraptor had Adrian and Cynthia switch places because he felt the dialogue that would result from this arrangement would feel less forced and more natural, and also because he didn't believe that Luczynski's initial plans for Cynthia in this mission made enough sense in regard to a specific planned plot point.
• Luczynski also wanted for Leon to encounter a flock of pteranodons and bring them through the portal during Age of Giants. Nathanoraptor vetoed this idea due to the environment and time the team was in during this 'episode' not being appropriate for pteranodons to appear in and also because he felt that Leon not accomplishing very much would make his anxieties more justified and meaningful. Luczynski also originally wanted for Cynthia to be the one to go on the hang-glider and for her to successfully rescue the argentinosaurus herd as well as a flock of pteranodons on first try. Nathanoraptor vetoed this as well since he felt that the argentinosaurus being so swiftly rescued would have downplayed the planned sense of tension and drama that was planned by virtue of the team staying to protect the injured Lightning from the nearby pack of giganotosaurus and also because he felt that having Cynthia do all the awesome rescue work would only reinforce Leon's earlier status as The Load as well as make it look as if his anxieties in that regard were based entirely upon Cynthia instead of really being more of a general insecurity of his.
• There were also briefly considerations to include animals from the Wonderbook game and Inside Their World app. But these ideas were eventually scrapped for the sake of preventing the story and park from becoming too cramped.
• When the plan was still for Cynthia to accompany Jack and Alice, the Utahraptor pack was initially planned to outright attack the trio during their encounter before getting sent through the portal. But after the decision was made to have Cynthia and Adrian switch places (and for Jack himself to have one of the Utahraptors as an animal partner), the planned scenes and plot points that the attack against Cynthia, Jack, and Alice would have led up to ended up pointless and discarded. Therefore, the planned Utahraptor attack was itself discarded along with the now obsolete scenes that were initially planned to follow it.
• The Giganotosaurus pack's alpha was originally planned to engage in a brief outright scuffle against the argentinosaurus before its eventual retreat seen in the final product. Nathanoraptor, however, decided to have it briefly attack and then almost immediately retreat once the sauropods started to fight back since he felt such a scenario was arguably more realistic.
• Luczynski wanted there to be a blatant followup on the fate of the injured macrogryphosaurus from Age of Giants to be present in Feathered Dragons. Nathanoraptor vetoed this idea due to both the macrogryphosaurus never being intended to play a major role as well as how, since the scene that Luczynski had wanted it to appear in was in the context of an informal visit to the vets from Jack and Adrian to check on the already hospitalized Cirrus and Keehar, it wouldn't make sense for them to visit the macrogryphosaurus due to the dinosaur in question not having any personal connection to them that would justify their visiting it.
• Nathanoraptor initially considered having Keehar throw a hilarious fit of rage whenever he was called a dinosaur while he was in earshot as a homage to Terry Pratchett's "don't call the librarian a monkey" gag. Nathanoraptor eventually chose to drop this idea when he realized that he wasn't quite able to pull it off as well as Pratchett himself would have been.
• Luczynski initially wanted the microraptor flock rescued in Feathered Dragons to be explicitly kept in the same enclosure as the borealosaurus. He later willingly chose to scrap this idea himself when he realized that, logically speaking, there was no way for an enclosure to be designed that would both allow the borealosaurus to have enough space to account for their massive size and still not allow the microraptor the chance to go flying right out of the exhibit.
• The sonar emitter breaking down was initially intended to become a Running Gag after its first instance of occurring in Spirits of the Silent Forest. This idea was later scrapped for the sake of pacing.
• Luczynski initially wanted Red to start out as the runt of the Utahraptor pack and later become the alpha after a clash with the raptor that he himself wanted to be the alpha. For some reason or other, he ended up conceding to Nathanoraptor's wishes for Red to be the pack's alpha from the very beginning.
• Luczynski also initially wanted Koolasuchus to be present in a scene in which various herbivores and carnivores gathered together near the rescue team's campfire to keep warm from the cold during Spirits of the Silent Forest, but allowed them to be replaced with steropodon instead after Nathanoraptor pointed out that, as amphibians, koolasuchus would be more likely to stick to moist environments and avoid the overly dry conditions that would result from the heat of the campfire.
• Kaisumi Ishiara was initially intended to play a considerably larger role in the story. For undisclosed reasons, she was instead reduced to receiving only a silent cameo in a single brief scene in Spirits of the Silent Forest.
• Nikolai was initially planned to end up heavily involved in the conspiracy thriller style plot-line that unfolded later in the story involving the saboteurs and animal smugglers. His scenes in The Stinger of Spirits of the Silent Forest were even written as a means to foreshadow these plans. However, these plans in question were thought up long before Cynthia was created and introduced into the story. And while the plans were initially still considered for use, they ultimately got changed later to something different for the sake of pacing and better manageability of the multiple other plot points and arcs that had already taken form by that point^note for what it's worth though, the stinger did still allow for reasonable grounds for Nikolai's later targeting by the black-ops squad during The Devils Here.
