Early Draft Tie-In

With many series or films, any licensed material is developed concurrently with, or even before, the product itself. Naturally, many works change over the course of development, but often the developers of the licensed materials don't get the memo in time. And since these merchandising companies may be contractually obligated to release said tie-ins by a certain deadline, instead of attempting to quickly go back to change their product, they simply release them as-is. This will often result in confusing fans as to why a certain character's name is wrong in the book or why a doll has the wrong hair color.

This may lead to a Development Gag. Related to Orphaned Reference, especially when the tie-in includes an element that was completely removed from the final product, such as an entire character or plotline, and Early Adaptation Weirdness. Compare Delayed Release Tie-In, when a work has merchandise come out despite a Release Date Change or cancellation of what it was promoting.

Examples (sorted by the original media):

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Anime and Manga

In Ai Shite Night, the main character Yakko was changed from blonde to brunette in the anime adaptation, but the animation for the opening still showed her with blond hair. This created a bit of confusion in European countries, where the local theme songs were set to a mix of scenes from the original opening and the proper show, showing both designs of the character in subsequent scenes and thus prompting fans to make theories about the two designs, such as Missing Episodes where Yakko dyes her hair or the blonde girl being actually a sexual education teacher whose segments were cut from the dubs.
A frequently used promotional picture◊ for Bakuten Shoot Beyblade has slightly different character designs compared to the final show: Takao's shirt is black instead of yellow, while Max's overalls are blue instead of orange and he wears a single black wristband on his left arm with a hole for the thumb instead of green ones on both arms and no thumb holes.
In the pilot manga of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Captain Gunkan/Battleship was intended to be an ally of Bobobo, whereas Heppokomaru/Gasser was his rival. But in the final product their roles were switched. This is why Gunkan appears in the first intro and ending theme alongside the main characters.
Digimon Tamers: One action figure of Beelzemon Blast Mode called it "Beelzemon Bluster Mode", which could be either an early dub name for the form or a simple misspelling.
Dragon Ball Z:
- An action figure of Mr. Satan released in the west before his debut in the show renamed him "Mr. Savage", while the English dub would call him Hercule.
- Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug originally claimed that it would feature Goku as a Super Saiyan (in fact, its Japanese title is "Super Saiyan Son Goku!"), despite having entered production when the transformation was only implied to exist in the manga, and being released ten days before it actually debuted. Consequently, the film's version of Super Saiyan consists of a glowing-yellow Battle Aura and Prophet Eyes, lacking the green eyes and blonde hair associated with the form. This left a lot of kids (especially in international territories, where it was released afterward) very confused about what this form was supposed to be, and it was eventually labeled "False Super Saiyan".
The first Fruits Basket anime accidentally Gender Flipped a major character. Akito Sohma was revealed late into the series to have been Raised as the Opposite Gender. The anime, having been produced before the reveal, does not have this twist, so Akito is male presenting as male instead of female presenting as male.
Many pieces of merchandise for Hamtaro showed Snoozer sleeping in a pink sock with yellow polkadots, as seen in early art. In the proper show, the sock is blue with yellow stripes.
A few early figures depicting Miyuki from Lucky Star, such as her winter uniform Figma and a statue by Clayz, depict her wearing brown tights (like in a few color pictures from the manga) instead of the gray ones she wears in the anime.
Ojamajo Doremi:
- A figurine playset for the first season contains a magical stick item that could be a prototype for the Peperuto Poron. It consists of a circle with a music note and a center that resembles the part of the Peperuto Poron where spelldrops are put into. Oddly enough, the figurines of the girls are holding their final wands.
- A very commonly used promotional pic◊ for the show's first season uses character designs that are slightly different from the final ones. The body proportions are slightly more realistic, with a longer torso and a smaller head, the eyes are smaller, and the boots have shorter heels and a smaller point.
Pocket Monsters: The Animation is a novelization of Pokémon the Series that consists of almost nothing but this. It was written by Takeshi Shudō, who worked on the Original Series (up until halfway through the fourth season), and contains multiple ideas that either aren't consistent with the anime or would later be retconned by that and/or the games. This ranges from what would have been major plot reveals, such as the series taking place in the future and Pokémon as aliens co-existing with humans and animals, to random trivia like Misty's sisters wearing wigs to mask their real hair colors.
The manga adaptation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica uses the same script as the anime, but it's quite clear that Hanokage wasn't working with the actual original episodes. A full list of differences can be found here, but some notable ones include:
- The main character designs are based on Ume Aoki's original designs rather than the tweaked designs they'd receive in the anime, creating oddities like nearly everyone's weapon being different and everyone's Soul Gem being pink instead of color-coded.
- Many minor characters and monsters have design alterations ranging from "slightly off" to "barely recognizable", with Momo (Kyoko's little sister) looking like a completely different character. This also affects designs like Homura's end-of-series design, where she's shown to have completely changed her hairstyle rather than simply replacing her headband with a ribbon.
- Kyubey, in the anime, is known for being completely unemotional: almost never moving his face or mouth, and maintaining a nigh-unreadable expression with perfectly circular eyes and a Playful Cat Smile, communicating solely through telepathy. In the manga, he has much more normal-looking eyes and does open his mouth to speak (though he still has telepathy), making him much more conventionally cute rather than the vaguely unnerving air he gave off. He also undergoes a more menacing-looking character design change when The Reveal happens (mainly changing his eyes), which doesn't occur in any other media.
- The action is noticeably Bloodier and Gorier; for instance, Mami's decapitation and subsequent devouring was almost completely offscreen in the anime, but is given a fair bit of splattering and blood-dripping in the manga.
- Witch runes, barring one later scene, are completely absent.
- The original script describes Soul Gems being fully corrupted as them becoming "indistinguishable from Grief Seeds". In the anime, this is expressed by them turning fully black before shattering and transforming. In the manga, they're shown as literally becoming identical before the actual Witch metamorphosis occurs.
- An early anime storyboard had Walpurgisnacht's familiars take the form of Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka, which was removed from the final product. In the manga, the scene stayed in. Many other action scenes are also noticeably changed.
Sailor Moon:
- A set of dolls put out by Irwin Toys in Canada in 1998 referred to Haruka, Michiru, and Setsuna as "Corrinn", "Nerissa", and "Celia". When the characters finally appeared in the dub, their Dub Name Changes were "Amara", "Michelle", and "Trista".
- Two toys from the American toylines are remnants from Toon Makers' pilot for a western version of the series: the Sailor Locket, a toy that combines the Crystal Star Compact's design with Usagi's first brooch that appeared in the pilot as her Transformation Trinket, and a vehicle called the Moon Cycle.
- In Japan, merchandise released alongside the first anime would occasionally use terms lifted from unfinished episode scripts, one such example being Sailor Moon's Moon Healing Escalation move being initially referred to as "Moon Power Healing" in the children's picture book series. Another example is the first opening of Sailor Moon R, which briefly features an early design for the Moonlight Knight that went unused in favor of a straightforward Moonlight Mask homage.
Saint Seiya:
- Early promotional pictures of the anime showed Andromeda Shun holding a single chain in his hands, instead of having two chains coming out from his armor's forearm guards like in the manga and in the final anime design. That picture not only was kept around anyway, but the original action figure was based on it and featured the single chain.
- When the Sanctuary arc began in the anime, early promotional art of all the Gold Saints had placeholder designs for Capricorn Shura and Pisces Aphrodite, as both characters weren't introduced in the manga yet and so had no finalized designs: both designs followed the same style as the obscured design used for Libra Dohko, with the helmet on and the eyes covered by shadows. Shura wasn't that much different, but Aphrodite looks completely different, with a more muscular build and darker skin instead of the blue-haired Dude Looks Like a Lady that he ended up as. As for the Shun prototype art above, those pieces of artwork ended up getting used in later years for official merch, such as the 2001 Italy-only reissues of the original toyline.
The Pretty Cure Style doll of Cure Selene from Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure depicts her with half-up pigtails rather than the straight hair she has in the final series.
Promotional art for Street Fighter II V used on merchandizing such as the CD soundtrack's liner notes and the trading cards depict Balrog (the boxer character) wearing a boxing attire similar to his video game counterpart. When the character eventually appeared on the TV show, he was made into a FBI double agent secretly employed by Shadaloo who always wears a suit, has to rely on Cammy to conduct an assassination and eventually goes down without even throwing a single punch.
Tidal Wave has a noticeably different color scheme in the Transformers: Armada anime than he does in the tie-in toyline, as Hasbro decided to alter the colors on the toy after the TV show was already in production. The Japanese release, which came out later, redecoed it to match the show.
The first manga "adaptation" of The Vision of Escaflowne was based on preproduction materials and released before the main show even went on air. As a result, it is markedly different from the final product.
The PlayStation Vita game for Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Memories of the Forest, features an unused character design for Karin which has reddish hair instead of brown.
In Yuri!!! on Ice, Sara Crispino's hair color was changed from brown to black late into production, so early merchandising, magazine spreads, and even the closing credits show her with chestnut hair like her twin brother Michele.

Comic Books

When DC Comics launched the New 52, artist Jim Lee redesigned Wonder Woman with a new costume that included a pair of pants, similar to her look in the NBC pilot. However, due to fan backlash, the pants were jettisoned before the debut of her relaunched comic book series and Lee's own Justice League (2011) reboot. Despite this, the pants still appeared in some early New 52 merchandise, such as Kotobukiya's Justice League statue series.

