Lost Media and Beta Content: A Strange World of Mysteries | Part 2

Hope you like Super Mario covers of ’60s soul hits!

Who am beta content?

Although it might sound like word salad, beta content is a real phenomenon that I’ve found myself equally as fascinated by as lost media. Typically, the term only relates to video games, specifically their development and/or release histories. Oftentimes, the prototypes of released or unreleased games will be categorized as “alpha” or “beta” stages, with the latter coming later into development than the former. For this reason, beta content⏤the material from these stages that, at one point or another, gets disabled or removed⏤can also be referred to as cut content, unused content, or scrapped material. I usually find myself just as allured by the obscure and/or scrapped production secrets of movies, music, and other forms of media, however, and these secrets are basically the equivalent of beta content among these forms. Therefore, I tend to use beta content as an umbrella term for the unused production and development secrets that relate to any type of physical or digital media.

Throughout this list, there are some notes to keep in mind. For starters, lots of beta content also counts as lost media, particularly when it equates to an entire alternate version that came before the final product (e.g. Kingdom of the Sun, a canceled animated Disney film that was reworked into The Emperor’s New Groove), so keep that in mind in the case of any confusion. Second of all, I’ll be condensing the material I cover down to the most interesting stuff, but I will be providing links to websites and videos with more info in case you’d like to learn more yourself. I’ll also be combining video game beta content with the “beta content” related to movies and TV shows, but it only makes sense to start off with the cut material for the first games I ever loved or formed a strong emotional attachment to: the same games that spurred my love for the subject.

1. The Sonic Dreamcast Era

I mean, it’s true that SEGA’s final console⏤the Dreamcast⏤predated me by at least a year, but Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut was the first game I played on the GameCube that I knew hit me just the right way due to its warm, welcoming environment, soundtrack, voice acting, and charmingly adorable retro animation. That same connection was formed with both Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Sonic Heroes soon after, and while it lives on just as strong with each game today, I also admire them for their characterization, story structure, and general creativity as an adult (Heroes is admittedly where most of the characterization starts to grow weaker, but it’s still equally rich with creativity.) I’ll be going over those aspects in later posts, however, as some of my favorite areas of them to explore nowadays are their cut content and complex development histories… well, at least in the case of the Adventure games, but we’ll get to Heroes and that… other one I used to play soon enough.

First off, Sonic Adventure went through the most stunning range of alterations over time, as it was the first fully 3D Sonic game and took the series in a completely new creative direction, having introduced totally new character designs, arcs, and even names (take the new name of Amy Rose for the character known previously as Rosy the Rascal); an impressive range of gameplay styles that differ radically for each playable character; and an expansive, intersecting storyline that reveals a turbulent ancient backstory piece by piece. Mesoamerican civilizations and their famous ruins acted as a primary inspiration for the game’s story, as Sonic Team traveled to and explored such landmarks as Chichén Itzá and Machu Picchu during the predevelopment stage. This led to such colorful yet relatively realistic stages as Emerald Coast, Windy Valley, and Lost World, but Windy Valley in particular is known for having been totally redesigned somewhat early into development. It was originally more wide-open and cartoony in terms of its textures and layout, making it feel more like a Saturn-era level than anything else.

Most of the game’s stages saw noticeable changes between its many prototypes, but the most eye-catching differences can be seen in the earliest official prototype, the AutoDemo. Now, with the non-playable loop of the AutoDemo broken, which has since made most of it fully playable, the only chao garden that the player can access is the Station Square garden, but it’s the closest garden to the version seen in the final game. As for the other two incomplete gardens, the Mystic Ruins garden is shaped differently and has its entrance on the opposite side to the one in the final game, and the Egg Carrier garden has literally zero resemblance to its final counterpart. It’s actually just a strip of land taken from the early version of Windy Valley, and there’s a giant hole in its west side because a bridge is attached to that side in the stage. Like AutoDemo Windy Valley, this early garden can be seen multiple times throughout the game’s reveal at the Tokyo International Forum of 1998.

Like the other pieces of cut content for the Adventure games that you’ll be reading about below, my fellow video game modders and I have painstakingly restored both AutoDemo Windy Valley and the AutoDemo Egg Carrier garden. In fact, the same modders are responsible for recreating the early versions of Speed Highway and Red Mountain, as well as the three test levels from the AutoDemo. I used to highly anticipate a mod that restores the Egg Carrier garden and its retro, liminal space-esque comfort, but any work on it was quietly discontinued due to the limitations of chao world object editing, so I pulled a Thanos in the post-credits scene from Age of Ultron and decided that I’d do it myself. That mod is available on Gamebanana, as well as all of the other AutoDemo stage mods.

Now, I feel like modding was destined to be a hobby of mine my whole life, because one of the first beta secrets I learned about is also the easiest to restore! That would be a fairly recognizable secret dubbed the Sky Chase Dragon, which was an unused mini-boss during the titular sub-game. It’s a mechanical three-headed beast that’s fully animated and mobile, chases the Tornado during act one, appears periodically during act two, exists in every version of the game, and can be easily spawned with an object spawner or stage editor like SALVL2. It can’t be destroyed, and it can’t damage the player, but explosions will go off if you shoot at it. I have a mod on Gamebanana that restores the dragon, although it doesn’t restore it in act two as it’s missing all of its textures in that sub-game. I recall reading about the dragon as a little kid, so there’s always been a sense of satisfaction that comes with seeing it functioning in-game.

The next one is a close second when it comes to the popularity level of Sonic Adventure beta content, but for entirely different reasons. You familiar with that iconic LED cowgirl billboard in the Las Vegas Strip? Well, in the upper level of Casinopolis, there’s a moving billboard closely modeled after it that can be seen in the original Japanese release for the Dreamcast, but it was removed in all subsequent versions for carrying one strange feature. See, if you hit or glide into it, you’ll hear a feminine grunt, which most people hear as a sexual moan. To me, on the other hand, it sounds as annoyed as it does suggestive, making it just subtle enough for little kids not to pick up on the meaning, but that’s up for debate. Point is, the AutoDemo features a far more provocative playboy bunny statue in its place⏤one that I restored as part of my Miscellaneous Beta Elements mod and boasts gigantic, orb-shaped breasts. Turns out, it really could be worse. Much worse.

As I mentioned before, Sonic Adventure accomplished a ton when it came to reimagining the characters. Just take the redesign for Dr. Eggman and the decision to make his English name (Ivo Robotnik) his real name and his Japanese name (Dr. Eggman) his nickname, thus introducing either name to either country. Something you would never guess without a closer look, however, is that Sonic’s appearance may not have been altered completely before the predevelopment stage was over. In an old public event photo, as well as several UI items like Sonic’s life icon and Tails’s mission cards, his model appears to be a blend of his low-poly Saturn model and his final Dreamcast model. In fact, Tails is pictured with black eyes in a promotional screenshot of AutoDemo Windy Valley as opposed to his final blue eyes. Although it’s not yet available on Gamebanana, a modder named ClassicSonicSatAm has made a full recreation of Sonic’s rarely-seen beta model, as well as models for Tails, Knuckles, and Amy that similarly blend their classic and Dreamcast appearances together. It even replaces Gamma with a combination of Mecha Sonic from Sonic 3 and the hidden Silver Sonic model floating in a stasis tube inside the Final Egg lobby!