• Jack's statement in Part 1 of Storm in the Desert was initially going to be "clean out Lightning's arsehole with my tongue." Nathanoraptor later decided to remove the 'with my tongue' bit because he realized that the intended joke would ultimately be too disgusting if he kept that part in.
• Luczynski initially wanted to wait until phase 3 before resolving the plot point of Balerion adopting the orphaned baby allosaurus hatchlings. Nathanoraptor, however, felt that it made no sense for the park staff to wait so many months after their rescue to resolve the issue, the fact that there was a six-month in-universe hiatus planned to unfold between Nightmare Labyrinthine and A Glorious Dawn would have only strengthened the Fridge Logic of the idea, and because he wanted Balerion to be able to do battle with Sharptooth during Nightmare Labyrinthine and felt that parental aggression channeled for the sake of protecting offspring would be the perfect reason to allow such a fight to be capable of happening. And in the end, Luczynski conceded to Nathanoraptor's wishes.
• The rescued mononykus were originally planned to live in Mesozoic Safaris alongside the various other herbivorous dinosaurs (that weren't the borealosaurus). This was changed when Luczynski and Nathanoraptor realized both that the mononykus diet would potentially lead to complications regarding their living with the other herbivores in that area and that it would also be perfectly sensible for them to start living in the paddock that had originally belonged to the now adopted baby allosaurus group instead.
• The variation of a joke from Dinosaur that appears in Storm in the Desert was changed to the way it is in the final product as a result of how Nathanoraptor felt that the way writer!Drew initially wanted it to unfold resulting in a lame punchline that didn't quite fully make sense in context and also had a different line in mind for usage that he believed would be a lot funnier. That in mind, Luczynski initially intended for the joke to go something like this:
  Drew: Looks like the Tarbosaurus is back.
  Jack: Uh, Fearless leader, it's actually something worse.
  Leon: What could be worse than a Tarbosaurus?
  Jack: Two Tarbosaurus!
• The male pteranodon that stayed on the boat over the course of The Wavering Gulfs was originally planned to be a secondary animal partner for Adrian alongside Keehar the rhamphorhynchus. He was even originally considered to be named Nigel (as a tribute to Nigel Marvin himself!). Furthermore, the scenes where the pteranodon interacted with Keehar were originally meant to lead into a meaningful moment that was planned at the time to occur later in the story. His planned bond with Adrian ended up cut for presumably pacing reasons or lack of room for inclusion alongside the various other plot points to be juggled around, and he was ultimately named Mert for unknown reasons.
• Before settling on 'The Ancient Mariner', the ship was originally considered to be called either Orca, Hispaniola, or Pequod.
• It had been Luczynski's idea to have Keehar accompany Adrian on every mission he was in - however, Nathanoraptor gave the ultimatum that Keehar would only accompany Adrian if he could play a meaningful role, rather than just "sitting in the background, squawking". In accordance with the ultimatum, Keehar does not accompany Adrian on any of the four missions he goes on in Phase Three.
• The 'bloodbath' occurring between the squalicorax in The Wavering Gulfs was originally intended to occur between the tylosaurus. But Nathanoraptor changed his mind and had it occur between the squalicorax instead for the sake of better pacing.
• Luczynski initially wanted Cynthia to take charge while Drew was marooned in the post KT Event Cretaceous landscape. Nathanoraptor had Jack fill this role instead since this particular moment in the story felt like the perfect point to have a natural conclusion to Jack's arc of shifting from Butt-Monkey to competent second in command and occasional acting leader for the rescue team.
• Luczynski also initially planned for one of the other team members (possibly Leon) to accompany Drew to the t-rex nest and end up heroically pushed through the portal by him seconds before Drew's ending up marooned. This was changed to Drew going to the rex nest alone due to a mixture of Luczynski realizing that the way he originally planned for the subsequent scenes to unfold was starting to over complicate matters and Nathanoraptor wanting Drew's marooning to be entirely his own fault and have no heroic, brave, or self-sacrificial overtones to it for the sake of the planned arc he had for the character.
• Drew was initially planned by Luczynski to openly mourn all the dinosaurs that had died in the KT event (and that he therefore failed to save) over the course of his time marooned in the post KT event landscape. Nathanoraptor, however, convinced him to change this to Drew having difficulty fully comprehending the true scale of the disaster and all the deaths it had caused since he felt that would be more realistic. In fact, several of the lines in Drew's mental thoughts on the matter during the scenes in question in the final product were stuff that Nathanoraptor himself had said to Luczynski over the course of convincing him to go through with the change.
• Cynthia's reunion scene with Drew after his safe return wasn't initially included. Nathanoraptor himself chose to add it in for the sake of throwing Luczynski a bone.