Films — Animation

The original picture book for Alice in Wonderland featured the Jabberwock scene that was cut in the final film. The Gryphon and Mock Turtle, which are also nowhere to be seen in the final product, appeared in several Jell-O commercials tieing into the movie.
The movie storybooks and novelizations of Anastasia all feature a more bittersweet version of Empress Marie and Sophie's final dialogue after Anastasia leaves with Dimitri, where Sophie laments that it seems like just yesterday she came back to them, and Marie replies "At least we had that yesterday. She has her tomorrow." In the actual film, they're unambiguously happy for Anastasia: Sophie calls her elopement "a perfect ending" and Marie replies "No, it's a perfect beginning."
Some video game adaptations of Atlantis: The Lost Empire retain the deleted Viking prologue as the opening cutscenes for those games.
Bambi II was originally titled Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest. The year prior to its direct-to-video release in early 2006 saw several examples of tie-in merchandise and trailers. These examples all referred to the movie by its original title. Interestingly though, one storybook has an advert for the DVD release, and refers to it as Bambi II while the book's title is Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest.
The manga adaptation of Big Hero 6 contains multiple differences from the film due to being based on unused concepts. The Japanese version even has Aunt Cass as Hiro's and Tadashi's mother, which she was in earlier drafts.
Cars:
- France and Germany were two locations planned for the World Grand Prix in Cars 2, but were cut from the final product because the movie was becoming too long. A few video games, including the Nintendo DS adaptation of the movie, feature these locations to race in.
- One Cars Toon short called "To Protect and Serve" that eventually got cancelled had diecast toys to the two young police cars bossing everyone in Radiator Springs around (who are both Palette Swaps of Rod Redline from Cars 2) while Sheriff was still on vacation, as well as a storybook that told the short's plot.
Deadly Tide was originally a licensed game for an animated film named Blue Planet, however the film fell into Development Hell and ended up being cancelled.
The novelization of Doug's 1st Movie retains the scrapped subplot of Roger having a crush on the disguised monster.
The Emperor's New Groove is not a musical, yet its soundtrack contains various songs, including an Yzma Villain Song called "Snuff Out The Light". This is because it was originally a musical called Kingdom of the Sun but was retooled from the ground up. Disney repurposed the Cut Songs on the soundtrack instead of letting them go to waste in archives.
The Finding Nemo tie-in game features an entire level about Nemo trying to escape the filtration plant, which is only briefly alluded to in the movie itself. Nemo's escape was originally intended to be shown in the movie itself, but the scene was cut to put more focus on Marlin and because it was seen as a rehash of the filter scenes.
Flushed Away: The tie-in video game includes two hamster butlers that work for Roddy that were also present in the first trailer for the movie, but ended up cut in the final product, due to the writers finding the idea of Roddy being a loner clashing with him having two butlers.
Frozen:
- A lot of merchandise uses stock art of older models of the sisters. Elsa's face is more angular and Anna's is rounder than in the final version.
- The novelization contains a difference near the end that was from a developmental change: Kristoff was going to have a larger role in the climax, knocking Hans out after the guy has a villainous second wind and tries to attack again. The novelization kept the scene.
- There's a plush Elsa doll with a voice box; one of her given lines is "But I am still your queen", which comes from an earlier version of the scene where Anna asks for Elsa's blessing to marry Hans. When Elsa refuses in the cut version, Anna responds that she doesn't need Elsa's permission anyway, because Elsa isn't her mother, prompting this quote.
- An early coloring book followed the "Life's Too Short" version of the story, in which Elsa tells Anna she won't thaw the Endless Winter, as opposed to what happens in the final cut, in which she instead says she can't.
Frozen II: In the final version of the film, Anna and Elsa, particularly the bond between them, together form the fifth spirit, the bridge between magic and humanity. According to a podcast interview with Jennifer Lee, earlier drafts only had one sister, Elsa, as it, and some books published around the time of the film's release still refer to her as such.
The toy line to The Good Dinosaur contains numerous dinosaur characters that were meant to be in the film but were scrapped due to its notoriously Troubled Production.
In the Picture Book Novelization of The Great Mouse Detective, the scene where a drunk mook of Ratigan insults him and is then fed up to his cat is slightly changed: Ratigan thinks he heard someone insult him, and chooses one random gangster (the same drunk fool from the movie) to make an example of (which is arguably even more evil).
Happy Feet: Originally, Mumble was intended to molt his baby coat shortly before getting captured, as a result of diving after the fishing boat. This would have caused him to resemble a proper adult penguin for the rest of the film. It was evidently cut late in production. In the final film, Mumble keeps his baby coat through the whole film, but tie-in books like Happy Feet: The Essential Guide still include this plot point, complete with fully-rendered images of Mumble with his adult coat.
Ice Age 1 originally was going to include a female sloth character named Sylvia, but she was cut from the film late in production. She remained in the novelization.
Joy from Inside Out originally wore a light yellow dress, but it was changed to lime green late in production. The majority of the film's merchandise still has her in the yellow dress.
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie:
- The tie-in book "Draw With Jonah and Friends" has a page that says that Khalil's Trademark Favorite Food is leaves. This may be a reference to the Mr. Twisty's Twisted Leafies plot element in the early draft of the film, which was replaced by Khalil being found in a bag of Mr. Twisty's Twisted Cheese Curls. Twippo also has a different design in this book, with his star-shaped monocle being replaced by star-shaped glasses.
- Several pieces of merchandise, such as the Overboard Adventure game and the Jonah VBS program, depict Khalil with blue eyes rather than brown eyes, hinting that this was his original eye color. There's also merchandise that depicts him with black eyes and no colored irises like in the final movie.
- The storybook in the Collector's Edition book of the movie keeps Khalil's "Was this part of the cruise package?" line that was cut from the final film.
Kung Fu Panda 1 originally had a trio of Co-Dragons working for Tai Lung named the Wu Sisters as well as an army made up of China's worst criminal gangs and clans whom he had hired to wreck havoc throughout the Valley of Peace while he attempted to steal the Dragon Scroll. However, almost none of them made to the final film (although the gorilla and wolf clans would become Lord Shen's army of henchmen in Kung Fu Panda 2). However, both the official video game adaptation of the first film and Kung Fu Panda: Legendary Warriors features the Wu Sisters and Tai Lung's army as the focus of several levels as Po, Shifu, and The Furious Five have to stop them from wrecking havoc in the Valley of Peace. The Wu Sisters themselves would be added into the movie canon as historical characters in Kung Fu Panda Secrets Of The Masters, a spinoff short special created to tie into the second film that told the origins of Master Thundering Rhino, Master Storming Ox, and Master Croc aka the Masters' Council, who appear in the sequel in supporting roles. The Wu Sisters also appear in Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends, with one being playable and the other two being tag characters. They mostly just serve as extra boss fights (and in the case of the Wu Sisters, a Shout-Out to the Three Storms from Big Trouble in Little China).
The novelization of The Land Before Time features several scenes that were cut from the film, such as the gang helping a group of crown-heads get along, and the Sharptooth being actively malicious instead of just hungry. There are also a couple of picture books that retain the original storyline of the film where Littlefoot finds the Great Valley on his own after the rest of the gang go off in another direction with Cera and he then has to go find them.
Lilo & Stitch (2002):
- In concept art, Stitch's space suit has yellow knee pads which were eventually changed to a dark red for the final release. The yellow knee pads were used in a number of toys, video games, and other products released around the same time as the film.
- A deleted scene shows Stitch wreaking havoc on an alien planet. Said planet is a playable level in the video game Stitch: Experiment 626.
- Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise, another one of the video game adaptations, gives Lilo the power to curse people with Scrump, which she does not do in the final film.
The Lion King video game contains several levels and enemies inspired by concept art that never made it into the film. You can see a bit about it here, with Louis Castle of Westwood Studios (who worked on the game).
- The scenes that were eventually truncated into the musical sequence "Hakuna Matata" became the game's level "Hakuna Matata", and the latter comes complete with a boss fight against a gorilla character who was cut from the film entirely.
- A scene with Simba going through a cavern filled with steam geysers on his way back to the Pridelands that was completely cut from the film became the game's level "Be Prepared". The stage is so very, very blatantly different from any of the scenes which did make it into the movie - including the song the level takes its name from, which Simba wasn't even present for - that it's somewhat infamous for sticking out like a sore thumb.
- The Elephant Graveyard looked different in early concept art, with a smaller number of bones overall and a greater emphasis on large ones, and with lime green lighting akin to the film's Villain Song "Be Prepared" - the Game Gear and Master System versions of the video game retain that, though the 16-bit versions were changed during development to match the film's grey and ivory toned piles of bones of all sizes.
- On top of all this, the Master System and Game Gear versions of the video game serve as this for the 16-bit versions, containing various elements that were dropped from the latter, such as the hyenas using A.I. Roulette instead of a set pattern, and hippos being present in Hakuna Matata.
Megamind:
- Roxanne originally had a bright yellow scooter that she would ride everywhere, but this was cut from the film. Nonetheless, McDonald's toys featured Roxanne with her scooter.
- The film originally had a subplot revolving around a group of villains known as "The Doom Syndicate" that didn't make it past the storyboard stage. The film's two tie-in games, Ultimate Showdown and Mega Team Unite, do feature the Doom Syndicate as the main villains, being formed by Titan in the former and being independent villains in the latter that turn good after being defeated. A different version of The Doom Syndicate would appear in Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate and Megamind Rules! as Megamind's (apparent) old supervillain team he abandoned to rot in jail before the events of the original film.
Some merchandise for The Mitchells vs. the Machines uses the older name for the film, Connected.
Several tie-in merchandise for Minions such as book and toys depict a deleted scene where one of the Minion’s previous masters was a pirate captain who would’ve been killed by shark.
In Moana, Heihei was originally going to have a Sebastian-esque personality, before it was changed because it made him seem too unpleasant. Merchandise featuring him, however, makes him seem far more serious than the actual movie.
My Neighbor Totoro was originally supposed to have only one girl as the main protagonist, but it was later changed to a pair of sisters. Anyway, the early concept art with a single girl ended up being used for the movie's poster, and it's still used nowadays in some modern releases. This was deliberate on Hayao Miyazaki's part according to this; he felt that changing it to Satsuki and Mei would ruin the poster's composition.
Disney Store doll sets based on Ralph Breaks the Internet give to Snow White and Jasmine respectively a pair of glasses and an inhaler as their accessories. These are based on an alternate extended take of the Disney Princesses scene, where Snow White admits she's nearsighted and Jasmine that she is allergic to cats.
In The Road to El Dorado, originally there was a scene of Chel escaping being sacrificed to the gods. This is why she is seen being chased by the guards when Tulio and Miguel first meet her. This was cut out of the film for being too dark, but was left in some promotional media like the tie-in book on tape.
The Robots video game uses an alternate take of the cross-town express scene from the movie as one of its cutscenes, which shows Rodney sharing a pod with a knitting old woman who remains unfazed to the pod's movements instead of Fender.
The Sherlock Gnomes novelization mistakenly refers to Ronnie as being female several times. This is because originally, Reggie and Ronnie were two female gargoyles as opposed to male gargoyles. The novelization also comes from an early draft of the movie which lacks the twist where Watson pretends to be the villain to get Sherlock to pay more attention to him, and instead has Watson thrown into a box by the gargoyles, where he has been waiting for the heroes, among other additional scenes not present in the final film, such as Sherlock and Juliet riding a train to get to Traitor's Gate, which is also mentioned in the "Gnome Sweet Gnome" and "Juliet Saves the Day!" tie-in books.
Shrek:
- Merchandise for Shrek 2 featured promotional renders of Puss in Boots with his whiskers curled like a mustache, a detail that was dropped from his design in the film itself.
- The tie-in game for Shrek the Third features a brief plot detour involving Shrek, Donkey, and Artie going on a quest to find the holy grail. Nothing like this happens in the movie itself, but it was actually planned before being cut.
The Simpsons Movie: Russ Cargill underwent a complete design overhaul late in production, but a tie-in Burger King figure retains his original design.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse:
- The Marvel Legends action figures used the original Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) title from back when it was being marketed as a Movie Multipack. By the time the toys shipped, the "Part One" had been dropped from the movie, with the sequel also being renamed from Across the Spider-Verse (Part Two) to Beyond the Spider-Verse.
- Cyborg Spider-Woman received a surprising amount of merchandise (including a Marvel Legends figure and another Hasbro toy) despite essentially being an unnamed background character with no spoken lines in the finished film. Deleted scenes indicate she was going to have a larger role with actual dialogue at one point, similar to the Constable Zuvio example mentioned below.
Toy Story:
- In Toy Story 2, Utility Belt Buzz's final scene was supposed to be him carrying Zurg's supposedly-dead body and lamenting to the others that he now had to go bury his father. It was deemed too dark; however, it was too late to remove it from the novelization.
- The "Nightmare Buzz" boss from the 1995 Toy Story (Disney Interactive) tie-in is based off of a Deleted Scene from the movie, the concept of which was later reused in Toy Story 2.
The Transformers: The Movie:
- In an inversion of how things usually went in the Transformers franchise, most of the new characters (with the notable exception of Ultra Magnus, whose original design was jettisoned in favor of the Powered Convoy toy from Diaclone) were created for the movie first, with the toys being based on concept art. Due to design changes made after the toys had already entered production, a few figures had noticeable discrepancies (not that this was anything new for the franchise). The most obvious instance of this was Galvatron, whose toy was primarily gray instead of sporting the regal purple color scheme seen in the finished movie. The older designs of the movie characters were also used by the Marvel comics and, for a few characters, also ended up being used in a few shots during the third season of the cartoon.
- Early drafts described Scourge and Cyclonus, Galvatron's new minions, being created from the "life sparks" of dead Decepticons (an eventually-discarded concept that basically meant their equivalent to a soul or spirit, similar to the later sparks). Due to misinterpreting the summaries he'd received, this led to Simon Furman, writer of the UK Transformers comic, having Cyclonus claim he was created from "Life Spark". As in, a character named Life Spark. Not only does no such character exist in any other media, but in the final film, he's created from a dead Decepticon who definitely isn't named that (don't ask which one, though).
- The changing nature of Scourge's and Cyclonus' origin also affected some other media. In early drafts, the plan was that Scourge and Cyclonus, along with their minions, were created from the life sparks of ancient Decepticon leaders. Eventually, it was decided that the Seekers and Insecticons would perish, and Scourge and Cyclonus would be created from their corpses. However, this seems to have been nailed down rather late in development, to the point that even the film itself occasionally showed the Seekers and Insecticons after their deaths. Unsurprisingly, this meant that other media didn't take the idea into account much: unlike Galvatron, whose background as Megatron gets referenced regularly, Scourge and Cyclonus never get any kind of callbacks to their former selves, and the Insecticons popped up a few times in the third season, often in scenes too extensive to be dismissed as animation errors.
- Hasbro was very determined to avoid spoilers on the reveal that Megatron would become Galvatron, which is visible in, for instance, his original bio - it gives his function as "City Commander" (the same rank Ultra Magnus has), describes him as "determined to lead the Decepticons", and has his Rank at only 9/10, all of which would imply to an unaware person that Galvatron was just a prominent Decepticon officer rather than a new form for the Big Bad. Because of this, some people writing tie-ins didn't get the memo, resulting in some early Japanese artwork and even an OVA meant to showcase all the year's new toys depicting him as Megatron's subordinate.
- The Comic-Book Adaptation drew from an earlier draft, most notably showing Ultra Magnus being drawn and quartered by the Sweeps. The final film cuts this (though the Sweeps are still shown initiating continuous beams, when we switch to seeing Magnus, he's simply shot several times before blowing up). There were also a few other differences, such as Unicron emitting a corrosive mist as part of his consumption of planets, the Lithones being able to transform, and the Junkions' entire planet transforming into a ship instead of simply deploying one. The character models are also largely based on the non-final versions, and Galvatron is also largely colored grey like his toy (or rather, a slightly bluish gray, owing to the coloring limitations of the time).
Turning Red: The Novelization includes the scene of Mei and her friends protesting for the environment which was cut in the film.
UglyDolls:
- The spin-off video game, Uglydolls: An Imperfect Adventure, still has Ice-Bat and Wedgehead as male characters like their original toyline counterparts, while they were swapped to female for the movie. Wedgehead is also still a dark blue color, instead of the movie's yellow color. Despite this, Wage and Tray (flipped to female as well and changed from pink to purple, respectively) still have their changes for the movie, hinting that the video game was made before the change of the former two. This is despite the fact that the game's plot takes place after the events of the movie, however.
- The novelization has Peggy as a female character. In the final movie, Peggy is a male character.
In the video game adaptations of WALL•E, WALL•E and EVE's roles are reversed in the airlock dump scene, with EVE being the one AUTO damaged and WALL•E never making it to the deck, and WALL•E fixing EVE in the dump. The decision to make EVE the main hero of the second half was a somewhat late one, as the creators concluded it'd work better to have her take center stage (there's even a few near-complete deleted scenes showing it off).

