What Could Have Been / League of Legends

The dragon champion formerly known as Ao Shin.

With over a decade of development and constant updates, it's no surprise that many concepts in League of Legends — from champion designs, to gameplay ideas, to entire derivative projects — have never seen the light of day, only some of which are even publicly disclosed.

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Champions A-G

Aatrox

• Aatrox's 2018 visual/gameplay update was originally merely supposed to be a gameplay rework, but partway in development, his creators felt his visuals weren't doing enough to convey the new power of his kit, so he was given the full VGU treatment.
• During a Reddit AMA for his 2018 VGU, several Rioters shared a few ability concepts that were tried out for his rework, but were scrapped for whatever reason:
  • One version of his ultimate had him create a "war zone" that would reduce the death timers of both allies and enemies who died in it, which proved to be popular, chaotic, and thematically resonant with Aatrox's old depiction, but caused too many balance problems. Another version of the ultimate also caused allies to instead respawn at nearby structures.
  • He possessed an ability to "turn allies into Darkin," leaving behind a sword that they would pay a Blood Price to pick up, causing them to die and be revived with huge stat bonuses.
  • An option was tested for his on-release ultimate (where he still had a resurrect mechanic) was to have him deliberately off himself for the instant invulnerability and revive, but was cut for causing no shortage of double-tapping accidents.

Ahri

• Ahri got her name from a Korean fan poll (originally "Ari"), featuring other potential names: Danbi, Nabi, Ruri, Chorong, and Dasom.
• From her ORIGINS blog post in 2017:
  • Ahri went through a few changes during development, with one iteration notably lacking her fox ears, featuring her "tails" instead being parts of her dress. The change was done in an attempt to differentiate her from the nine-tailed fox archetypes she was based on, but she consequently looked too plain, prompting Riot to return to a "true version of the nine-tailed fox" instead of "an artificially unique one."
  • Originally her creators wanted to cram in as many references to nine as possible for her abilities, including a nine-hit passive for her Fox Fire, but was reduced to a more manageable three. Fox Fire also used to illuminate brushes like a ward, but was cut for technical reasons.
  • Ahri's ultimate originally had her "basically [become] an Ezreal ult," making her continuously dash and consume mana over time to travel up to an unlimited distance, damaging enemies she passed. Senior game designer Colt "Ezreal" Hallam claimed "We had to change this ultimate due to its interactions with the Dominion map, which is easily one of my biggest regrets on the character."

Akali

• According to her Reddit AMA, Akali had a few potential abilities for her 2018 VGU:
  • One ability had her "ride" projectiles from other champions, which was considered crazy and novel in concept, but impractical and annoying in practice.
  • Another ability had her throw down 2 kunai with a rope in the middle, tripping enemies if they walked through it, similar to Irelia's Flawless Duet ability, but was cut for not being very fitting for an assassin champion.
  • It was originally planned that her Twilight Shroud would form a dragon-shaped billow of smoke (one of the teaser images for her rework featured this), but was cut due to visual clarity concerns.
• Akali at some point featured a much longer katana in her arsenal, but was cut for making her appear too similar to Yasuo.
• Former Rioter CoolRadius (who wrote post-VGU Akali, as well as Kayn and Kai'Sa) expressed interest in writing more lore surrounding Akali's personal life, including a short story that implied that she was gay and had feelings for a "lost" member of the Kinkou. CoolRadius admitted that it was left as a work-in-progress concept and up for the rest of the story team to pursue; it's implied that the draft was reworked into the "The Bow, and The Kunai" short story released in 2020.

Anivia

• Festival Anivia got its name chosen from a wide list of titles, including "Parade Queen Anivia", "Carnival Anivia", Kaleidoscopic Anivia", and "Wings of Revelry Anivia".

Aphelios

• Aphelios was originally conceived as being a traditional Wizard Classic, but early on when the idea of a mage with many spells didn't result in anything especially unique or interesting, he was shifted to be a marksman with many guns. From the concept of a "Gunswap Marksman", many pitches for his character concept were tried, from being "Braum’s mean older brother, who carried a totem pole that channeled Freljordian animal spirits to swap abilities" (rejected specifically because the design implied he was tanky), to a Zaunite or Piltie Bounty Hunter, before settling on a Lunari of Mount Targon.
• Many weapon designs were tested, with his arsenal going through lots and lots of experimentation. At one point, designer CertainlyT proposed him having 25 guns, but it was toned down to a more modest 5.
• Another one of the more out-there suggestions by CertainlyT (which even some Rioters are unsure of if they were meant to be serious or not) included having Aphelios' power based on the phase of the real life moon, even (jokingly?) suggesting that Riot copyright the moon for the purpose.

Aurelion Sol

• As listed below under "Cancelled Champions", Aurelion Sol was initially conceived as a storm dragon concept named Ao Shin, although it was suggested that his gameplay kit was significantly different during this phase.
  • Riot tested giving Ao Shin/Aurelion Sol permanent or long-duration-based flight that allowed him to ignore walls. It was considered too annoying for melee enemies to deal with and consumed too much of his power budget, so it was greatly redone into his current Comet of Legend ability.
  • A Twitch-based Riot Q&A claimed that Ao Shin had an ability described as a global version of Lee Sin's Resonating Strike, where he could send out a storm cloud in a direction, marking enemies it hits for him to dash to as a massive bolt of lightning. It had apparently shown enough promise that Riot considered iceboxing it for potential future use (Vex's Shadow Surge ultimate fits the description, though whether or not it was borrowed from this concept is unknown).
  • Visually, Ao Shin/Aurelion Sol originally had a much more elongated and serpentine body described as 10-12 Teemos in length, with a gameplay element that he could wrap his body around enemies like a coiling snake. This was scrapped due to consuming much of his power budget (he'd have to be fast enough to maneuver around enemies and durable enough to survive them fighting back), as well as raising technical concerns like interactions with bush concealment.

Azir

• Azir had a several-year-long development cycle, once leaked at some point as a sand mage named Seth, and the two concepts were confirmed to be related. Part of this was due to Rioters struggling to find a unique creative niche for him, resulting in countless kits being scrapped even after his "emperor" theme was decided upon.
  • As detailed in Azir's ORIGINS blog post, Seth was originally envisioned as "an aspirational fellow who wanted to turn everything into a desert, thus spreading the realm of Shurima across the land." Sand was tested as an active gameplay element, where casting abilities spread sand across the map, granting further casts on sand bonus effects like extra range, knockup, and in one iteration the ability to summon a giant Sand Worm to attack enemies. It greatly interested Rioters, but was unfortunately cut due to technical concerns as the extensive particle effects were simply too intense for lower-end computers, and as a result, the "desert expander" character concept died with it.
  • One infamous ability by Colt "Ezreal" Hallam was described as "sand hands," which conjured two giant hands of sand that would "rise from the ground and after a delay move together, pushing everyone in between together and squishing them in."
  • One version of Seth/Azir by ZenonTheStoic had him using sand as a resource that had to be gathered, which "made a triangle of obelisks for the ultimate fight arena and spammed sand missiles from sources of sand."
  • GypsyLord once devised an ultimate that caused a sandstorm that globally slowed all enemies.
  • Before Azir gained his turret-summoning passive, one of his abilities had him summon "a windmill of death◊", a tower that shot four rotating beams of lethal light.
  • Several versions of interacting with Sand Soldiers were tested, such as sending soldiers to block incoming skillshots, sending walls of soldiers to knock enemies backward (which was then retooled to become his final ultimate), and ordering soldiers in auto-attack range to become damage-dealing skillshots to the nearest enemy (reworked into his current Q). Also, his soldiers originally wouldn't actually attack enemies unless Azir personally landed an auto-attack on it first.

Bard

• Originally, Bard could choose between different types of color-coded Meeps akin to Pikmin when he collected enough Chimes, each type buffing one of his basic spells, with Meeps continuing to follow behind him as a visual indicator of his upgrade rather than being consumed on-hit. However, testing preferred simpler upgrades to basic attacks over his abilities, resulting in his passive's current state.
• One of Bard's tested ultimates had him create a global wave of sound that silenced all enemies. This was concurrently tested with an Ekko ultimate where he would globally cause all units to rewind 8 seconds to reset their spells, resulting in every fight featuring one team getting globally silenced.

Bel'Veth

• One scrapped ability for Bel'Veth was giving her the power to create long-range portals that permanently remained across the map, forming a network that would allow her to be virtually anywhere she chose by late-game. This was scrapped in part due to feeling like it was overshadowing Rek'Sai's tunnel gimmick and the team not wanting to "2.0" her.

Braum

• According to a now-deleted 2015 PAX East interview, Braum was originally envisioned as a Demacian champion, but it was deemed too serious for his "jolly defender" theme, motivating his move to the Freljord.
• An early design for a wall wielding champ was a young woman from Piltover with a large hextech battering ram named Ceecee.
• On the PBE, his Unbreakable ability was named Immovable Object, which was probably changed because Braum isn't actually immobile at any point while using the ability.

Briar

• According to her Insights article:
  • It was briefly tested to make Briar lore-accurate by making her berserker state have her potentially kill her allies, but this was naturally scrapped for being too potentially toxic.
  • One alternate idea for an ultimate ability was giving her a revive similar to what Aatrox used to have, where if Briar was dead and the ability off cooldown, activating it would cause her to drain the blood of all nearby enemies to bring her back right on the spot. They also tested allowing her to use while alive as an instant self-destruct button, then reactivate it for the damaging revive ability. This ended up removed as Briar is already very devastating as is, so the "suicide-self-revive-wombo-combo" was scrapped.
  • At one point, Certain Death was a true global ultimate rather than a near-global ultimate, but it was nerfed so that if she hit someone from base, she wouldn't accidentally launch herself into the enemy fountain.
  • Briar's initial visual concepts for the "physically-restrained berserker" fantasy already featured her trademark pillory, but one additional concept is that she could create weapons out of blood, and that she would chew her own ankles to create leg-mounted blood blades that she would use as her primary weapons.

Caitlyn

• Originally, Caitlyn was supposed to have an ability to temporarily create patches of brushes, but as this was not technologically feasible at the time of her creation, it was reduced to her Yordle Snap Trap. This idea eventually be explored again with Ivern.
• Before his departure from Riot in 2016, IronStylus did concepts for a Caitlyn visual update before it was officially deemed "abandoned" (though she eventually would receive one in 2021).