• The ending of A Continent of Blight was initially planned by Luczynski to lead immediately into the beginning of Nightmare Labyrinthine, complete with a scene of an unseen figure walking into a control room and disabling the security measures for the theropod paddocks. Nathanoraptor convinced him to have the events of Nightmare Labyrinthine occur a week after Continent of Blight instead since he felt that it would be more realistic for Drew to finally realize the unpleasant truth of his usual recklessness if he had sufficient time to fully process the fact after returning home from his temporary period of being marooned.
• Luczynski also initially planned for Sharptooth and Zira's conflict in Nightmare Labyrinthine to be more blatantly antagonistic and personal in nature between the two of them, as well as for Sharptooth himself to be considerably more explicitly malevolent in nature. Nathanoraptor, however, felt that this anthropomorphized them too much and would be out of place amongst what had been established prior, and also wanted Sharptooth to be more similar to creatures like Godzilla^note who are more the subject of simultaneous awe and fear rather than outright hatred and felt that having him be explicitly 'evil' in nature and personality made him seem too much like more of a Hate Sink instead, so these ideas got the ax. Leon riding on one of the allosaurus during the crisis was also considered, but ultimately axed as well due to Nathanoraptor deciding that it looked too silly in the context of what had been established. And even after Zira (and Keehar's) fight against Sharptooth was done and over with, Luczynski still wanted Sharptooth to continue to play an antagonistic role by actively seeking an opportunity for payback against Zira during phase 3. But Nathanoraptor felt it would be better for the story to have Sharptooth become a sort of Anti-Hero instead, and even went ahead and both created and set-up his idea for Sharptooth to form a bond with Yolanda for the sake of enforcing this decision. And furthermore, he also had Sharptooth largely avoid the other t-rex in the enclosure due to being more of an antisocial Grumpy Old Man.
• Luczynski also initially wanted the allosaurs and utahraptors to get into a fight against each other over the course of the chaos that ensued, only for Leon and Jack to intervene in time to get them to stop the fight. Nathanoraptor felt that the plot would be structured better to have Leon and Jack's 'taking charge' of their respective 'dino squads' occur at two separate scenes. However, he did appreciate the clear intention behind his co-writer's original plans, so he added a scene where the Utahraptors save Jack from a predator that's trying to eat him, he and Red subsequently manage to get the pack to back off from attacking Nikolai and Collete, and Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion try to attack Drew and Cynthia (not recognizing them) before being put in line by Leon.
• Nathanoraptor originally wanted the scenes with the giganotosaurus at Mesozoic Safaris to be preceded by scenes with Drew ending up attacked and pursued by a panicked triceratops while in the midst of searching for the giganotosaurus and subsequently saved by Lightning before the argentinosaurus and a massive group of the other herbivores in the exhibit joined together and chased off the giganotosaurus after the carnivores' own arrival onto the scene. The intention behind this scene was for emphasizing Lightning having basically become the 'leader' of Mesozoic Safaris' inhabitants. For unexplained reasons, Luczynski vetoed this version of the scenes.
• Luczynski was initially hesitant to have Cirrus be responsible for saving Linda from the velociraptors in the vet facility due to him thinking that Cirrus's Handicapped Badass state would put him at a disadvantage. Nathanoraptor, however, was able to convince him to let Cirrus remain the animal responsible for saving Linda since, realistically, even a wounded large pterosaur like Cirrus would still be more than capable of taking on two small velociraptors and winning.
• The velociraptors were initially not planned to be tranquilized at all. Instead, they were initially planned to corner Jack, Colette, Nikolai, and Linda outside the vet facility before getting driven off by Sharptooth...who would have immediately tried to go after the four humans himself aferward!
• Luczynski also initially wanted the velociraptors and giganotosaurus (potentially amongst multiple other theropods) to be present at Main Street alongside Sharptooth immediately before Sharptooth's planned battle with Zira. Furthermore, he also initially planned for either Drew or Cynthia to arrive on the scene with Lightning, all the other Mesozoic Safaris herbivores, and the Utahraptor and Allosaurus squads in time for them all to chase off all the hostile carnivores in the area that weren't Sharptooth.
• The battle between Sharptooth and Zira wasn't initially planned to have Keehar taking part in the fight. Nor was it initially planned to end with Jack successfully tranquilizing Sharptooth into unconsciousness. Nathanoraptor added these two details in because he wanted Keehar to have a chance to do something badass and felt that Sharptooth getting tranquilized was the only way the battle would be capable of ending without him or Zira ending up getting killed.
• Nathanoraptor initially planned for Zira to pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit against Sharptooth over the course of their fight in order to defeat him. He also initially planned for Keehar's Disney Death to occur before Zira was released by Drew and brought in to take on Sharptooth. However, Nathanoraptor eventually realized that the scene needed a chance for a lull in which to focus properly on Keehar's seeming death (and possibly that, with such a lull in place, Zira's initially planned Wounded Gazelle Gambit might have ended up a bit redundant), and so Keehar's Disney Death was repositioned to occur while Zira was already actively involved in fighting against Sharptooth and her Wounded Gazelle Gambit got the ax.