Films — Live-Action

Alien: Covenant: The novelization is based on an early version of the script, and features details and scenes cut out of the final version of the film - including a detailed explanation on how the Engineers' bioweapon works, canonizing the long-held fan-theory that the Engineers created the Xenomorphs, and a scene where a Xenomorph rips a Neomorph to bloody confetti.
Dark Horse Comics released a comic adaptation of Army of Darkness that was based on an early script of the film.
Prior to the release of the Artemis Fowl film, several tie-in books came out that depict a version of the film that is based more closely on the original novel. For example, Artemis Fowl: A Fowl Adventure depicts Artemis Fowl, Domovoi Butler, and Juliet Butler standing together with a prize of fairy gold, as well as Holly Short doing the ritual and Fowl Manor being attacked by a bio-bomb. While all of these were key events in the original novel, none of them appear in the final film, though some do surface in the deleted scenes.
The novelization of Babe: Pig in the City retains some details that were cut from the movie, such as Esme's dress shattering from the glue it was drenched in having dried up, which gives her more of a reason to wear Fugly's clown costume, and the chefs in the ballroom pulling on Esme's clown shoes, which can be seen in the trailers and explains why they disappear in-between shots.
The Back to the Future novelization by George Gipe is based on the movie's earlier drafts, and its descriptions of Marty indicate that it was written with Eric Stoltz's version of the character in mind rather than Michael J. Fox's. The changes are so drastic that the novel - thanks to exposure courtesy of Ryan North's B to the F: The Novelization of the Feature Film - got its own trope page.
Batman (1989) had a Comic-Book Adaptation based on the fifth draft of the screenplay.
It was intended that the character of Robin be introduced in Batman Returns. Reportedly, Tim Burton collaborated with DC Comics artist Norm Breyfogle to redesign the Robin costume so that it would coincide with the one planned for the film. Kenner Toys even went so far as to produce a corresponding action figure, but when Robin was eventually written out of the script, Kenner released the toy anyway, as the character newly rendered in the comic books. However, because Marlon Wayans had been cast to play the character (meaning the toy would have been made with him in mind), the figure allegedly had to be repainted to match the Caucasian skin tone seen in the comics.
The finale of Blade was originally going to see Deacon Frost transform into the eldritch blood god La Magra, but the entire sequence wound up being scrapped after test audiences found it unsatisfying due to the cheesy special effects. Despite this, the Deacon Frost action figure from ToyBiz still included an alternate arm and face that were meant to depict him in his blood demon form.
For The Dark Knight, the first major figure of the Joker by Hot Toys was put out at a point when they didn't have access to the film itself. Consequently, the figure was based on prerelease promotional photography of Heath Ledger in makeup, combined with what could be gathered from posters and the Alternate Reality Game Why So Serious?. The main place this is evident is in the accessories, consisting solely of a flick knife and a handful of playing cards and defaced bills; for a company as high-end as Hot Toys, where it's expected for figures to come with a ton of accessories pulled right out of the most iconic scenes of the film, this is a very limited selection. Compare that to the 2.0 release, which came out well after the movie: it had four different knives, the table and lamp from the interrogation scene, a set of handcuffs, three different guns, the detonator from the climax, and, of course, a pencil.
DC Extended Universe:
- The DC Multiverse figure of Ares from Wonder Woman (2017) bears little resemblance to his design seen in the movie, instead sporting a helmet carved from an animal skull and a shadowed face with glowing eyes like in the comics. This look, which was also used for the film’s tie-in LEGO kit, was based on an unused concept design.
- Zack Snyder's Justice League was originally supposed to feature an appearance from the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, with Snyder even casting an actor for the role. However, the studio objected to this due to having their own plans for the character, leading to Stewart's cameo being cut. Despite this, some early merchandise and apparel featuring Stewart's Green Lantern logo alongside the symbols of the other Justice League members was still released.
- The Flash (2023):
  - The movie was originally supposed to serve as a relaunch of a sorts for the DCEU, with the new slate of films ultimately culminating in a Crisis on Infinite Earths movie that would have dealt heavily with the Multiverse. To that end, Jim Lee illustrated a massive piece depicting characters from DC's various live-action productions, including The Flash, The Batman (2022), The Suicide Squad, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Titans (2018), Doom Patrol (2019), Superman & Lois, and the Arrowverse shows. The Crisis film and several of the movies that were meant to lead into it were ultimately cancelled after the 2022 merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery, but Lee's illustration was still released as a variant cover for the Dark Crisis comic book mini-series.
  - Some of the merchandise of Ben Affleck's Batman (such as the DC Multiverse figure from McFarlane Toys) depicted him wearing a black suit, based on concept designs and the physical outfit Affleck wore on set, rather than the blue and gray colors he sports in the finished film.
DC Universe
- Superman (2025): A joke about Krypto attacking abominable snowmen that live outside the Fortress of Solitude was cut from the film, but the snowmen still made it into the tie-in toyline and the Superman: Friends and Foes! picture book.
The book about the making of the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie shows pictures of scenes where Susan buys Greg's diary and Greg meeting Fregley's mom, which are both absent in the final film.
The novelization of Dora and the Lost City of Gold contains an alternate take of the scene in which the characters are trying to open the gates to Parapata in which Swiper has a Heel–Face Turn, where Swiper reveals that he's been swiping because he is a poor 65-year-old man who lives in a studio apartment. In the final movie, Swiper gets poisoned by the frog that we saw Dora talk to us about at the beginning of the movie in the final video she filmed before she moved to California.
When Mattel acquired the license to make toys based off The Flintstones, they were only given a few months to design and produce them. They weren't given a screenplay of the film to work off of, as it was still being written. This resulted in toys that had nothing to do with the movie, such as "Big Bite Fred". This also explains why the toys themselves look like a hybrid between the live actors and the 1960s cartoon, as Mattel didn't know what the characters would look like beyond the actors' likenesses.
Fly Away Home was originally titled Flying Wild. The rename happened so late, VHS copies of Jumanji included a trailer with the original name.
Scarecrow appeared in the tie-in toy line and video game adaptation of the Ghost Rider movie, a holdover from earlier script drafts that featured him as the main antagonist.
Godzilla (1998): The film includes a Mythology Gag to Godzilla's atomic breath in the Japanese films by having Godzilla's roar ignite and propel gas fumes in two occasions, added in late post-production due to outcry from fans about this incarnation lacking a Breath Weapon. Because of this, the novelization does not include mention of this ability in the scenes that show it in the film.
Godzilla vs. Kong: The novelization is based on an early draft of the script and retains elements that were cut or changed in the movie, such as references to the tie-in comics and the Time Skip between it and the previous film having been only three years instead of five.
The Golden Compass was originally planned to end in the same way as the book with Roger being killed by Lord Asriel, the energy of which opens up a gateway to another world. Due to its depressing nature, it was ultimately removed from the final film, but a number of scenes still ended up in the video game adaptation.
GoldenEye inked a major Product Placement deal with BMW, in which the brand-new BMW Z3 would get a gadget-filled showcase in the film, while the car itself would get plenty of opportunities to promote its association with James Bond. The only issue is that the car's big action scene was cut from the script. As a result, the BMW Z3 gets a disproportionate amount of focus in the marketing in spite of its tiny role in the film proper.
Bolg was originally supposed to appear in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with a radically different design◊. He was cut and re-designed for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but this version of Bolg still appeared in merchandise, including action figures and a model for Games Workshop's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. (The Games Workshop model was later re-named "Gundabad Orc General" after a new Bolg model accurate to the Desolation of Smaug design was released, and was removed from the catalog some time later.)
A few of the early Jurassic Park (1993) toys were based on descriptions from the novel, including the red Tyrannosaurus rex toy.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: The new ceratopsid of the movie was initially meant to be Pachyrhinosaurus, but its identity was changed in late post-production to Sinoceratops due to fan criticisms that it looked nothing like Pachyrhinosaurus. One of the first toys released to tie-in with the film, which uses a much more accurate Pachyrhinosaurus design, identifies the dinosaur as Sinoceratops as a result of this very late name change, resulting in the Informed Species going the opposite way.
Kamen Rider OOO had a crossover movie with its predecessor series Kamen Rider Double early in its run, early enough that the movie was written based on an earlier draft of the show's events. The result is that the movie has the series Big Bad perform a test of a plan that actively goes against his goals in the show, another Greeed [sic] is introduced who doesn't exist in the show, and Eiji is very noticeably out-of-character in terms of what he thinks about solving people's problems by giving them money.
Topps' trading cards for Little Shop of Horrors show stills of the cut "The Meek Shall Inherit" Dream Sequence, and the original ending in which Audrey II clones destroy New York City. The former scene is also in the photonovel.
The novelization of Maleficent is based on earlier scripts with major characterization and plot differences from the final film.
This is a common ocurrence with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in part due to Marvel's main merchandise producer Hasbro having to work from concept art (as the turnaround time for toy manufacturing often requires the figures to be in production before the movie even begins filming), and in part due to Marvel often making tweaks to costume designs late during post-production:
- Iron Man:
  - The Iron Man MK 2 action figure from the first wave of the Hasbro toyline features different shades of grey instead of one uniform silver finish like in the film. It also lacks the rivets in the armor's chest and thighs from the movie, but it includes a detail absent from the on-screen armor: small warning tape-like yellow highlights around the hips and knees.
  - The wave 1 Iron Monger figure sports a bronze-ish finish and red light accents, whereas the final Iron Monger design in the movie uses a cool silver finish and blue light accents. This inaccuracy is partially a carryover from the Iron Monger design's having been originally conceived for Crimson Dynamo. Subsequent reissues of this figure fixed the inaccurate colors.
  - Both the wave 1 Iron Monger and the wave "1.5" Iron Monger with opening cockpit sport much more screen-accurate design than their prototypes that are featured in the glam shots in their packaging. The prototype of both Iron Mongers featured a helmet design that strayed from the Iron Man MK 1-inspired faceplate from the movie. The opening cockpit Iron Monger prototype features a radically different Obadiah Stane design with hair on his head and a clean-shaven face. This is because the original head sculpt was based on Adi Granov's concept art, which was done before Jeff Bridges was cast.
- Iron Man 2:
  - All licensing artwork of the Iron Man Armor MK 6 featured the same color palette as the Iron Man Armor MK 4, that is to say that the silver highlights in the armor's arms and legs were instead gold, with the gold surrounding the silver highlights being instead red. This is because, originally, the only difference between Marks 4 and 6 was going to be the shape of the arc reactor switching from circular to triangular. This also affected most action figures, toys, and collectibles, with only merchandise produced later on featuring the screen-accurate colorway for the MK 6.
  - In a less extreme case, some licensing artwork and merchandise depicted War Machine with a blue tinge in the light of his eyes and arc reactor, as opposed to the red tinge featured in the movie.
- Iron Man 3:
  - The children's book Iron Man 3: Suits of Armor depicts the Iron Man Armors MK 15 (Sneaky) and MK 16 (Nightclub) with their concept art color palettes, with Sneaky being red and gold, and Nightclub being dark blue, whereas in the movie Sneaky is black and Nightclub is red, black, and gold. Nightclub was also depicted with its concept art color palette in Dragon Models' 3" model kit mini-figure, in the Marvel's Iron Man 3 - JARVIS: A Second Screen Experience app released after the movie, and even in the movie's own poster. Suits of Armor also depicts the Iron Man Armor MK 38 (Igor) with the red and gold color palette from its concept art.
- The first issue of Star Wars contained an ad for a Gray Hulk Funko Pop! from Avengers: Age of Ultron, based on a planned scene where the Hulk's green skin would have turned gray after he was enchanted by the Scarlet Witch. However, the special effects artists ultimately kept the Hulk green in the film due to worries about confusing the audience, and the toy itself was later redecoed prior to release.
- The Marvel Legends figure and other merchandise from Ant-Man used an early concept design with a visible mouth under the helmet, like in the comics.
- Captain America: Civil War:
  - Most of the Civil War Spider-Man toys depicted the costume with a different spider symbol on the chest and sculpted web lines (similar to the suit used in the earlier Sam Raimi movies) that aren't present on the actual outfit in the movie. This is because the toys were all based on the suit Tom Holland wore during filming, which wound up being digitally altered during post-production.
  - A number of early promotional images and even an action figure depicted Sharon Carter wearing a black and white combat uniform and wielding a pair of batons. This was apparently based on an earlier draft of the screenplay where she took part in the airport battle as part of Team Cap, something that doesn't happen in the finished film.
- Avengers: Infinity War:
  - Both Hasbro and Funko used their products to depict a scene of The Incredible Hulk bursting out of the Hulkbuster 2.0, based on a planned scene where Banner was supposed to Hulk out during the battle of Wakanda. The scene was ultimately unused, but by then the toys were already in production.
  - Early merchandise and licensing artwork, most notably its initial S.H. Figuarts and Marvel Legends releases, depicted the Iron Spider Armor with a fabric-like texturing and without gold bracelet web-shooters. The Iron Spider Armor was depicted with these features in its brief appearance at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, but the suit's design was tweaked for Infinity War to make it more armor-like and to include the gold bracelets.
  - War Machine was originally planned to wear two suits in this movie, with the MK 4 being destroyed early in the film and replaced by a MK 5. This idea was ultimately scrapped, and the key feature of the MK 5, a modular weapons backpack, was integrated into the MK 4, which Rhodey uses throughout the entire movie. The War Machine figure for Hasbro's basic figure line makes use of the original design of the MK 4, which featured only a shoulder-mounted railgun.
  - The mobile game Marvel Future Fight by Netmarble released an Infinity War-themed update ahead of the film's release, which included new skins for the heroes of the movie. In addition to changing his armor to the film's MK 50, Iron Man's Infinity War uniform changes his skills to be nanotech-based. The specific weapons that Tony shapeshifts do not appear in the movie; they're instead taken from concept art explorations of the MK 50's abilities by Josh Nizzi.