Speaking of doing a lot with the characters, Sonic Adventure 2 had the hefty responsibility of introducing a few new characters, and the work on those characters was complicated, to say the least. The two most vital and memorable of them all, Shadow and Rouge, saw drastic changes made to their designs and names as the project progressed, although the overall visions behind them stayed more or less the same. The suave, manipulative, and arrogant jewel thief of the two was first named “Nails”, a name with clear similarities to Knuckles’s (this makes sense, given they’re rivals in the story and share the same gameplay style.) She also had a meaner, edgier look to her, sporting a different hairstyle (or… fur… style?) and even piercings. As for the confused, mysterious anomaly and ultimate life form, Shadow was originally modeled closely after Sonic, bearing the same face, body, and quill shape alongside a red bandana and a fractured eye. Funny enough, his more unique final design creates a plot hole, as everyone confusing him for Sonic would’ve made sense if he kept his prototype design. Regardless, the first name planned out for him was Terios, which is believed to originate from the Japanese term “Terasu”, meaning “to compare with” or “to shine upon”. All credit goes to Sonic Team for sticking with a more straightforward and appropriate name despite the subtleties of the original name. I don’t expect a silly kid’s cartoon game to drown too deep in linguistic subtleties.

Complain about Sonic being framed for Shadow’s crime all you want⏤you can easily chalk it up to, “it was dark outside”. One out of the two following texture oddities between prototypes would’ve made zero sense if it stayed in the final game. Once upon a time, the fake Chaos Emerald created by Tails was meant to be silver, as proved by an unused texture, even though the Emerald it’s based off is yellow. This would’ve made Eggman knowing it’s a fake way too obvious, and he would’ve looked far less brilliant for doing so! The latter unused texture, on the other hand, is just a neat little design change for one character in particular⏤or, well, the alternate form of one character. Instead of a pale gold, Super Shadow was going to be a pure silver, which would’ve implemented a nice distinction between him and Super Sonic… not that I view his final fur color to be a detriment, of course.

The last prerelease detail related to this game is an extremely obscure one, as it comes from the most recently discovered prototype and is therefore rarely talked about aside from here and the Twitter page of a known modder. It’s Easy Actually, a well-respected leading member of the Sonic modding community, posted a looped video after exploring the online content files of this prototype. As you can tell by watching the video below, the subject is a fully animated music box that was most likely intended as a chao toy, although why it was discovered in this prototype, but never in any other release, is anyone’s guess. Now, I don’t know about you, but there’s… there’s this song playing in my head every time I see it for myself. Why does it sound so… familiar?

Before moving on from the Adventure games, it should be noted that I have two in-depth videos on my now-inactive YouTube modding channel, ElectroNuke Mods, covering easter eggs and beta secrets for each title, in case you’re interested in learning more. I also have a modded playthrough of SADX using Dreamcast and beta mods called Sonic Adventure: Beta Edition on the playlist here.

As for Sonic Heroes and the just-as-creative but not-so-wholesome Shadow the Hedgehog, there isn’t a whole lot to offer in the realm of beta content, but there is a little to say about both. Heroes already benefits from incredible stage design, but the concept art for these stages is arguably even more beautiful. The two pieces I’ll be showing off are for Lost Jungle and Final Fortress, and in the case of the former, it looks much closer to Frog Forest overall and even appears to feature giant dinosaurs! Now, that surely sounds like an idea that was ripped straight from the brain of seven-year-old me, but suffice it to say, these ancient creatures were swapped out for the giant alligator that always manages to turn up the tension of the stage from twelve to twelve hundred the moment it comes out to eat its fill at the very end.

The second art piece is a whole different story, however, considering the Lost Jungle art above at least takes place in a jungle. Whereas Egg Fleet was meant to take place all across Eggman’s fleet during a thunderstorm, Final Fortress was once intended to take place someplace else entirely: under the goddamn ocean. Yes, the game featuring dinosaurs and deep sea marine life would’ve been a wet dream for me before I was even old enough to ejaculate. However, I digress, as the sudden shift from Eggman’s fleet⏤a previously set-up location⏤to someplace so low beneath it would’ve been flat-out bizarre. Besides, we would end up getting an underwater stage in the form of Aquatic Base from… Sonic ’06. Good thing the concept was utilized in that masterpiece.

The last beta secret to note with this game is… a little weird. See, Sonic Mega Collection Plus includes a prototype intro for Heroes as an unlockable feature, rendered using a combination of incomplete CGI animation, storyboards, and the strangest element of all: an early version of the game’s theme song with Crush 40 vocalist Johnny Gioeli slurring through the lyrics after downing ten PBRs, for some reason.

Oh, before you ask… yes. I know he’s spouting gibberish in order to get the rhythm just right. I am not, in fact, too dumb to pick up on that, in spite of prior evidence.

As for the game with such an unlikable main hero and such an interesting main villain that you just end up hoping the main hero will help the main villain enslave humanity, Shadow the Hedgehog was apparently meant to be even darker and more vulgar, having been riddled with more swears and featuring both G.U.N. soldiers and Black Arms alike drawing red blood. While at least one low-quality screenshot exists proving either detail, an extended intro sequence featuring longer shots was cut (à la Event Horizon), as well as a removed shot of Maria falling back from the gunshot that killed her. The only known recording of this removed shot is filmed playing on a television in egregiously low quality at an unknown event.

On the subject of discussing genuinely neat beta assets with obvious cynicism, there’s an unused level referred to as “stage9900” in the game’s files that uses a combination of stage meshes from Heroes and… some underpaid digital artist’s beautiful cyberpunk cityscape, apparently. Because of course they knew they’d get away with that!

Okay, as far as poking fun at this game goes, I think I’ve said just about enough. Before moving on, though, there is one last piece of beta content related to it that’s managed to leave me mystified as someone who enjoys a vast array of music—and I won’t sound as outrageously cynical this time. See, aside from the aforementioned uncensored “Maria’s death” cutscene, Shadow the Hedgehog features several unused CGI events using these events’ same (and admittedly stunning) 3D animation, two of which were included in rare 2005 TV spots, but none of them compare to the game’s assortment of lost music tracks. The official album included the beta versions of the Digital Circuit and Circus Park themes, as well as an unused remix of the Digital Circuit theme, but reportedly, three vocal themes never made it into the game, even having been left out of the official vocal album titled Lost and Found: Shadow the Hedgehog Vocal Trax. These included two songs by short-lived alternative rock band Sins of a Divine Mother titled “All of Me” and “Broken”, which are said to have been intended for one of the dark endings and the semi-hero ending, respectively. “Broken” was eventually replaced by “The Chosen One” by A2. The third track was “Who I Am” by Magni-Fi, the band behind the game’s original version of “All Hail Shadow” and who later re-recorded and released the song on their second studio album. Granted, this should be taken with an extra grain of salt, as these songs’ associations with the game have not been confirmed by SEGA or Sonic Team to this day, hence why I decided to save them for last. The album version of “Who I Am” can be listened to below, and the Sins of a Divine Mother EP featuring both “All of Me” and “Broken” has been archived here.

2. Super Mario Sunshine

I think it says a lot about my feelings towards the Mario franchise when I choose to discuss only one game instead of four, like I did with the Sonic franchise. I’ll provide my reasons for preferring the latter in a post of its own, but for now, I’ll be going over some of the beta content for the one great Mario game that’s always acted as a source of comfort for me… even though I can’t show the story or characters that much appreciation in hindsight, especially compared to the Sonic Adventure games.