• Luczynski wanted for Lightning to take part in the fight alongside Zira and Keehar, and also for the fight to end with Thanatos the liopleurodon lunging and snapping his jaws upon Sharptooth and bringing him down similarly to the mosasaurus doing so against the I-Rex in Jurassic World. Nathanoraptor, however, felt that having Lightning actively participating in the battle would be too difficult to allow to unfold properly without either having Lightning's presence be pointless as a result of just watching from the sidelines, having Sharptooth come across as overpowered in the event of him being somehow capable of gaining the upper hand against Lightning despite the sauropod's superior size and earlier managing to subject the t-rex to The Worf Effect in a previous encounter, or ending up ended too early and anticlimactically precisely because of Lightning's involvement. Eventually, a compromise was reached in that Lightning ended up serving the role initially planned for Thanatos by arriving in time to cause a lull in the fight just long enough for Jack to successfully tranquilize Sharptooth.
• Nathanoraptor initially considered having the ending of Part 5 of Nightmare Labyrinthine to unfold more closely to the following fashion (instead of the more condensed version currently present in the final product):
  “Sharptooth is bearing down on them (they being Jack, Collete, Kyle, Nikolai and Linda) when a sudden blow knocks Sharptooth of balance, courtesy of Drogon; Drew and Leon (with Keehar tagging along) have arrived with the allo squad. The allosaurs are quickly defeated by Sharptooth and Keehar is seemingly killed. Drew leaves, stating a desire for "bigger teeth", releasing Zira, who engages Sharptooth.
  The tyrannosaur fight is roughly equal, with it being uncertain as to who’s going to win. However, Zira is eventually joined by Keehar, who turns out to be merely unconscious, and the two proceed to beat on Sharptooth, eventually knocking him to the floor. Whilst he’s down, Jack tranquillises him.
  As the first rays of sunlight begin to break the sky, Zira, Keehar and a recovered allo squad barely have time to enjoy their moment of triumph, before all the other carnivores (Zira’s family, Balerion, Meraxes and Vhagar, the Giganotosaurus, the Utahraptors and Velociraptors definitely – probably the other theropods and maybe the Postosuchus, gorgonopsids and Dimetrodons) suddenly appear, attracted by the noise of the battle.
  There’s a brief, tense moment where they all regard each other, and Balerion advances towards Zira, snarling a challenge, but is quickly silenced by a glare from the tyrannosaur. Keehar is the first to bow, quickly followed by Zira’s family, before all the assembled animals follow suit, acknowledging their new alpha.
  Satisfied, Zira lifts her head to the sky and roars triumphantly, Godzilla-style, illuminated by the rising sun.
  All Hail The Queen.
• Furthermore, Cynthia wasn't initially planned to turn out to be Theodore's spy working to expose von Grimm's mole. She was initially only planned to turn out to be a red herring. But Nathanoraptor eventually decided that only having her be a red herring for the identity of the von Grimm mole would be a bit too anticlimactic. And so she was made both a red herring AND a mole working for Theodore to expose the true mole.
• That in mind, Luczynski also originally wanted for the reveal of Cynthia being Novum's mole instead of The Mole working for Von Grimm to occur immediately after von Grimm's reveal as the Big Bad. Nathanoraptor had this reveal wait until the end of A Glorious Dawn instead so as to preserve the horror he wanted to be present for the reveal of Von Grimm as the big bad.
• Nathanoraptor was initially uncertain as to whether he wanted the mother leptictidium to be killed by the gas. However, he eventually came around to Luczynski's wishes for the mother leptictidium to die when he realized that the story needed a death in A Glorious Dawn for the sake of balancing out the Spared by the Adaptation treatment that had been given to the baby gastornis and the adult male ambulocetus. He also figured it would be a good way to show just how powerful the gas cloud actually was.
• Speaking of leptictidium, the baby leptictidium was initially planned to be left behind and rescued by Alice alongside the adult male ambulocetus. But this was changed to have the baby leptictidium already safe at the park when Alice rescued the ambulocetus due to its initial presence causing the finale of A Glorious Dawn to become too crammed.
• Zira was originally going to have the nickname 'Big Boss' amongst the Prehistoric Earth staff and have considerably more prominence in Phase 3 than she ultimately did. In the final product, this nickname got the ax and, while still somewhat prominent, Zira was not quite as prominently featured as initially considered. Furthermore, there was also initially consideration for Sue to be the subject of a Love Triangle between the young males Terry and Gigas, as well as for her arc of getting accepted into the larger t rex pack being more prominent in the story than it ultimately was.
