What Could Have Been/Web Original

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of What Could Have Been in Web Original works include:

  • Glenn Rubenstein has told people various plots that he intended to incorporate into Lonelygirl15 (such as Elizabeth Avery being the woman behind OpAphid), but he left the show due to "Creative Differences," taking the rights to the OpAphid characters with him.
  • The first RP of Darwin's Soldiers was planned to feature an interdimensional battle but it was scrapped after the creator, Serris, decided that the potential for narm outweighed the potential for coolness.
  • Several examples abound for the various That Guy With The Glasses shows and specials:
    • Spoony's commentary for Kickassia reveals that during the fight over who would rule Kickassia, Spoony, who had turned into Doctor Insano and "got better", originally grabbed the hat, gave a That Guy-style speech about how pointless the fighting was - and then put the hat on and ran off, because he was still Insano. It got cut because they ran out of time to shoot it. In a related note, LordKat's role was scaled back after Jason twisted his ankle during filming of the invasion of Molossia.
      • Spoony also proposed a scene in which Santa Christ after being resurrected would give Jew Wario a look, as if to show that he knew Jew Wario didn't believe in him. This was nixed pretty quickly.
      • Rollo T has also mentioned that as a tie-in to the Second Anniversary, he and LordKat wrote a skit paying Homage to The Usual Suspects, with the pair of them attempting to interrogate several of the site's personalities (including Paw, who would have had the line, "What, are you guys like fat cop, fatter cop?"). Chris says he still regrets that they never got the chance to do it, as the material was rather funny.
    • Doug Walker was originally going to do a Critic episode where he compared the old and new versions of "War of the Worlds". He nixed the idea as he decided that neither of them were all that good.
    • The Nostalgia Critic had also announced plans to review movies such as Drop Zone and Newsies, but he later replaced them, with one reason being that other TGWTG reviewers were going to review them. And shortly afterwards, The Nostalgia Chick indeed reviewed Newsies as part of the Dark Nella Saga.
    • Linkara was also guilty of planning reviews and then replacing them (In his case "The Wanderers" #5, "Syphons" #1, and "Q-Unit" #1).
    • Doug Walker was originally going to do a Nostalgia Critic review of Matilda but when he first announced he would, he got so much flak he just couldn't do it. Matilda would resurface later as part of Doug's List of Movies He Hates But Everyone Else Loves in 2011.
    • The Cinema Snob planned to do a Kung Tai Ted episode about The Room until he heard Tommy Wiseau was taking down videos for copyright infringement (including The Nostalgia Critic's review) so he made a Brad & Jerrid sketch where they reenact scenes from the movie.
    • Benzaie's short movie, "Students," was originally supposed to a feature length cross between Clerks and Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return. He was only able to make the first ten minutes and an English dub.
    • In Linkara and Iron Liz's commentary, Liz mentions that the original script for Suburban Knights was much longer. One thing she mentions specifically was a female zombie named Mildred who would bite Phelous. This would lead to Phelous becoming progressively more zombie-like, only for the same end reveal (he was perfectly fine and was just being in character). According to Linkara, most of Mildred's role was replaced by the Good Witch of the Wood.
      • There were actually two ideas for the third anniversary special: One that would eventually become Suburban Knights and another idea called Ninjas vs. Pirates that was not used. In this video, Doug Walker explains what the special not chosen would have been like.
      • A few dropped ideas where mentioned in the cast commentary. Among them:
        • Apparently there were original several working titles for Suburban Knights, including "Flights of Fantasy" and "Dungeons and Critics".
        • Angry Joe had a line where he lampshaded how the Critic continually tricks them into showing up for his mad schemes. It was cut for time.
        • Bennett had a much more prominent running gag where he would try to say something epic and bungle it.
        • Luke and Film Brain had a more extensive scene, where Luke's "inners" from his Film Conscience reviews came into play.
        • When the Critic refused to go along with Linkara's plan to write a musical number for their adventure, there was a cut scene where Linkara would call someone (possibly Andrew Lloyd Weber) and say that the Critic didn't go for it. Linkara would they say "What do you mean 'who is this'?"
    • Way back when Channel Awesome was in its infancy and the Nostalgia Critic was their only feature, site execs Mike Michaud and Bhargav Dronamraju planned a Paranormal Investigation series in the vein of Ghost Hunters.
  • The first season of Red vs. Blue, and by extension the entire series, was originally supposed to unfold in a dramatically different fashion than the finished product. DVD Audio Commentary for the first season reveals that, as originally envisioned, the entire project would only have been six to nine episodes in length, which had all been very loosely planned in advance. Additionally, the format of the first two episodes (The Reds talking at their base while the Blues observe them through the sniper rifle and make snarky comments) was supposed to be maintained until the end. However, by the third episode the expanding script had already pulled the Blues to their own base, and when they reached the tenth episode the writers realized they had not gotten to almost any of the jokes they had planned for the "final" ninth episode (Specifically, putting Donut in the pink armor). The episodes continued to be written until the immediate story was completed, with a total of nineteen episodes which were subsequently billed as "Season One." Continuing the leftover plots points from those episodes lead into four more seasons, as well as several sequel series, and are still ongoing.
The characters themselves were also supposed to evolve differently, and their portrayals in their first appearances (Even throughout the entire first season) contrast heavily with their final forms. Caboose, the Breakout Character legendary for his severely warped mind and personality, was originally a rather bland character who was introduced to the series simply to serve as a catalyst to get Church angry. Donut, who became almost as widely known for his armor-induced personality, was one of the "normal" characters of the series, and as a whole the entire cast was saner and more likely to at least notice the Idiot Ball, even if they could not quite let go of it. Fan reaction to individual points of personality that each character showed lead the writers to magnify and focus on those points, which eventually resulted in the insanity of the series itself.
  • Pops up from time to time in Survival of the Fittest as a result of either an Aborted Arc, handlers scrapping the idea, characters' deaths before the idea could be executed, mods disapproving, and other causes. Examples noted on the wiki include Blood Boy getting a facial reconstruction in pre-game, a lot of things about Cillian Crowe that were planned but never carried out, Adam Dodd Taking the Bullet for Amanda Jones, Walter Smith being an Evil Counterpart to a character that never made it into the game, and others.
  • YouTube was originally conceived of as a dating site. Indeed, the site was originally called "Tune In Hook Up", and would have essentially been a video version of HotOrNot.com (the original site layout was also designed with this in mind). The site creators redeveloped the site, however, and launched it in 2005...and history was made.
  • Chaos Fighters: Cyber Assault-The Secret Programs is supposed to be span eight sub-arcs, but cancelled as it was too ambitious to begin with. It's summary can be read here.
  • What if Google Street View didn't get in trouble for accidentally collecting security and information from unsecured Wi-Fi Networks? According to the Wikipedia article before the incident, Google Street View might have been in over half of those countries (mainly European, where the Obstructive Bureaucracy are preventing them from releasing the photos) by now. Since that occurred, a massive slowdown of updates, only releasing South Africa, Brazil, Ireland, Germany and Romania towards the second half of the year, followed by moving away from the roadside format, and moving more towards parks, museums and now, indoor businesses.


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