Anywho, the game was first unveiled at Nintendo’s 2001 Spaceworld convention, where a brief trailer showed off a plethora of differences from the final game. These included an early HUD design, oddly shaped piantas, an unknown female human NPC, a skinnier model for F.L.U.D.D., a massive scrapped enemy called “Tramplin’ Stu”, a functioning unused soccer ball, collectibles called Sol coins that were replaced with normal coins early on in development, and most notably, a test environment that appears to contain prerelease iterations of Delfino Plaza, Bianco Hills, and Ricco Harbor. The song used for the startup demo in the final game plays throughout the trailer, as you’ll see in the 2K-upscaled recording embedded below.

Due to how much thought and aesthetic beauty went into a test world that was presumably only built for this one trailer, I’ve always pondered the idea of the test world being modded into the game someday, but that never happened—the closest I got was a quickly compiled landscape of untextured blocks shown in some obscure YouTube upload from ages ago. However, using a test level height map that follows the same layout as the Spaceworld test map, modder Level Select has faithfully recreated the test map using most of the proper textures, custom tree models, red coins in the place of the Sol coins, and such unused items as the soccer ball, an ice cream stand, and our forgotten pal Tramplin’ Stu! Although Bianco Hills is textured but not yet accessible and Ricco Harbor is non-solid, the recreation of “Dolpic Town” is beautifully constructed and available for download in the description of the video below.

While there are plenty of physical objects that went unused, the majority of the strangest secrets are buried among hidden textures and blocks of text. Aside from a scrapped scenario where Mario would’ve helped two parents find their missing daughter that can be read in detail from the Cutting Room Floor page here—the daughter possibly being the unknown girl in the Spaceworld trailer—one of the most substantial and mysterious beta secrets in the game is for a system dubbed the “Delfino Express”, a complex subway system that would’ve taken the player all across Isle Delfino. Presumably, a ticket to each world would’ve been purchased with Sol coins, and scattered throughout the list of available worlds below are several unused worlds with their names acting as their only existing remnants. Considering some worlds take place on their own islands, it made perfect sense to create separate transportation methods for each world.

Oh, and some unused text also contains a couple of the lyrics to “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King for some reason. It’s not important, but it is.

Speaking of which… ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Gadd Industries’ very own F.L.U.D.D., here to perform Ben E. King’s legendary soul hit “Stand by Me”!

3. The Batman: Arkham Series

Unfortunately, the perfectly wholesome times of Dolpic Town and yours truly nasally singing ’60s soul hits through electronic distortion are over, but plenty of interesting stuff is coming your way, and this is where we get into some of the really obscure secrets. See, the Batman: Arkham games were the first critically acclaimed Batman video games aside from the LEGO games, so they’ve all left behind a lengthy trail of the trials and tribulations that came with working on them. Two of the most obvious traces of this paper trail are pictured at either side of the heading image above: the Worst Nightmare skin for Arkham Origins and the Joker Mayhem DLC challenges for Arkham Knight, the former of which is Joker’s imaginary perception of Batman throughout the main story and the latter being based around causing as much damage as possible and sending the bill to Wayne Enterprises, according to unused text. However, even with the game that started it all, I’ve begun to realize that some of the most fascinating beta elements are almost never talked about—even on modding-related Discord servers. That in and of itself is surprising, as these amount to entire prototype releases with completely different story sequences and even character designs!

As for that first game, Arkham Asylum—admittedly my least favorite title story-wise, as will be discussed in a later post—the better-known beta elements include an entire portfolio of concept art, which is available with other artwork and development info in The Art of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, & Arkham Knight. Between early batsuit designs; costumes for villains like Bane, Scarecrow, and Harley; and mad doctor outfits for a version of Joker with a Heath Ledger/Lee Bermejo-esque Glasgow smile, there was clearly a profound level of effort that went into finalizing comic-accurate interpretations that still match the grim tone of a bleak gothic fortress like Arkham Asylum. I mean, I still prefer the quieter depiction of Scarecrow in Arkham Knight, and I still get the strong feeling that Paul Dini doesn’t quite know how to write Bane properly, but the effort is there nonetheless.

As for other secrets that are relatively well-known, early magazine articles for Arkham Asylum featured screenshots that seemed to otherwise portray the final game accurately, but they curiously showed off an alternate version of Riddler’s cell. Whereas the final version of the cell has green graffiti all over the walls, this one is covered in bloody words and question marks, including an ultimately scrapped French phrase that translates to, “I loved, I suffered, now I hate.” Honestly, I commend Rocksteady for sticking with a more faithful take on Eddie Nygma by making him an obsessive-compulsive smartass as opposed to the type of lunatic who would scribble something like that. Then again, they kept all the other written words, so they wisely didn’t make him perfectly sane, either.

Funny enough, the earliest known trailer for Arkham City available here is similar to the Spaceworld 2001 trailer for Super Mario Sunshine in that it features a different setting and character designs from the final game. Most of the models are reused from Asylum, like those for Harley, the security guards, and Joker’s thugs, but Joker’s TITAN-infected appearance in this trailer is completely new and completely unrecognizable from his scarred, boil-spotted final appearance. Granted, that’s not to say he doesn’t look pretty goddamn sickly, having numerous boils and drooping wrinkles, noticeable hair loss, and even black patches around both eyes, which makes this the second time that Heath Ledger-inspired elements of his design were scrapped in this series, something that I’m surely the only one to ever approve of! The fully textured model for this early take on sick Joker has its own detailed render, as pictured below.

After a closer look at that teaser trailer, I bet you’ve got a craving for some more scrapped visual assets! Well, going back to Arkham Asylum, another fairly well-known fact is that there was meant to be rainy weather throughout the whole game, and although this wasn’t able be fully implemented outside of the intro sequence, it acted as a nice addition to the Return to Arkham remaster (you can just tell that it was originally supposed to rain by looking at the security guards, many of whom are inexplicably still wearing hooded raincoats.) Another that you probably wouldn’t pick up on if it weren’t for the previously mentioned art collection book is the “straightjacket henchman”, a scrapped enemy in a… you guessed it… rainbow petticoat! Okay, no, he does wear a straightjacket as opposed to something more progressive in the LGBTQ+ scene, and he was supposed to wield a blunt object as a weapon. While he was removed very early on, the severed head of the original model can still be seen floating inside a jar in the final game! By the way, before you ask, no, I can’t tell you how the asylum is legally allowed to remain in operation given that detail.

Did that satisfy your visual material hunger? Well, you’re about to bite off more than you can chew, because both Asylum and Origins have rarely-discussed pre-alpha stages that have been released in some capacity, but the difficulty of finding reliable information on them is staggering, based on my own experiences researching them. Considering at least two Arkham modders have released gameplay videos for the Origins pre-alpha, I’ll be starting with the pre-alpha version of Asylum, which apparently doesn’t even exist as a full release and is rather an extensive compilation of primitive mid-development assets. According to the modder who released the alpha texture pack for Asylum available on Nexus Mods here, the pre-alpha mainly just consists of UI graphics, models, textures, and a few cutscenes, but among these is a completely different batsuit from the iconic one in the final game. It appears to have been based off the batsuit from Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb comic stories like Dark Victory and The Long Halloween, the version of Batman typically illustrated by Alex Ross, and the suit from the previous (and far less critically acclaimed) Batman game, Dark Tomorrow.

