What Could Have Been / BIONICLE

BIONICLE had so many unused concepts, they deserve their own page.

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General

• Fans have compiled a massive document containing most of the unused ideas and original authorial intents that have so far been made public.
• The entire franchise would have only lasted for one year, culminating in Mata Nui's awakening. Greg Farshtey, the writer of the comics, saw potential in the story, and convinced LEGO to keep it going. The line continued for another 9 and a half years.
  • The Lego also considered ending the line in 2004 which Mata Nui rising at the end of 2003 and Vakama would be retelling he and his fellow Turaga's time as Toa on their way back home to (presumably) Spherus Magna to pass the time.
• The original concept behind the series definitely fit the "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" Working Title — crude, stereotypically "tribal" looking robots bashing each others' heads off. Test groups found this idea too disturbing, hence why the characters were given collectible masks instead that kids could knock off the toys. The visual design also changed to a more streamlined, robotic look, with the tribal elements reduced.
• Every time the Toa won, they were originally supposed to dance. The canceled Legend of Mata Nui game shows how this would have looked in its final cutscene.
• One idea Christian Faber had for the Bahrag queens is that they could have been Giant Spiders, carrying Bohrok in "ball-mode" on their back. While the eventual Bahrag sets more closely resembled theropod dinosaurs than arthropods, their non-canon combiner model returned to a four-legged spider concept.
• A name the LEGO company considered earlier for the location of Mahri Nui was Ankor Nui. Another was Akua Nui.
• This concept video tells us that the Mata Nui robot would have had the ability to roll up into a giant ball for space travel, a vortex would have lead to the "Power Plant" (Karda Nui), the prototype robot was to be only one tenth the size of the Mata Nui robot, as opposed to two thirds the size, Mata Nui's knee and three of his fingers would also have been islands, and while it's been known since '08, from another concept vid, it's worthy to mention that the Mata Nui robot has also been envisioned as a more organic-looking rock giant.
• Faber Files, a blog by BIONICLE co-creator Christian Faber, based around very early concept art. Other subjects beside BIONICLE are touched upon, such as LEGO Exo-Force. Among other interesting behind-the-scenes plans, the blog details what early ideas they had for ending '01, bringing the "Three Fingers" into play: the island, in reality Mata Nui's left hand, was to be the birthplace of the Bohrok when they were still called by their preliminary name, "Bugs". They would have drifted to the main island's shore much the same way as the Toa, and would have resembled spherical capsules with insect-legs. This idea was reworked into the hive-like Bohrok Nest setting under the main island, probably partly because the Three Fingers would have given away Mata Nui's nature too early.
• Originally the powers of the Hordika Venom was to slowly turn its victims into Visorak rather than turning into Rahi. This would have been a better explanation for why Vakama was so quick to defect to the side of the Visorak in the 2005 Story.
• Originally, Mutran was going to wear the "Kanohi Artidax, the Mask of Mutation." However, the idea was scrapped after Greg Farshtey saw that the set wore a Shelek. The name is now the name of the island where Miserix was held. The Mask of Mutation was later given to Miserix.
• "Gatherers" was a name originally considered for the Bone Hunters, and is still reflected on some of the location names.
• BIONICLE: The Album. Advertised on a teaser page in the promotional comics of '02, with names like Cold, Kenna, Rob Zombie and Woven attached, fans were unsure of what to think of this strange new venture. Then the official website finally went up, containing a poll for various bands. Shortly afterwards, the entire thing disappeared. This is because LEGO and the performers didn't manage to come to a happy agreement over the promotion.
• Many early toys lacked actual hands, confusing fans and even some comic artists. Some older bits of media even portrayed Gali as having hooks for hands, until Greg Farshtey's comments finally confirmed the hooks to be just her tools. The idea of characters having tools in place of hands was also briefly considered for the movies (see below).
• Keetongu was initially conceptualized as a giant, in reference to his appearance in the Tower of Toa playset's prototype. LEGO later convinced themselves Keetongu should have a more manageable size, and reasoning that buyers probably wouldn't fork out money for two Keetongu toys, his "giant" version was removed from the playset. However, some elements of his originally intended stature arguably survive in the story, such as when he towers over Sidorak.

