Recess
Screenshot from the unaired "The Break-In" pilot.
What Could Have Been in this series.- In the original 1996 unaired pilot, there was very different animation and character designs, with Spinelli looking like she never grew out of kindergarten! T.J. went through the most drastic change, however. He was skinnier, taller, had darker, messier hair, had a completely different outfit (he didn't even have the baseball hat!), and had green eyes.
- And the oldest character designs (before the pilot) gave the main six characters a more "realistic" look to them. For the pilot and series proper, they were given a more "cutesy" look. T.J. also had a drastically different appearance in the sketches. In those, while he wore something similar to his regular outfit, was even more heavyset (though as usual, not as much as Mikey), and had a different character design (along with the rest, who looked more realistic and not as "cutesy"). They got him a new outfit and slimmed him down for the pilot, only for him to return to his original outfit and put on a few pounds for the series proper.
- Other early drawings of T.J. (using a similar character design that he does in the series proper) gave him gray sneakers (Instead of red) and rounder, completely circular eyes (Instead of semi-circular). Some early drawings even have him as a blonde.
- T.J.'s original name was going to be P.J., as in "Paul and Joe"!
- Vince went through ten different hairstyles (and a different outfit) before finally deciding on one.
- From what we've seen from clips of the pilot, Gus wasn't even going to be in the show!
- Cornchip Girl's original name was Frito Girl, but was changed for legal reasons.
- In "The Break In", one of Spinelli's plans to free T.J. from detention was to break in using soda and pop rocks near the door. The line was cut because Pop Rocks was copyrighted.
- There was going to be a scene in "Yope From Norway" where Miss Grotke attempts to speak Norwegian to Yope, but was cut due to time restraints.
- In "The Box", the song T.J. was going to sing in his Madness Mantra was "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?", but was changed to "This Old Man" because the song was copyrighted.
- After the two DTV movies were released, one more was being planned, known as Recess: The First Day of School, which as the title implies, would have been a prequel to the series of how the main five (as Gus would be absent) adjust to fourth grade. For unknown reasons, it was shelved.
- When ABC noticed that the sixty-five episodes the show finished with had extremely high ratings, they wanted another season for the 2002-03 television season. Disney halted production in the middle of the new episodes (apparently having reached their 65-episode limit, which has since been broken by several other series), and three of them were released as Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade.