Aside from the Dark Knight himself, Gordon was apparently younger in the pre-alpha; the TITAN thugs were more skeletal in appearance and stuck with protruding metal rods; the fear toxin in Scarecrow’s needle glove was green instead of orange in color; and Joker had slightly different hair and a puffier necktie, seemingly based more closely off his later concept designs. The retextured versions of Batman and Joker included with the alpha texture pack are pictured below, as well as the… well, let’s just say, rather shitpost-worthy Gordon head render from the prototype.

Now, alongside the cold case regarding why the Arkham Asylum pre-alpha has seemingly evaporated into thin air with zero explanation from anyone, this prototype is still not to be confused with the leaked prototype of a canceled port developed for the DS or the prototype of a canceled Wii port. While the Wii port was presumably a prequel about Batman apprehending Joker at city hall immediately before the events of the main game, the DS port was… uh… something. Listen, how about you try watching the footage embedded below and see if you can decipher anything behind the project?

Despite the relatively clearer vision behind the Wii port compared to that of the DS port—not to mention the fact that the footage embedded below was released by its presumed developers, Red Fly Studios, as opposed to the DS port’s quiet leak by a user who may or may not have been one of its developers—a playable copy of the prototype has never been released in any form. The ROM file for the DS prototype, on the other hand, can be downloaded here from Hidden Palace, a database dedicated to documenting and archiving video game prototypes. I know—talk about a shit-show.

Okay… breathe. The pre-alpha version of Origins is much better-known, although its bizarre differences from the final game still deserve to be recognized for how… well… bizarre they are. First off, the Arkham Asylum pre-alpha batsuit is held inside the suit storage tank at the Batcave because… I guess Warner Bros. Montreal had access to the model and figured, “why not?” Anywho, the centerpiece of the pre-alpha is the end of the Royal Hotel chapter and the subsequent Joker dream sequence at Blackgate, and the prerelease weirdness starts right off the bat (no pun intended) by forcing Batman to take on Branden and his entire SWAT team, snipers and all, as opposed to wisely grappling out of there and taking off in the Batwing like he does in the final.

Rest assured, the insanity starts back up again like an atomic bomb when Joker’s therapy session with Dr. Quinzel begins, with a start to their discussion that is not heard in the final over what appears to be a compilation of storyboards or concept art depicting his birthday party as a child. After that, an unused rant plays over a live-action scene of what appears to be his mocap actor in Joker makeup, and right before the whimsical comedy club fight, you can catch a glimpse of some bald, mustached, shirtless lunatic jumping off the stage (most likely another mocap actor). The Red Hood scene at the end of the sequence appears to be compiled with concept art and storyboards, although a frame from the end of his backstory in The Killing Joke is so clearly added into the mix. After a frame from the beginning of The Wizard of Oz is pasted over the storyboards of Batman and Joker falling from the hotel balcony, we see the mocap actor being analyzed by a therapist who is definitely not Dr. Quinzel, and the nightmare ends with an unrelated live-action previz sequence of the mocap actor in the same Joker makeup shooting a couple comic book nerds with a snub-nose revolver behind an apartment complex somewhere in Montreal. Honestly, I think I might need a therapy session of my own after watching all this.

Oh, and afterwards, a GCPD officer drops the f-bomb during the dispatch that Batman listens into at the Batcave, something that definitely isn’t heard in the final.

4. Grand Theft Auto (3D Universe)

In spite of how beloved these three Grand Theft Auto games are, this is the first instance of beta content discussion based on how much beta content there is, as opposed to how much of a fan I am of the games involved. I have enjoyed each of these games to an extent, but as an adult who didn’t grow up playing them, I’ve only found myself engaged with the story and characters of San Andreas, so just don’t assume that this’ll be another praise-fest centered around GTA III and Vice City. Trust me, my feelings towards both will be elaborated on thoroughly in a future post, but for now, let’s get into the stuff related to them that I legitimately find engaging.

Let’s begin with the title that transitioned the series into the world of 3D—its very own Sonic Adventure, if you will. The earliest known promotional screenshots displayed a much more colorful and cartoony art style that more strongly resembles the 2D games than the more realistic visual flair of the final. This is reflected in Claude himself, the other NPCs, the weapons, the vehicles, the buildings, and even the weather. Although it acts as a separate build that requires the base game and does not include any story missions, Rockstar Games’s original vision for the game has come to life via a beautiful conversion mod called Grand Theft Auto 3D, which is available for download on the GTA Forum page here.

One of the most popular unused assets related to the game is a removed mission giver named Darkel, and that’s probably because the most information is known about him, but there is also a fair share of misinformation about him. See, Darkel was intended as a homeless man and violent anarchist who’d give the player chaotic side missions based around wreaking as much havoc as possible, and his name and voice actor are actually listed in the final game’s credits despite his absence. However, certain missions that he was believed to have given the player have been debunked by Rockstar, including an assassination attempt on Donald Love by crashing a plane into the Love Media tower.

On the subject of that assassination attempt, GTA III was a violent third-person shooter released in 2001 that takes place in a fictional city inspired by New York, so suffice it to say, 9/11 threw one hell of a monkeywrench into the whole development process. Many aspects of how the world and its AI were programmed had to be disabled or removed, like airplanes flying near the mainland, but Rockstar has been adamant that the changes were nowhere close to as noticeable as people have spoken and asked about online. For instance, the assassination attempt assigned by Darkel was rumored to have been cut due to 9/11, but Rockstar has repeatedly denied this. However, the programming details that they would end up altering in response to the attacks have shown up in a few early screenshots and trailers. Just take the German trailer embedded below, at the end of which an airline jet is seen being blown sky-high, whereas they’re totally invincible in the final. With all due respect, Rockstar, I get the feeling that this might not be a coincidence. Just my two cents.

As for Vice City, it’s a tough game for me to praise, as it features an astounding Hollywood voice cast in service of a mostly forgettable cast of characters. However, and as much as I’ve never found much to like in Tommy Vercetti, (a) you have Ray Liotta giving it his all, and (b) there was clearly plenty of thought that went into his design and casting. Development sketches seem to imply that he was based closely off Al Pacino, who may have been originally intended for the role. The obvious inspiration taken from Scarface aside, early promotional screenshots showing off an early model for Tommy during both gameplay and cutscenes indicate facial similarities to Al Pacino, although he’s clearly much heavier in terms of his body type—far bulkier than Tony Montana. Also noteworthy is his bright blue Hawaiian shirt, which he’s pictured wearing in all of the iconic promotional artwork for the game. This pot-bellied early model, along with a vast range of other prerelease character, mission, weapon, vehicle, map, and UI changes, is fully restored in the incredible conversion mod Vice City: Beta Edition that’s available for download here, complete with detailed facial animations during cutscenes.

Now, similarly to how Darkel was still included in the credits for GTA III despite his otherwise total nonexistence in the game, a minor character in Vice City is introduced during the first yacht scene at the beginning only to never play a single role in the story as the rest of the side characters introduced in this scene would. That character is named Pastor Richards, who was originally intended as a mission giver with unused lines and even his own development sketches. It seems that some work went into his character, as he turns out to be a corrupt preacher (of course) trying to leech money off the church (again, called it.) His role was diminished to almost nothing throughout development, with the only exception being on a talk radio segment, which ends with him shooting a nudist in the groin. I’d respond rather appropriately to that with “Jesus”… if I hadn’t already used that joke in the Vice City episode of the Back to Beta series on my modding channel.