  - The Marvel Legends Cull Obsidian figure was made with a concept art-stage costume.
- Avengers: Endgame:
  - Iron Man was originally going to wear the Iron Man Armor MK 50 from Infinity War, with the MK 85 featured in the film having been conceived during post-production. Because of this, all early licensing art and merchandise for the movie features the MK 50, with the MK 85 only starting to pop up in posters, licensing artwork, and merchandise closer to the film's release.
  - War Machine also underwent a post-production redesign. The bulky Iron Patriot-colored armor he debuts for the final battle was initially going to be his main suit throughout the entire movie (minus the prologue). It was going to be grey and was going to be the MK 6. During post-production, the framing of a scene featuring Nebula and War Machine in a moment of closeness would have conflicted with the armor's mass. Because of this, a slimmer suit was designed for Rhodey to wear for the bulk of the movie, and this was the MK 6 that appeared in the movie. All early merchandise and licensing art had Rhodey sport the grey bulky suit. And since Rhodey would have worn this suit for the Time Heist, this armor was also depicted with the Team Suit color palette, as opposed to the armor he actually uses for the Time Heist in the film.
  - The design for the Team Suits used by the Avengers for the Time Heist wasn't consolidated until post-production. Because of this, all of Hasbro's merchandise depicting these suits (Marvel Legends, Titan Heroes, and basic figures) use a concept art-stage design, with the most notable difference being the use of gray instead of white, and the Avengers logo being cut into the chest plate as opposed to being tampoed on. McDonald's' Happy Meal toys use the same design as Hasbro's toys, and they also include a light-up feature based on a discarded idea to have the Team Suits glow when they're traveling through time. The Hasbro and McDonald's offerings, as well as other brands that did use screen-accurate designs (like LEGO's mini figures, Funko's Pop! figures and Mystery Minis, Diamond Select's Gallery PVC statues, Eaglemoss' Marvel Movie Collection figurines, and Hot Toys' Cosbaby Bobble-Heads), depict Iron Man, Captain America, and Ant-Man wearing their superhero helmets as part of their Team Suits, an idea that was discarded in the movie in favor of uniform Ant-Man-style headgear for every character.
- Most of the Red Guardian toys from Black Widow (including the Marvel Legends action figure and the Funko Pop) included a shield emblazoned with a Soviet-style star, likely to play up the Captain America parallels. While the shield was featured in Josh Nizzi's concept art, Red Guardian doesn't actually use it in the movie (though it does later appear in the What If…? (2021) animated series).
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:
  - The Marvel Legends figure of Wenwu lacks his fingerless gloves and sports a blue shoulder sash and pauldron that aren't actually present on the suit he wears during the final battle. These specific inaccuracies are also present on some other toys of the character, suggesting it was another case of the toys being based on early concept designs that wound up being altered before filming.
  - Ying Li and her sister Ying Nan were originally going to have the family name Jiang instead. Not only are they still called Jiang Nan and Jiang Li on official merchandise, but the latter was even made a Canon Immigrant in the 2021 Shang-Chi comic book series with her original name rather than the one she's actually called by in the movie.
- The Marvel Legends figure of Makkari from Eternals depicts her with a different hairstyle than the long braid sported by Lauren Ridloff in the movie.
- The Marvel Legends figure and several other pieces of merchandise depicting Spider-Man's new black and gold suit from Spider-Man: No Way Home had the red gloves used in initial concept art, rather than the black and gold ones that appear in the actual film. Notably, the Hot Toys figure was initially solicited with the red gloves, before being corrected in a later update.
- The Marvel Legends figure (as well as some other pieces of merchandise) of Monica Rambeau from The Marvels (2023) referred to the character as "Photon", one of her superhero codenames from the comics. While Monica was going to officially adopt that name during the movie, the scene where this happened wound up being cut.
- Hasbro released a Marvel Legends figure of the comic version of Kang the Conqueror that came with alternate heads depicting his Council of Cross-Time Kangs counterparts, likely intended as a tie-in to the then-upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which was planned to feature the Kangs as the villains. However, the same weekend the toy was revealed, it was officially announced that the movie had been retitled Avengers: Doomsday, with Doctor Doom replacing Kang as the main antagonist due to a combination of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania flopping at the box office and Jonathan Majors' legal woes.
- Captain America: Brave New World:
  - Toys and official merchandise images of the Leader depict him with a more comic-accurate design that includes hair and a goatee, as opposed to the clean-shaven look with the deformed skull that he sports in the finished film.
  - The movie originally featured Rosa Salazar as the Serpent Society member Diamondback, only for the character to be cut from the movie and replaced with Giancarlo Esposito's Sidewinder during reshoots. Despite this, Diamondback was still featured in a Brave New World-themed season in the Marvel Snap mobile game, as well as in the film's Happy Meal promotion.
- The Marvel Legends figure of the Thing from The Fantastic Four: First Steps depicts him shirtless due to being based on early concept art.
The video game adaptation of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie for Game Boy features boss fights against the Queen Tengu (a giant version of the Tengu/Tenga Warriors seen in the movie and in Season 3 of the show) and a giant rat, two monsters that were in early drafts of the movie but not in the final release (albeit the rat costumes were recycled for the "Return of the Green Ranger" 3-parter).
The first Modesty Blaise prose novel is Peter O'Donnell's novelisation of the script that he wrote for the film, because he was so unhappy with the changes made later.
The Novelization of Night at the Museum (2006) (not to be confused with the original children's book that the movie was based on) was based on an earlier draft of the script that had Akhmenrah unable to read hieroglyphics, requiring Larry to seek the help of his Love Interest to translate them.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Film Series):
- In response to a backlash from fans towards Sonic's design, the release of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) was pushed back from November 2019 to February 2020 in order to fix it. Several pieces of merchandise featuring Sonic's design from the original trailer (or even older versions of the design seen in leaked promotional material) still made it out into the wild during mid-to-late 2019, including Halloween masks and costumes, and some of them even came out after the movie's release.
- Sonic × Shadow Generations has a bonus DLC level based on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), complete with Movie Shadow skin. The skin's design however is based not on the final Shadow design used in the proper movie, but on the one used for a pre-release teaser poster. This is noticeable due to his Air Shoes (which were the most prominent thing shown in the poster) lacking the black details present in the movie design. According to Sega producer Shun Nakamura, the DLC was based on scenes and limited material provided by Paramount rather than the finished film.
Spider-Man Trilogy:
- Initial drafts for Spider-Man 1 had him use the signature web-shooters (albeit a modified take to help Spidey aim better), but they were cut very early on and instead settled on giving him organic web powers. Despite this, the novelization still has Parker use web-shooters, and though they weren't directly brought up in the game, Spider-Man: The Movie gives him a limited web meter similar to the comic-based Neversoft Spider-Man games due to Treyarch using an older draft for reference.
- Venom merchandise from Spider-Man 3 (such as the Marvel Legends figure, the other Hasbro toys and the film's tie-in video game) tended to depict him with a different design that more closely resembled his comic incarnation, including a bulky physique and his trademark dragon-like tongue. This is because they were based on the early concept art and animatronic, which had a more comic-accurate look than what wound up being used in the finished movie.
Merchandise for Space Jam: A New Legacy still has Penelope Pussycat as a member of the TuneSquad, when in the film proper she was removed following a controversy surrounding Pepé Le Pew; once Pepé was removed from the film, Penelope was as well.
The Star Trek: Generations action figures were this. Most notably, a Kirk figure was made in a space suit which he doesn't wear in the film, as it was based on a Deleted Scene. More subtly, the whole crew wears a uniform designed for the film that was ultimately scrapped.
Star Wars:
- The Marvel comic adaptation of Episode IV (A New Hope) includes a deleted scene of Han Solo chatting with Jabba the Hutt, who looks nothing (being based on a Nimbanel instead) like the Jabba who would first appear in Return of the Jedi, and would later be added to A New Hope in the special edition and later releases.
- The novelization of A New Hope, released the year before the film itself, was based on an early draft of the screenplay (a preface broadly describes the overarching plot of what would eventually become the prequel trilogy, albeit without any mention of Anakin Skywalker, and introduces the curious early idea that the Rebels were fighting to restore the Emperor, whose wicked advisors had turned him into a puppet ruler). The novelization also includes Luke's cut scenes with Camie and Biggs.
- The novelization and Marvel comic book adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back are both famous for having Yoda as a blue creature, not green.
- About a year before Return of the Jedi was released, at least one licensed toy was labeled with the title of the forthcoming sequel Revenge of the Jedi. Theatrical trailers said the same thing. Apparently, the title was changed because revenge is not part of a Jedi's character. Star Trek II: Vengeance of Khan changed its name to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to avoid similarities to the then-upcoming Star Wars film.
- Early toys of Elan Sleazebaggano (the guy who tries to sell Obi-Wan death sticks in Attack of the Clones) show him with human ears instead of the antennapalps he has in the movie, as they were based on reference photos from before his ears were replaced in post-production.
- Both the novelization of Revenge of the Sith and LEGO Star Wars include a Deleted Scene in which Yoda and Obi-Wan fight Clone Troopers disguised as Jedi outside the Jedi Temple.
- The toyline for The Force Awakens includes an action figure of Constable Zuvio, a character whose scene was entirely cut from the final film. This has become rather infamous in the fandom for being a prominent example of why Spoiled by the Merchandise isn't always true, since his emphasis in the toyline suggested that he would be a notable character in the movie.
- In some of the Rogue One toylines (such as the LEGO sets), Jyn is referred to as a sergeant, a leftover from when Jyn was originally a rebel soldier in early drafts.
- The comic miniseries The Star Wars is a retrospective example - an adaptation of the first draft of A New Hope produced 39 years after it was written.
Supergirl had a headband in Supergirl (1982) because she originally wore one in the Supergirl (1984) film. The headband was ultimately scrapped from the film, but it was too late for it to be removed from her comic design.
The 3DS tie-in game for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) contains a rather big remnant of initial drafts: namely, Eric Sacks being the Shredder. In the final film, the Shredder is still Oroku Saki as per usual.
Thomas and the Magic Railroad underwent a lot of Executive Meddling during production, and this resulted in some of the merchandise and early trailers referencing some of the dropped plotlines, including the film's intended Knight of Cerebus, the human motorcyclist P.T. Boomer.
Transformers Film Series:
- For Transformers (2007), Megatron's face changed late during production of the film, but in such pieces of merch as books, Megatron's original face design was still used.
- The transformation scheme and overall design for Optimus Prime was dramatically changed in the film, as the toy for the film quite accurately reflected the original model. The general look of Optimus was similar enough to not be a big deal (all variations on the window chests, smokestacks on the shoulders, and the grill for abs), but he got a significantly more accurate toy for the sequels.
- The comic and book adaptations of Transformers: Dark of the Moon feature the movie's originally intended finale, where Optimus Prime doesn't kill Megatron and the two make amends.
- The toyline for Transformers: Age of Extinction featured "Silver Knight" limited releases of almost every Optimus Prime figure released, which recolored in silver all the armor parts that are usually blue. He was supposed to get that color scheme after taking the sword from the knights' armory in the movie, but in the final release he only gets new forearm armor with no color change. The toyline also featured Slash, a Dinobot who turned into a Velociraptor and was supposed to bond with Hound, which was going to be in the movie but was ultimately cut.
- Transformers: The Last Knight:
  - The Nitro Zeus figure in the toyline has an easily detachable head using the same kind of pegs as the Titan Masters from the Titans Return toyline, and Cogman's head is also an Headmaster using the same tooling as Titan Masters. This refers to a scene shown in press previews but removed from the final movie where Cogman, after beheading Nitro Zeus, uses his Headmaster powers to control his body. (This also made the reference to Cogman being a Headmaster into an Orphaned Reference.)
  - Berserker, a character who, in the final film, appears for eight seconds and does nothing but stand around locked in chains, saw a weirdly high amount of representation in the toyline: he got three new-mold figures, one of which was in the first wave, while several of the other Decepticons to appear in the film, though not that much more important, got no toys at all. (It is perhaps not surprising to note that Berserker was a notoriously slow seller.) This seems to originate from earlier cuts where the character actually... well, did something.
- The comic prequel of Bumblebee features the titular character on Earth in the 70's, while the movie clearly shows that he arrived on Earth in 1987. The reason behind this discrepancy is that the comic was done early in the movie's production when it was clearly supposed to be a prequel of the Michael Bay movies (where, as shown in The Last Knight, Bumblebee was on Earth since World War II), while the final product got multiple alterations to make it a Continuity Reboot.
  - As an additional note, most of the Bumblebee toys made for the film are based on an earlier character model that has the same front door wings as the Camaro Bee from the precedent movies, while the render used in the final movie has the front doors folded up and pointed downwards.
  - A number of the Shatter toys also depicted her with a battle mask that she doesn't actually wear in the Earth portions of the film (aside from when she briefly confronts Sector 7), another holdover from earlier concept art.
- A few of the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts figures were once again based on concept art rather than on final designs. For example, Battletrap is missing an additional grill piece over the chest, while Scourge is lankier, with a longer neck, smaller head, and skinnier legs compared to the movie design. Several figures depicting Optimus Prime with a more heavily armored look and a new HEMTT vehicle mode were also released, apparently based on a concept design that didn't make it into the movie.
One of the Wicked Little Golden Books, I Am Glinda, includes a two-page spread inspired by the deleted "Dancing Through Life" reprise Glinda sings with her new friends Elphaba, Fiyero, Boq, and Nessarose. (Footage from the number was Refitted For Wicked: For Good as flashbacks, but not the song itself.)
A scrapped plot point from the first X-Men movie would’ve seen Wolverine in possession of a photo showing a mysterious woman he presumably knew back before his memories were erased by Weapon X. Even though the photo isn’t in the movie itself, it does appear in one of the official prequel comics published by Marvel.
Some elements of X-Men Origins: Wolverine draw from an earlier draft of the film's script, most notably the Sabretooth clones in the final level.

