What Could Have Been / Miraculous Ladybug

Concept Art from when Miraculous Ladybug was 2D and Animesque.

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Pre-Production

• The faux-comic covers that creator Thomas Astruc sketched bear the title The Mini-Menace Ladybug. As these stem from all the way back when the idea for the franchise first started, most of the ideas shown are more likely just doodles than anything that ever became solid (which makes it not so different from Covers Always Lie). The idea for Cat Noir ended up being introduced in these covers. In these covers, Marinette was originally named Marietta; at one point, the police would be against Ladybug and seemed to have labeled her as a criminal; Ladybug seemingly dies after one of these confrontations, but gets better; Marietta would face accusations that she may be Ladybug; and her Ladybug necklace is apparently not a Transformation Trinket and only gives her her powers, as her mask is shown to be separate from her body rather than quantic masking.
• Adrien was originally developed as an entirely different character named Félix (hence why the character seen in the 2D PV is a much more reserved and standoffish character); early promotional material using the name indicated that he would be interested in Ladybug because a kiss from her would remove his ring and the bad luck it gave him. He ended up being changed in development on the grounds that Adrien would allow for more interesting stories.
  • Félix was a Jerkass toward Marinette in his civilian form and he was manipulative toward Ladybug as Cat Noir. Thomas Astruc felt that the romance between Félix and Marinette would be cliché and saw Félix as a bad role model, so he scrapped him altogether and replaced him with Adrien.
• When Ladybug was in development, for a while, Ladybug and Cat Noir were in the Quantic Kids, a team with superheroes Melodie, Mercury, and Sparrow. Sparrow eventually getting replaced with Kid Mime, and Gavroche was later added. However, the superhero team didn't help sell the show to broadcasters, so the superhero team members outside of Ladybug and Cat Noir were dropped. All three were eventually re-tooled; Melodie was made the protagonist of the planned Melody animated movie, while Sparrow and Mercury both debuted in the show during the New York special (the former a major character, the latter a minor one).
• Concept art of Ladybug and Cat Noir shows them with more powers, such as Ladybug being able to create a powered staff using her Ladybug charm and Cat Noir having the ability to create black holes.
  • Cat Noir had two additional powers, Black Storm and Black Hole.
  • Similarly, Ladybug's yo-yo would've been a Swiss-Army Weapon, with the ability to transform into a shield, a staff, a bomb, jump rope, and roller blades.
• Test footage of what would later evolve into the CGI-animated Miraculous Ladybug that we know today. Notably, Marinette's design was less ambiguously Asian than her final design and the animation is much more expressive and high quality on a cinematic level (and presumably, too expensive to keep for an entire television series). This also shows that for a time, the project was known as just Ladybug.
  • This poster also uses a similar logo but now titled Miraculous Ladybug, which would later be the colloquial name for the show (the official title being Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir).

The Anime Teaser

• The anime teaser shows excellent hand-drawn, breathing, character and effects animation, as well as a slightly darker atmosphere during the superhero parts of the trailer... but it was changed into a brighter colored All-CGI Cartoon to appeal to broadcasters, who wanted a Merchandise-Driven show for little kids. According to Word of God, Toei Animation might make an anime themselves, if the CGI show is successful enough◊.
• Early concept art including the above faux-comic covers implied that Marinette inherited her Transformation Trinket (in the form of a necklace) at the scene of her father's murder. The 2D PV's background lyrics "Every love went through your head, giving love turned bad" implied a Dark and Troubled Past for a Sad Clown Marinette.
• The artbook showed concept art of a blank kwami named Null, who was the first kwami to exist and preceded Tikki. It remains to be seen if he was scrapped or merely has yet to appear.
• The villains were quite different from the final product. For starters, Gabriel Agreste without the Hawk Moth costume is shown directly conversing with the Mime rather than communicating telepathically. It's possible that the villains were originally hired guns who acted on their own freewill rather than being Brainwashed and Crazy.

General Show Production

• Thomas Astruc has mentioned that Alix, Chloé and Sabrina were initially meant to be a trio. This was meant to be a reference to the main characters in one of his earlier works.
  • One early concept saw prototypes of the three of them gain their own bug-themed hero identities; proto-Chloé was still bee-themed (though she went by "Killer Bee" instead of "Queen Bee"), while proto-Sabrina and proto-Alix were dragonfly and grasshopper-themed, respectively.
• At one point, Hawk Moth wore a Cool Helmet with a butterfly-shaped visor that had a view of Paris on it.
• Some of the classmates, Marinette included, had very different designs◊ than what they got in the final animation.
  • Alya didn't wear glasses but instead wore sunglasses on top of her head. She and Marinette also used to have matching pink bows.
  • Nino had a white shirt with red color included in the eye logo and dark gray headphones.
  • Sabrina had her hair up in a bun rather than a short bob cut.
  • Chloé had her hair down and a white-and-black outfit.
  • Juleka had a much more punk-rock-themed outfit, with entirely pink hair and a guitar.
  • Rose had a more pastel pink dress and a different hairstyle.
  • Similar to Alya, Lila had sunglasses on her head too, but those were discarded for the final animation.
• Manon used to have much lighter skin and orange hair, as shown in the above picture with Alya's bow. This older design was eventually used for a one-off background civilian in "Gorizilla".
• For Season 2, it was originally announced at New York Comic-Con that Ladybug would be able to use five differently colored Ladybug Miraculous called "Pearls" and "Stones" that would grant her power-ups. These were replaced by the seven Miraculous Potions.
  • These included the Pearl of the Sea (breathe and swim underwater; replaced by the green potion), Pearl of the Heart (cures the akumatized), Stone of the Moon (breathe and fly in space; replaced by the purple potion), Pearl of the Mysteries (infinite Lucky Charms), and Stone of the Sun (ability to fly).
• Concept art for Lady Butterfly on Artstation lists her as being a Pixiegirl character, with Thomas Astruc confirming she was meant for Pixiegirl before Zag brought her into Miraculous Ladybug as a Miraculous user for the Brazil special. Lady Butterfly was meant to be an African-American girl rather than an Afro-Latina Brazillian girl.