• Returning to the continued subject of Cynthia, Luczynski wanted her to be the one to accompany Drew and Alice during Serpents of the Nile. The way he saw it, due to how Phase 3 was intended to have a healthy focus on Alice's Romance Arc with Will, having an already established Official Couple working together and accompanying her on this mission would help to add emphasis to the matter. Nathanoraptor vetoed this and had Leon accompany them instead as he believed that Leon would be much more empathetic, perceptive, and sensitive to romance related matters and Alice's situation compared to Drew (who often had a tendency to either be completely oblivious about other peoples' feelings or outright ignore them altogether) and Cynthia (who didn't really have any personal attachment to Will or Alice at that point in the story and thus would likely not really have cared that much about what was going on between them) as well as because Leon's planned Romance Arc with Yolanda and Alice's own arc with Will, plus the added symmetry of the both of them having their love interests back at the park taking care of the orphaned baby leptictidium while they were on the mission, allowed them both to bond together and be more thematically appropriate in working together alongside Drew in the context of that particular mission.
• Jack and Cynthia's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis dynamic wasn't initially planned, but ended up getting written in by Nathanoraptor completely by accident, and subsequently allowed to stay in since he felt that it would make sense for Cynthia to still not necessarily like Jack that much for other reasons despite no longer considering him the prime suspect for being The Mole.
• Mammal Trail was originally intended to be called Mammal Mania. Luczynski himself chose to change the name when he realized how silly the originally planned name sounded.
• It is possible that Jack and Colette's scene together with Kaa during The New Giants may not have originally been included. Nathanoraptor chose to write it in since he felt that, with their overall lowered prominence in Phase 3, he should at least allow them to have one scene together as a couple during this phase.
• Sharptooth throwing a fit because of a medical problem was initially planned to occur in Serpents of the Nile. Luczynski subsequently suggested for Nathanoraptor to agree to move it to The New Giants so that Sharptooth would have a chance at having more time to adequately show off his usual personality before any signs of his vulnerable side got shown off. That being said, the medical problem in question was originally planned to be a toothache. But Nathanoraptor then changed his mind and changed it to an in-grown claw on his foot when he realized that theropod dinosaurs constantly replacing teeth.
• The hyaenodons were initially planned to go through the portal alongside the entelodonts. However, Nathanoraptor chose to instead have them go through the portal after first sticking around in their home time period long enough to be seen menacing the trapped indricothere for the sake of Rule of Drama.
• Raksha was initially planned to be a male (and have an unrevealed male sounding name), before Luczynski convinced him to let the amphicyon be a female instead (complete with this suggestion allowing Nathanoraptor to decide on the name 'Raksha' in the first place). Nathanoraptor also initially planned for Raksha to be orphaned by means of her parents being killed by a hyaenodon. Luczynski, however, suggested that the orphaning be a result of a mudslide instead, which Nathanoraptor ended up going with in the final product.
• The animals in Anthropomorphous Apes were originally planned to be brought back to the park over the course of a wildfire. Nathanoraptor changed this due to both the fact that Ten To Midnight was planned to feature a similar plot point and how he wanted to give the primates a chance to demonstrate gratitude for their rescuers before the 'episode' ended.
• Zira was initially planned by Luczynski to play a role in saving the team from the megalodon in Beyond the Sea by virtue of the portal ending up opened in time for her foot to come through it and stomp down on the Ancient Mariner's deck in time to throw off the sharks. This ended up changed once Luczynski realized that it was proving difficult to make such an idea actually work without coming across as silly.
• The idea of Drew using basilosaurus recordings to distract the adult megalodon wasn't initially planned, but ended up added in by Nathanoraptor when he realized that a large number of the missions had included one Chekhov's Gun after another, and decided that it wouldn't hurt to make the basilosaurus vocals serve as yet another one.
• The megatherium Leon encounters during his solo mission in Ten to Midnight was originally going to be the scrapped smilodon antagonist Scarface (described in further detail below), who would have ended up running off into the undergrowth after the encounter was over. And with that being the case, he was also initially intended to be seen doing battle with (and subsequently getting defeated by) Diego before the bushfire came about. And during the bushfire, he would have managed to get through the portal without Leon noticing and gone rushing off into the wild surrounding the park without anyone else noticing afterward while they were all distracted by the mass group of animals Drew and his team had brought back. And naturally, The Stinger would have featured a scene in which he was found and captured by the smuggling operation, setting up for his initial planned role in The Devils Here and Isle Full of Noise (see below for further information on said role). However, when Scarface ended up scrapped, Nathanoraptor still wanted Leon to encounter something in the forest during his solo mission in Ten to Midnight, so he allowed Scarface to be replaced with the megatherium that Leon encounters in the final product while outright deleting and changing all the other scenes that would have featured Scarface as needed.
• Frank didn't exist at all in the original plans, and von Grimm was initially planned to play the more active antagonistic role in the climactic scenes in Isle Full of Noise instead. However, Nathanoraptor kept hitting walls trying to write von Grimm taking part actively in the events of the chapter without him coming across in a way that felt to Nathanoraptor as if he were undergoing Villain Decay^note via somehow always losing his aura of enigma, mystery, and fear and ending up seeming not as threatening as a result. Then he remembered how Luczynski had originally wanted von Grimm to have a bodyguard with him in The New Rulers, and so he took the initially discarded bodyguard for von Grimm and turned him into Frank as seen in the final product.