Live-Action TV

The episode of Adventures in Wonderland "White Rabbits Can't Jump", starring O. J. Simpson, was shelved due to the murder case he was involved in, but the novelization of the episode (which came out first) was still released.
Doctor Who:
- The first Dalek comics based their artwork on photos taken at rehearsals, at which the Daleks had numbers on their domes so the director could tell which Dalek was which. The numbering was faithfully reproduced in the comics. This was later incorporated into the Dalek redesign for the 2005 revival of the series, as unique symbols under the eyestalk.
- The series had a retrospective example in the novelisation of "The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve". The original scriptwriter disliked the changes made to his story in development, and years later novelised his first-draft scripts.
- James Goss' 2017 hardcover novelisation of Douglas Adams's "The Pirate Planet" is based on the first draft scripts, which are much longer, and very different, from what made it on screen. Goss later wrote a different 2021 paperback novelisation based on the final story as broadcast, with its publisher blurb inviting readers to check out the hardcover novel for an early draft tie-in.
- The novelization of "The Leisure Hive" was a Self-Adaptation by original writer David Fisher. As Fisher originally wrote the serial as a comedic parody of gangster movies before John Nathan-Turner ordered a Mid-Development Genre Shift to make it a political drama, Fisher based the novelization on his original draft.
- Some stories in Big Finish Doctor Who's Lost Stories range adapt earlier drafts of televised serials that had changed so heavily during development that they practically became completely different stories in the process. Among others, "Return of the Cybermen" is adapted from an early draft of "Revenge of the Cybermen", while "Foe from the Future" is sourced from Robert Banks Stewart's initial version of what would ultimately become "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" before Robert Holmes rewrote it.
Donkey Hodie: The Jada Toys figurine of Purple Panda does not have light purple coloring inside his ears. This mistake likely comes from an early promotional image of him that does not have the inside of his ears colored. Other merch of the character, however, doesn't have this design error.
During the "Who Killed Lucy Beale?" story arc on EastEnders, the official list of suspects included Pam and Les Coker despite the fact they didn't really have enough involvement in the plot to justify it. This was a remnant of the fact that they were originally meant to be the killers, but the writers changed their minds early on.
The Mandalorian: The Mandalorian Fang Fighter vs. TIE Interceptor LEGO set took inspiration from a space battle deleted from Chapter 24.
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The Marvel Legends figure of U.S. Agent from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has a star symbol on the helmet, apparently a holdover from earlier concept art.
- The packaging for the Marvel Legends MCU She-Hulk figure uses the original logo for the show from before it was retitled She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
A lot of early, first-wave Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers merchandise - including posters, video games, and toys like the Micro Machines sets - had the Rangers in the outfits◊ they wore in the original, unaired pilot, none of which were actually worn in the show proper. Most noticeable was Billy, whose look was given a complete overhaul for the series, changing his hairstyle, his glasses, and giving him a more traditionally "geeky" wardrobe.
The Noddy Shop:
- In an odd example of a website doing this, the official website of the series used song lyrics from what appeared to be the actual scripts for the show, with some of these using prototype names for the characters. On the lyrics page for "A What-If World" and "Partytime", Gertie was called "Crockodile", and in "Too Much Monkey Business" Gaylord is called "Swami".
- The sign at the beginning of the promotional music video "Special" features a sketch of a prototype Johnny. However, the puppet in the video is the final character, so it's likely that Johnny's final promotional artwork wasn't ready yet when it was filmed.
Star Trek:
- Many of the original Star Trek: The Original Series Novelizations by James Blish were based on early scripts, and contained elements that didn't make it into the finished episodes.
- The first couple of Star Trek: The Next Generation novels included concepts that, while used in the pilot "Encounter At Farpoint", did not appear in the rest of the series. The first novel, "Ghost Ship", featured Deanna calling Riker "Bill" instead of "Will", Deanna wearing a micro-dress uniform instead of the normal bunny-suit, and her and Riker having a fully fledged psychic link. Picard tended to be intensely French in it to a degree he never was in the series proper. The cover art also appears to have a picture of the classic Battlestar Galactica only upside-down on it instead of the Enterprise.

