What Could Have Been / RWBY

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Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

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Casting

General

• Professor Ozpin was originally supposed to be voiced by Monty Oum himself, but he decided that he wasn't the right fit. Matt Hullum (the voice of Sarge from Red vs. Blue) also auditioned for the part.
• Monty would have voiced Qrow Branwen had he not passed away. The role instead went to Vic Mignogna and later Jason Liebrecht.
• Gavin Free was originally slated to voice Junior.
• Glynda originally had an Australian accent.
• According to the "World of RWBY" book, Sarah Silverman was nearly cast as Neopolitan, but after the casting fell through, Neo was made largely mute.

Character Design

General

• RTX 2013 revealed that both Ozpin and Glynda were going to have more cape elements in their design, but they were scrapped for the same reason as Ruby's cape-muff.
• RTX 2013 revealed that Roman Torchwick's early designs had a striped scarf.
• Professor Oobleck was originally going to be a boring, lethargic teacher.
• Cinder at one point had incredibly long, flowing sleeves similar to Weiss.
• Volume 3's opening shows Ironwood with additional belts and shoulder armour◊. These additions were never used in the actual show.
• RWBY Volume 2: Production Diary 1 reveals that Velvet was created solely for the purpose of demonstrating Faunus discrimination. They almost went with a male Faunus with an elephant trunk. The fandom response to Velvet was so positive that her role in the story was expanded, leaving the creators feeling like they made the right call.
• Russel Thrush was originally Russel Crow until Monty pointed out the connection, declaring "I had to slap that one out of the air".
• CRDL was originally pronounced something like 'Crow'.
• Adam had a complete model revision per Shane Newville's Vine account. He initially had shorter sleves,◊ a brighter shade of red in his hair, and wore his sheath on his back compared to his hip.
• Mercury's jacket and hair◊ went through several revisions, including one where his jacket was yellow.
• Roman's costume went through major revisions,◊ chief among which ageing him up as he was originally imagined as a street urchin. Alongside longer hair, he also wore a long scarf, darker sleeves and straighter hair at various points.
• Cinder's spy outfit in Volume 2 was far more conservative in design,◊ being full body and exposing no skin below the neck. In the series proper, it's made to emphasise Cinder's sexuality, in particular her clevage and behind. Her Mistral outfit also underwent several modifications regarding her Grimm arm◊ and its length, how much of Cinder's arm it had consumed and how Cinder hid it.
• Winter's Volume 7 design◊ went through many different editions, including one that gave her a half-cape.

Team RWBY

• RTX 2013 revealed that Ruby's hair was originally going to be gray, because Monty wanted to evoke a kind of wolf-like appearance for her. He mentioned later that Ruby's current hairstyle still looks kinda "wolfy". Her cape was also originally going to have a muff-like thing around her neck, but animation issues restricted that.
• Team RWBY wasn't supposed to have hair colors that matched their theme colors, and everyone but Yang was a brunette. So, Yang was the only one who ended up keeping her original hair color.
• Early designs for Ruby and Weiss were discarded for those two characters, instead becoming the basis for Melanie and Mitia's designs.
• Early art for Blake gave her heterochromia and two differently colored cat ears.
• Monty's earliest doodles of Yang give her pants and some highlights of her clothes were yellow and she had a different style belt.
• Monty's earliest doodles of Weiss' clothes weren't as detailed, her jacket lacked it's red collar, is missing her black undershirt and had a different ponytail. There was also a few early designs for her snowflake emblem.
• Different production art that was released showed that Weiss originally had a beauty mark instead of a scar, and that Myrtenaster's hilt was built more a complete gun rather than just the revolver mechanism.
• Something that mistakenly made it into the White trailer in a few shots was that the Dust in the mechanism in Myrtenaster was all red, as opposed to the multicolored seen in the series proper. Each would still have had different properties, but Monty initially disliked the idea of having a rainbow used on the design before deciding that it would make things clearer overall.
• Crescent Rose was originally much more sniper-like, looking almost like a Barret Sniper rifle with a scythe blade added onto it.

Team JNPR

• Jaune's original concept art played up a moral rural/rustic part of his character, with his clothes having a more tan-based color scheme. His eyes also went from red, to brown, to eventually settling on blue. Jaune was also originally named "Jean" after jeans for the show's color naming rule, until Burnie walked in on the writers and suggested a different name.
• Nora was originally meant to have a sash that wrapped around her waist, and ended in two long tails. Monty scrapped the idea because he thought it would be too hard to animate. Volume 3's commentary also mentioned that Nora was meant to get spikier hair when using her Semblance as an homage to anime characters hairs spiking up when they power up, but it wasn't worth the effort/time to make a new model just for it.
• Monty's earliest doodles of Pyrrha give her some armor covering her sash instead of a belt, extra armor on one leg, and no tiara or ponytail.