Story

• The sets and story originally planned for '10 and '11 (which is four waves, containing about 40-50 sets altogether). They scrapped all of this in preparation for the line's abrupt Cancellation, and released a wholly new line of merely 6, small-sized sets instead. That means no Element Lords, no shapeshifting assassin robots, no cyborg dinosaurs (although the basic setting has been recycled in Hero Factory), and no sequel to that "trilogy starter" movie that ends on a Cliffhanger.
• They had vastly different plans for the '06-'11 storyline originally too. '08 would have seen the continuation of the "Jaller and his team try to save Mata Nui's life'' arc (wrapped up in '07), followed by a multi-year story of the Toa Nuva trying to awaken him. The latter arc got compressed into '08, and instead of the originally planned happy ending, had a shocking Downer Ending/Gainax Ending.
• Allegedly, making Gali a female was something of a last-minute decision. Originally, all of the Toa would have been male — not that this kept the theme from suffering heavily from Viewer Gender Confusion.
• The writer said he wanted to finish off the Big Bad by having The Hero tear his chest open. This was deemed too violent, and thus the scenario was changed to part of his head getting crushed. Okay.
• The Toa were first envisioned as being these God-like entities that spoke in a constant dramatic voice. They were also to be of different age, Onua being the eldest and Lewa the youngest. Farshtey argued that this would make them too distant and boring, so they were eventually outfitted with wildly different personalities and talked like normal people. They were also made the same age, though Onua still was the wisest and Lewa still acted like a kid.
• Allegedly, the official Universe Bible contained so much potential story info that a lot of it never made it into the storyline. However the extent and exact details of these unused ideas is not known to the public.
• LEGO produced two special edition copper masks — not made of actual copper, just colored like it. Their promotional blurbs claimed that they gave special powers to their wearer, but this point was later dropped, and the masks were introduced into the story as powerless decorative masks traditionally given to the winners of sporting tournaments.
• A 2003 BIONICLE Style Guide, containing a quick rundown on the lore and characters, reveals that Makuta originally wasn't truly evil, just misguided in his ways. Hints of this crop up even in the film Mask of Light, where it seems he has concern for Mata Nui's well being and is almost reluctant to release the Rahkshi at first. No part of this early characterization survives in the post-2003 story, where Makuta's irredeemable evilness is made clear every step of the way.
• Co-creator Christian Faber, in a video discussing concepts and things that never got realized properly in the actual story, if Hero Factory continued long enough, it was actually supposed to lead The Reveal that it was actually a Stealth Sequel of Bionicle as the secret creator and leader of the Hero Factory was a former Toa — now Turaga —who got trapped in a parallel universe and created an interdimensional peacekeeping force to keep an ancient power safe, which would have led into a proper relaunch of the main Bionicle line after a Retool, but the "dumbing down" demanded by Lego executives^note Ironically missing out on the sheer success of an overarching multiversal storyline a whole decade before even Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came along and became a more standard fare as described on Hero Factory's own trivia page that ended up killing the story before the reveal came to light, ending any possible relaunch of the original Bionicle story before it reached that point.