You know, in my professional opinion, the only two legitimately compelling characters in the game are Ken Rosenburg and Umberto Robina, and between Mercedes and that… porn star character whose name I feel guilty even saying… the sexualization of the only couple female characters still overwhelms me with second-hand embarrassment, but all one would have to do is play the Mario Sunshine soundtrack over some nonviolent gameplay along Vice Point Beach using the Beta Edition mod to let the warm, nostalgic vibes wash over me like the ocean waves. See? I’ve recreated that effect below!

Now, you remember all of that blasphemous stuff I said about the game everybody else loves religiously? The stuff I just said five seconds ago? Well, luckily, I don’t hold those same ill feelings towards San Andreas, a game that starts out unexpectedly compelling but gradually diminishes in that area, but I mean very gradually. It’s a slow fall, like the House of Usher. Anywho, San Andreas holds just as impressive a collection of beta content as its predecessors (and even its successors, come to think of it!) The first (and most disappointing) is centered around a character whose drastically diminished role is representative of the game’s slow fall, as it’s particularly towards the end of the story. That character is Big Bear, B Dup’s coke-addled base slave introduced towards the beginning. Before I get into the cut material related to his role in the story, he’s only seen as emaciated in each cutscene he appears in, but two fatter unused models were designated for him in the files: one with him wearing the same outfit and the other basically just a generic Grove Street hood model. It can be assumed that the latter model acted as a placeholder before the other two models were completed.

The next secret relating to Bear is honestly a little frustrating to discuss, as it’s a conversation removed from the mission “Beat Down on B Dup” despite being a legitimately sweet moment of character bonding. The cut sequence was centered around CJ taking Bear to get detoxed, and the two are able to catch up on everything that’s happened since CJ left Grove Street. It’s also a great scene from an acting perspective, on the part of all three characters involved: Sweet, CJ, and Bear. The only reason that I can come up with for this scene’s removal is time constraints, as it feels like a valuable scene to keep in from a writer’s perspective. I don’t know. Maybe, Rockstar figured players would enjoy the game regardless, and as it would turn out, they were pretty on-point.

Apparently, the 3D era is not only a goldmine when it comes to unearthing beta content—it’s also the breeding grounds for restoring it, considering San Andreas: Beta Edition is another humungous conversion mod that exists! Available here, it restores the next several changes in character designs that I’ll be detailing, as well as countless other NPCs, vehicles, weapons, missions, map details, UI elements, and more. As can be seen in early trailers and promo screens, basically the entire lead cast was redesigned… well, at least a couple were. The other two just have different outfits, but radically different outfits. The first of those two outliers is Big Smoke, who originally wore a white sports jersey and no bowler hat. The latter is Sweet, who wore a gray tee over a white long-sleeve and a black beanie, making it so two of the most important hoods on Grove Street aren’t even wearing any green! Try out the Beta Edition mod when Sweet demeans CJ for lacking Grove Street colors if you want to know what a brain aneurysm feels like. As for the other two, the model for a generic female pedestrian is reused for Kendl while Ryder is completely unrecognizable, clearly being modeled after Snoop Dogg as opposed to Eazy-E.

5. Max Payne 3 and Half-Life 2

If piecing together the Arkham Origins pre-alpha wasn’t a conflicting experience in its own right… well, here, I’ll be discussing the beta versions of a game that I’ve played extensively and loved, and another that I’ve never even played once but find fascinating for its scrapped concepts nonetheless. Naturally, however, let’s start off with the one that I’m familiar with in its final form. I’ve always admired Max Payne 3 as a finale for taking the series in such a new and unexpected direction (well, for that and for cutting out the few annoying and pretentious aspects of the first two titles), particularly the new writing for Max and the fish-out-of-water effect of him traveling thousands of miles to an unfamiliar environment like São Paulo. Whereas the politically and economically divided tropical metropolis that he ended up in was a completely out-of-left-field location change for a grim, downbeat detective-noir trilogy, he was once going to be placed in the slightly less exotic locale of dark, snowy, Ukraine-atomizing Russia—that is, a whopping six years before its release! Indeed, concept art depicting a very different setting and cast of characters dates all the way back to 2006, concept art that was at first believed to have been illustrated for GTA IV, and for good reason.

This artwork has been confirmed to come from the portfolio of an artist for the original developer, Rockstar Vienna, and the screenshots you’re about to see presumably come from this same in-development beta version before the studio was closed and the project was handed over to Rockstar North. Now, it’s important to take these with a grain of salt due to the uncertainty behind their legitimacy, although the second screenshot does closely resemble the docks during chapter five, and the player character does seem to share Max’s same appearance from this chapter in particular but with different hair.

So, anyway, it’s true that I don’t know nearly as much of Half-Life 2, but one of the elements that’s always kept me away from it was the rather confusing tone. It so often switches between silly, lighthearted dialogue between characters like Freeman, Barney, Alyx, and Dr. Kleiner and harrowing horror sequences with disgusting alien monsters and headcrab-controlled zombies. So, in other words, to know that it might’ve been more consistently gloomy and dour if it stuck closely to a written and illustrated prequel is somewhat frustrating. The book in question, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar—on which a relatively recent mod for the game was based—contained concept art for City 17, which was less of an eastern European city center and more of a dark, rusting, flickering neon-riddled cyberpunk hellhole. Just to further cement this stage’s distinction from the final, the Citadel was essentially a vertical concrete art deco sculpture instead of a glistening steel tower, making the entire setting feel like an all-out inverse of the final version.

Another issue of mine that Raising the Bar seems to address comes with the autocratic main villain, Wallace Breen. Again, I don’t have much firsthand experience with the game, but from what I understand, it’s how ordinary and welcoming he comes off as that makes him intimidating, almost like reverse psychology. However, not only was he once depicted as a noticeably different character, but he wasn’t even supposed to have an actual name! Ambiguously dubbed “the Consul”, a title that I’ve actually adopted for the antagonist of a comic miniseries of mine, he was far more stoic, blatantly authoritarian, and most eerily of all, alien in nature. As you can see in the artwork below, his design was straight out of a science fiction epic like The Fifth Element or Mass Effect.

By far the most eerie and dystopian element of this stage are the Consul’s video-recorded messages to the people of City 17. The final “Breencasts” are simple shoulder-level camera captures of Breen speaking plainly and professionally, which certainly feel overly and unnaturally welcoming given the current state of the world and the military control over it. I mean, yeah, they’re effective enough… until you watch and listen to the nightmare fuel that are the original “Consulcasts”. In these visually and audibly distorted clips, he declares strict standards for life under Combine rule that each start with “the true citizen…” in the regime’s native tongue, albeit translated by a deep-pitched voice that really doesn’t do the unnerving auditory experience any justice.

6. SpongeBob SquarePants

It’s about damn time that we finally get to the beta secrets from other forms of media, and I can’t imagine a better example to start with! Like the Sonic games detailed at the beginning, however, the sappy, emotion-fueled antidepressant that is nostalgia does factor into my feelings toward SpongeBob, but I’ve found plenty more to appreciate about it in retrospect as an adult, the unused production material being a perfect example. Just so you’re aware, there’ll be a blog post dedicated to one episode in particular that perfectly exemplifies the show’s best brand of humor in the near future, but for now, let’s talk a little about how the show began.

