Have you ever heard a story about how a different actor was almost cast in an iconic role played by someone else? Like how Will Smith could have been Neo in The Matrix or how Eric Stoltz was first cast as Marty in Back to the Future? There are hundreds of examples, and it makes for some fun movie trivia.
Less well-known than the actors we missed are the subplots. Sometimes a story gets cut down for time, or because the studio didn’t like a certain part, or because something just doesn’t work. Here are some of the most incredible subplots we never got to see.
10. Tommy Wiseau’s The Room Had a Vampire Subplot Removed
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is infamous for its badness. It’s so bad that another movie was made about making the movie just to explain the whole fiasco. People have watch parties just to watch Wiseau’s awkward vision unfold in all its glory and if you haven’t seen it, it’s hard to explain just how poorly the whole thing comes together.
Wiseau not only starred in the movie, he wrote and directed it. The result is a cult classic of “so bad it’s good” nonsense, but we almost had so much more. Co-star Greg Sestero said that Wiseau’s original plan was for his character to be a vampire.
Nothing in the movie lends itself to the idea that anyone should or could be a vampire, but nothing in the film really lends itself to anything that makes sense, so maybe it’s not a big deal. That said, the vampire subplot would also have included a scene in which Wiseau’s character flew away in a car because, for him, vampires have flying cars.
9. A Trans Character’s Storyline Was Cut from Paper Mario
In the incredibly vast universe of Mario games, Paper Mario is a sort of subset of games that are part puzzle, part RPG, and can be a lot of fun to play. The first Paper Mario dates back to the N64 in the year 2000 and they are still being made. The series could be considered groundbreaking for a transgender subplot in the Japanese version that was cut from the English language release.
In the gameplay, you befriend a former villain named Vivian. She’s part of a group of sisters but she’s the bullied one and, as an outcast, joins Mario at a time when he’s an outcast.
In the Japanese version, you can use a skill that gives you a description of Vivian which says she “appears to be a girl but is really a boy.” At one point in the game when Vivian gets into a fight with her sisters, one calls her a man. She also goes on to say she is a woman now and proud of her transformation. So, for a 2004 game deemed acceptable for children in Japan, it was pretty progressive.
The English translation for Western audiences lost all of this and the character’s status is never really relevant at any point.
8. The Godfather Left Out a Bizarre Subplot About the Size of Sonny Corleone’s Genitals
Considered by many to be one of the greatest movies ever made, The Godfather was based on a book and that’s where most of the story comes from. As with any book-to-movie adaptation, some things had to be cut to make a coherent story that was not 12 hours long. One subplot that didn’t make the grade was the very bizarre subplot about the size of Sonny Corleon’s nether region.
It’s hard to talk about this in a way that doesn’t sound both offensive and entirely made up, but there’s a whole section of the book in which the character Lucy Mancini misses Sonny because of his “manly stature.” And this is compounded by the fact that author Mario Puzo decided to include details about Lucy’s dimensions. He was very obsessed with this idea.
It’s not a one-off either. This is consistently mentioned throughout Sonny’s story. Puzo was really obsessed with it and obsessed with the women in his book who were obsessed with it.
7. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Had a Cheating Subplot
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a classic comedy and one of the few Thanksgiving movies that people watch every single year. Steve Martin and John Candy are brilliant together and the film provides a lot of laughs. It also includes one quick but weird scene.
When Martin’s character returns home and his wife finally meets John Candy’s Del she seems very emotional, almost on the brink of tears. Arguably she was just relieved to see her husband, but there’s a longer cut of the movie that makes this scene more logical.
In the original script, there was a subplot in which she’s worried that her husband is with another woman, that Del is not a man at all and that he’s having an affair. The only remnant of this in the movie most of us saw is that relief on her face when she sees him for the first time.
6. James Gunn’s Scooby-Doo Had a Lesbian Subplot
Scooby-Doo has been a staple of children’s entertainment since back in 1969. And since that time it’s also been mired in jokes about just what’s in those Scooby Snacks that Shaggy eats, not to mention potential relationships between characters. While many people speculated a Fred and Daphne romance, there was a long speculated subtext that Velma might be a lesbian.
Was she written that way intentionally? Who’s to say, unless you mean in the more modern iterations when yes, Velma was very explicitly and intentionally written that way. In fact, James Gunn’s movie from 2002 may have kicked off the intentional story when he wrote a lesbian subplot for the character that was later axed from the movie.