Multiple Media

BIONICLE:
- Several pieces of media depict the characters based on the toy prototypes rather than the finalized models, such as all six Piraka on the cover of the book Dark Destiny, most characters in the Voya Nui Online Game, the Toa Metru having exposed chest-gears throughout the 2004-05 comics, or the Bone Hunters looking like Rock Tribe Agori and the Thornax fruit appearing as an orb of glowing energy in the movie The Legend Reborn.
- Nearly all characters of the original three movies were based on unfinished prototypes. When a Makuta toy prototype was auctioned off a decade and a half after the movies, it finally cleared up why Makuta's mask looked nothing like his finalized toy: it was actually two different masks stuck on top of each other.
- The Mata Nui Online Game was designed using prototype toy images and often low-quality 3D assets from the concurrently developed but unreleased The Legend of Mata Nui PC game. This explains why the Matoran villagers in MNOG have prototype limbs and why there was so much confusion on how the Pakari mask was supposed to look. The Tarakava's Pakari mask is an obvious patch-job of its prototype and low quality photos of its finalized version, as the development team were not given access to the actual LEGO models. Environments were also designed based on early version of LOMN, most notably the village Ga-Koro with a conspicuous "arena" in its middle. In LOMN, every village would have had a Takara dance stage which were later removed due to complaints of unauthorized appropriation of real-life Polynesian traditions. As LOMN was never officially released, these early, crude environment designs seen in MNOG with remnants of removed content became canon.
- The novelizations for the movies feature deleted or altered scenes, and sometimes describe the characters looking different to their movie portrayals. Mata Nui's Toa form is white and gold instead of gold and black and when Team Pet Click turns into a shield, he just has one giant eye in the book but keeps his entire face in the movie (his toy meanwhile has no Click parts whatsoever). Mata Nui also carries a huge sword in the film which was left out of his regular toy, though a very inaccurate sword was present in Mata Nui's giant-sized alternate set.
- In BIONICLE: Mask of Light's novel, Takanuva's very brief death is absent, as he simply walks out of a dust cloud to the other characters' delight, instead of having to be resurrected by them.
- Inverted in BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, in which the franchise's staple Elemental Powers are completely absent, save for a generic indeterminate beam effect at the end. The Toa heroes not having elements was an early idea dropped during development, but whereas all the ancillary media around the film, such as comics and novels, contained elemental powers aplenty, the film itself was not updated to reflect this rewrite. This necessitated the writers to handwave that the overt element usage of the books is precisely the reason why the heroes lack powers in the film, implying they "ran out". The combined beam at the end of the film was then retconned into an elemental power beam, indicating that was when the powers "refilled".
- The Web of Shadows novel contains awkward innuendo about Matau being taken over by his "animalistic" urges, such as building a nest, trying to court Nokama (not that he needed to become bestial for that) and making weird noises during the night, which were cut from the film, though Matau's "fascinating" noises are referenced in a later scene.
- The Legend Reborn's novel has a much more serious and dramatic tone compared to the comedic and lighthearted movie. The film's characters are also fully mechanical, with robotic limbs making servo noises and wounds emitting electric sparks. Later material explained that the characters are actually organic beings with flesh, blood and bones wearing metal armor with only minor cybernetic implants.
- The regular, non movie-based books also portrayed certain character with weapons that the prototype action figures carried but were removed from the final products, like Jaller Mahri's second sword. Nuparu Mahri's Aqua Blaster Blade is a peculiar subversion: described in the novels but seemingly not featured on his toy, which came with a shield and a Cordak revolving gun instead. Thus, a fan contest decided on the Blaster Blade's canonical appearance, giving Nuparu both a shield and a blaster alongside his gun. 16 years later, toy designer Brian Ellis cleared up that the shield was the Aqua Blaster Blade all along as mentioned in the books, but both fans and the book author mistook it for a shield. Despite this clarification, the toy's equipment canonically remained a shield and the Blaster Blade is a different tool.
- Kapura, technically a powerless Matoran, has the unexplained ability of Super-Speed, which he calls "traveling fast by moving slow". This originated from an unused game mechanic in the unreleased The Legend of Mata Nui game that was referenced in the Mata Nui Online Game back when LOMN was still under development. Kapura's ability remained one of the franchise's big unexplained mysteries, later writers opted to ignore it as they couldn't justify it in canon.
- The 2001 Rahi toys are all shown living near or inside caves on their toys' box art, while in the lore they live in various places on the island Mata Nui. The original concept was that Rahi would be legendary guardians of whom only a few existed, being distinct creatures from the other animals. In actual canon, the word "Rahi" was changed to mean literally every animal rather than special ones. The 2001 Rahi being legendary guardians was mostly removed from the lore, minus the Manas who still kept that role. According to the Universe Bible, this change was made to give The Legend of Mata Nui players more challenges by having more Rahi across the island - despite that game being cancelled, the change in the lore stuck but the Rahi box promo art was not updated. Some early media like promo CDs, TV ads, or online descriptions still kept up the notion that the name Rahi only referred to a select few beasts.
- The 2003 BIONICLE console game didn't follow canon beyond some surface-level basics, but the way in which the Toa get upgraded into Toa Nuva stands out as particularly strange: rather than the Toa falling into liquid Energized Protodermis after their clash with the Bahrag hive queens, the game simply shows the Krana mask-parasites the Toa have collected swirling around them and they attain their Nuva forms for no stated reason. The Bahrag queens and Energized Protodermis are omitted entirely. A very early story bible for the 2002 arc did describe the Toa using the assembled Krana to unlock their upgrades, which might have inspired the game.^note Other abandoned ideas show up as well, like villagers being able to construct friendly animals and Suva shrines being used as devices that can teleport people rather than just masks, both concepts scrapped in 2001 yet still finding their way into the game.
- The 3D-rendered Bohrok-Kal mini comics depict an early version of the story in which the Kal locate their imprisoned queens' cave first, then rob Tahu's Elemental Powers by stealing his Nuva Symbol and slotting it into the Nuva Cube found in the cave, prompting Lewa to console Tahu as his powers gradually fade. In the final lore, the Kal don't initially know where the cave is, so they start by stealing all six Toa's symbols at the same time, robbing their powers immediately without having to place the symbols into the cube, and Tahu only meets Lewa after both have lost their powers. Promo art for the 2003 line also prominently showed a still elementally-charged Tahu engaging multiple Bohrok-Kal in a battle after they stole his symbol, a scene taken from an early outline that never happened in the story.
Harry Potter:
- This poster◊ advertises the then-upcoming fourth book as Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament, which was its Working Title. Ultimately, the book would be titled Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
- Pre-movie Harry Potter merchandise has its own distinct look, with character designs that don't resemble the as-yet-uncast actors, a Hogwarts that doesn't resemble the as-yet-undesigned movie Hogwarts, etc. You see, Warner Bros. bought the rights to the Harry Potter license in 1999, but the first movie would not be released until late 2001. Harry Potter being the phenomenon that it was, Warners didn't want to wait until the movie came out before they started merchandising, even if they didn't yet have a movie to derive the designs from. Therefore, Warners executive Ruth Clampett (daughter of Bob Clampett, by the way) and Warners artist Fred Bode met with J. K. Rowling to design a series of Harry Potter illustrations. Fred Bode's artwork subsequently served as the basis for the look of official Harry Potter merch. This lasted until the first film came out, after which Harry Potter merch started following the movie aesthetics.
- Peeves the Poltergiest was originally going to appear in the films, played by Rik Mayall, but was cut from the final product. However, in the video games that were meant to tie-in to the movies, he appears as a recurring antagonist throughout the first three games.
- The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 video game includes a deleted scene from the film in which Draco Malfoy gives Harry his wand to fight Voldemort after Harry reveals he's alive, a scene which wasn't in the book.

Music

When Mini-Moni. were heading towards the Ai Takahashi era, member Mika Todd was going to wear a skater-styled outfit as evidenced by the end of Okashi na Daibōken!. However, by the time of the spring 2003 live show, it was replaced with a blue tracksuit. Despite this, some merchandise from that era still use her prototype◊ outfit◊.
The promo CD for Gregg Alexander's debut single "In The Neighborhood" states that the song is taken from the album "Save Me From Myself". This is the working title of "Michigan Rain", with Gregg noting in a 1999 interview that the title got changed after the last minute due to possible misinterpretation of it being about suicide. Gregg had never made the correlation - he just thought "Save Me From Myself" would be the big hit off the album and thus thought it made business sense to name the album after it.

Tabletop Games

The early print media for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar featured a bunch of early concepts that were already changed in the proper rules of the game: descriptions featured early names like "Juju Doks" and "Red Slayers" instead of the proper "Wardokks" and "Fyreslayers", while picture gallery showcased certain models (Cairn Wraiths and Warrior Priests) treated as 5-men units instead of standalone heroes and another unit (the Ogor Ironblaster) is associated with a different subfaction than the one it's actually part of in the proper game.

