What Could Have Been/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

* For a while, [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] was planning on naming the protagonist of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' Bingo, son of Bilbo Baggins. Frodo Took might have been the name of one of his companions. Tolkien switched names a lot during the early stages of writing ''LotR'', so almost all characters in the Fellowship went through multiple names.

** There are '''far''' too many of these to mention in the new ''History of Middle-earth'' series. Perhaps the most radical are that Tol Eressëa was going to be England, Farmer Maggot and Treebeard were going to be villains, and Aragorn was going to be a [[Badass]] hobbit called Peregrin Boffin (alias "Trotter") who had been tortured in Mordor, or else a [[Future Badass]] version of Bilbo himself. He wore shoes (very unusual for a hobbit) and one proposed explanation was that he had [[Artificial Limbs|wooden feet]] as a result of his real feet having been ''[[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|sawn off by his tormentors]]''.

** Another one had {{spoiler|Boromir}} surviving the Breaking of the Fellowship, but then doing a [[Face Heel Turn]] and joining Saruman in the attack on Minas Tirith. (This was before the Rohan subplot was conceived.)

** Zahn and Stackpole wrote "[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Reenlistment_of_Baron_Fel The Reenlistment of Baron Fel]", which started as a six-comic miniseries and was revamped into a four-part story. It's about [[Ace Pilot]] [[X Wing Series|Soontir Fel]], once of the Empire before [[Defector From Decadence|defecting]] to the New Republic, getting abducted by Thrawn and joining the Empire of the Hand. They ''finished'' both versions, and both of them have both versions. But they haven't been bought and published. They are just sitting on those hard drives. Waiting. This is incredibly frustrating.

** The proposed miniseries ''Spectre of Thrawn'', between the two [[Hand of Thrawn]] books. Cowritten, again, by Zahn and Stackpole! And it never happened.

* ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' originally ended with the young lad in charge of the world's largest "chocolate shop", selling all manner of things from an egg containing a little sugary bird to a giant chocolate elephant with a chocolate rider. There were also meant to be two extra naughty children, "Marvin Prune", who would have been a conceited boy, and "Mary Miranda Piker", who would have been a girl allowed to do anything she wants - to that end, become a school-obsessed snob. The chapter in which she was dispatched with featured Mr. Wonka making a powder that allowed children to [[Playing Sick|play sick]], botching a job with her father to sabotage the machine that made the powder (they start <s>laughing</s> screaming. Mrs. Piker claimed her husband never laughs).

** Another version had about ''thirty'' children, but Dahl's nephew described it as the most boring thing he'd ever read.