Camille

• Her Hookshot ability went through several early experiments, with one iteration described as having the ability to shoot up to 5 hooks in a row to loop around walls. It was fun, but was scrapped for being too impractical in combat and unwieldy to use. A greatly simplified version of this ability was re-implemented for Akshan.

Diana

• Diana's on-release version of Moonfall was inspired by an earlier iteration of a tested ultimate ability, which was a channeled AoE that slowly darkened the area with a crescent moon that would become a full moon if fully charged, shattering the area with true damage based on a resource called "Scorn". It was replaced and greatly toned down into its current version for being "toxic and nearly impossible to counter." Ironically, due to other balance issues with Diana's overall kit, Moonfall was shifted to be her ultimate again in late 2019, albeit with significantly different implementation.

Ekko

• Ekko's ultimate went through a few iterations:
  • One version had him return himself and a targeted enemy champion to where they were 4 seconds ago, but was deemed too busted as it made chasing down enemies too easy.
  • A much more drastic version had him rewind every living unit in the game, resetting all their health, mana, cooldowns, positioning, etc., cut for being too disorienting and cheap.
• One early version of Ekko's 3-hit passive was an amalgamation of several things from his present kit, but mashed into one: when procced on champions, Ekko would steal movement speed, slowly regenerate lost health from the last few seconds, and made his next attack blink onto his opponent from afar (presumably like in his Phase Dive ability).

Evelynn

• When Evelynn's 2017 VGU was originally announced, Allure was named Lust Dust, but was changed on release at the last minute.
• According to her Champion Insights:
  • Several earlier attempts at a core visual design —specifically to communicate that she was a stealthy demon— made her more monstrous while under stealth, including giving her "spider legs, cracked porcelain skin with shadows pushing their way out, [and] the cavity of a missing eye you could peer into and see three eyes within." It was considered a little too much, and they decided to tone it down to its current state in order to preserve the "attractive succubus" concept.
  • One early attempt at preserving her signature high-uptime stealth but making it manageable was by making a full quarter of the map in a constant shroud which would move around the map and be visible on the minimap, with Evelynn only becoming invisible if she was in it. This particular concept was scrapped as it was too chore-like and didn't have satisfying payoff.

Ezreal

• On original announcement, Ezreal's abilities had different names that were changed come final release: Mystic Shot was called Vector Shot, Essence Flux was Chains of Light, Arcane Shift was Dimensional Pocket, and Trueshot Barrage was Trueshot Blast.
• One tested idea for Ezreal's 2018 rework was a short-ranged peel spell where he'd plant his gauntlet on his chest, firing a blast that would knock enemies backwards, skipped for being not a good fit for Ezreal's playstyle.

Gangplank

• His "Captain Gangplank" skin had a few potential names in development, including "Dread Gangplank", "Dread Pirate Gangplank", and "Maurader Gangplank".
• For his 2015 VGU, one tested new ultimate informally dubbed "Pirate Gundam" had him summon a giant, tank-like unit that would either fire cannonballs or charge into enemies similarly to Malphite. It was scrapped for being too overpowered and requiring too much additional attention for design teams to implement.

Gnar

• Mega Gnar had a few different abilities during prototyping:
  • His Wallop was originally both a stun and had an auto-attack chaining effect, simplified to just the stun for clarity and to avoid overloading his kit.
  • His Crunch originally knocked up enemies on landing, which felt satisfying and thematically cohesive, but this feature was cut since it seemed Mega Gnar already had enough CC in his kit.
  • Gnar's ultimate was completely different, and was essentially the precursor to Tahm Kench's Devour when used on an enemy champion. It also tested well, but Riot opted to save the mechanic for an entirely new champion as a core part of their kit (eventually becoming Tahm Kench) rather than tacking it onto one half of Gnar's involuntarily transforming kit.
• Gnar's W originally had no damage cap against monsters. This changed when playtesters discovered that Gnar in the Jungle was a complete Game-Breaker.

Gragas

• His Gragas Caskbreaker skin was potentially instead named "Gragas the Wanderer", "Cleric Gragas", and "Gragas Stoutbrew".

Gwen

• Gwen was originally envisioned as being more actually doll-like than being a doll-turned-human, but the archetype was rejected for making her too similar to Orianna and Shaco in concept.
• As revealed in her Champion Insights, early iterations of her kit were designed with crowd control in mind, such as using a needle and thread to yank opponents towards her or to spear two opponents together and swap their positions. This was scrapped as giving her too much crowd control when she was already a high-damage skirmisher would almost assuredly be game-breaking.
• An early version of her Hallowed Mist ability behaved more like Mordekaiser's ultimate, allowing her to cut a section of reality with her shears that anyone could enter and exit and granted immunity to damage.

Champions H-M

Hecarim

• Hecarim was initially conceived as merely "the ghost of a dead knight who could summon his spectral horse," but was then built up during development into the undead centaur being he's presently known as.

Hwei

• One of Hwei's potential spells was an ability to create a Personal Raincloud over his head that would put him under stealth, which was scrapped for being too problematic for balance.
• One early approach to Hwei's Ability Mixing high concept was of mixing one of three colors with a specific shape that it would be cast as (red circle, blue line, etc.), with a version also allowing for variants for his ultimate ability slot (which — in lieu of giving him an actual ultimate — would instead grant him somewhere around 16 total spells). This was reworked due to it being too restricting and unsatisfying, with the final version of Hwei depicting his mixed spells as distinct abilities from the get-go.
• Another scrapped ultimate ability concept (tested during a phase where he had three different ult options) had Hwei fall asleep and enter the spirit realm, leaving his body behind, becoming visible but mobile and untargetable for a few seconds before exploding to deal burst damage, then returning to his body.

Illaoi

• Pretty early on in her design, Illaoi was already envisioned as being a female juggernaut. There was some contention in the idea of giving her armor, but this was done away with in favor of showing her own raw strength and physique. They also tested with the idea that she could summon tentacles directly through her tattoos, but while they kept the tattoos, the concept felt too evocative of Braum or Udyr, so she was given her totem as a weapon instead.

Irelia

• One early concept for her 2017 VGU her featuring 6 arms, with each arm holding a blade.
• During testing for her 2017 gameplay update, Irelia's Defiant Dance was reportedly a full counter able to reflect damage, including Syndra's ultimate.

Jayce

• Early in development and before his hammer/cannon weapon was finalized, Jayce was very originally planned to have three different forms (a two-handed weapon, a sword and shield, and a ranged glaive), but there were difficulties in implementing this in gameplay as opposed to if it were just two. When it was reduced to two forms, the plan was then that he would have two different melee forms, which led to some interesting abilities, but ultimately the setup didn't feel distinct enough, so it was reworked again into the melee/ranged dichotomy of the final product. Some unused abilities:
  • One tested version of Thundering Blow which allowed him to stun enemies with the enemies he knocked away, allowing him to "golf swing" minions into enemy champions for a stun.
  • It was tested that he have a different ultimate for each form: with his hammer, he could slam down and create a shockwave that knocked up enemies, and with the sword and shield, he could march forward with an impenetrable wall to knock back enemies.

Jhin

• RiotAugust's very first pitch for the champion concept that would become Jhin was a Demacian assassin sniper, one who would warn his victims ahead of time simply because he was that good at killing them. A conceptualized story beat leading up to his release was that Jarvan III was targeted for assassination and would die.
• As mentioned below in "Cancelled Champions", Jhin became a byproduct of a "cyborg cowboy bounty-hunter" codenamed Deadeye, originally more of a sniper often compared to Caitlyn. As development wore on, elements of his kit and design fragmented into newer concepts, including making Deadeye a much more theatrically-designed Mad Artist we now recognize as Jhin. Visual elements of the Deadeye version of the champ inspired his High Noon skin.
• Jhin was originally named "Jin" during development, but added an extra H due to it being easily confused with Jinx, another one of RiotAugust's champions.
• One tested iteration of his Dancing Grenade had it bounce infinitely rather than the set cap of four. It even preserved its damage-increase-on-last-hits mechanic, leading playtesters to set up thousands of minions in lines across the map to chain-reaction bounce until it reached an enemy Annie.
• His ultimate, Curtain Call, was originally considered to be called "Make Them Beautiful", but had to be changed due to localization concerns.

Jinx

• According to her ORIGINS blog post:
  • Jinx herself originally had a more traditional design with a standard voluptuous hourglass figure (and also a lot more tattoos), which proved to be a problem as she was too generic, eventually developing her into her Small Girl, Big Gun archetype in the final product.
  • Gameplay-wise, Jinx was conceptualized as "a weapon-swapping ADC, like a ranged Udyr" where each main ability simply switched what gun she'd use for her basic attacks, with her ultimate changing based on her current stance. After trying out all sorts of weapon combinations to see what would fit (pistols, rifles, crossbows, tasers, taser crossbows, semi-automatic machine guns, mini-guns, grenades, a rocket launcher, and even a flamethrower) and finding this exclusive gameplay pattern boring, Riot consolidated her weapon-swapping into a single ability with just two distinct options, her current Switcheroo! ability. Riot eventually did come around to a proper "gunswap marksman" concept with Aphelios, albeit with drastically different implementation.
  • Several ultimate abilities were also tested:
    • Drop the Hammer summoned a cannon to fire a bomb onto any position on the map, but because its detonation time was 10 seconds, it was incredibly easy to simply walk away.
    • Homing Missiles fired six missiles to automatically chase down enemy champions, dealing instant death if they couldn't avoid them.
    • WTF Missiles fired a massive swarm of missiles that would travel in unpredictable directions, cut for being... well, too unpredictable.
    • Circle of Cats fired a bomb across the map that surrounded the first enemy hit with magic smoke, causing enemies who crossed it to turn into harmless kittens, which was considered too impractical and indirect for Jinx.

K'Sante

• K'Sante was tested with various different abilities that had him interacting more with terrain. One of these was an alternate version of his ultimate where he'd drop his tonfas and use them as dash/terrain points.