Toys

• Some of the original, thankfully entirely scrapped prototypes looked like this googly-eyed monstrosity. It would have had articulated eyeballs.
• The Sand Tarakava never got through its prototype stage, however a total of five prototype Sand Tarakava model were indeed sold.
  • More research suggests that the Sand Tarakava was simply a prototype of the final Tarakava set before the final colors were pinned down. LEGO in the rush to get games developed for the coming 2001 launch sent a batch of the prototypes out to developer studios such as Templar and Saffire to use as reference for the Tarakava design. The Tarakava Gali fights in MNOG matches the Sand Tarakava almost perfectly right down to wearing a Ruru mask, but with the Sand Tarakava's colors switched to blue to match the finished set.
• The two Toa Hagah sets, Norik and Iruini, were designed to represent the Toa forms of Turaga Dume and the Dark Hunter Nidhiki, respectively. This is why their masks look so much alike. Reportedly, after a few seconds of looking at them, the Story Team decided to make them the Toa forms of two Rahaga characters, and rewrote their backstory from scratch.
• Traitorous Matoran and servant of Teridax, Ahkmou was originally meant to have a new set coming out in '08, as a Shadow Toa. Plans were quickly scrapped, thus his only set remains his Matoran form from '04. He never became a Toa in the story either.
• Nuparu Mahri's set was supposed to come with an Aqua Blaster Blade, and it was even written into the books, yet the final model didn't include it. Instead, it only had a shield and a Cordak blaster.
• Similar to this, it was thought that Jaller only possessed one Energized Flame Sword until it was confirmed that he had two in Prisoners of the Pit. The reason for this was that Greg Farshtey was writing the story based off the Jaller toy's prototype.
• As revealed by German and Russian documentaries on LEGO, the Toa sets form the Mistika line had gone through a couple changes as well before finalization, mostly in the color scheme department. Insiders have also mentioned that their prototypes had resembled their original '02 sets better than the final models. There was much complaining.
• The 2005 playsets went through some particularly shocking changes before finalization. The Tower of the Toa set, for instance, was meant to come with a miniature Keetongu figure (at this scale, the same size as a regular canister set). In the finished set, a miniature Kahgarak spider occupies its place — but it came with a gold-colored Mask of Shadows piece, so it's all good. The prototype Visorak Battle Ram◊ looks absolutely nothing like the final product◊.
• The Manas were first envisioned having giant, bulging eyes, large teeth and grasping pincers. The finalized versions have teeny-tiny beads for eyes, no mouth and their pincers (which hardly look the part) can only poke.
• The Toa Metru were bare-chested at first. For the entire comic run, they were constantly drawn this way. The eventual sets, however, included a piece that covered their inner gear-mechanisms.
• Mata Nui's canister set was originally gold and white, not gold and black. As such, he is described as wearing white in one of the novels.
• The cover image for the '06 book Dark Destiny has a group shot of the six initial Piraka sets in their prototype forms. Most of them have only subtle differences from the released models, however Avak sports an entirely different head-design (he has pincers for cheeks), while Reidak has three eyes (also seen on the first promo-image for the '06 set-line, though the creators claimed those were just random eyes belonging to no actual character). They even appear as such in the Voya Nui On-Line Game. Fenrakk the spider also sports six legs in that game, whereas his actual set only has four.
• Hewkii Inika, the set famous for launching the color gray as a replacement for brown, was, apparently, originally meant to be brown itself, as evidenced by the non-canon on-line animations of '06, which show the character like this.
• Chirox would have originally been a more monstrous, lime and black set, his head having an open jaw with yellow fangs and a ribcage more in line with human ribcages.
• Krika's set was envisioned with spikes that could be shot out of his back with a pressure-pump. In the actual set, this was abandoned and the concept carried over into the Nynrah Ghost Blaster, which he carried with a "third arm" on his back. His prototype set was also much more tall, and much of the red on his body was replaced with solid black.
• Bitil was almost completely different besides sporting the Shadow Matoran torso, being lime and black with large claws in place of his arms, a radically different Kanohi and digitigrade legs.
• Briefly seen for 2008 were two unknown Mistika Makuta that never saw the light of day, one reddish-orange and white with black antenna emerging out of it's head that was a combination of a modified Toa Nuva shoulder and a Rahkshi head, the other blue and black with orange tubes running through it and a long, spiny neck, with yellow eyes that appeared to be used from the pieces in a Rhotuka Launcher function.
• A prototype for a sort of Matoran sphere-carrying vehicle shows up in the "behind-the-scenes" featurette on the Legends of Metru Nui DVD. No such model came out in the toyline.
• A prototype toy for Makuta that surfaced in 2020 (through an Ebay listing)◊, implied that the Kraakhan was originally going to be a kitbash of a (black) Vahi and a Pakari rather than a mask of its own. This was also most likely the version of the toy Miramax had access to when they made the Mask Of light Movie, as concept art for Makuta's model resemble the prototype toy quite a bit. Including the Kraakhan.
  • Said Ebay listing also shoved smooth Rakshi shells rather than the ribbed ones used for the final toys. Again, very similar to how they looked in the movie.