Toys

American Girls Collection:
- Molly McIntire has brown eyes in the character books but the doll herself was made with grey eyes, likely to differentiate her from brown-haired Samantha. (Ruthie Smithens - Kit's best friend - had the same thing happen years later, but her doll was released years after the books she debuted in.)
- Some of Tenney Grant's merchandise was mislabelled as "Girl of the Year" when she was not part of that line. Overwhelming evidence, from the early rumour mill to stills from a scrapped movie, suggests that she was supposed to be but was quickly replaced by Gabriela (who had a reused character design and a thrown-together collection as opposed to Tenney's unique design and large, elaborate collection) after American Girl was publicly called out for their lack of diversity in the Girl of the Year line.
Some Monster High tie-in merch, such as the Hallmark itty bittys and the Funko Pops, that came out around the Continuity Reboot still use the Generation 1 character designs, despite bearing the Generation 2 logo.
My Little Pony:
- The My Little Pony 'n Friends story arc "The End of Flutter Valley" featured a race of creatures known as Furbobs. Although no toys of them were ever sold, they were designed before being scrapped.
- The My Little Pony (G3) short "Pinkie Pie and the Lady Bug Jamboree" prominently features a pony named "Fiesta Flair". She was never released as a toy. Fans theorize that this is because she was deemed too stereotypically Mexican, and that her toy was reworked into Candy Apple instead; this theory came about because nearly every G3 character has a toy, the characters made their respective debuts within a year of each other, and Candy Apple is suspiciously identical to Fiesta Flair in everything but name and cutie mark, with even said mark depicting two candy apples positioned similarly to Fiesta Flair's maracas.
- Various ads have shown prototype versions of the ponies. The differences range from subtle to glaringly obvious. Most blatantly, some ads for the original six ponies show all of them with identical patterns of white dots on their flanks - the released version of Cotton Candy has those dots, but the other five which were shown alongside her have different imagery on their final designs^note. Apparently, at the time of those ads, the iconic "different ponies have different symbols on them" concept hadn't been thought up yet.
- The G4 pony Cupcake (not Mrs. Cake, the other one) has a multicolored mane - it's yellow, pink, and purple. Stock photos of the toy show a prototype with the yellow in front and purple in the back, but the released version has purple in front and yellow in back.
To promote Sonic Adventure in Japan, a few commercials feature Sonic plushes. These were prototypes of the Sonic Adventure plushes. They're different from the released products, most noticeable in that Sonic's smirk is different.
Transformers:
- The Decepticon logo seems to be a stylized version of Soundwave's face, and the Autobot symbol appears to be based on Prowl's, suggesting that at some point these two were intended as the leaders. This was obviously changed, but the logos remained.
- Often, toy designs, colour schemes, and even whole alt modes are based on earlier designs or concepts that become changed in the finished comics, cartoons, or movies.
- In G1, characters had their character models drawn based on their toys... or pictures of their toys... or in some cases, concept drawings of their toys. This resulted in some of the biggest deficits in Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy in the series. For a good example, Grapple's character model◊ shows his crane arm going down his back, but the artists and animators interpreted it as a part of his leg, including the person who drew the back view of the model.
- The Combaticons have a particularly clear case of being based on prototypes. Aside from the heads and the broad color schemes, nearly everything is off, with some even having the wrong vehicle modes.
- The earliest character model for G1 Megatron, that was used in the first few issues of the Marvel comic and in early TV commercials, was not based on the proper toy but on an early prototype of the original Micro Change figure, which featured a smaller head with a black helmet.
- A few toy commercials featured appearances of both early toy prototypes and early character models:
  - The commercial for Jetfire featured a toy-accurate character model for him, which went unused in the cartoon due to legal reasons (the G1 Jetfire toy used the Super Valkyrie design from Macross).
  - The commercial for the Dinobots shows the toys with chromed weapons (and horns in the case of Slag), like their original Diaclone counterparts. The final toy release gave them unchromed red parts instead.
  - The commercial for the Decepticon Triple Changers shows the Astrotrain toy in the same grey and purple color scheme that his cartoon counterpart has, but the actual toy is instead black and white.
  - The commercial for the Autobot Triple Changers shows Broadside with a character model that looks nothing like the actual toy (which would end up being also used by mistake in the cartoon episode "Carnage in C-Minor"), as it was based on an early prototype.
  - Early commercials for the Beast Wars toyline featured some toy prototypes with different color schemes than what was sold in stores, including Dinobot being tan brown rather than salmon pink with the dark brown stripes on top being thicker, Tarantulas being almost entirely cast in transparent orange plastic and Cheetor's guns looking different (the water squirting one lacks the blue paint on the barrel and has pink paint on the brain-like it on the top, while the other one is a completely different design that has the barrel and handle positions swapped around compared to the final toy, and also doesn't have the cheetah tail folding up).
- The commercials for the 1987 line of G1 toys followed the status quo of the cartoon's third season, with Rodimus Prime as the Autobot leader. By the time they aired, however, said season had brought Optimus Prime Back from the Dead following unexpected audience backlash to his death.
- The commercial for the Beast Wars Fuzors subline presented Injector with his early tentative name, Aquasting.
- The initial Optimus Primal toy from Beast Machines was based on early concept art, resulting in the figure's gorilla mode having a skeletal face and translucent blue arms, neither of which were present on the character's animation model.
- The artwork on the cover of the comic included with the Generations Thrilling 30th figure of Nightbeat shows the character as a retool of the Reveal the Shield Jazz mold instead of the Thrilling 30th Bumblebee. The Jazz retool version also appeared in early promotional pics for the wave of figures Nighbeat was part of, but at the end they chose the Bumblebee mold because it was cheaper to produce.
- The promotional renders for Power of the Primes Swoop had the figure in the same color scheme as the G1 toy, with a red chest and a fully clear pterodactyl beak. The final figure, which was actually shown shortly after the render at the same event, was instead in show-accurate colors, with a blue chest and a golden pterodactyl beak. The render was never fixed after that, and the final toy was actually released with the red-chested render on the card back. Still, a redeco of the figure in the originally intended color scheme was released later as part of the Generations Selects subline.
- The Earthrise Allicon figure had a similar yet slightly different situation. When the figure was first presented at the 2020 New York Toy Fair, both the render and the painted prototype had the figure in green, purple, and grey with blue paint applications and silver teeth on the alligator head, but in the time between the reveal and the final release the official Transformers account for the Japanese release showed promotional figures that featured a drastically different color scheme, with purple and pink instead of the grey and blue originally shown. Later in-hand pics by TakaraTomy had a third color scheme, closer to the first one but with blue shins and tan paint applications on the alligator face and teeth. The final figure had a color scheme near identical to the original render but with tan teeth... but for some reason the back of the box had the render recolored in the pink and purple color scheme of the original Takara promo pics.
- In Transformers: BotBots, the spin-off books and promotional commercial use Dinger and Kikmee, two characters that were introduced in Series 1 promotional images, but with toys released in Series 3 instead. Kikmee has it very badly, since he was originally created as a Lost Bot, but was shifted to the Playroom Posse in his Series 3 release, though the books and commercial keep him as a Lost Bot, especially jarring in the book titled after the titular team.
- Transformers: EarthSpark: The figurine of the human character Robby Malto which comes with Spin Changer Optimus Prime is wearing a baseball cap, which appeared in some storyboards but never made it to any episode.