Kai'Sa

• Planned as a marksman champion from the beginning, she had a few different initial concepts from artwork alone:
  • A "Zaunite life-essence-drainer", which slowly got done away with after her creators latched onto a "predator" concept that became more associated with The Void.
  • An ex-Purifier (the faction Lucian is representative of) who herself fell to darkness and undeath.
  • A Vampire Hunter who herself turned into a vampire.
  • A human who created a Void-powered suit (created by a Void virus and not a symbiote like in the final version) to hunt down the Voidborn.
  • Another early scrapped narrative idea was having Kai'Sa be part of "a new generation of Void creature" trying to emulate humans.
• Kai'Sa's "wings" on her Void suit were originally separated and hovering behind her, with Riot toying with the idea that they were additional Void creatures tagging along with her before they were all made a single being.
• After settling on the idea of a Void-themed marksman, there was much deliberation on what she would use as a weapon, with one early idea being that she used a crystalline "void rifle" out of energy from her body, later iterated to be made out of the body itself.

Kayle

• For her 2019 VGU:
  • one version of her passive gave her the ability of "true flight" at level 16, allowing her to fly over walls when out of combat, though this turned out to be very easy to abuse.
  • According to RiotAugust, her E was once tested as a dash which granted her great attack speed. She also had a version of her ultimate where as she shielded someone with invulnerability, she would also fly into the sky to become untargetable, then shoot a meteor at them to damage nearby enemies.

Kayn

• Kayn was originally envisioned as a nemesis to Xayah and Rakan (and during development was even named "Nemesis"), though this was phased out as his conflict with the Darkin was considered more interesting.

Kindred

• One of Kindred's first solid concepts after the initial concept of a "dual character jungler marksman" had Lamb being a mythological symbol of life to Wolf's death, which was then changed to both of them representing death.

Kled

• Kled's abilities went through multiple changes during prototyping:
  • Instead of Beartrap on a Rope, Kled had an AoE flurry ability where he repeatedly striked all enemies in front of him, akin to Pantheon's Heartseeker Strike but mobile. The "melee flurry" aspect was reworked into his current Violent Tendencies.
  • In place of Violent Tendencies, he had a completely different ability where he tossed a net that stunned enemies in an AoE, cut for not being a great fit for him.
• His "Sir Kled" skin went through a huge namepool before settling on its current title. Among the runners-up were "Kled the Cavalier" and "Grass Knight Kled".

Lee Sin

• Lee Sin was one of the game's first-designed champions and was hinted at around the game's release, but was seemingly cancelled due to his design at the time not being interesting enough. He eventually did see the light of day in 2011 with a new design, with his previous design inspiring his "Traditional Lee Sin" skin.
  • He also had a rarely-seen third main design during very early stages of the game, featuring a conical straw hat.
• His "God Fist" skin was potentially instead named "Heaven's Fist Lee Sin", "Undefeated Lee Sin", "Invinicible Lee Sin", and "Sacred Order Lee Sin".

Lillia

• Lillia had a few different gameplay plans:
  • Giving her the ability to make enemies fall asleep was imperative as she was envisioned with a dream-based theme early on. Riot wanted to add it to a regular ability, but after testing options out (such as a skillshot that could affect multiple people or sleep-inducing traps), it was seen as too oppressive and non-interactive, so it was made into her ultimate.
  • Her passive's damage-over-time effect originally didn't have a cap on monsters, which turned out to be incredibly broken as it allowed a level 1 Lillia to solo-kill the Baron. It was also supposed to heal her to give her sustain, but it was cut for launch for being too overpowered (it eventually was added back in for patch 11.14, but modified to be a lot more conditional).
• Lillia's very original character archetype was "form swapping jungler on a timer," with early depictions of Lillia depicting her with two different, diametrically opposing forms, including a shy priestess/murderer, traveling shaman/exorcist "with a dark side", and a deer whose personality changed with the seasons (joyful and fiery like the summer, but also cold and melancholy like the winter). However, while Rioters loved the deer archetype, they struggled to meaningfully integrate any sort of Duality Motif in gameplay, which went up to a dream/nightmare dichotomy that would change her from a bruiser to an assassin every five minutes. In the end, this was all scrapped as playtesters ultimately hated the high concept, but they decided to preserve the elements that did work (namely her faun-inspired design and focus on dreams), resulting in her final product.

Lux

• Elementalist Lux went through many different potential names in development, including things like "Queen of the Elements Lux", "Queen Lux", "Infinity Lux", "Aegis of the Elements Lux", "Evoker Lux", and more.

Milio

• A very early idea for Milio was that he was a chef who collected ingredients to mix in his pot for spells. This was scrapped when it was decided that Milio should be a "back-to-basics" Enchanter after a string of high-complexity champions, but this Ability Mixing concept would later be reborn into Hwei with his "paint-mixing mage" concept.

Miss Fortune

• Her "Captain Fortune" skin went through a few potential names, including "Baroness Fortune", "Queen Fortune", "Mistress Fortune", to even simply "Sarah Fortune".
• A voiceover update was toyed with around 2018 as Riot was doing voicework for her Gun Goddess skin, but it ultimately did not come to pass. According to Riot Meddler, some lines were recorded and tested, but their internal feedback was immensely divisive with too many differing opinions of what her proper characterization should be, causing the update to be shelved. With her newly-recorded voiceover for Legends of Runeterra, they finally settled on preserving her iconic Femme Fatale characterization with a smattering of drama here and there.

Mordekaiser

• In 2015, his title was planned to be changed from "The Master of Metal" to "The Lord of Death" on the PBE. After widely negative fan reception, it was then replaced with his current title, "The Iron Revenant".
• With his 2019 update, Mordekaiser was explicitly stated to have had several potential lines and interactions planned but cut in order to make him less "chatty" and "conversational". One revealed potential interaction was with first encountering Kled: "What is... a taco?"
• Early on in his VGU, one explored idea for his visual design was making him resemble a miniature version of the Immortal Bastion, with a more architectural armor motif with legs resembling walls, shoulders resembling towers, and banners functioning as capes.
• Originally when Mordekaiser banished enemies into the Death Realm, it was intended to make him look completely different, portraying him as an infinitely and unknowably horrific force, but it was greatly scaled back to just making him headless and with a floating crown due to the idea being too out of scope and potentially confusing.
• Many abilities for his 2019 VGU were tested and scrapped:
  • A passive based on his original ultimate, where every kill/assist on an enemy enslaved their soul and forced them to fight for him, able to have up to all 5 enemies at a time.
  • A basic attack passive that left him with glacial attack speed at first, but consecutive attacks caused his mace to turn into a chained flail with bonus attack speed and range.
  • Several versions of his Q were tested revolving around the shape of the attack. One version had him slam his mace/flail into the ground before sweeping it towards his mouse, with its shape changing depending on which direction it was relative to himself.
  • Several defensive abilities were tested before his final W, including an ability to become an untargetable wraith, losing his ability to attack, but gaining armor/MR based on nearby enemies and immunity to slows.
  • An ability to shoot a circular, damage-dealing missile that moved very slowly and temporarily sent enemies into the Death Realm, operating similarly to how it does in his final ultimate, with the bonus of Mordekaiser able to move alongside the missile/Death Realm and becoming untargetable while approaching enemies.
  • Several versions of his ultimate were tested, including ones that allowed multiple people to enter into the Death Realm beyond the 1v1 duel. When the solo duel was settled on, different cast paradigms were tested, including making it a skillshot rather than a point-and-click ability. They also originally made it so the Death Realm removed turret interactions, but they were reintroduced in order to ensure he wasn't unstoppable with the ultimate once ahead.
  • He was originally tested to have attack damage-based ratios for his abilities, but they were changed back to being ability power-based once Riot realized how limited his itemization was.
  • During production, Darkness Rise was originally called Harvester of Sorrow (distinct from a previous ability of the same name), Obliterate was called Nightfall (the name of Mordekaiser's weapon), Death's Grasp had multiple potential names including Creeping Death and Master of Puppets, and Realm of Death had many quick production names like Damnation, Shadow Realm, Spirit Realm, Death Realm, etc.

Morgana

• While Morgana's half of her and Kayle's dual 2019 update was primarily expected to be merely cosmetic, several new potential abilities were tested on her.
  • One tested replacement for her passive had her become "enraged" when at low health, making her deal true damage per second to nearby enemies and giving her a massive surge of movement speed and spell vamp. It was cut for being too intense for the rest of her otherwise perfectly functional kit.
  • Another attempt at a new passive had her gain movement speed towards enemies she had damaged or were hit with crowd control from allies, which was cut due to negative playtester feedback.
  • Yet another attempt at a new passive gave her bonus auto-attack range towards enemies she snared, which also allowed her to steal health.
  • Yet another passive, this time based on her ultimate, gave her an "ascending power tiers" mechanic similar to Kayle, each level granting her bonuses like movement speed towards enemies (which was kept), massive healing, and true damage.
  • A version of her Tormented Shadow was also tested that would deal bonus critical damage to enemies on low health.

Champions N-S

Nami

• During PBE, most of her abilities had different names but were changed before release. Her passive was titled Celerity, Aqua Prison was instead called Hydroblast, Ebb and Flow was called Surging Tides, and Tidecaller's Blessing was called Aqueous Empowerment.
• At one point, Nami's Tidal Wave ultimate was supposed to be global and vector-targeted^note The same aiming paradigm used for Viktor's Death Ray and Rumble's Equalizer, coming in from one side of the map to sweep the entire thing and knock everything in their direction. In Ziegler's words, "It was an awesome concept with mediocre gameplay."

Nautilus

• Xypherous originally intended Nautilus to have an ultimate that involved picking up an enemy champion and spinning them around him, but it sadly didn't pan out. He also wanted Nautilus to have a base movement speed even lower than the bottom-of-the-barrel 300 Nautilus has right now, but said they wouldn't let him make it any lower.
• Nautilus' "Worldbreaker" skin went through several potential titles shared with its skin line, including "Era of Gods", "Mythic Retribution", "Finis Mundi", "Forsaken", and "Dawn of Ruin". One was even simply just "Na'tilus".