Episodes

• "A Miraculous Christmas" was intended to be a 40-minute mini-movie, but was scaled down to a half-hour special due to deadlines. Due to that, things that were promised to be featured in the special including learning more about about Mrs. Agreste (and why Hawk Moth had a picture of her, but all we learned was that she disappeared sometime in the past year) as well as learning the powers of the Turtle Miraculous hero (which is never touched upon, in addition to the absence of Master Fu and Wayzz) were not included in the special.
  • "Chris Master" was originally intended as the Christmas special, but the producers weren’t happy with it. The Artifacts of this are Santa's involvement and Chris's connection to Nino presumably being what would've led to Nino becoming the Turtle Miraculous hero, feeling he had to personally stop his akumatized brother.
  • Alongside the Christmas special, two other specials were announced: a Halloween special and a special where the characters would travel to China. While the latter would eventually get a release date (getting renamed from "The Chinese Legend" to "Miraculous Shanghai" in the process), the Halloween special seems to have been canceled.
• The script reading of "Troublemaker" at Comic-Con was slightly different from the final episode. Key differences include the absence of Alya (whose lines were given to Marinette and her mother) and the omission of Adrien's infamous line "she's just a friend".
• An episode called "Gagotor", with French comedian Dany Boon guest-starring as the titular Akumatized villain, was originally planned for season 2 or 3. However, season 2 came and went without it airing and the list of episodes in season 3 didn't include it. Eventually, Word of God confirmed that the episode had been cancelled, and the concept was retooled into the season 4 episode "Psychomedian".
• Vivica/Desperada went through many design changes before the episode she debuted in came out. At first, she was supposed to be a vet with an akumatized form to match, but that ended up being scrapped. Then she was meant to be a fan of Cat Noir who felt that he didn't get enough attention and got akumatized for vague reasons related to that. In the final product, she became a backup guitarist for Jagged Stone, and her akumatized form became what it is today.
• The New York special was originally planned to be a crossover with Ghost Force and Pixie Girl, but this was scrapped due to neither shows being ready by the time the special was made. It would later be announced that there are still plans for this as Ladybug's return to the United States. Jeremy Zag still has interest in making this happen and has posted concept art of it on his Instagram.
• Lady Dragon had a different design, wearing a plain orange superhero suit rather than the Renling-based suit and appearing to be based on the western depiction of dragons.
  • Lady Dragon's design in the Shanghai special was changed at the last minute due to complaints of whitewashing — she originally had golden hair, which looked no different than blonde hair. Her final design changes her hair to the red in her concept design.
• "Gabriel Agreste" was supposed to feature scenes set in the Agreste family kitchen, but the budget didn’t stretch to designing it.
• Between it getting leaked alongside the rest of the series bible and its airing, "Collusion" underwent several edits. Most notably, a scene from the original draft where André officially disowns Chloé, divorces Audrey, and takes custody of Zoé was removed from the final product.
  • Similarly, a scene in the preceding episode "Confrontation" where Alya and the rest of the class apologize to Marinette for believing Lila's lies for so long was present in the leaked script and leaked storyboards, but was cut from the episode proper.

Other

• A live-action movie was announced to be in the making, but was later quietly cancelled and replaced with Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie.
• In 2016, three comic series — Tales of Ladybug, Tales of Cat Noir, and Tales of Miraculous — were announced, but as of now, nothing has been said about them since this post from 2017. Therefore, it is unknown if these have been cancelled or are just stuck in Development Hell.
  • Tales of Ladybug would've been about Marinette/Ladybug's adventures in Shanghai, meeting Chinese superheroes, and connecting with her heritage. It's unknown if this would've taken the place of the then-unmade Shanghai television special, would've been an early iteration of it (like with the United HeroeZ appearing in a now-non-canonical issue in the main comics), or would've been a spin-off of it.
  • Tales of Cat Noir would've been about Adrien/Cat Noir traveling the U.S. and meeting heroes in New York and Los Angeles. It is unknown if and how the New York special would've connected to it.
  • Tales of Miraculous would've told stories about the various Miraculous users throughout history.
• According to Feri González on a Instagram live video, the show was only supposed to last 5 seasons before the additional ones were announced.

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