Dialogue

General

• Jaune's original line after Ruby killed the Nevermore was going to be a quiet, awestruck, "Bye bye, birdy."

Grimm Design

General

• The Apathy was one of the first Grimm designed. However, the creators realized that they'd be too strong for Team RWBY in the early volumes, so it took until volume 6 for them to appear. There was also discussion of whether other Grimm would be affected by the Apathy, with an emaciated Beowolf too weak to hunt humans being in concept for a while.

Story

General

• Miles revealed during the Reddit AMA post-Volume 5 that had "Jaunedice" not gotten such a cold reaction, Volume 1 may have included more character-centric episodes like it.
• Before the show premiered, Corsac and Fennec Albain were going to be the villains of Volume 1. Then came Roman Torchwick, who stole the show beyond anyone's expectations. The Albains would later become the overarching villains of Blake's story in Volumes 4 and 5.
• Warner Bros. Japan asked Burnie Burns to include a Hot Springs Episode in the future. Burns staunchly refused due to Ruby's age.
• Prior to the release of Before the Dawn, EC Myers, author of After the Fall discussed on a podcast several instances of this that occured while making the first book:
  • CFVY wasn't the first choice for the book's protagonists, with early considerations including covering Roman's background and focusing on Team STRQ. Neither story was very fleshed out before CFVY was chosen.
  • Coco's Semblance was initially something different, until EC was told of a character in-show who had a similar Semblance.
  • The book series was initially going to feature an unexpected character, which was stopped because it would have spoiled their appearance in Volume 7 of the show. The book was going to cover Penny's return; but Volume 7 was set up for her return, so he had to change it.
  • Fox was going to meet the Summer Maiden in the desert, who would have appeared to save him from Bertilak.
  • The Ravager Grimm were originally going to be called the Camazotz, an allusion to the Mayan bat god of the same name.
• Following the release of Roman Holiday, EC Myers revealed more information about the novels.
  • During Before the Dawn, Junior Xiong and the Malachite sisters were originally going to reappear at the Mirage as the surprise antagonists of the novel. While their role in the novel was scrapped, Myers would later use the Malachite sisters and the Xiong Family in Roman Holiday instead.

Volume 1

• By the original plans, Jaune was actually on the right track in the cave in Players and Pieces, because the relics were going to be inside assorted Grimm, including the Deathstalker stinger.
• Penny's curbstomp of the White Fang forces, where she clearly shows signs of being a robot (weapon popping out of her back, inhuman strength even by the standards of what had been shown, firing energy beams in a very mechanical fashion), was not intended to be in Episode 16, and was added by Monty without prior knowledge. This is clear in the DVD commentary, where Miles Luna makes it clear he had intended Penny stopping the van to be the first indication of Penny's true power and identity.

Volume 2

• During Mercury and Emerald's Establishing Character Moment of their assassination of Tukson, the crew considered adding an extra shot of some of Tukson's blood on a wall.
• During Best Day Ever, the first food Yang caught was going to be a cherry with stem, then she reveals the stem with a knot tied in it (you can see her 'hold small object' hand pose when she does the 'with a Yang' pun), but they decided that was a hair too risque.
• Ren originally grabbed a pair of cucumbers during the food fight, but they were changed to leeks after a lot of "Is he hitting Yang with a pair of green dicks?" reactions.
• Sun and Neptune were meant to partake in RWBY's fight against the Paladin, but Monty was having difficulties with Sun's gunchuck rigging that he had the two be knocked out of the fight for his own sake. The gunchuck rigging proved to be "one of the most stupidly complex rigs" for Monty (requiring him to reuse old animation for their scene in Volume 1) and after Volume 2 he began work on a new rigging system for the gunchucks to make them easier.
• During Pyrrha's fight with CRDL, the plan was to include a flashback to Pyrrha training as a child and getting to see her mother.
• Neo didn't exist until late in production, based off Monty seeing a genderbent cosplay of Roman and deciding it would be easier to make Neo and her Semblance than justify Roman escaping the Paladin battle otherwise. Neo's impact on the plot makes her a series-wide example of this.
• Monty initially wanted the events of the Breach to lead directly into the Fall of Beacon, but he was persuaded to pull back and delay it until Volume 3.
• Caroline Cordovin and the Colossus were originally going to debut in this Volume during the Grimm Breach and fighting off the Grimm. However, they were cut out and debuted in Volume 6 instead.