Neeko

• One of Neeko's tested abilities was an ultimate where she set up a high-range trap nest that would deal a lot of damage, with the idea that she could disguise herself as allies to lure enemies into it. It was scrapped for being too frustrating to play against.
• Some of Neeko's earlier concept art had her looking more wild and threatening than her current version, intended to showcase how she's less influenced by civilization, but Riot instead opted to a more human-like appearance to showcase her constantly learning.
• Other early concepts for Neeko was that she was a "muse character" who escaped from a painting, and an "Avante Gaurde"[sic] oracle.
• For her 2023 midscope update: designer Riot Phlox considered a rework to her Shapesplitter ability by making it so that Neeko's clone — rather than simply moving straight forward — would move along a path that would "mirror" your actual movement, but this was scrapped for being too confusing, later reworked to just giving the player full control of the clone's pathing. Many ideas to update Pop Blossom were also tested, including a version that generated four moving clones while landing (again, cut for being too confusing and noisy), a version where Neeko turned invisible, and they almost tested a version where it disguised everyone in the ult (enemy or ally) randomly as someone else.

Nocturne

• Nocturne was a candidate in a poll to decide which champion would be relaunched in 2020, but it was won by Fiddlesticks and Volibear, and the following VGU went to Dr. Mundo. His later inclusion in Legends of Runeterra suggests that Riot will be holding off any future relaunches for a much longer time.

Nunu & Willump

• One early concept for Nunu and Willump's 2018 relaunch was that they were part of a Freljordian traveling circus who secretly stole and hid artifacts from Lissandra and the Frostguard, including a True Ice shard that gave Nunu ice powers.
• One early tested CC spell for the VGU involved throwing out a lasso to latch onto enemies, where they could move freely within Nunu and Willump's radius but not beyond it.

Orianna

• Orianna's title was teased as "The Clockwork Girl", but was changed to the current "Lady of Clockwork", most likely due to copyright concerns.
• Reportedly, Orianna's first incarnation by Xypherous was based on Hong Meiling from Touhou Project.

Ornn

• Ornn was first conceptualized as a "living forge" champion from as early as 2013, having a rocky creation/development cycle over several years — influencing other champions along the way like the 2014 relaunch of Sion — until finally being saved in 2017.
• One of Ornn's scrapped abilities during development — affectionately referred to as "Murderhenge" — had him summoning a volcano that erupting boulders around the area, stunning enemies on landing, which Ornn could then charge into to cause them to explode. It was fun, but was also too chaotic, random, and noisy.
• Another scrapped ability had him upgrade his own hammer into a different weapon as a steroid for a set number of auto-attacks: an "extra hammer" for bonus AoE, a blade for piercing damage, or an axe for crowd control.
• One concept scrapped just before Ornn was released was a "Weapons of Legend" sidequest, where his team would need to take down 5 objectives (such as dragons or Baron) in order to obtain Masterwork items. Recorded, but unused dialogue reflecting this quest (namely the need to return to base to receive the upgrade) could still be found in the game's data.

Pantheon

• One early story concept given for Atreus' backstory for his 2019 VGU was introducing a child he would have to raise and mentor "a la Wolverine and X-23," intended to help ground and properly establish his motivations and philosophy. However, this was scrapped due to it adding unnecessary complication to his story and Rioters not being a fan of it anyway, with the later-added Iula and her farm serving the same general story purpose.

Pyke

• He had a few considered names before settling on "Pyke", including "Shar" and "Jaull", the latter of which became reused as the name of the supernatural fish that ate him.
• Early on he was designed as wielding a sickle and a harpoon as weapons, but the sickle in particular was removed has his gameplay iterations at that time didn't have any "hook" abilities and they didn't want to be misleading (making the fact he did ship out with a "hook" ability pretty Hilarious in Hindsight).
• Originally conceived as day 1 as an "assassin support", Pyke went through a bunch of scrapped ability concepts, including:
  • Permanent invisibility if he was within range of an ally but not in combat.
  • A "Zed ult on a basic ability that worked off of your team's damage."
  • A dash that exhausted enemies he hit, which would reset if he hit 2 or more.
  • A "kidnap spell" where he marked his current position, which he could then reactivate in a time window to dash in a direction, and if he hit an enemy, he would teleport back and take his catch with him. This was turfed because playtesters quickly discovered that the best use of this would be to kidnap enemies directly into the fountain for an instant kill, or simply take an important carry far away from the teamfight and lead to a decisive 4v4 victory.
  • One idea tied to a design concept was that he had a fishing net for a cape, and when he dashed, he would be able to hook enemies with it.
  • Another tested ultimate was an AoE spike ability which shielded him, slowed enemies, and applied a stack of his then-passive which allowed him to teleport behind fully-stacked targets. The point of this was to give him more utility, but it was scrapped as it made him feel less like an actual assassin and more of just a mobile support.
• Various thematics for a dark assassin support were tested out, including making him an undead yordle from the Shadow Isles. They also considered making him a sand wraith in Shurima, which then inspired his launch Sand Wraith skin.

Qiyana

• The original concept for Qiyana and the new faction of Ixtal at large was to create a "metal person" (more specifically described in concept art as an "alloy girl"), experimenting with making a new race from an entirely new continent away from Runeterra. When Riot realized they didn't have the time or bandwidth to do that, Ixtal was reworked into a new faction, with Qiyana being representative of that.
• Early concept art also showed that Riot considered giving her multiple weapons beyond her ring blade based on the elements she chose (including whips, claws, and a trident), but it was cut due to concerns about the amount of assets that would need to be designed and the sustainability of them for future designers.
• It was originally planned for Qiyana to properly wield fire among her other available elements, but it fell through as there is little to no fire in the map for her to absorb from. Her ultimate was also much more drastic in that it exploded the entire river rather than just a small segment of it.

Quinn

• Quinn was very originally based on a much older "Eagle Rider" concept resembling a traditional barbarian with a bow◊.
• When she got her "Falconer" identity settled on, she was originally envisioned as a being a melee assassin with two swords, up until someone suggested "Why not ranged?"
• Her in-game title was supposed to recognize her as "Quinn & Valor", but was reduced to just "Quinn" due to client issues (said issues would later be curbed with the 2018 relaunch of Nunu & Willump).

Rakan

• Built as part of a "duo botlane" concept, Rakan had a few different abilities in concert with Xayah:
  • During one phase where the two were described as more mage-like and as "a Storm Shaman and a Storm Elemental," one tested ability had them each fire a continuous beam similar to Vel'Koz's ultimate, which could combine together into a single "megabeam".
  • One iteration of the duo had one of them summoning storm cloud that could be used to strike enemies with a lightning bolt, and the other being able to blow enemies away with a gust of wind, with a Combination Attack to push the cloud while it was charging to stun enemies from a further distance.
  • Another version of the duo made them more into villainous vampires, testing out gameplay based on a day/night cycle similar to Dota 2, which was interesting but considered "one too many layers" as they already had the duo mechanics.
  • Originally the two had a shared passive that would later become Yuumi's gameplay hook, where upon death one of their spirits could tether onto their still-living partner and continue fighting together.

Rammus

• Rammus was originally supposed to have more voice lines (and in fact does in earlier localizations, such as in French, German, and Spanish), but their initial recording was apparently awful, so another was recorded within 15 minutes as a temporary placeholder... and the rest is history.

Renata Glasc

• According to Renata Glasc's Insights post, Riot was originally considering making Silco from Arcane into a playable champion as he broadly fit in with the thematics they were seeking (namely an "evil enchanter" rooted in sinister capitalism). However, it was decided Silco as a character didn't reach the standards for a playable League champion, and when they tried beefing him up only for him to stop feeling like Silco, they abandoned the idea and designed an entirely new character.

Renekton

• In a sneak preview before his official announcement, Renekton was first teased with the title of "The Eater of Souls", though it was almost immediately changed to his current title, "The Butcher of the Sands". Similarly, his Cull of the Meek ability used to be called Tyrant's Reach.

Rek'Sai

• Rek'Sai was envisioned as a "Burrower" champion from the start, a concept which went through different versions in development.
  • She initially started with the idea of being under stealth while underground, but it was quickly discarded as it was simply too much for her kit.
  • One of her unburrowed Q abilities was a simple passthrough dash, similar to that of Fizz. Another was a channeled "Void Cleave" ability that ghosted her and had her deal constant damage to all enemies in front her.
  • Initially, her unburrowing ability was merely a stance change without the knockup, which was instead part of an ultimate consisting of slow-moving stealth and untargetability.

Rell

• It was planned for Rell to have voice interactions with Taliyah due to their similarities, but they were cut out due to it being over their line count and the frequency in which they'd interact (Taliyah being a pretty uncommon champion and in a completely different lane to Rell) wasn't seen as worth it.

Riven

• Riven was originally pitched as "Gooder than good" according to her designer Xypherous. She also had an alternate backstory about her being an exile from Demacia, which was changed just before release. This is the reason for the Redeemed Riven skin, which was released with her on launch but looks notably Demacian and seems unfitting both in appearance and name-wise to her current backstory.
• Riven's Runic Blade passive used to be called "The Art of War", which can be seen in her original Champion Spotlight.
• Riven's ultimate (where her shattered BFS magically reforms in her hands) was an idea from very early on, originally tested with a more drastic transformation animation, but unfortunately had to be cut to fit her fast-paced gameplay, it instead being indicated by a voice line. As for what her ultimate would actually do, however, many versions were tried:
  • One version had her gain a rage meter very similar to Shvyana, continuously charging up while attacking and allowing her to stay in the form longer. This was cut since Riven was already an aggressive champion, making it overkill.
  • One version made her abilities reset her auto-attacks, and her auto-attacks reset her abilities, which was canned because "It was just... kind of terrible."
  • Another ultimate made her deal a sonic boom on activation, knocking opponents back and creating distance, which was cut for being counter-intuitive for an aggressive melee fighter.
  • Another gave her the ability to shoot laser beams every time she used an ability, which was greatly reduced into a single Wind Slash for being overkill.
• During late 2015, Riven was briefly given a rework on the PBE to change up her passive based around a new resource called "Edge": damaging enemies with her abilities, in addition to buffing her next basic attack, also granted her small amounts of "Edge" that collectively buffed her damage before decaying rapidly, with Wind Slash — rather than dealing bonus damage on weakened enemies — dealing bonus damage scaling directly off her current "Edge". Riven mains weren't receptive to the changes, and the rework was quickly scrapped.