• Luczynski wanted Cynthia (seeing a pattern here?) to accompany Drew during Full Fathom Five, only for this suggestion to be vetoed by Nathanoraptor in favor of Leon due to Leon having developed the most alongside Drew over the course of the story and arguably being the consistent true deuteragonist of the story (despite Luczynski's efforts to push Cynthia into this role instead), as well as the fact that Nathanoraptor found Drew and Leon to be a lot more fun to write together. Furthermore, Nathanoraptor also felt obligated to allow a follow-up on how Leon had noticed Alice talking to Cynthia on the communicator near the end of Ten to Midnight and found reason to feel suspicious, and having Leon accompany Drew seemed like a good way to do so.
• The pack of cave hyenas that showed up to attack Martha in Full Fathom Five were initially going to be a tribe of undiscovered hominids similar to the Denisova Man and various 'wild man' type cryptids from Russia and eastern Europe. This idea was changed to the cave hyenas seen in the final product when Nathanoraptor realized that, with this mission occurring so close to the end of the story, it would be problematic to suddenly introduce a brand new mystery to potentially be either left unresolved or piled onto the various other plot points that were already in need of resolution.
• Luczynski initially wanted members of the smuggling operation to turn out to have been responsible for injuring Martha. Nathanoraptor initially seriously considered allowing this to be the case before eventually deciding against it when he realized that this would potentially be too obvious of a hint to the Prehistoric Earth staff at what was going on.
• Before Cynthia was switched out with Leon, the rescued herd of woolly mammoths were initially planned to be rescued from a group of neanderthals trying to hunt them by forcing them over the cliff in a scene reminiscent of the climax of the woolly mammoth episode of Walking with Beasts. However, this scene was changed to involve the blizzard in the final product due to it since being revealed that the neanderthals themselves may not have been directly responsible for the mammoths falling off the cliffs, the fact that Nathanoraptor didn't want to risk potential Unfortunate Implications in portraying neanderthals and other early hominids as antagonistic, and because a blizzard felt appropriate in that it was a natural disaster like the ones that had already been featured in every other mission in phase 3.
• As revealed by Word of God from Luczynski in one of his sporadic posts in the review section, Ursula, Zander, and Ed were not present in his initial plans and drafts for the story, and were added in entirely by Nathanoraptor.
• The climactic events of The Devils Here and Isle Full Of Noise were originally planned to unfold quite differently from how they unfolded in the final product:
  • Originally the 'A Dazzling End' trilogy that serves as the overall finale to the story was originally planned by Nathanoraptor to be a tetralogy instead. But when he realized that his efforts at adequately stretching the events out to adequately befit four 'episodes' worth of story were basically starting to feel too much like Padding, he condensed the planned second and third installments of the planned tetralogy into a single second installment (known in the final product as The Devils Here).
  • Luczynski initially planned for it all to just be relegated to a side plot during Ten to Midnight, with von Grimm having several moles in the park, who would be killed and eaten by Sharptooth, Zira, and other carnivores while Percival himself would be crushed to death in a building trampled by the herbivores (the fate that ended up befalling Frank in the final product). And all without anyone even being aware of the smuggling operation or anything untoward at all. The reason for this was because Luczynski wanted for the animals to be responsible for defeating the human villains as a means of poetic justice. Nathanoraptor, however, felt it would be too anticlimactic to have the bad guys so abruptly killed off in one of the missions prior to the finale after having been so strongly built up prior.
  • The scene at the beginning of the 2nd part of The Devils Here was originally intended to be how the first part ended. Nathanoraptor ended up changing his mind and having it instead be the way it is in the final product when he realized it would be much more dramatic for the 1st part to end with the alarm being successfully sounded
  • Duncan was initially planned to end up shutting down a few of the fencing security systems so as to allow some of the animals already present in enclosures on the island to escape and wreak havoc for the sake of keeping the park staff busy. One of the animals that would have escaped would have been the male andrewsarchus, which would have subsequently done battle with Baloo before the moment in which he kills Zander. These plot points were ultimately dropped for the sake of pacing.
  • In earlier drafts of the story, Jack, Alice, Adrian, and Leon all each had their own 'animal squad', all of which were intended to play major roles in what became The Devils Here. Alice would have had a pack of hyaenodon or cave hyenas under her command, Adrian would have successfully trained a trio of phorusrhacos, and Jack would have had Red and her pack under his command. That in mind, Alice's trained trio of hyaenodon or cave hyena would have worked alongside Raksha to help Baloo in his initially planned battle against Scarface (who would have at some point entered the picture after Baloo's fight with the andrewsarchus), Leon's allosaur squad would have helped Martha take down Rhea, and the utahraptor and phorusrhacos squads would have been actively working to help track down Duncan and the smuggling operation.