Volume 3

• A massive change that occured between Volumes 2 and 3 was Monty adding the Maiden power system into the series, which necessitated large changes for several character arcs, including Cinder, Raven and Penny. Cinder was most affected by this as the show goes from her fighting with Dust woven into her clothes to using magic afterwards. One only wonders how the plot of the Volume and the series from here would have gone had the Maidens not been implemented.
• There was going to be a Nora and Pyrrha vs. Sun and Neptune fight during the Vytal Festival Tournament, but it was cut due to not having any real relevance to the plot and being short on time.
• Other cut fights from Volume 3 per leaked test footage included a 4v4 between JNPR and CFVY and a full sequence of Neo breaking Roman out of jail, with her encountering Yang again. The test footage also reveals that the cut 2v2 was originally going to be Sun working with Scarlet instead of Neptune.
• During the development of the Volume, multiple characters were considered to be commentators for the Vytal Festival including reporter Lisa Lavender. Eventually, Professors Oobleck and Port were chosen as the commentators.
• In "Fall", the version of "The Four Maidens" shown in the World of Remnant episode was meant to be in this episode instead of the shorter version told by Pyrrha in the final version. It was cut due to time restraints, but was made into it's own World of Remnant episode instead.
  • Due to this, one of the World of Remnant episodes planned to originally air near the end of Volume 3 in it's place was moved back and was aired around Volume 4 instead.
• Adam and Yang were meant to have a full battle instead of him one-shotting her at the Fall of Beacon, with Monty having already done prelimary work on it before his death. The parts he animated were later repurposed in the two's fight in Volume 6.

Volume 4

• Miles during the Volume 4 commentary mentions that his "Favorite Grimm" was left on the cutting room floor. With the knowledge since then that the Apathy were this Grimm, it means RNJR nearly encountered them on the way to Mistral.
• Jeff Williams revealed while working on the Volume 4 soundtrack that BMBLB nearly didn't make it in; he planned to do it for a later soundtrack, but due to a leg injury he had more time at home than intended so he was able to finish the song.

Volume 5

• The commentary for Volume 5 revealed that large chunks of RNJR's plot line in Mistral were cut due to the Volume's troubled production making it easier to just have RNJR stay in the Mistral house and reuse the plot lines in Volume 6:
  • Qrow was meant to meet Maria Calavera during his Huntsmen search, who would have been living with a cat. Maria would have then taught Ruby about her Silver Eyes.
  • Jaune, Ren and Nora finding the statue dedicated to Pyrrha was another plotline alluded to that was meant to be in this season but had to be cut.
• During an interview talking about Volume 6 in retrospect while preparing for Volume 7, Miles revealed that one draft of the Battle of Haven in Volume 5 had Adam dying.
• Cinder's backstory shown in the Volume 8 episode Midnight was originally meant to be shown during this volume. However, it kept getting pushed back until Volume 8.

Volume 6

• Volume 6 was originally meant to have 14 episodes like Volume 5, but due to unknown production reasons it lost an episode and had its contents merged with the 13th episode and Volume 7's premiere. The Volume 7 commentary later elaborated on this and had the crew saying that the finale would have been an extended version of what was seen in episode 1 up to Penny's return.
• Salem was originally meant to have her full Tainted Veins appearance in "The Lost Fable", during the flashback, but Miles suggested that she not have the veins so as to make her more conventionally attractive and look less like the Antichrist.
• While the series never reveals what Ruby got for Yang in "Argus Limited", Miles revealed during C 2 E 2 2020 that the plan was for Ruby to have bought matching friendship bracelets for the team that, during the Apathy arc, would have granted the team a second wind to let them escape. This got scrapped for being too corny for the intent of the episode.
• Neopolitan originally wasn't going to return in this volume, but the creators thought it would be cool to have her and Cinder team up before they went to Atlas.
• Storyboarding for "Lost" revealled that Tyrian's new cybernetic stinger initially had a more kitbashed appearance to it, before the smoother edition he uses in the series proper.