Ryze

• Ryze Whitebeard skin was potentially instead named "Ryze the Azure Conjurer", "Ryze the Ageless Conjurer", and simply "Wizard Ryze".
• According to concept art for the "Ryze: Call of Power" short, a couple of unused characters he would've encountered on his journeys across the world was a Zaunite assassin, and very interestingly a little girl who suspiciously resembles Daisy, Annie's stepsister seen in her origins video.

Samira

• A few experiments with her Gameplay Grading system:
  • Originally her passive was meant to go up to 7 stacks/grades◊, but it was considered too difficult to achieve and was reduced to 6. The icon for the 7th stack/"F" grade remains in the game as a byproduct of this, left just in case Riot changes their mind.
  • Other tested means of achieving "stylish" gameplay included rewarding players for dodging skillshots and perfectly timing her abilities.
  • The first ability tested involved her targeting enemies for 10% of their max health in true damage per stack. This would mean that with a full combo, she would've been able to blow off 70% of an enemy's health in one go.

Senna

• One tested version of her kit was much more mobile, wielding 2 pistols, with an ultimate that allowed her to teleport around enemies Ezreal-style after every attack, and a passive that allowed her to infinitely stack up percent-max HP damage. She was also tested to have been able to heal minions and turrets with her Q.

Sett

• Sett was originally envisioned as a grappling-heavy juggernaut, with early versions of him featuring four arms to grapple enemies with. This didn't pan out in the long run as grappling introduced loads of technical concerns, and when he was reworked to focus on straightforward brawling, the concept was greatly reduced, and the four-arm silhouette was phased out.
• Among the early designs for the grappling juggernaut included a "Darkin behemoth", a classy, but built robot butler from Piltover, and a proposed Targonian Aspect of Might.

Shaco

• Shaco had at one point been testing for a rework, with one iteration giving him an ultimate that turned him into a missle that would then respawn upon colliding with an enemy. This caused problems in colliding with Yasuo's Wind Wall, which made Shaco disappear from the entire game.

Shyvana

• Shyvana was a candidate in a poll to decide which champion would be relaunched in 2020, but it was won by Fiddlesticks and Volibear. While she had a strong run for third place (placing first in China) and Riot openly acknowledged the high potential demand for a VGU, this was iceboxed in favor of updating Dr. Mundo instead, with her appearances in Legends of Runeterra and Wild Rift being mostly the same as usual. It was later confirmed to be further delayed by producer Reav3; Rioters had great interest in reworking her, but it had to be pushed back even more, especially since Udyr won the audience poll for the 2022 VGU, and both champions would require exceptional amount of work (Udyr already has 4 forms against 6 different skins; immediately working on Shyvana having 2 forms among 7 skins was simply not in Riot's production timeline). After coming in as a runner-up in multiple VGU polls (losing to Udyr in 2021 and Skarner in 2022), Riot has publicly acknowledged Shyvana as a strong contender for a VGU they'll address without a poll — this was eventually set in stone in 2024, with Shyvana's VGU scheduled for a 2025 release.

Skarner

• Skarner's VGU undertook a pretty hectic development as Riot struggled to reach a consensus (internally and externally) on what to actually do with him, resulting in various ideas being presented in early previews that they'd later scrap:
  • From the April 2022 roadmap: One idea of a lore reboot was that he and the rest of the Brackern were ancient guardians of Shurima from before it was lost to the sand, being crystalline constructs powered by the souls of thousands of elite warriors. Another idea was passed that attached him more to the present day (more of a progression of his pre-VGU lore) that he was captured by Piltover and experimented on to turn him into a hextech cyborg guardian before he escaped and pledged revenge on the city. Neither of these were well-received, eventually leading to him instead being placed in Ixtal as a precursor of its elemental practices.
  • From a March 2023 update, Riot presented several attempts to lean into his "crystal scorpion" idea that failed for a variety of reasons:
    • Riot tested out playing into the "venom" aspect of his scorpion concept, making his abilities function as Damage Over Time spells, which fell through as they couldn't figure out how to design or properly balance such a paradigm.
    • Another test was trying to lean into the Power Crystal fantasy by integrating hextech, but this direction was turfed as things felt disjointed and very non-Skarner-like. In the end, Riot deemed the whole crystal theme too thematically dissonant with what they could accomplish with Skarner, and it was discarded to instead focus on a new direction surrounding elemental magic.
    • Another attempt was to lean into the story beat of Skarner trying to rebuild his race, with mechanics hinging around cultivating additional baby Brackern to assist him around the map. While it was emotionally resonating, this was also scrapped for feeling mechanically unsatisfying, as well as the fact Riot was already producing a "Cute Followers" champ in the form of Milio, whose production cycle overlapped that of Skarner's VGU.
    • One really big gameplay concept was that Skarner could continuously enhance his outer shell, molting off his carapace for new ones that would augment his playstyle. This had the issue of too much potential that Skarner as a character likely couldn't take advantage of, as well as being a logistical nightmare (Skarner already has so many skins that making the assets for all skins, including future ones, would be unfeasible), and the whole "adapting and growing" concept was too similar to that of Void monsters like Cho'Gath and Kha'Zix.

Sion

• His very original design before the game's official launch was initially going to be much different, appearing as less of a zombie and featuring blue skin and a red beard.

Sivir

• Very early on in the game's development, Sivir used to have a much different design with either blonde or pink hair. She was also at one point titled "The Bladedancer" (a little Hilarious in Hindsight as Irelia is currently named "The Blade Dancer").

Swain

• Regarding Swain's 2018 full visual/gameplay update, his newly-updated kit could've gone in a plethora of different ways. One shared element to his kit which was removed relatively late in development was a transformation inspired by his original ultimate, but bound to a regular ability; while transformed, Swain couldn't cast any spells but he'd slowly drain health from nearby enemies and gain extra movement speed, and could empower his transformations by absorbing the souls of fallen enemies for bonus damage. This was greatly retooled back into an ultimate after resulting in several problems with balance and thematics.

Sylas

• One potential direction Sylas (then simply known as a "Copycat" champion) could've taken was making him a magical, Houdini-style Escape Artist who intended to let Demacia capture him just to prove he could escape... only to be imprisoned for 20 years due to their Anti-Magic petricite, driving him mad.
• Riot had tested making Sylas' Hijack ultimate a skillshot instead of a point-and-click ability, but was found to be too weak and unreliable.
• Sylas was originally more mage-like, at different times possessed an ability that resembled Neeko's current Q, a skillshot that left a glyph which could be detonated with another for one-two combos, an ability to cleanse through crowd control, and an ability to absorb all damage received over a few seconds then unleashing it back onto enemies. This would be redone over time to make him more of a versatile brawler who could use majority of the ultimates his gameplay fantasy required.
• Sylas' ORIGINS dev blog specified that during the "straightforward mage" phase, Sylas was also envisioned as being a young, cute female mage to be played in the top lane. After initial playtesters felt that the ult-stealing high concept "felt mean", they went to the drawing board narratively to make a villain, leading to Sylas' current direction as a prisoner-turned-revolutionary. Even following this idea, designers briefly toyed with the idea that he wore spectacles (which he used to read all the books and manuscripts Lux gave him while in prison), and also that he had a pet lizard riding on his shoulder.

Champions T-Z

Taliyah

• Early in her development, Rioters experimented with giving her a much more destructive palette of earth spells, one of which was an alternate ultimate that completely removed all the natural terrain from a portion of the map. This was scrapped due to it not fitting her self-sustaining, disruptive control mage playstyle (this ability seemed to belong more to a support champion), as well as concerns of visually representing this effect.
• Before her kit was solidified, Taliyah's visual designers tried out giving her a "spool" accessory that she would use to gather up rocks to then unleash onto opponents. This would suggest that her abilities would realistically be Charged Attacks, but as her kit went in a different direction and made it so she has none, the idea was scrapped.
• Taliyah was planned to be the games first transgender champion, but after discussion among the champ team, the idea was nixed.^note This was later given a nod in the game itself from an interaction with Neeko, suggesting "Neeko not the only one who changes", but whether this is an inconsequential Development Gag or something else is ambiguous.
• Taliyah's auto attacks, rather than her appearing to sling rocks toward her enemies, instead resembled her ripping out a trail of rocks from the ground to use as projectiles. It looked visually impressive, but looked misleadingly powerful when compared to its actual damage and wasn't very clear to read.

Talon

• A few scrapped abilities:
  • An ability to throw out knives that created a slowing field, ending if Talon left its proximity. It was difficult to use, so it was reworked into his current Rake ability.
  • An ability to throw out a knife and then teleport to it, which was scrapped for being too reliable for escapes.
  • His current ultimate was also once tested as a basic ability.

Teemo

• Unused concepts from an early developer interview:
  • While very early on in defining ideas for an swift, mischievous lockdown champion, their very first idea for an ultimate was a beefed-up poison dart that would not only deal damage over time, it would also burn away their mana and put them to sleep for 6 seconds, with different versions having the target either wake up from the first instance of damage or completely invulnerable while asleep. Needless to say, it was changed for being total overkill, especially on bruisers.
  • Another ultimate idea thrown around was giving him a nuke to launch, "complete with laser targeting from stealth."
  • He originally had a "pathfinder" passive so that wherever he moved, he would leave behind a trail of vision and bonus movement speed for his allies, allowing him to better serve as an actual scout for the team. This was scrapped as not only did his high squishiness made this counterintuitive, Riot didn't have the tools at the time to make implementing this feature performance-efficient.
• In early 2019, Riot briefly tested a series of mini-reworks to Teemo on the PBE: Toxic Shot was changed into a passive (stacking damage when used in tandem with other poisons, such as from his shrooms and Blinding Dart), Guerilla Warfare was changed into an active ability where he could briefly stealth on demand, then emerge with an attack speed buff, allowing him to place more shrooms at the cost of nerfed damage, and also a cosmetic effect to his Blinding Dart that caused enemies to visibly miss during their attacks. This would end up getting scrapped due to mixed-to-negative feedback from Teemo mains, and due to his relative popularity and stability in spite of his problems, Rioters have little interest in tweaking him again. However, this iteration of Teemo was later ported to Wild Rift, becoming his base kit there.

Trundle

• Trundle's "Worldbreaker" skin went through several potential titles shared with its skin line, including "Era of Gods", "Mythic Retribution", "Finis Mundi", "Forsaken", and "Dawn of Ruin". One for his skin was simply just "Tr'ndle".