  • Ursula and Duncan's scene at the beginning of part 4 of The Devils Here was initially intended to unfold very differently as well. Ursula was initially intended to die in a manner similar to Eli Mills in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, with Sharptooth successfully grabbing her in his jaws by her front half while her bottom half would have in turn been grabbed by a deinosuchus (although Balerion and one of the tarbosaurus were also initially considered for this role), and the two would have engaged in a brief tug-o-war that would have ended with Ursula getting torn in half and eaten by Sharptooth, who would have then roared triumphantly. Duncan, meanwhile was originally intended to survive and successfully escape with the stolen portal by commandeering the black-ops team's jeep after or during Ursula's death scene and driving it over to the agents' boat at a secluded harbor, which he would have then used to sail away to the smuggling operation's base (with Scarface also hitching a ride there on the same boat alongside him without him noticing). After this, the ending of The Devils Here would have been shown before then leading into the beginning of Isle Full of Noise as it did in the final product. See below for further information on what else was planned to happen to Duncan after this.
  • Von Grimm was initially not supposed to show up on the island in person. Instead, Frank and Duncan were to betray him by taking over the entire operation themselves, becoming the main antagonists. More specifically, Isle Full of Noise was initially planned (before all the changes that got made) to open with Duncan arriving at the smuggling operations' base in time to show the portal to Frank and Percival (the latter of whom would have been watching via video communications) before he and Frank would have then betrayed von Grimm and taken full control over the smuggling operation themselves. However, Nathanoraptor eventually decided that it would be a wasted opportunity to not allow von Grimm the opportunity to have a face-to-face confrontation with the heroes.
  • All the action involving the smuggling operation in Isle Full of Noise was initially planned by Nathanoraptor to take place on a separate island, with Jack releasing all the animals amongst the cargo and their escaping into the wild on the island. He'd also initially considered having the action take place at a top secret Novum facility on the mainland before changing his mind to try to have it on another island instead. Luczynski, however, felt that it would be too confusing to have the action switching back and forth between two islands; Nathanoraptor agreed, and the second island was removed. Luczynski also pointed out that it wouldn't really work out to allow the animals amongst the smuggling operation cargo to escape into the wild due to the vast majority of them either being malnourished or having conditions that would prevent them from surviving very long (if at all) in the wild, resulting in the animals amongst the smuggling operation instead getting proper medical care and placed amongst the park's repertoire of animals on display.
  • The scrapped smilodon named Scarface would have also ended up serving an antagonistic role alongside the female t-rex that ended up appearing (and later named Rhea) - originally, he would have fought Baloo in the smugglers' camp, before escaping into the Everglades (after killing Duncan). He got scrapped firstly because of room and secondly, due to being a loose end (and a potentially rather frightening one to consider at that) that neither author wanted to follow up on.
  • In relation to the above two points, the climactic scenes were intended to unfold very differently in the drafts where Duncan was still alive, von Grimm was absent, the action was intended to occur on either the mainland or a second island, and Scarface was in existence:
    • Will, Alice, and Raksha were initially planned to end up locked outside of the 'main building' of the smuggling operation as a result of Frank initiating a lock-down. Drew and Nikolai were initially going to be separated from Leon and Cynthia and end up being the only members of the group to end up face to face with Frank. Jack, Collete, Adrian, and Keehar, in contrast, were always intended to go onto the boat and end up held at gunpoint by a group of goons onboard as they do in the final product. That in mind, the cliffhanger was originally intended to end with Jack, Colette, Adrian, and Keehar as they ended up in the final product, Leon and Cynthia locked in the animal holding room inside the 'main building' alongside a large amount of captive animals, Drew and Nikolai being held at gunpoint by Frank, and Alice, Will, and Raksha being stuck outside the main building and at risk of being attacked by Scarface the smilodon (who would have been running lose in the area as a result of having snuck onto the boat that Duncan would have used to reach the area himself, and also would have been deliberately going after Alice for the sake of attempting to get revenge against her; something that real big cats have actually done).
    • Subsequently, Jack was initially going to trick one of the more idiotic mooks into calling Keehar a dinosaur within earshot of the pterosaur (this was before the plan for this being Keehar's Berserk Button got scrapped), causing Keehar's resulting fit of rage to distract all the mooks long enough for Jack himself to get ahold of the remote that he then used to release the captive animals in the area the way he does in the final product, all of which would have killed the mooks while he himself, plus Colette and Adrian, would have then ganged up on and taken down the boat's captain. Alice, Will, and Raksha would have been saved from Scarface by Baloo once again (with help from Raksha). And Cynthia and Leon would have managed to escape from the animal holding chamber in time to come bursting into the scene with the allosaurs in time to save Drew and Nikolai. From there, the allosaurs would have killed all but Frank, who would have willingly surrendered in these versions of the events, and Duncan, who would have escaped from the area, gotten into a jeep or boat, and tried to escape from the base with the inferior jury rigged portal. Unfortunately for him, Scarface would have ended up in the same jeep or boat as him, and would have then killed him offscreen in a Gory Discretion Shot before then leaving the subsequently crashed vehicle and gone rushing off into the wild, crushing the inferior jury rigged portal under his paw in the process.