Tiny elementary-grade Sammy Burke would surely have been fascinated to know that SpongeBob was always technically an adaptation of creator and marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg’s comic series, The Intertidal Zone, and that the titular protagonist was a reimagining of a radio DJ from the comic named Bob the Sponge. The initial title of the show was SpongeBoy, Ahoy! until it was discovered that the name “SpongeBoy” had already been licensed for a cleaning mop… a mop that, upon investigation, never seems to have existed at any point in history. The collection of concept art illustrated during pre-production features a drastically different overall art style from the final, character designs and all, although certain elements of it still exist in the show’s official pilot episode, “Help Wanted”.

Speaking of “Help Wanted,” the pilot originally aired all the way back in 1997, at a time before the iconic intro and theme song were implemented. Given that fact, the incredibly rare first airing featured an early intro credits sequence using a unique instrumental theme that would later be reused for the title card of the episode “Hall Monitor”. In fact, when watching reruns of the pilot today, the awkward wipe transition that cuts out the 1997 intro is all too noticeable.

You’d be a friggin’ madman to think that I’d get into all of the show’s deleted scenes—the goddamn ocean of deleted scenes, even within the first three seasons—so the only example that I’ll be bothering to get into (in this post, at least) is not so much a deleted scene as it is the entire original cut of an episode. See, the season two episode “Shanghaied”, during which SpongeBob and Patrick become the Flying Dutchman’s crew until they learn that they’re at risk of being eaten, has always been aired in the form of a special called “Patchy’s Pick” for no good reason… that is, except for the original airing. This first airing was a longer special called “You Wish!” and was based around viewers calling into a toll-free number and voting for a specific ending, much like Batman: A Death in the Family as mentioned in part one. These endings involved one out of SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward being given a wish by the Dutchman that could potentially save them from getting eaten. Ultimately, SpongeBob’s ending was the winner, but oddly enough, it’s the only ending that concludes with everyone surviving, as both Patrick and Squidward’s endings result in them swiftly getting eaten when their wishes backfire—Squidward’s because he wishes to have never known the other two but is still stuck with them afterwards, and Patrick’s because he asks for chewing gum. So… considering SpongeBob’s wish… the one that would end up saving everyone… was the ending that ultimately won… could this possibly be a case of… VOTER FRAUD?! Give Rupert Murdoch a call! We got some breaking news for all the conservatives out there!

Too bad we’ll never get more of Tucker Carlson and his hypothetical fear-mongering. This is so obviously a national crisis! Anywho, the “You Wish!” special was clearly a one-time deal, so it was edited into “Patchy’s Pick” for all subsequent airings. Now, like the deleted scenes from “Just One Bite” and “Procrastination”, I definitely recall seeing the original version as a little kid and having been confused by the edited version. Then again, they don’t do a whole lot to hide the edits made for “Patchy’s Pick”, as everyone including me noticed the out-of-sync dubbing over Patchy’s dialogue. You’ll be able to tell just as early on while watching the comparison video embedded below.

The original “You Wish!” special has basically remained as lost media since the edits were made, although it would be made available with its two alternate endings on the wonderful treasure trove that is the First 100 Episodes box set. Granted, considering there’s still the matter of the since-retired 800 number, it’s been blurred out and replaced with humorous text on the box set version, but the rest of the original special is properly restored as originally aired. Now, while I never would’ve cared as someone who just wanted to see the scenes that were awkwardly cut or replaced, recordings of the special with the 800 number intact have since been uploaded online for all the hyper-perfectionists out there.

Hmmm… I don’t know. Maybe, some people felt bad for the original number with it having been shoved into a storage locker with Davy Jones and The Monkees’ dirty gym socks.

Gee, that’s a whole lot of wholesome deleted SpongeBob content for you! Well, I hope you’re ready for a dramatic tonal shift, because there’s one especially noteworthy prerelease secret included with the dumped development assets for the PS1 game SuperSponge, and it’s… well… these very personal sketches doodled by someone deeply, deeply disturbed.

Ummm… it’s, uh… it’s about as disturbing as the prototype intro cutscenes for The Simpsons: Hit & Run. That’s the kindest thing I can say about it.

7. Miscellaneous Kids Shows

Getting back to the wholesome stuff, Dora the Explorer was an educational series that little kid me absolutely despised for… well, seemingly no good or even discernible reason. I guess Dora herself is a little annoying, but not anywhere close to as bad as the Pink Demon herself, Kyu Sugardust (stay tuned for my HuniePop hate post coming up!) Regardless, this show is an interesting case as far as unused material goes, considering it has not just one, but two unaired pilots! The first to be leaked online matches the art style of the final show in almost every way except for the design of Boots, who has a completely different, fuzzier, bright yellow appearance. The pilot is basically a silent loop of Dora and Boots walking together, and while Blameitonjorge has described it as “a little unnerving”, all I can hear when watching it is the walk cycle theme from the SpongeBob lost episode.

Long after this pilot was made available, however, a portion of the second pilot was discovered on the website for Funline, the show’s animation studio. While storyboards and even animation cels imply that more was intended, this is the only footage from it that seems to exist, and it features an early art style that looks relatively primitive. Aside from the same yellow version of Boots from the first pilot, other character design differences are present, like Benny being orange in color as opposed to blue. While I can’t explain why Benny’s color was changed, I can take a smart guess and theorize that Boots may have originally shared too many similarities to Tails from the Sonic franchise.

Hey, speaking of Sonic, there were two cartoon series that aired during the ’90s, and no, I’m referring to the two American series as opposed to that wierd, unfunny anime with a creepy neko-girl and Knuckles in a cowboy hat. While the more intense and dystopian second series was fairly successful, its slapstick-riddled predecessor was… well… pretty widely hated, although this first series did have an unaired pilot that may have been released online in its entirety, but without any music or sound effects.

Whereas Sonic is still voiced by Jaleel White (AKA Steve Urkel) like he is in the rest of the series, Tails’s voice actor is unknown, and Robotnik is shockingly voiced by legendary Disney voice actor Jim Cummings as opposed to openly gay ’60s blues musician Long John Baldry. Cue “Let the Heartaches Begin”.

I have to give credit where due to Cummings, as his whole performance is appropriately hammy for the Egghead he’s playing, but I’m afraid he has a long way to go if he wants to recreate the magic of Deem Bristow in the Adventure games. Rest in peace, of course.

At this point, I’ve only intended on covering these two shows in particular… but, as someone with a passion for screenwriting, I’ve found myself captivated by a third example for… well, let’s call them reasons that aren’t for the faint of heart. While Rugrats is a show that predated me by several years, I did grow up extensively with its reruns, which makes this third story all the more emotionally conflicting. Until researching this topic (and by “researching this topic”, I mean exploring the depths of the Lost Media Wiki that I never should’ve roamed to start with), I’d never heard of a somewhat private subject matter in the animation world called a “storyboard jam”, which is essentially an unused storyboard that the animators illustrate to relieve negative feelings like anger or stress in the workplace. Suffice it to say, the end result tends to come out as crude, vulgar, violent, and, as this case perfectly demonstrates, uncomfortably sexual.