Games

• The Mata Nui On-Line Game
  • Legend of Mata Nui: They intended to make this the ultimate, full-canon telling of 2001's storyline. Then they scrapped it due to various issues, and so the Adobe Flash-based Mata Nui On-Line Game replaced it as "the" 2001 BIONICLE game (and is still to this day for many fans "the" definitive BIONICLE experience). In turn, the MNOG was meant to be just a little, semi-canon side-note, which is why The LEGO Company gave such a free hand to its creators at Templar Studios, and it turned out all the better for it. While there are some inconsistencies, such as how Lewa obtained his golden Kanohi, the MNOG is for the most part accepted as part of the canon.
  • The game was apparently designed with many more minigames in mind, as many characters throughout the game give the player instructions on how to defeat Kofo-Jaga scorpions, all the way to the final fight. Yet no such creatures ever appear in the game. The Sand Tarakava, Kane-Ra bull and Kuma-Nui rat is also mentioned, despite not appearing.
  • There was to be a secret seventh tribe that lived on Mata Nui and worshiped the Makuta. Ahkmou, the evil bazaar trader, was supposed to stem from this tribe. In the MNOG, he was meant to hold a group of Matoran hostage, who would mass-produce the infected Comet balls. As with the things mentioned above, this was abandoned from the finished game, but there still is a strange, unused gamefile that shows a Ga-Matoran making Comets.
  • The Le-Wahi chapter of the game would have played out differently. In the finished game, the player and the Le-Matoran (along with Taipu if you take him with you) are enslaved by a swarm of Nui-Rama, a Nui-Kopen wasp and an infected Lewa under Makuta's control. Originally, there was to be no Nui-Kopen present, and the slaves would have been kept there to serve as food for the Rama larvae — but as Matoran Universe species can't reproduce, this had to be abandoned. In the game, Onua appears to fight Lewa apparently at random, but the developers originally wanted him to be summoned by Taipu, after you play a flute-song which he hears underground. The biggest change was the way Onua defeats Lewa — not by hurling an electric bug at his face, knocking off the corrupted mask, but by punching him, fully intending to kill him until the Le-Matoran point out that Lewa is also a Toa. Not only would this have been overly violent, it would have created a plot-hole, since by this point in the story, Onua had already met Lewa.
  • An updated (such as the removal of all Maori words) and offline CD release of the game was also planned by Templar for a 2002 release but was cancelled. This version did see the light of day though in 2006 when LEGO made it downloadable from their website in ZIP format.
• There were plans to release BIONICLE: The Game with levels featuring the six Toa in both their original Mata and updated Nuva forms, adding up to a total of 13 levels. A lot of these had to be scrapped due to the rushed development, even though the canceled levels were still heavily advertised in promotions. The released game only had 8 levels, and Tahu's the only one playable in both of his forms.
• A 2004 sequel to BIONICLE: The Game based on the Metru Nui storyline had started development but was scrapped due to the low sales of the former. Nothing was really know about it until a tech demo was leaked in 2012.
• Unfinished alpha and beta builds of the Legend of Mata Nui game leaked to the public in 2018 revealed a slew of scrapped ideas and mechanics that could have affected the wider franchise outside the game itself:
  • Accompanying the toy version's original intention to be packaged with the game, the Vahi was slated to appear as the 13th and final mask collected in Tahu's level, with the fairly straightforward power of slowing down time for the user (which was also it was described in the 3rd comic issue's backup pages). Had this representation of the Kanohi's powers been kept, the Vahi may not have received the infamous Dangerous Forbidden Technique power threshold it was given in its 2003 comic debut, or have risen to the prominence it received in the second movie and the Generation 2 narrative.
  • The character Nobua, aka Tamariki. The first islander you meet in the game, but no such character appeared in any other media — unless you count unnamed lookalikes showing up in MNOG.
  • Dances would have been crucial parts of Mata Nui island culture, derived from real-life Haka dances practiced by Maori people. These were entirely dropped following the threat of the famed Maori lawsuit, so they only appear in the alpha.
  • Some villages were drastically redesigned between the two game builds, and Ga-Koro in particular looks totally different. Interestingly, the design used in MNOG, which was eventually accepted as canon, was based on the preliminary alpha design, and contains a dance hall.
  • The finalized canon showcases various elemental monsters, but these would have had significant roles in the game. Each Toa eventually faces off against rather generic-looking beasts, like a mud monster, rock monster or fire dragon. Concept art for some of them has been known for a long time, but the 2018 leak was the first occasion they were all revealed as a group.
  • As for an example of "what might not have been", neither build of the game features a final confrontation with the Makuta despite all the buildup. Just some wonky platforming areas. It is unknown whether the game would have ended without meeting the Big Bad, or if development simply hadn't reached that segment yet when the game was cancelled. The Shadow Toa are also absent, meaning they never got any visual depictions in any media.
  • Insider comments reveal LEGO's management had gone through a kind of shift around the time the game got scrapped, and the two are possibly closely tied together. In response to the Maori lawsuit threat and Bionicle's change in management, the entire franchise was re-imagined behind the scenes. Several fantastical, tribal and almost mythological elements were dropped, Polynesian influences were diminished, and the series became a more "generic" fantasy with less ties to real-life cultures.
• The Bionical Heroes video game was originally going to be a First-Person Shooter. However, it was turned into a Third-Person Shooter due to concerns that the first person perspective would raise the game's age rating too high, as rating boards are generally harder on first person violence for some reason.