Twisted Fate

• His "Cutpurse" skin was chosen out of several other potential skin titles, namely "Seadog Twisted Fate", "Reckless (Twisted) Fate", and "Wanted (Twisted) Fate".

Udyr

• Throughout much of the production on Udyr's 2022 VGU, the design team fought repeatedly towards him having large antlers on his back. Following mixed reception from fans, complications regarding his in-game silhouette, and simply looking goofy on an actual in-game model (they struggled to make them not look like wings or propellers), the idea was scrapped to instead refocus on his "animal spirit" fantasy.

Urgot

• One of the iterations for his season 7 relaunch had Urgot being a much longer-range champion, with an E that launched a cluster bomb that spread into a field of mines which feared enemies. It was scrapped for being too overly punishing and unreliable.
• Early on during his VGU's creation, Rioters experimented with making him a more theatrical personality akin to a Batman villain like The Joker or The Penguin, one who would toy with his victims with deranged playfulness on top of his intellectual brutishness (his taunt at one point was a minute long and could only be interrupted if he was attacked, "but that got old really fast.") They also considered for his ultimate giving him a pipe organ to play a tune and give a monologue as he pulled his victim to their death, and it was only cut because the gameplay was too fast for it.
• Urgot's infamous "shotgun knees" were the result of devs coming up with a use for his multiple legs. Before arming them with shotguns, they experimented with giving them flamethrowers and the ability to simply stomp enemies.

Vayne

• Vayne was originally being designed to have "a big hat", and was almost cancelled after her concept artist couldn't make any design work for her. After at least 60 designs, they had enough and simply left her bareheaded.

Vel'Koz

• One of Vel'koz's earliest iterations had him be a lava-dwelling kraken known as the Keeper of Secrets, who reportedly influenced the "koz" in his final name.
• According to Riot August, Vel'Koz used to be in a vastly different design state during playtesting. Reportedly, while initially playtesting him, the designers were of the impression that he was really strong and they were constantly toning down his abilities to what they felt was a reasonably balanced state, but once they felt he was ready to go and shipped him to the live balance team for fine-tuning before release, they got reports that he was really weak. At this point of time, among Riot's ruleset for playtesting was "do not disrupt test points," which meant ganking was heavily discouraged, leaving Vel'Koz's design tuned entirely for laning against mages and other midlaners, but completely at the mercy of aggressive junglers, so he had to be additionally tweaked to make some of his abilities more reliable against such opponents.

Vex

• Vex was originally teased in a champion roadmap as being an artillery mage, but in the following roadmap, they announced that she was shifting away from it to become a more traditional burst mage. According to her Champion Insights article, the hook of her original artillery mage playstyle was that of creating portals to extend the range of ally projectiles (ultimates and hooks included). However, this was scrapped as Riot realized this meant having to tweak every projectile in the game to properly behave with the ability (something Riot estimated would take years to do), so she was reworked into a mage centered around anti-mobility.
  • During the artillery mage phase, they also tested the exact opposite, creating portals that would drastically slow down enemy projectiles, but this also created its own host of technical issues.
• Also shown in the Champion Insights article, one early idea for her visual design of interest was that she was accompanied by giant shadow arms, but Riot moved away from this as it suggested she was more of a fighter or puppeteer, not quite in line with her image. From that idea, they tested the idea of giving her "goo bunnies" as a form of pet that she could summon for her abilities, which was then reworked into Shadow.
• Vex's alternate skin at launch was supposed to be "Unbound Vex", similar in theme to Unbound Thresh. The plan was that in the Rise of the Sentinels event, after the party's encounter with her at the Freljord, she would return to Viego and become empowered by the Black Mist, a form she would carry when the party encountered her again at Piltover/Zaun. This was dropped and replaced with Dawnbringer Vex after she ended up getting delayed, as it was decided the Unbound skin wouldn't have much impact outside of the event.

Vi

• One of Vi's earliest stabs at a "Piltover Enforcer" champion was described as "a steam-punk capoeira fighter with dreads and robot legs", though it was apparently more interesting in concept than actual execution.
• One early version of Vi's ultimate gave her a brief suppression period once she reached her target, and could follow up by hitting one of the QWE buttons for a different combo: an extended damaging beatdown, a stunning slam into the ground, and a throw in a target direction. It was compressed into its current form because playtesters only picked one option 90% of the time.
• Before she was fully shipped, Vi's textures as one point were much more muted, with her gauntlets being more visibly dirty and beat-up to imply constant use and degradation over time. While this was thematically fitting, it was cut for looking very unclear and ugly during gameplay, so they were polished up for clarity.

Viego

• One of his voice lines on the PBE has him namedrop his previous kingdom as "Camaveia". This was confirmed to be not canon anymore due to the name translating rather unflatteringly as "old bed" in Portuguese, with it later being confirmed as "Camavor".
• Several abilities surrounding his use of Black Mist were tested. One form of his passive allowed him to control and move his allies across the map, and one ability allowed him to use Black Mist to walk through walls.
• From his Champion Insights:
  • One explored idea was to have him be "carried around" by his allies (similar to Yuumi's attaching gimmick) where he would follow them and strike whenever opportunity hit. It was fun, but didn't reflect the "king" aspect of his character as he would be subject to the whims of his allies, not vice versa.
  • In order to communicate that Viego was possessing an enemy, one idea was to engulf the entire champion model in a shader to appear as a ghostly spirit. This was deemed too unclear to discern in the thick of a fight, so it was toned down into a mild recolor and placing Viego's crown on them.
  • A few versions of a "Harrowing" ability using his Black Mist were tried out. One version had him cover the entire map in Mist, allowing him to stay in stealth almost permanently, but it was too annoying and similar to Evelynn. Another version filled the Mist with ghouls, with an ultimate that would summon them to attack enemies.
  • Experiments were also done to integrate the Blade of the Ruined King item into his gameplay. One idea was that he began games with it and it would become greater and more powerful as Viego collected more souls (starting off as a small, broken dagger and only with the slowing ability, and would grow over time to become the item's standard form and then into an even bigger upgrade), but was scrapped by the time designer August fleshed out more of Viego's main design and it became increasingly out-of-place. It was instead just integrated as a passive on his Q ability.

Viktor

• He was considered for a Rift Quest-themed skin where he served as a Game Master, with his staff having a 20-sided die on top.
• One tested idea for his upgraded Q was that it would bounce between enemies, additionally allowing him to build up a bigger shield. It was scrapped for giving him too much farming and teamfight power.

Volibear

• For his 2020 VGU, one major tested design identity was making him "unstoppable", with a passive that makes immobilizing crowd control merely slow him down. This was turfed as while it was seen as "surprisingly fair", this still consumed a lot of his power budget, and his designers decided to allocate it elsewhere. This design still influences his current Thundering Smash, whose cooldown resets if he's hit by crowd control. A revision of this idea has found a new place in Dr. Mundo's VGU.

Warwick

• One mechanic tested out for his 2017 VGU was the ability to slowly turn allies who helped him secure kills into wolves, granting them bonus movement speed to roam the map in packs. It was scrapped for being too far-off from Warwick's identity.

Wukong

• Wukong was originally a much more complex character, with a mechanic oriented around his clone that would echo his movement and attacks. However, this mechanic was reduced as Riot intended him to be more accessible and beginner-friendly, leading him to be simplified into his current kit (he was reworked in 2020 that expanded some of his clone's utility by allowing it to attack, but not move, keeping things simple).

Xayah

• Built as part of a "duo botlane" concept, Xayah had a few different abilities, some in concert with Rakan:
  • During one phase where the two were described as more mage-like and as "a Storm Shaman and a Storm Elemental," one tested ability had them each fire a continuous beam similar to Vel'Koz's ultimate, which could combine together into a single "megabeam".
  • One iteration of the duo had one of them summoning storm cloud that could be used to strike enemies with a lightning bolt, and the other being able to blow enemies away with a gust of wind, with a Combination Attack to push the cloud while it was charging to stun enemies from a further distance.
  • Another version of the duo made them more into villainous vampires, testing out gameplay based on a day/night cycle similar to Dota 2, which was interesting but considered "one too many layers" as they already had the duo mechanics.
  • Originally the two had a shared passive that would later become Yuumi's gameplay hook, where upon death one of their spirits could tether onto their still-living partner and continue fighting together.
• A few scrapped abilities for Xayah herself:
  • Xayah originally possessed a tweaked version of the ultimate that would eventually go to Kai'Sa, though rather than being a one-way trip, Xayah would be able to dash up a long distance near an enemy, and after roughly 5 seconds, she would then automatically dash back to her starting point to escape.
  • A version of her W that lasted until relatively late in the process granted her a single rotating missile around her (similar to Ahri's Fox Fire) which if an enemy got close would deal damage and grant Xayah movement speed, which was cut for being "soooo lammmeee."
  • One briefly tested experiment was an ability which had her summon a shadow clone of every ally that wasn't nearby, meaning she could instantly turn a 2v5 with her and Rakan into a 5v5.
  • One early passive concept was called "A Thousand Cuts", granting stacking damage with each consecutive basic attack. It stacked up to 10, and her damage was reportedly capable of full-on 1v9s.
  • She had a condition where damaging enemies from a specific side marked them. Damaging the same spot consecutively would grant bonus damage but make it decrease in size, making it increasingly difficult to land, but also more rewarding in damage.
  • One tested ability was described as "a ranged Yasuo Q with ammo", with her launching a super-fast dagger that she could quickly launch as long as she had ammo.

Yasuo

• In 2010, it was hinted that Riot was toying around with the idea of a double blade samurai champion but was put on hold, "though he may come back some day," hinted to have been a much earlier version of Yasuo. This concept may have been recycled when designing his brother, Yone, almost a decade later.