Volume 7

• While talking about the production of the series on Twitter, Eddy Rivas revealed that Volume 7 was originally greenlit for 14 episodes instead of 13. However, one of the episodes after "As Above, So Below" had to be cut due to production issues.
• On a rewatch thread for Volume 7, Eddy shared that Team RWBY were meant to become aware of Tyrian's presence in Atlas in episode 4, but the choice was made to push this internal reveal back as Tyrian's role in the election massacre had more impact.
• Volume 7's commentary had the crew discussing several major deviations in the original script:
  • When discussing Penny's return, several ideas were tossed around as to her mental state, with one possibility being that she would be completely amnesiac and not remember Team RWBY.
  • Ruby and Qrow's scene in the fourth episode was considered a "Low priority" scene for the team to adapt and nearly was cut for time.
  • Much of Robyn's subplot and a lot of the bigger Team RWBY/JNR moments would only come together late in production, as scenes including Ruby, Ren and Nora being at the election rally and Blake and Yang's talk with Robyn were both not part of the original scripts.
  • Robyn herself originally wasn't going to appear until the election in "A Night Off" and her appearance in "Sparks" was added later in production to help show the tension between Atlas and Mantle.
  • The original plan for RWBY following Robyn's election massacre was that they and Ironwood would investigate a warehouse to find information on Tyrian.
  • Much of Ren's arc was entirely cut from the season, including him explaining his more irrational behavior and decision to side with Ironwood that was summarily dropped. His kiss with Nora was one of the above-mentioned RWBY/JNR scenes that was added after initial drafts upon realizing how little the teams did in Volume 7. While the last episode of the Volume hinted at his problems, Ren's arc would later happen in the next Volume instead.
  • Marrow was meant to have a scene with Blake where they discussed their Faunus heritages, but the scene was pushed from Chapter 3 to 6 then out of the season entirely.
  • Cinder and Neo were meant to be in the season sooner than they were shown, with a Neo reveal especially being pushed around several times.
  • The original plan for Tyrian and his role in sowing mistrust in Mantle was to stage a scene where it looked like Atlas soldiers were firing on civilians. The idea then became framing Team RWBY for the massacre, before settling on Penny.
  • "Gravity" initially ran for over twenty minutes before it was cut down.
  • Ruby in the storyboards for "Gravity" was depicted as furiously activating her Silver Eyes after Salem taunted her by mentioning Summer Rose, while in the show proper she instead has a small breakdown and is left crying.
  • During Qrow, Clover and Robyn's fight with Tyrian, the battle was meant to have several chase scenes where only Qrow would be able to keep up using his bird powers. One of the chases would end with him landing in front of Tyrian and saying a one liner, only for Tyrian to ask if Qrow can talk in bird form or if he needs to change back to be able to speak. Tyrian was also at one point meant to charge into an alleyway full of Grimm to show his lack of real self-preservation.
  • Fiona's Semblance "Deep Pockets" was based off a rejected idea for Torchwick's Semblance.
  • Penny and Winter's fight with Cinder originally had a section where Penny was knocked into a collection of deactivated robots, with Cinder somehow using the Maiden powers to bring them to life. The idea was scrapped after Miles wondered why Cinder wasn't just blasting through walls, leading to the aerial battle.
• Jaune was originally planned to first use the Disc Grenades in this Volume instead of the Volume 8 episode "Refuge" with it being built up with Vine asking Jaune if he ever considered extending his Aura. Because Jaune couldn't do this yet, he would have started using the Disc Grenades in the Volume as a way to compensate for it.

Volume 8

• At RTX 2021, it was revealed that Ruby, Weiss and Blake were meant to enter Monstra alongside Yang, Jaune and Ren, but for unknown reasons this content was cut.
• Volume 8 was originally planned to air alongside the "RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant" animated episodes. Due to both the Covid-19 pandemic and the show not being finished by that point, "RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant" aired months after Volume 8 had finished airing.
• Following the release of "Strings", a video of the episode's storyboard was released and showed some differences from the final version such as May calling Ironwood a bastard after the alarm was sounded.
• During Lie Ren's rant in "Fault", he was originally going to also bring up how Jaune decided to charge in blindly at Cinder in fury during the battle of Haven. However, the writers decided to remove it due to feeling it was one sting too many.
• Qrow and Robyn's plotline in the Volume was originally going to be bigger than it ended up being due to it being scaled back.
• The river of Grimm was originally going to have a much larger role in the plot of the Volume with many of it's elements being set up with the Scenes in Mantle early in the Volume. Among what was cut out, there would have been a fight against the "pillar of Grimm" that erupted out of the river and attacked Atlas in the final version.
• In the storyboard for "Witch", there was going to be a scene where Yang thought about exiting Monstra through it's rear end with her and Emerald arguing about whether or not to go through with it.
• Ironwood was originally going to end up smashing his own desk in fury instead of the table in the middle of his office in "Ultimatum". According to the creators, this was built up throughout the Atlas Arc with Ironwood constantly smashing his fist into his desk when something got in the way of his plans. They changed it to the table in the middle of the room due to wanting to frame the scene of the Ace Operatives around it.
• Right after the tense meeting scene in "Risk" when Ruby ran out of the room, Emerald was going to comment on how nice the Mansion was before Weiss told her to shut up. The scene was cut when they realized that it would have ruined the tension between the group.
• During "Worthy", there was going to be a scene where it showed Arthur Watts releasing Ironwood from his cell before it was cut out. However, the final version still implies that he still released him.
• Jaune's sword wasn't originally going to end up shattered during the fight against Cinder. Eddy Rivas thought it was cool and the team decided to add it in.
• The final scene before the end credits of the Volume was originally going to be Winter charging in to attack the Grimm instead of Cinder and Salem flying away from the destroyed remains of Atlas and Mantle.