Movies

• They had a movie planned to be released concurrently with the Legend of Mata Nui game. Yes, as in way back in 2001, when BIONICLE started. When both of these would-be storytelling sources got the ax, it was up to (yet again) little ol' Mata Nui Online Game to wrap up the plot. Not even the comics pulled that off, as they were meant to tie into the game/movie.
• Before Creative Capers and Wang Film Productions were hired for the first movie, other studios (who, with the exception of a test produced by Blur Studio, are still largely unknown) were also considered to animate. Reportedly, a common issue with most of the studios LEGO approached is that they insisted on a plot involving human kid in the world, but the BIONICLE team stuck to their guns and kept looking until they found a studio where avoiding humans wasn't an issue.
• The directors of the first movie, Mask of Light, talked about envisioning the characters with mechanical, switchblade-like hands, that could go from being claws to tools or other gadgets (mimicking the toys, which more often than not had no true hands to speak of). But as the plot never really called for them to have this ability, they were given normal hands with which to hold their stuff the normal way. Though Gali was shown to possess flip-out wrist propellers.
• Unused concept art of the Rahkshi for Mask of Light depicts them as being controlled by the Krana — the parasitic entities in control of the Bohrok. However, LEGO deemed the concept of the inner workings too scary.
• An early film summary mentions that the island was to be crumbling apart during the course of the film, necessitating the Matoran's relocation to Makuta's lair at the end. The film was also meant to wrap up the story and feature Mata Nui's awakening, resulting in the island's complete destruction. Though the dialogue about awakening Mata Nui remained unaltered, the island destruction's plot line was cut apart from a minor tremor on one scene.
• Legends of Metru Nui was briefly considered to be produced as a theatrical feature and would have served as both a prologue and epilogue to the series (which at the time was planned on ending in 2004).
• The Lohrak were originally scheduled to make an appearance in Legends of Metru Nui, but they did not make it into the final cut, only appearing in the novelization. The same happened with the Troller Rahi. The Lohrak, though, later made a very brief cameo in Web of Shadows (since they had their CGI models done), but it's hard to tell that it's them.
• Click the beetle, upon transforming into a shield for Mata Nui, would have stayed that way. But The Legend Reborn director Mark Baldo liked the idea of Click being able to switch between forms at will. His shield-mode face was also supposed to have just one huge eye on it, but in the movie, it has his whole face. Meanwhile the toy doesn't have a face at all.
• Relating to this, the Scarabax beetles' intro in the movie would have involved them eating the Vorox that attacks Mata Nui alive. There would also have been a quicksand scene in the film, which had to be cut as it would have been difficult to animate.
• Many fans have complained about the liberties the original movie trilogy took with the toy models, but when conceptualizing the Mask of Light movie, the creators originally did intended to go with toy-accurate character models, as evidenced by the early Lewa animation tests. Eventually, due to the figures' often ungainly designs and see-through holes, they decided to go with the style we see in the films, and fans had to wait 'till The Legend Reborn for a more toy-faithful animated movie, with mixed results.
• According to composer Nathan Furst, LEGO toyed with the idea of a Makuta origin movie, which never materialized.
• The fifth movie in its entirety — nothing came out of it, apart from an unapproved story summary.