Yone

• One scrapped ability meant to parallel with Yasuo's Wind Wall was a "flame wall" that could block enemy vision, which, while powerful, had negligible impact for Yone himself and his team to appreciate.
• Yone's ultimate was at one point meant to be able to be combined with Yasuo's to make an even stronger ultimate if the brothers were on the same team. This was later scrapped, but was clearly scrapped late into development, as it can still be seen in one of Yone's promotional videos, Kin of the Stained Blade.^note Yasuo's ultimate can still be triggered off of Yone's, but the two do not combine into a different ultimate.
• Several details from the design process were revealed in a 3-part interview between Rioters Blaustoise and EndlessPillows:
  • Early in the process, the creative team toyed with the idea that in making the now-resurrected Yone a more ambiguous character whose connection to Yasuo was only implied, and would only go by the nickname people gave him in-universe: "Dusk", tied to another idea that he was known for fighting demons during sunset. This was scrapped as the secrecy was deemed redundant and they decided to fully confirm that this was Yone.
  • One early mechanic Yone was built around was the ability to let him dive onto enemies who are dashing or otherwise moving suddenly. This was core to his kit for a while, with several abilities being designed to synergize with it, including knockback-inflicting tornados (knockback could count as a "dash" he could follow up on) and an ultimate described as "you are the Gragas ult", where he would launch enemies up in the air, then blast them all away with wind. The ult in particular lasted for a long time in development^note In part also because it could synergize well with Yasuo's ultimate, but eventually Riot realized that the mechanic was ultimately too much to play against (and even play as), and once the core was removed, the other abilities were greatly reduced.
  • One iteration of his kit contained his current Q (a three-strike ramping attack where he would dash forward and create a tornado), and a W ability that was nearly identical, with the only difference being its third cast which would send him backwards and creating a tornado that pulled enemies towards him. This was surprisingly very exciting and helped lean into his Dual Wielding fighting style, but like above, it was considered way too much during playtesting, so it had to be drastically scaled down.

Yorick

• A few different abilities and mechanics were tested out for his 2016 VGU:
  • Riot had tried testing with giving Yorick an ability to resurrect allies as undead, with one version having them become explosive akin to Kog'Maw. This was cut as it meant part of his power counted on his allies dying, and there wasn't a way to make it fun or satisfying to either party.
  • At one point, Yorick could summon an endless amount of Mist Walkers, with an ult that caused all dead enemies to become Mist Walkers. To quote gameplay designer Solcrushed, "Anyone with a skillshot was unplayable."
  • An early version of his Q gave him based on a percentage of missing health (rather than max health), which made him surprisingly unkillable and prone to turtling sponge fights with other durable tanks.
• One scrapped narrative idea was that Yorick actually turned out to be the Ruined King all along, having suffered a form of amnesia and was never aware of it. This has since been completely turfed with the proper introduction of Viego as the actual Ruined King.

Yuumi

• At one point during development, her passive was "very close" to being named "Protecc/Attacc".
• A few scrapped abilities:
  • A few ultimates were tested that involved attaching to enemies, one of which involved diving onto and shoving an opponent an unlimited range until they collided with a wall, potentially knocking them out of the fight.
  • The devs experimented with making her unattached Prowling Projectile a significantly different spell focused on setting up fights than her attached version, which would be used to capitalize on the setup. One version of the unattached version had it charge for a brief second, then fire at "fastest speed of any missile in the game".
  • Another ability was tested that involved sending out a boomeranging orb that could be used to extend the source of her other abilities, giving them extra range and AoE.
  • Yet another ability was described as a "mini Ryze ult", teleporting her and anyone immediately near her a distance away, scrapped for being too overly reliable for escapes when things got too hairy.

Zoe

• During one early iteration, Zoe was able to create magical fairground rides out of her portals, which was later vastly simplified into just the portals of her final project.
• One early idea for a passive was a much more complex affair similar to Corki's "Package": every few minutes, Zoe would be able to collect a giant water balloon and run it down the map, and upon launching it, it would flood an entire section of the map and put enemies caught to sleep.

Cancelled Champions/Skins

• In addition to proper development, countless champions are conceptualized at a time with only a few considered great enough to make the cut. Even if they don't, Riot still tends to put projects "on hold" rather than outright cancel them, as some may be significantly reworked in the future to eventually see the light of day.
  • Omen was a ranged champion concept that was shelved. Rioters elaborated on why he didn't make the cut, reasons including he was felt to be lacking personality and his visual design clashed with his gameplay.
  • Komachi was a female, Grim Reaper-esque, scythe-wielding tank champion concept by Xypherous that died once the artwork concepts happened. While they were experimenting with gameplay kits, she fell apart when they couldn't make the champion design not cliche. This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when they finally did release a scythe-wielding character, Kayn, who purposefully wears cliche like a top hat.
  • Well the Hydrosoul was a very early attempt by Riot to make a water elemental champion. He was called off after someone asked if Riot had the graphical technology to make him look good, which they didn't at the time. Eventually they did receive the tech to do so, giving it another shot in the form of a sand mage named Seth (listed below).
  • Priscilla was a cancelled champ who was a princess with an arachne-like appearance. She was left in the dust, but her models and voice can still be found in the game files. A petition with 24,000 votes was formed for Riot to introduce her into the game, and while she herself didn't get in, this led to the creation of another spider champion in her place, Elise.
  • Some time before 2013, an unnamed "paper mage" was being iterated on, one who could manipulate words and paper to create effects, which at some point also became a sort of rune-based mage. He was scrapped as it was difficult both to make his source of power clear as well as simply make him look cool.
  • Gavid, the Plant King was a plant-themed caster champion discovered through datamining from as early as 2009, and was cancelled due to his design not fitting the game's artistic themes. Many assets, including his model and even gameplay descriptions already existed, featuring several gameplay elements (namely his thorn-based turrets and entangling abilities) that would be reincorporated into Zyra.
  • According to the developer Ezreal in 2012, there were plans for an unnamed duo champion that "started off as two crazy yordles in a motorcycle + sidecar (one with bombs and the other with a rocket launcher)." The bomber yordle was considered a lot more interesting and fun, with the concept evolving into Ziggs.
  • A cyborg cowboy bounty-hunter champion codenamed "Deadeye" was conceptualized as a single champion, with the concept of being a "target chooser" marksman rather than a "shoot whatever's in front of you" marksman like the others were. As development wore on, he was split into three— the bounty hunting mechanic went to Kindred, the "careful target chooser marksman" became Jhin, and the visuals were incorporated into his High Noon skin.
  • Azir was originally conceptualized as a sand mage named Seth, but he was scrapped before 2012 due to them being unable to finish him with their then-development cycle, as well as a smattering of other issues listed above in Azir's subfolder.
  • While conceiving a "shielding tank-support" champion that would eventually evolve into Braum, IronStylus made the concept art of a female Piltover engineer similar to Vi named◊ "CeeCee," but for whatever reason she was scrapped.
  • TotalBiscuit reached the maximum reward tier of its now-defunct Refer-A-Friend system, where the reward was an all-expenses paid trip to Riot HQ to help design a champion. After a fallout where his champion was denied, he gave the prize to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and in turn a fan named Samuel, and a prototype was designed for a space-marine-styled gladiator champion named Kadarin. While the experimental prototype was tested out, no further word was given on its progress, and designer DanielZKlein stated "it's unlikely you'll ever see Kadarin as a full package."
  • Ao Shin (pictured above) was an eastern-inspired, serpentine storm dragon who was teased early on in late 2013, even featuring in Spirit Guard Udyr's motion comic. He unexpectedly went through Development Hell due to various reasons, from gameplay and thematics not jiving to technical difficulties with animating his long, serpentine body, leading him to be scrapped and repurposed into Aurelion Sol in 2016. Ao Shin himself was salvaged in 2020... as a Fun Size Little Legend for Teamfight Tactics. Ao Shin's visual design would later become the basis for Aurelion Sol's Dragonmancer skin.
  • Husk was a champion designed by IronStylus but was then split into the designs of Camille and Kai'Sa. According to his description, Husk used to be Caitlyn's partner before Vi, but was paralyzed by Caitlyn and defected to Zaun, starting a band of mercenaries and outlaws called H.I.V.E., armed with a hextech jetpack and "baton".
• Some scrapped or reworked skins:
  • Karma has had a few scrapped skins found in the game's data: "Bladecraft Karma" was found in a texture file for a while, "Jade Empress Karma" was listed as a skin in the data, and "Lunar Karma" once appeared in the shop◊ by accident.
  • During a PAX AUS 2013, a "Futuristic Caitlyn" skin was presented at an art demo, disappearing shortly afterwards. It's believed that it eventually evolved into her current Pulsefire skin.
  • Mordekaiser had a "Dark Crusader" skin whose splash art and even model were completed, but was scrapped, with its data being recycled for his eventual King of Clubs skin.
  • Before her visual update, an unreleased "Arm Cannon Tristana" skin was found in the game's files. No further word has been made by Riot as to its existence and lack of release.
  • The SKT T1 skins representing the team's victory at 2015 Worlds originally looked much different when first introduced to the PBE◊, most notably with Sivir in the place of Kalista and the absence of Azir. After largely negative fan feedback, they went back to development for a few months to their current iteration, with SKT T1 Azir being added to represent Easyhoon and Sivir being replaced with Kalista at Bang's request.
  • It's highly likely that Dark Star Kalista was at one point planned to be a skin due to the files of Dark Star Thresh (the skin line's debut along with Dark Star Varus) featuring an unused dialogue flag listing her name◊.
  • Two skins, Sewn Chaos Amumu and Sewn Chaos Blitzcrank, were planned for release in 2017, but they weren't considered up to the same quality as other skins at the time and were never released. Oddly, the skins were fully modeled and their splash art was fully drawn before they were shelved.
  • Resistance Illaoi was the result of a 2017 poll where fans got to choose between one of three potential skins to be made a reality, the others being Adventurer Illaoi and Deep Space Illaoi.
  • A similar poll happened in 2019 for a Tristana skin. The winner was Demon Tristana, the other options being Sugar Rush Tristana and Galactic Gunner Tristana.
  • Dark Star Cho'Gath skin was created in collaboration with an individual named Bryan from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. The documentary video reveals that he and Riot had conceived of a few other skin ideas, including Elderwood Cho'Gath and War Drake Cho'Gath before settling on Dark Star.
  • A Prestige Edition of the Snow Man Master Yi skin was planned, but scrapped. This led to a bug in 2019 where some users rolled a skin shard for a nonexistent "Prestige Snowdown Master Yi" skin, with Rioters stepping in to clarify its origins.