  • On a comparatively minor note, the smuggling operations' boat was initially intended to be called the Pandora instead of the Venture (with the intention being a nod to the Pandora's box myth that Percival had alluded to in describing Theodore's creation of the time portal). But Nathanoraptor chose to scrap this idea and name it after the ship from King Kong instead when he realized that readers would have potentially been more likely to mistake 'Pandora' as being a reference to either Avatar or the jewelry store.
  • Also, the good guys were initially planned to successfully enter the smugglers' base without any trouble. Nathanoraptor than changed his mind and chose to change their entry to the version present in the final product for the sake of a last bit of humor before things got dark once more by including a Shout-Out to Titan A.E. in which there was a subversion of The Guards Must Be Crazy.
  • Finally, there was originally going to be scenes explicitly showing the dismantling of the smuggling operation unfolding 'on-screen'. But Nathanoraptor changed his mind and chose to skip over them straight to the scenes unfolding at the park afterward so as to immediately focus on Frank's escape and death, plus Theodore's reaction to Percival's betrayal, and get those events over with as quickly as possible.
• The way that the epilogue would have ended was also changed over the course of the changes made to the events of the finale:
  • If the 'mainland' version of the climax had occurred, then the story would have ended with all the scenes already present in the final product, Percival's arrest being mentioned to have occurred off-screen, and a scene with Scarface lurking about freely through the everglades.
  • If the 'second island' version of the climax had occurred, the story would have ended largely the same as the 'mainland' version's interpretation, but with Scarface being shown hunting an ornithomimus on the now abandoned second island as well as a brontoscorpio from said island arriving at mainland Florida after a long swim.
• If Nathanoraptor had gone through with his original plans involving Cynthia and Drew having previously been a couple prior to Cynthia's introduction in this story (which he ended up still considering canon to some degree despite never actively going through with making the idea explicit in the story), then her and Drew's breakup and turning into Amicable Exes at the end of the story would have had extra weight behind it. Furthermore, the entirety of their relationship in the story would have gone as follows:
  • Cynthia would have been Drew's ex girlfriend from before they'd both started working for Novum and Prehistoric Earth, they would have broken up on bad terms before the events of the story, only for awkwardness to ensue when Cynthia herself would have ended up coming to work at the park as their latest employee. Over time, they would have managed, despite initial understandable hostilities, to find their old feelings bubbling back up and rekindle their old relationship. But ultimately, after Drew would have finally found out just what Cynthia had gotten herself up to since their first breakup (becoming a deep cover agent in Novum's spy unit), the both of them would have realized that they'd both changed too much in the years since their first breakup for their relationship to ever fully work out properly; thus resulting in them splitting once more (but this time on much more amicable and pleasant terms) after the conspiracy had been fully dealt with and stopped altogether.
• Spiny and Rey's Back for the Finale cameo in the Team Shot wasn't originally planned, but Nathanoraptor chose to add them in when he decided that he wanted to have a couple animals from Phase 1 to be present in the shot.
• On a particularly big note, Luczynski initially envisioned this story to focus more on just simply adventuring in the past and actually caring for the animals similarly to an Animal Planet behind the scenes at a zoo show. Nathanoraptor, however, had other plans, and he eventually won out and took the story in a completely different direction from what Luczynski had envisioned. This particular glaring case of Creative Differences (and one where Nathanoraptor won out instead of him), plus the fact that the overwhelming majority of the readers seemed to be siding with Nathanoraptor over him, proved a heavy contributing factor to Luczynski himself eventually developing Creator's Apathy for the story and allowing Nathanoraptor to do the majority of the work on it (even going so far as to willingly have minimal involvement in the writing for Phase 3) while devoting more of his own time to his passion project Dinosaur King Retold.
• On a lesser note, Jack and Alice would've eventually been revealed to have been orphans, with Alice planning to prove herself capable of handling things on her own and Jack's eccentricities receiving a Freudian Excuse. Nathanoraptor decided to remove this, as it didn't really have an effect on the plot, not every character really needed to have a tragic backstory to explain their issues, and Alice's desire to prove herself that Luczynski wanted her to have didn't make sense due to her having already worked with plenty of dangerous modern-day animals prior to her work at Prehistoric Earth; also, it transpired that Luczynski had gotten their ages the wrong way around.
• Some of Luczynski's other ideas that ended up cut include Lightning and Zira forming an odd Interspecies Friendship, Martha having a form of PTSD, and a smilodon named Simba killing one of the other rescued smilodons in a very gruesome fashion (with the last of these three being something Luczynski never even bothered to let Nathanoraptor to even be aware of until long after the story had been completed).
• Finally, there was a large amount of ideas (plus a few characters) that were originally planned for Prehistoric Earth, only to end up scrapped for some reason or other, that are currently planned to be refitted for the subsequent reboot, Prehistoric Park Reimagined (and shall currently, for the sake of avoiding spoilers, not be discussed here).