Rugrats is a Nickelodeon cartoon that’s generally believed to have been intended for a more mature audience early on, although this obviously changed sometime into pre-production. One element I’m aware of during said phase is that Angelica was meant to always get excused by her parents for her selfish actions, which would’ve been intended to send the message to kids that some people are simply more inclined to get away with the things they do. As John Marston says in the first Red Dead Redemption, “some men are born rich enough and dumb enough to enjoy their lives. Ain’t nothing fair.” Granted, that was before they realized how insufferable she was and realized she couldn’t be allowed to win, giving the writers a level of common sense that extends light years beyond that of HuniePop‘s writers. Guess I can’t completely rule out my theory of Angelica being a toddler version of Audrey, now, can I?

Well, here’s where that collar-tugging matter of storyboard jams comes into play, as a rather crass Rugrats comic has been making the rounds on the internet for probably close to a decade by now, and for some time, it’s been used as evidence for the show’s initially intended grownup audience. Now, given the discomforting material shown, it would probably trouble most people (particularly people like me with fond memories of the show) to know that it not only came directly from the animation studio, Klasky Csupo, but well after it was repurposed for a young audience. No, I can’t tell you what this says about the animation industry other than that John Krisfaluci isn’t the only deranged creep with a prolific presence, but the partially released storyboard tells a story that starts out like a wonderfully dark yet cathartic parody, with Tommy poisoning Angelica’s drink that everyone who knows the show hopes will kill her as slowly and painfully as possible. Well, if only this was where the story ends, but the true depravity of the animators then has to rear its ugly head instead for some ungodly reason. When Tommy’s mom Didi scolds him for his actions, her lovable husband Stu pushes her away with an unquestionable level of aggression, coupled with some misogynistic language before swearing at and threatening Tommy to tears. Meanwhile, as Tommy’s apparent epilepsy takes hold for reasons that are never provided, Stu and Angelica… ummm… you know what? Check out the colorized version of the original storyboard below and decide for yourself which federal crime registry these bastards need to be added to!

Yes, this feels very much like some sickening fanmade material that is probably still being investigated in the embarrassing dystopian realm that is 4chan’s /b/ board, but the Lost Media Wiki describes its history in the studio with candid detail, with the first panels of the storyboard being shoved away in disgust by an animation director named Steve Ressel… who then proceeded to add even worse panels of his own. The end of this blight on the animation studio that’s really only about half as offensive as the Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon apparently came when the relatively sane-minded production team of The Wild Thornberrys got their hands on it, thus resulting in its either destruction or permanent shelving. Other reports claim that Steve Ressel was a child groomer on a similar level to John K., and at this point, I’m not even surprised by anything. Let’s just say, when I develop a recreation of Rugrats in Iraq, my dad’s unofficial sequel to Rugrats in Paris, Angelica’s terrifying O-face will definitely be reused for the poster. Anything to detract from its original context.

Now, if you excuse me, I have to pull a Max Payne 3 and drink myself to death while pondering the true meaning of my past experiences.

8. Toy Story

Now that we’re moving onto film production secrets, let’s begin with one of the most fascinating cinematic production histories that I’ve ever heard… well, as a close second to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, that is. Pixar’s grand entrance into the world of feature-length films was very clearly aimed at children and families, but Disney would frequently push for more “edge” throughout the final product, seemingly targeting it towards an older audience. Because of this, the character of Woody became less of a morally complex protagonist and more of a straight-up antagonist, acting as a bossy and controlling leadership figure among Andy’s toys. The storyboards, voice-acting, and SFX were combined into an early cut of the film that was aptly and coincidentally shown to Disney on Black Friday, leading to it being remembered as the “Black Friday reel”. While Pixar was deeply humiliated by the reel, Disney was infuriated, threatening to shut down production… even though they themselves pushed for a vision like the one they got. Thus, Pixar was forced to restart the project, and this would lead to the heavily-improved version that the world would come to know and love. Although much of the Black Friday reel is still considered lost media, several fully voice-acted portions are provided during a short documentary on the film’s production troubles.

However, traces of the edgier original project are not exclusive to the Black Friday reel. In fact, a short test animation shows off early designs for Woody and Buzz, with Woody aptly being a giant-headed wooden ventriloquist dummy and Buzz having a much smaller body and red armor. Even after Tom Hanks was cast as the former, Billy Crystal was considered for the latter before Tim Allen came along, as explained in the commentary recorded over the second half of the test footage. Regardless, Woody’s more antagonistic personality and role in the story is very much present the whole time.

At the end of the day, the Black Friday reel was ultimately an important stepping stone in Pixar’s history. Towards the end of the embedded documentary, Thomas Schumacher points out that the failure of one project allows the next to be so much better. Because of this, an upcoming post of mine will be focused on my comic series, ElectroNuke, a series that takes place in its own DC Universe timeline. Before I planned to share it with the world, it was basically just a crass, embarrassing self-insert fanficion, and while it’s as hard for me to talk about as the Black Friday reel is for John Lasseter to talk about, I do think it’s important nonetheless for both self-reflection and the sake of history.

9. Shrek

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That’s not Shrek. That’s just an old CGI caricature of Chris Farley.” My response to that is… well, you’re half-correct. It’s true that the overweight troll you’re looking at is Chris Farley, but it’s Chris Farley as Shrek. Yes, that was actually supposed to happen, as the plans for Dreamworks’s 2001 animated adventure-comedy hit date all the way back to 1995! Granted, this was nothing like the Shrek we’ve come to know, although that does appear to be the norm with beta content at this point, doesn’t it?

Indeed, long before fellow comedian Mike Myers became synonymous with the lonely outcast ogre, the great Chris Farley recorded a fair amount of dialogue from an early revision of the script, and the character even had a scrapped early design intended for this stage of production, but the entire project was put on pause following the actor’s passing as the result of a drug overdose. Not that it belittles Farley’s death necessarily, but Myers’s performance would go on to become one of his most famous… even if he was basically just recycling his Fat Bastard voice from Austin Powers.

Chris Farley Show jokes aside, most of his vocal recordings for the original project have not yet surfaced online, a rare exception being his full performance for the hilarious and somber campfire scene that ended up in the final movie, albeit mostly rewritten. Granted, it doesn’t take much listening to identify two major problems: the writing and Farley’s performance. He basically just ended up using his normal voice, thus lacking much of any real emotional range, and the writing simply isn’t as heartfelt or sympathetic as the final revision of the script. One reason for this is that Shrek was intended to have parents, according to the original version of the scene and the collection of concept art and character renders released on Andres Molina’s Twitter page, which surely would’ve taken away from the themes regarding social ostracism and isolation that make the final version of the scene so much more emotionally impactful.

Speaking of Molina’s Twitter page, plenty more early production material can be seen both here and across YouTube. Aside from more cartoony designs for other characters like Donkey and the Dragon in the form of sketches and 3D models, multiple unused characters are also present, such as a goblin-like thief that Shrek would’ve encountered in a dark village. This scene would’ve begun with the ogre dancing to and singing “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by James Brown, which is unfortunately a heinously overused song in all manner of shitty kids media from Garfield to Home Alone 4. Aside from storyboards, we know that this was planned thanks to an ancient test animation that thankfully surfaced online last year, during which he grabs the thief and flings him high into the air after showing him some very discomforting facial expressions.