Books and comics

• BIONICLE Legends: Invasion was a book that was scheduled to be released in 2007 as the seventh Legends novel. It was, however, canceled due to poor book sales. Invasion was meant to tell the story of the Toa Inika's trip down The Cord. Included in the book was a scene where Vezon slammed Matoro's head into a wall, a confrontation with a tribe of Zyglak, Vezon being taken by the Zyglak, Hahli being injured in a battle, Teridax possessing Matoro while the latter was using his Iden, stealing Hahli's Elda, and later being forced out by the other Toa Inika who threatened to kill Matoro's body. The book would also explain the relationship between the Zyglak and Krana. That information was released in the LEGO Magazine and BIONICLE: Encyclopedia Updated instead. In 2019, the prologue for the unreleased book was finally recovered.
• The first novel's Hungarian version was based on a preliminary manuscript, containing scenes and a slew of continuity errors not found in the official English release. The non-finalized text reveals just how unfamiliar author Cathy A. Hapka was with the story material, but her extended scenes also added a lot of personality to the characters and their world, which were sadly excised from canon when the book was shortened.
• Movie novelizations are also a rich source, as they are always written according to pre-finalization scripts. As such, while the novel for Web of Shadows describes Roodaka riding a giant flippin' mutant wasp out over the sea to where Makuta's imprisoned, the movie has no such scene, and she is simply shown walking around in a room, delivering exposition to herself.
• Because of various characters (particularly an ancient shapeshifter) being present in some canons and not others, the book, movie, and graphic novel versions of Legends of Metru Nui were all somewhat different, and the book, movie, and graphic novel of Web of Shadows were all significantly different, at the same time requiring fans to watch/read all three to understand all of what was going on.
• Graphic novel #10 would have told Mata Nui's journey through the Great Beings' maze in detail, but due to the low sales of GN #8 and #9, it never got made. It would have been the second graphic novel with fully original content.
• In 2005, an exclusive comic detailing how Turaga Dume had escaped from his pod was advertised, but it didn't get made, so his escape was explained via handwave — the pod simply malfunctioned.
• One filler comic from 2008 got canceled but its script was shared online under the title "Comic 12.5".
• Most of the book releases were confined to the the United States, with the rest of the globe only getting a handful of books. Around 2007, Hungarian online listings appeared for the first two 2006 novels, but they were never released in that language. Of note is the somewhat darker reinterpretation of their titles: Island of Doom became Island of Death and Dark Destiny became Dark Misfortune.

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