According to Gunn, the subplot was watered down by the studio, then edited out, and then she was given a boyfriend in the sequel.
5. House of 1000 Corpses Was Supposed to Have a Skunk Ape Subplot
Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses was the horror movie director’s first foray into film, and it’s still a memorable grindhouse-inspired horror classic that gets down and dirty. Among the many memorable scenes is a psychedelic dream sequence that briefly shows us something called a skunk ape.
The skunk ape is a cryptid sort of equivalent to Bigfoot, but more of a regional variety. The movie only gives us a brief glimpse of it and that’s it, but Zombie originally had bigger plans. He talks about it in the director’s commentary briefly, but the original script was said to have included a bit where the skunk ape shows up for real to wreak some havoc. Ultimately, it never made the grade.
4. There Was an Epilogue to The Shining
The filming of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the stuff of legends. Numerous articles have been written on the nightmare Shelly Duvall experienced and there’s even a documentary about the whole thing. There are so many good, weird, or unbelievable stories. One that gets overlooked a lot is the actual story itself. Kubrick filmed an epilogue to the movie that was even released with the first cut of the film.
In the original cut, and still available to read in the screenplay, we find out that Danny and his mom are fine after the events at the Overlook, at least physically. They’re in a hospital recovering from the trauma they endured and, you know, that’s it. Nothing zany or spooky happens. Apparently, the intent was to let audiences know they were fine because Kubrick initially had a soft spot for the characters and thought audiences needed to know.
When Kubrick changed his mind about the scene he had to have it physically cut from the movie. That meant people went to the theaters in LA and New York that had prints and they used scissors to literally cut the scene out. Word is every copy was destroyed.
3. The Movie Fantasia Cut an Evolution Sequence
Disney’s Fantasia is beloved by many for its music and animation and the 1940 film contains a long evolution sequence that shows the origin of life up through the dinosaurs which is still very cool to watch. However, being the 1940s, the idea of evolution was still a touchy subject for a lot of people who chose faith over science and Disney could only get away with so much.
Originally, the evolution sequence was supposed to continue onward. It would go beyond the dinosaurs through the evolution of mammals and finally to the evolution of humans, the creation of fire, and all that good, Darwinian stuff. None of that made the final cut of the film, however. The early evolution parts stayed intact because this is just a musical and no one explicitly states anything about science. But the human parts were cut for fear of offending any fundamentalists who would protest the movie.
It wasn’t just blind fear that made Walt Disney stop. According to animator John Hubley, Disney was threatened. Those fundamentalists, who would have wielded quite a bit of political and business clout at the time, made sure Disney knew they didn’t want humans connected to evolution. Disney was already concerned the movie would have a hard time gaining acceptance, so he bowed to their threats and cut the evolution.
2. Zootopia Involved Predators Being Forced to Wear Shock Collars
Zootopia is a fun animated movie about a world full of anthropomorphic animals doing all the sorts of mundane jobs people do in the real world. The story follows a character named Judy who’s a cop and also a rabbit. Hijinks ensue. But the original plan for this movie was much darker.
Originally, Nick Wilde was going to be the main character and Judy would come in later. Nick, and all predators in Zootopia, was set to wear a shock collar that suppressed his predator instincts. Whenever a predator expressed a negative instinct, they’d get zapped. There’s a scene that was never fully animated in which Nick and Judy witness a taming party in which a little bear is forced to wear a taming collar to be accepted into Zootopia.
Producers eventually decided this was much too dark, and the characters were unlikable so they tweaked the story, but early concept art still exists.
1. Kangaroo Jack Was Filmed as an R-rated movie
Kangaroo Jack isn’t the most famous film in history by any means, but the PG-rated 2003 buddy comedy does have a solid 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes so even if you haven’t seen it, you can try to imagine what it might be like.
The movie involves two friends trying to chase down a kangaroo that has accidentally made off with some mob money, something that likely happens all the time in Australia. The movie was once much different than the final cut leads us to believe, however. Star Jerry O’Connell once confirmed that the movie was originally R-rated and even included full-frontal nudity. It was supposed to be a crime-comedy like Midnight Run about low-level mob guys. And then the studio stepped in.
Apparently, test audiences were under the impression that, due to the wacky kangaroo in a jacket used in the promo material, it was going to be a family-friendly comedy for kids. Needless to say, people were unimpressed. Rather than change the film’s marketing, the studio recut the movie to be a family-friendly comedy. And, based on the critics’ response, it didn’t work.