10. Miscellaneous Cinema

In case George C. Scott witnessing his daughter in an x-rated film doesn’t make it clear enough, this is where we diverge from any family-friendly content, unless you just so happen to want to hear something Star Wars-related. We’ll get there, but first, I’d like to start off with a lesser-known film that I find far more fascinating as an adult. Having become a fan of both The Exorcist and The Exorcist III (let’s pretend the second film never existed, as everyone else has done), I thoroughly enjoy watching RedLetterMedia’s review of the third film on their re:View series, and part of that comes with learning about the cut material from the director’s cut. Aside from the Gemini Killer being held in a brick cell instead of a padded cell, everyone who knows the film well will tell you that a grander, more epic studio-shot ending was included in the theatrical cut. On that subject, (a) I’m not quite as put off by the introduction of Father Morning as everyone else thanks to the prior scene with George C. Scott that sets him up; and (b) the original director’s cut ending is surely divisive, as it’s verbatim just Kinderman wandering into the Gemini Killer’s cell, shooting him dead, and walking out, making the studio-shot ending feel completely earned by comparison, or at least in a cinematic sense. You can watch the director’s cut and compare it with the theatrical cut on the Shout! Factory rerelease here, and the borderline comically barebones and anticlimactic original ending is also shown in the episode of re:View below.

Well, we might as well get the Star Wars stuff out of the way. Even those with cursory knowledge of the franchise might have seen Ralph McQuarrie’s stunning concept art for the original trilogy at some point in time, which features oddities like stormtroopers with lightsabers, Luke fighting Darth Vader in scuba gear, C-3PO as the robot from Metropolis, Boba Fett as a “stormtrooper super-commando”, Emperor Palpatine as a red-eyed goblin, and plenty more. Even the prequels offer some intriguing concept art depicting scrapped ideas, like a blue-skinned Darth Maul covered in red silk ribbons, the later-implemented sith assassin Asajj Ventress who was swapped out for Count Dooku, and my personal favorite: Padmé preparing to stab Anakin on Mustafar as opposed to acting like the same passive love interest that she had always been. C’mon, don’t go soft on him, girl! Put down that soon-to-be galactic tyrant! You’ll be saving the audience a corny “NOOOOOOO!!!”

Well, what if there was concept art for a Star Wars film that never actually happened? No, I’m not referring to the early A New Hope artwork that depicted a female Luke and a totally redesigned cast. Regardless of how you feel about the sequel trilogy, the planning behind it was messy, to say the least, and this was especially the case with The Rise of Skywalker. See, before Colin Trevorrow was ousted and J.J. Abrams took over as director, an entire potential finale to the Skywalker Saga was written called Duel of the Fates, which was named after a famous track in the orchestral score for The Phantom Menace. The leaked script and concept art offer a rejected series of events, such as the introduction of an ancient sith being called Tor Valum instead of Palpatine being dug back up, Kylo Ren extracting the so-called “life force” from his enemies (paste Tobe Hooper’s LifeForce joke here), a final battle on Coruscant, new Imperial walkers, a rebel pilot about to be executed on a laser guillotine by Captain Phasma, and even General Hux (the current supreme leader in this script) committing seppuku with Kylo Ren’s lightsaber… because… Japanese? I don’t know. Maybe, that was just symbolic of Trevorrow’s disgrace and subsequent replacement.

Speaking of films that a lot of people hate, Rise of Skywalker is where the family-friendly content officially ends, because we’re getting into a movie that makes its viewers want to throw up more than anything. That would be the romping 1980 family classic Cannibal Holocaust, and it feels rather appropriate to me that a stomach-churning movie that no one asked for has a stomach-churning deleted scene that no one asked for. Director and alleged snuff filmmaker Roggero Deodato desperately wanted a scene in the first quarter of the movie where the Yanamomo tribe would feed one of their enemies to piranhas, although the scene was ultimately shelved as he (a) didn’t have access to an underwater camera and (b) couldn’t properly train the piranhas. Now, the screenshot you’ll see down below is one of the only known remnants of this scrapped sequence, and its existence implies that filming for the sequence began before they realized the piranhas couldn’t be trained, which is pretty goddamn disturbing to think about in retrospect. Then again, this is the same film that shot and killed a piglet for no good reason in a scene that didn’t call for it. The amount of ethical problems surrounding the production sees no boundaries.

Instead of a bang, this post will end with a grand whimper, although it’s nonetheless an interesting topic. Whether you love or hate the 2011 prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, one of its most often-criticized aspects is the CGI, which has taken many out of the movie due to its cartoony appearance and movement. Well, Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece has been considered to be the pinnacle of practical effects in cinema, but not everyone who’s seen either film might be familiar with a forgotten attempt to bring even more modern and advanced practical effects to the prequel, specifically through a complex arrangement of animatronics and full-body puppetry. These were eventually rejected and junked due to the “dated” quality of the final results, but those interested can still observe and appreciate the intricate and criminally underappreciated effort that went into the original effects by visiting the YouTube channel for StudioADI. The playlist for their work on the film can be accessed here.

An Obvious Outro

The title of these last couple posts says it all: general intrigue aside, lost media and beta content can so often lead those interested down an endless rabbit hole of confusion, but that can just as often turn out to be as entertaining as it can prove to be enriching. These are works and assets that have been quite literally disowned by the very people who conceived them, and every abandonment has some kind of story behind it. This might not be felt by everyone the same way, but much like a major scientific advancement, with unearthing and/or restoring this material comes a unique sense of satisfaction, and for good reason: you are, without exaggeration, preserving a piece of history! Sometimes, however, a new mystery can sprout when a piece of this lost material is recovered, one that’s typically centered around the inexplicable ways that it sometimes happens. Take Short Subject, an unofficial Mickey Mouse cartoon created as a protest against the Vietnam War, which was found by a user named “abadhiggins” in a scrap film bin, meaning it could’ve potentially been tossed away or destroyed entirely. An even more baffling scenario involved the influential French silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, a pristine nitrate print of which was spotted sitting in storage at a psychiatric hospital in Norway, of all places!

As a matter of fact, on some occasions, a piece of media believed to be lost forever may receive an unexpected official release when everyone least expects it. You have abandoned Nickelodeon game shows like Nick Arcade being made available for viewing on the Paramount+ streaming service, as well as the projects for two long-since-cancelled games—Avengers and Six Days in Fallujah—suddenly being revived by different studios and completely redeveloped in a more modern form.

I guess a finishing question worth answering would have to be, “why am I, of all people, so fascinated by all this?” Lord knows how constantly I happen upon lost anime, and I can’t go as far as to call that fun or intriguing, but I personally believe that my connection to the topic is, like a lot of things, more emotional than anything. Although I don’t watch most of Blameitonjorge’s newer uploads, his editing style and chosen music tracks elicit this sense of mystery with an impressive variety of tones. The mystery might be eerie or unnerving, but other times, it might be rising, hopeful, and victorious. Then, with certain pieces of lost media like Spider-Man vs. Kraven the Hunter, the soundtrack makes you feel genuinely lost and reflective by the thought of them never seeing the light of day. However, no matter the tone, it’s always mystifying—the combination of his elegant, intricate editing and all of his instrumental synthwave and hip-hop harmonies certainly make that so. It’s just a damn shame he had to peddle that ridiculous “erratas” conspiracy theory and promote an emotionally destructive therapy scam like BetterHelp. I tolerated your focus on lost anime out of sheer respect for you and your content, you son-of-a-bitch!

So, with all of this lost media, beta content, and the strange world of mysteries that they both flourish in under my belt… I’ve got places to be. If you excuse me, I have to go make sure the entire HuniePop franchise becomes lost media. I owe at least that to mankind.