Volume 9

• After "A Place of Particular Concern" was released on Crunchyroll, the creative staff released a video of The RWBY Roundtable where they explained that idea of the Ever After was originally conceived around the production of Volume 2 back when it was going to be a part of Remnant.
• Tick Tock Clearing and the stopwatch fruit tree that Jaune finds in the Jungle Acre was originally planned to be located in the Gardens Acre with a alligator ringmaster Afteran voiced by Billy Burson looking after it who would have cried "gigantic crocodile tears" after seeing that someone stole one of the fruits from the tree and would have eventually been used by the Curious Cat to fight off the Jabberwalker clones in "The Parfait Predicament" before Hawker took his place in the final version.
• Neopolitan's torture of Ruby in "Tea Admist Terrible Trouble" was originally longer with Clover and Lionheart's clones having moments of their own and was more brutal before being toned down when the script was compressed from 12 to 10 episodes with the episode originally supposed to end with Ruby's Ascension.
• During an earlier draft of "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble" made after the script was compressed to 10 episodes, the Curious Cat was going to leave Neopolitan's illusory mansion after possessing her by turning her legs into wheels, Looney Tunes style. The fight would also have them use rubberhose-esque transformation abilities that would make fighting them absurd and frustrating. It was cut for being too expensive to animate and being a bit too out there. However, concept artist Chelsea Kennedy later posted concept art of the idea.
• The original episode 9 was going to start with Team RWBY and Jaune's reactions to Ruby's ascend instead of just the way they looked in the final version with the Curious Cat taking over Neopolitan happening after he explained to them what actually happened to Ruby and Jaune seeing the Genial Gems and the group going to the tree happening in the middle of the episode with the episode ending right as the group prepares to fight against the Cat.
• A cut sequence after WBYJ were transported to the Tree (storyboards from the artist here) has Jaune and Weiss holding each other's hands, Blake nearly slipping off the Tree and being saved by Yang, and Weiss (instead of Yang) coming across Ruby's wood cocoon.
• Concept Art of Summer Rose's updated design showed "Episode 11" as the episode it was originally for, implying that Volume 9 was originally going to be longer than 10 episodes earlier in development. The writers later confirmed at RTX 2023 that Volume 9 was originally planned to be 12 episodes before the last two had to be cut with the original 80 minutes from episodes 8-12 being cut down to 40 in the final volume and episodes 8-11 becoming the current episodes 8-10 with 25 minutes cut and episode 12 which was more of an epilogue for the volume and was at least 15 minutes long being cut out of the volume entirely.
• Summer Rose's flashback was originally considered to be made 2D due to budget cuts and the original script being compressed before the writers realized that it was too important to be in that style and was made 3D instead.
• In an earlier draft for the episode "Of Solitude and Self", the Herbalist's ascended form was originally going to help the team burn the leaves for there smoke in the fight against the Curious Cat. The Butterfly would then tell Jaune "The thing about humans is that they have everything that they need to make the changes", which would have tied into Jaune's later line regarding Ruby ascending as herself.
• There was a cut line from Weiss upon entering the tree's door expressing her disdain for the Ever After and how she was falling through nothing this time, calling back to her falling through the hole from episode 6.
• The writers were originally indecisive on whether to revert Jaune's age at the end of the volume before deciding that he had experienced enough trauma in the volume and deserved it.
• Volume 9 was originally going to have a post-credits scene in it's cut 12th episode where Raven Branwen would use her portal to help Team RWBY and Jaune reunite with the rest of their team and loved ones before it was cut. The scene was shown in animatic form during RTX 2023 and will instead be worked into the opening for Volume 10. However, Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen part two was written with the events of the episode having already happened. The full storyboard animatic version of what episode 12 was originally going to be was eventually released on the Rooster Teeth website on March 30th, 2024 hours after Volume 9 was released on the website.

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