Miscellaneous Content

• In 2012, it was discovered Riot had registered many web domains for a possible game called League of Legends Supremacy, and after President/CEO of Riot Games Mark "Tryndamere" Merrill's Twitter account was hacked, it gave suggestion to the idea that it was some kind of Collectible Card Game. Tryndamere later confirmed it was something in development, but then word on the specific product disappeared following 2012. A 2021 dev video revealed that this was because despite it being months from potential announcement and launch, several Rioters then played the newly-announced Hearthstone in PAX 2013 and realized it easily outshined what they created, causing them to quietly icebox the entire project. They eventually regained the confidence to create another TCG years later, and ​it would eventually be released in 2019 as Legends of Runeterra.
• Magma Chamber was a map tossed around for a long time, teased from as far back in 2010 (whose game mode apparently evolved into Dominion), but was then repurposed for a 1v1/2v2 gamemode map that was teased at All-Star 2013 Shanghai. However, feedback from pros playing on the map, as well as major technical optimization concerns, led for the map to be shelved for public use, and no word of it being introduced has came since.
• Around 2015 after the Bilgewater "Burning Tides" event, a leak surfaced of a future event titled "The Invasion of Bandle City"◊, reportedly born out of Riot's annual internal Thunderdome event and presumably would've involved conflict between Bandle City and Noxus. This would be verified years later as the artwork of Katarina would be found recycled in Legends of Runeterra, but for whatever reason, the event never saw the light of day.
• Concept artist IronStylus had been working on several champion visual updates before leaving Riot. Some of them (Evelynn, Irelia, Akali and Dr. Mundo) eventually got full VGU releases, with additional works-in-progress for Trundle and Vayne.
• In the preseason 2017 Assassins Update, CertainlyT experimented with adding a new dynamic in the jungle called "Base Guards", with each team getting a pair of "woodland satyr-like creatures" to spawn from base and patrol a quadrant of their jungle. Each one would attempt to fight enemy intruders, granting gold to the opposing team if they were defeated, and while they possessed high damage, they were also susceptible to burst, which was theorized to give assassins an avenue for relevance in high-level macro play. This likely inspired the "Jungle Guardians" of Nexus Blitz, which acts in the similar position of guarding their respective jungles, with high damage but takes bonus damage from single-target spells.
• A cinematic short surrounding Garen and Katarina was in development at some point in time, featuring Garen and Katarina first meeting as enemies, but end up having to work together to survive and developing a relationship. The development went as far as concept art and even a voiced story reel/animatic before it was shelved for unknown reasons. The origin story for Garen and Katarina's relationship would eventually be properly canonized in the events of the Katarina comic.
• Another, much shorter animated short featuring Darius fighting a horde of various soldiers, was also in the works at some point around 2017, but was also cancelled for unknown reasons.
• The Zed comic saw quite a bit of cut content, mostly to accommodate the page count.
  • The intro to issue 1 was originally supposed to feature Zed killing vastaya for their magic instead of the monk in the final version, which was turfed by Marvel who felt it made him too unlikable. There are around three further scenes where "Zed/Kayn were doing horrible stuff to monks and/or Vastaya", and in general, there was much content that had to be cut or altered due to rating restrictions.
  • One planned scene taking place during the Noxian war was meant to have Shen and Zed converse about their conflicting philosophies, as well as their relationships with Yevnai.
  • Many scenes with Akali had to be cut, including a fight scene between her and Kayn and a flashback to her childhood where she was dragged away from her father, who she'd never see again.
  • Many other flashback scenes were cut, including one scene where Zed was originally banished from the Kinkou for using the Tears of Shadow as Yvenai and Shen watched helplessly.
  • There were also many scenes of investigation which provided clues to the audience, allowing them to figure out where Jhin was going at the same pace as the characters, including one scene where Zed would scan a crowd for Jhin's face (the clues of which could help the reader narrow down to four potential suspects).
  • Early on, the climax of the final issue was completely different, with the twist that Master Kusho was still alive and Evil All Along being completely absent, instead featuring Jhin taking control of the temple Zed was kept prisoner in, with Shen arriving and using the same trap they used to catch him years before. This was changed as the editors "wanted a bigger ending."
• Right before preseason 11 and the massive overhaul of the item system, several new items were announced with different names (and presumably designs^note As mentioned in the article itself, everything about the items — including their icons, names, and stat values — were in flux until the last moment) to what they became introduced as on the PBE a month later.
  • "Kraken Slayer" was originally called "Behemoth Slayer". Its passive, "Bring It Down", was originally just "Harpoon".
  • "Sunfire Aegis" has a passive called "Flametouch", originally "Radiance".
  • "Frostfire Gauntlet" has a passive called "Snowbind", originally called "Frostfire".
  • "Turbo Chemtank" was originally called "Berserker Suit". Its passive, "Supercharged", was also called "Pursuit".
  • "Duskblade of Draktharr" had its passive replaced, but instead of changing its name to "Dusk" as announced, its previous name of "Nightstalker" was preserved.
  • "Eclipse" has a passive called "Ever Rising Moon", originally "Moon Strike".
  • "Prowler's Claw" has a passive called "Sandswipe", originally "From the Shadows".
  • "Everfrost" has a passive called "Glaciate", originally "Frigid Blast".
  • "Hextech Rocketbelt" has a passive called "Supersonic", originally "Fire Bolt" (the same as the item's previous incarnation, the "Hextech Protobelt-01").
  • "Riftmaker" was originally called "Axamuk's Folly". Its passive, "Void Corruption", was originally just "Corruption".
  • "Night Harvester" has a passive called "Soulrend", originally "The Reaping" (likely as to not conflict with "Reap" passive of the Cull item).
  • "Trinity Force" was given a new passive called "Threefold Strike", originally "Swift Strikes".
  • "Strikebreaker" has two innates: "Halting Slash" and "Heroic Gait", which were originally "Swift Slash" and "Nimble" ("Nimble" became the passive name for one of its component items, Hearthbound Axe).
  • "Divine Sunderer" was originally called "Divine Devourer". It also had an additional passive called "Feast", but was folded into the rest of its "Spellblade" passive.
  • "Locket of the Iron Solari" has two innates: "Devotion" and "Consecrate", originally "Intervention" (which instead became the name for the "Redemption" item's active ability) and "Iron Aura".
  • "Moonstone Renewer" has a passive called "Starlit Grace", originally "Vital Stream".
  • "The Collector" has a passive finalized as "Death and Taxes", originally "Contract Killer".
  • "Navori Quickblade" has a passive called "Deft Strikes", originally "Nimble Strikes".
  • "Force of Nature" has a passive simply called "Absorb", originally "Rhythm of Ionia".
  • "Serpent's Fang" has a passive called "Shield Reaver", originally "Shieldbreaker".
  • "Horizon Focus" has a passive called "Hypershot", originally "Focus Fire".
  • The passive of "Serylda's Grudge" was initially called "The Grudge" in beta, renamed to "Betrayal" on the official PBE implementation and 10.23 patch notes, and was then renamed again to its current title of "Bitter Cold".
  • "Silvermere Dawn" was originally called "Silverweave Legplates".
  • "Chempunk Chainsword" has a passive called "Hackshorn", originally just "Cursed".
  • "Chemtech Putrifier" was originally called "Chemtech Fumigator".
  • "Staff of Flowing Water" has a passive called "Rapids", originally "Riptide".
  • "Stirring Wardstone", "Watchful Wardstone", and "Vigilant Wardstone" were originally called "Ancient Runestone", "Ixtali Wardstone", and an inconclusively-named "Ixtali Wardstone Upgrade". Their shared "Arcane Cache" passive was originally called "Control" (interestingly, the Watchstone and Vigilant Wardstones preserve the "Visions of Ixtal" titles).
• Wild Rift wasn't Riot Games' first opportunity to make a mobile port of League — Tencent first requested Riot to make one following their acquisition of the studio in 2015, but they declined at the time, deeming that a mobile compression of such a sophisticated game would be impossible. This ironically spurned Tencent into making their own mobile MOBA, Honor of Kings, which exploded into becoming the biggest phenomenon in Chinese mobile gaming by the end of the decade and then brought to the international market as Arena of Valor, also producing success. Both were the ironic impetus that caused Riot to reconsider and begin proper development of Wild Rift.
• When Wild Rift was first announced, one of the advertised changes was to the vision system — rather than traditional wards and sweepers, jungles would have "Ward Zones" that provide vision to teams who captured them, who could do so by fighting around them or standing on them similar to Skarner's Crystal Spires. This was removed at the last second and the game ended up returning to the traditional warding system, presumably because capturing Ward Zones would be too tactical and complicated in a version that was designed to be streamlined and accessible.
• Riot originally planned for 2021 to provide two VGUs: Dr. Mundo and a second champion based on player poll. Unfortunately, outside circumstances forced the second VGU to be shunted to later; they had difficulties implementing the voting tech within their intended time (only arriving by early 2021 to decide the 2022 VGU), and so they decided to just move onto the second VGU anyway, which Studio Head Meddler and Lead Producer Reav3 later confirmed was going to be Jax. Unfortunately, the shift to working from home due to the COVID-19 Pandemic created scheduling and resource issues that ultimately resulted in it being iceboxed, and while his concept art influenced his updated design in Legends of Runeterra, in League itself, Jax would only receive a mid-scope rework in the start of 2023 and wouldn't receive his Art/Sustainability Update until the end of it (effectively a full VGU but staggered over several months).
• Some of the Ruined King saga of 2021 went through a few significant changes mid-development:
  • The Ruined King: A League of Legends Story spinoff was supposed to be released in early 2021, filling in the spot in time between the start of the season and the actual event in July. Unfortunately, complications arose in development thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic that forced its release date to be changed.
  • Vex was originally slated to be the champion released in July during the Sentinels of Light event and before Akshan. However, Vex ended up behind schedule (having experienced a shift between being an artillery mage to a traditional burst mage, as well as technical challenges in depicting her Living Shadow) while Akshan was ahead of schedule, leading Riot to swap their release dates around, as both of them would be major characters present in Rise of the Sentinels anyway.
  • According to writer Jared Rosen, around 40 different champions were considered to be appointed to the Sentinel team before narrowing it down to the final roster.
  • The storyboards of the "Absolution" cinematic revealed that in addition to Ruined Pantheon being summoned, Miss Fortune and Karma were also supposed to be present at the final battle, along with showing all of them returning to normal following Viego's defeat.