Video Games

The BioShock Infinite content featured in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is primarily based off pre-release footage: the Stowaways stage features a Vox Populi blimp with the words "OUR VOICE WILL BE HEARD" painted on the side (said blimp appeared in Infinite E3 trailers but is nowhere to be seen in the final game), while the Columbia stage depicts Comstock as his younger appearance from the 15 Minutes of Gameplay trailer rather than his older appearance in the final game.
An unofficial strategy guide for Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped was based on an early build of the game and features various beta elements, such as different time requirements for relics and different amounts of fruit in levels.
Promotional posters for the original Darius depict several bosses that were Dummied Out from the final game, something lamented by developers of the game in an interview. This would end up working out, though, as all of those bosses would be reintroduced in the game's Super Darius port on the PC Engine CD-ROM.
The GameFAN Books strategy guide for the arcade game Vampire Savior, aka Darkstalkers 3 on consoles, was released under the Jedah's Damnation name, which was a rejected localized title for the game.
Diddy Kong Racing's cast of supporting characters were largely conceptualized to receive their own games in the future. Of the two who eventually did, Banjo doesn't have Kazooie with him because she was a later addition in his game's development, and Conker infamously had his game reworked to be the much less kid-friendly Conker's Bad Fur Day.
The Dig took 6 years to complete, taking in some story rewrites in the process. Unusually for a game, a tie-in novel was released during this time. It was based on an earlier version of the script featuring a fourth character who was cut from the final version (and can be seen in early versions of the artwork).
An early Universe Bible for Donkey Kong Country named "Donkey Kong and the Golden Banana" shows an unused plot where a Kremling steals the special Golden Banana of "Grandpa Kong" (the prototypical Cranky Kong) and Donkey Kong has to retrieve it. The Golden Banana appeared in the Donkey Kong Country cartoon, and was later used in Donkey Kong 64.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 came out at a time when the Goku Black arc was still in its infancy, but still put the character in the game for promotional purposes. According to behind-the-scenes accounts, the localization team wasn't given the original audio to work with, only being handed the script and various directions on how to handle lines. Sean Schemmel, Goku’s English voice actor, had heard that his Japanese voice actor, Masako Nozawa, used a voice reminiscent of Super Saiyan 4, and so copied that performance... only Nozawa's Super Saiyan 4 was more even-tempered, pushed into out-and-out Soft-Spoken Sadist territory for Black, whereas Schemmel's Super Saiyan 4 had a very deep and guttural voice. Because of this, Schemmel uses a very different voice for Goku Black than he'd use in the actual series dub.
Due to numerous delays leading past the end of the Sega Dreamcast's life, Half-Life 1's Dreamcast port was cancelled mere weeks before its intended launch date in June 2001. By that time, Prima Games had already written, printed, and shipped their strategy guide for the port.
The beginning of A Hat in Time's digital manual contains a tiny silhouette of Timmy, an unused character who was originally meant to be the co-op character until the developers scrapped him in favor of Bow Kid, due to disliking him.
The The Legend of Zelda I (1989) manga by Yu Misyozaki portrayed Link with blond hair instead of brown like in the game. This could be a case of Adaptation Dye-Job or it could be a reference to concept art that depicted Link with blond hair.
The Japanese commercial for Mega Man 3 features Proto Man with a fully exposed head of hair. This was an early design for him, which was altered to have a red helmet so it wouldn't seem as if Mega Man was attacking a human being instead of a robot.
The Play Arts Kai action figure for the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance incarnation of Raiden seems to be based on the earlier version of the game titled Metal Gear Solid: Rising. He wears his sword sheath on his leg instead of his back and also wields a knife for dual-wielding that he uses in the trailers for MGS: Rising, but not in Revengeance.
Early posters for Metal Slug and the Neo Geo Home cartridge cover's back artwork◊ prominently features a golden Metal Slug tank. This is because the original Metal Slug was a very different game that was played entirely inside the tank and the 2nd player character in that iteration was a gold Metal Slug. The artwork was not changed to reflect the final game. While there is a golden Metal Slug in the final game, it is simply one of a Redshirt Army that shows up in the final stage and has no plot or gameplay significance.
MultiVersus' files and previews hinted at The Wicked Witch Of The West being a playable character, and featured her prominently in the Collision Detected comic, but she remained Dummied Out for seven months until the game shut down without her ever being added.
The cinematic trailer for Overwatch (the one with the two kids in the museum and Reaper trying to steal Doomfist's gauntlet) shows a group shot of Overwatch members featuring a bunch of early concept arts for various characters, including a red armored guy and a guy in a yellow hazmat-like suit, which were Reinhardt and Junkrat's earliest designs.
The Prima Strategy Guide for Paper Mario: Sticker Star mentions various enemies that aren't in the game, such as 4-Fold Goombas and Shiny Dry Bones.
Pokémon:
- In the original concepts for Pokémon Red and Blue, Blaine looked completely different, with no moustache, no sunglasses, balding hair, and a military uniform. The design that ultimately became Blaine was originally going to be a completely different character, the Silph chief. While the final game removed the Silph chief and gave his design to the Cinnabar Island Gym Leader, the original design survived in a few places: the instruction manual still features the artwork of his original design, and in the anime Blaine was drawn based on that design, minus the military uniform.
  - Concept art for Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! features a Development Gag related to Blaine's early design: a small sketch reveals that Blaine is actually completely hairless and wears a fake moustache, but sometimes takes both the mustache and the sunglasses off and wears fake balding hair to go around without being recognized.
- The first Pokémon manga, a 4-koma anthology, featured Red with straight hair, similar to his prototypical Capsule Monsters design.
- Many of the early artworks and illustrations released in Japan when Pokémon Red and Green were released showed many details from preliminary concepts for the game, such as Poké Balls splitting in half when the Pokémon inside is released and Pikachu's and Charizard's prototypical designs (with Charizard having a larger lower jaw and Pikachu being abnormally large and having a white belly).
- Some early English-language merchandise of Red and Blue, such as posters and stickers, depicts the various Pokémon and lists their English names... more specifically, their prototype names from relatively early in the localization process. As such, most of the names mentioned aren't used in any other official materials in any language (for instance, Omanyte and Omastar are referred to as Ess and Kargo).
- Ho-Oh as shown at the end of the first episode of the anime is from a very early design that differs from the finalized Pokémon Gold and Silver design; it's entirely gold instead of red with green and white accents.
- Gold and Silver were originally going to include a character disguised as Professor Oak. Although this character didn't appear in the games themselves, Impostor Oak still managed to make repeated appearances in the trading card game, and also had a brief appearance in a chapter of Pokémon Adventures, where he's revealed to be Sabrina's Kadabra who took the real Oak's place after Team Rocket kidnapped him. Later on, the concept was used for two episodes of the anime where James pretends to be Professor Oak.
- Gary's sudden personality change in Johto is lifted from earlier versions of Gold and Silver's script. In an earlier version of the game, Blue is a much more humble person who mentions that Red knocked him down a peg. He now works as an assistant to his grandfather Professor Oak. In the final game, Blue still keeps his cocky spark and works as the current Viridian Gym Leader. Even after the script for the games changed, the anime's script didn't. As a result, Blue and Gary are very different in terms of character and occupation. Gary still mainly acted as a trainer rather than a researcher throughout Johto in the anime, however, and briefly regained his cocky attitude for the Johto League. Once Ash beat him there, then he became the researcher from the original script.
- The author of Pokémon Adventures is often given access to development material while the games are in development to use as a basis for the manga. This resulted in a number of scrapped concepts making their way into the manga, such as Red being a Gym Leader (or at least it being heavily hinted he would become one by the Johto saga, which ended up not happening due to the final game dropping the idea), Daisy being Oak's aide, Gold riding a skateboard, or the Kalos saga having a bit of a conspiracy theme in its early chapters, with Team Flare being presented as a shady MiB-like group that secretly controlled Lumiose City.
- In early versions of Gold and Silver, Togepi was Poison type, and so the Pokédex stated that its spikes were poisonous. Its Dex entry was rewritten for the final version, as it was now Normal type, but the old lore made its way into one of Togepi's cards in the card game.
The Primal Rage line from Playmates Toys featured an action figure of Slashfang, a character who was intended to be a playable fighter in the first game before being cut.
A company named Moby Dick Toys made a line of Resident Evil action figures around 1999 and 2000. Most of the characters and monsters were from games that were already released by that point, but one of the figures was based on the outfit wore by Rebecca Chambers in the canceled Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 0, where she wore shoulder pads and a white beret. Her outfit was changed in the finalized version of the game released on the GameCube, where she wears the same outfit from the Resident Evil remake released on the same platform (which was basically the same as the original outfit minus Rebecca's red bandanna). Eventually the suit was featured in the "HD remaster" re-release of Resident Evil 0 as a DLC.
Sands of Destruction's opening shows Morte looking serious and pensive, praying in a church of some sort before walking out solemnly. The anime version of her is also quite somber. In the game proper, however, Morte is more of a Genki Girl Mad Bomber who jumps up and down with happiness when she wins a fight. The game's opening also shows Rhi'a walking around with Naja, and the anime has them working together in the World Salvation Committee, with Rhi'a angry and indignant that Morte wants to end the world; in the game, Rhi'a joins the World Annihilation Front out of curiosity and sees the end of the world as its unavoidable fate, whether at Morte's hands or not. The anime was created midway through the game's production cycle, and it's obvious they were working with old scripts: the locations and characters are all there, and even in mostly the same order, but characters' personalities - especially the girls - and the precise chain of events are quite different.
The Simpsons Arcade Game inexplicably depicts Marge having large rabbit ears hidden beneath her hair, a holdover from an early idea Matt Groening for the show that would have revealed Marge was one of the rabbits from Life in Hell in disguise.
Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Some things which were cut or changed in Sonic the Hedgehog 1 remained unchanged in said game's 8-bit counterpart, which was developed concurrently. In the latter, Green Hill Zone retained its underground sections (complete with yellow borders), and Labyrinth Zone keeps the original compact design for its crystal formations.
- Splats the Rabbit, an unused enemy from Sonic the Hedgehog 1, appeared in Sonic the Comic, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), and early merchandise. Splats didn't make it into the games themselves until Sonic Mania - around 25 years after said appearances in tie-in materials.
- The first promotional manga for Sonic the Hedgehog 1, named Sonic the Hedgehog Story Comic and dating to Summer 1991, contains a lot of this. For one, it shows Sonic with prominent fangs, which were allegedly^note cut from his finalized design to make Sonic look less scary. The manga has Sonic being in a band, which was cut soon alongside several other elements (Sonic's human girlfriend Madonna, the original non-badnik enemies, etc.) for various reasons, and it also uses the developmental names for various Zones rather than their final names.
- An in-character interview released in a Japanese magazine not soon after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 has Sonic as a rock star, despite the fact the concept was changed before release. This idea was later made reality by the short-lived Sonic Underground cartoon and also existed to an extent in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).
- A TV in the background of Wayne's World cameoed Marble Zone from the first game in an early format. It shows the infamous scrapped UFOs.
- The Shogakukan manga, much like the Story Comic, refers to Spring Yard Zone as "Sparkling Zone" and Scrap Brain Zone as "Clockwork Zone". These are their prototypical names.
- Tails has brown fur with a cream-colored muzzle and chest in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), and early issues of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) due to his design in these series being based on very early sprite artwork (predating any known game prototype). The early artwork in question used temporary colors, its colors had been mangled by a low-quality printer, and the art was only used by the game's developers for 2 or 3 days, but it mysteriously managed to get used as a color reference despite all of that. Sega never sent updated color references to the companies involved, so this continued to be Tails' color scheme in media released long after the games had established him as being orange with a white muzzle and chest.
- As indicated by Sonic the Hedgehog 3's standalone sound test option, Flying Battery Zone was originally supposed to be the fifth level in the game, taking place in between Carnival Night Zone and Ice Cap Zone, with cutscenes showing a cannon from Carnival Night launching Sonic into Flying Battery and Sonic using the door from Flying Battery as a snowboard for Ice Cap. However, to keep the levels even between Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles (and possibly also in part because no proper transition cutscene between Mushroom Hill Zone and Sandopolis Zone was made), Flying Battery didn't make it as a playable zone for Sonic 3. It was later used as one of the zones for the game's sequel/Expansion Pack Sonic and Knuckles, taking place in between Mushroom Hill and Sandopolis. Nevertheless, the bag for the Sonic 3 McDonald's Happy Meal tie-in shows Flying Battery as one of the zones for its activities.
- The ultimately cancelled Sega Saturn title Sonic X-treme had a fair amount of merchandise, including the Blue Bunny Sonic ice cream having an X-Treme edition wrapper for a while. Inexplicably, the Sonic ice cream bar still used the X-Treme design until 2004◊.
- For the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) tie-in for Sonic Adventure 2 (issue #98), the creative team had to use the exclusive early demo disc released with Phantasy Star Online and vague plot outlines from Sega for reference. The end result was an adaptation of the opening cutscene and City Escape stage that featured a SOAP shoe-less Sonic and the initial translation of the aforementioned cutscene's dialogue (complete with a bowdlerised "What the hell?").
In the CoroCoro Comics Splatoon manga, Goggles' Splattershot has the Inkzooka special as part of its kit, like the E3 demo of the game. In the final release, it has Bomb Rush instead.
Super Smash Bros. 64: Link, who is based on his adult counterpart from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, has a boomerang attack, even though the Ocarina of Time boomerang is restricted to Child Link. The reason for this is that Smash and Ocarina were in development concurrently, and the developers of Smash did not discover that Adult Link was unable to use the Ocarina boomerang until too late.
Super Smash Bros. Melee: Roy's game was still in development when he was finalized for inclusion in the roster, with Sakurai only having early concept art to base the fighter on. As a result, what little personality he gets in Melee portrays him as a Hot-Blooded Stock Shōnen Hero, unlike the Wise Beyond His Years personality he ended up having in his own game.
By the time Transformers: Reactivate was cancelled in early 2025, Hasbro had already released official action figures of Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Starscream, and Bumblebee based on their designs from the game and carrying its branding on the packaging.
TRON Deadly Discs: Due to Mattel getting an early and incorrect draft of the script, the Tron sprite in the game was shown as a red-orange figure cutting down hordes of blue Mooks. In the actual film, the colors are reversed, with Red Is Violent and Blue Is Heroic. The simple color goof in 1982 makes for accidental but Harsher in Hindsight Foreshadowing come 2010's TRON: Legacy.
A closer look to the cover art for the retail version◊ of Unreal I reveals a lot of stuff that didn't made the cut for either the retail game or the Expansion Pack Return to Na Pali^note: an unnamed map taking place in a villa, different skins for the Krall and Brute monsters, the Kevlar Suit room in the Vortex Rikers being circular and having an Assault Vest instead, and a different Nali Castle.
Ishizu's first appearance in a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game came out a whole three months before her first appearance in the manga. This Ishizu has a noticeably different design from how she'd eventually look, with narrower eyes with smaller irises and a different-looking headband. More noticeably, though, her dialogue is rather different, with her spouting off egotistic you'll-never-beat-me dialogue that'd be more associated with a rival than the kind and humble figure who'd appear in the story proper. Her deck is also based on Water monsters and Dragon-types, when her actual appearance had her using an Earth/Fairy deck.

Western Animation

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius video games usually use Cindy's movie design with the Girlish Pigtails, instead of her cartoon design which has a ponytail and looks older. This is so prevalent that her movie design is in at least half of her video game appearances, even when not including the games actually based on the movie. Same goes with Carl where most video games still have his suspenders.
Darkwing Duck: The show started out with the title character as a secret agent along the lines of James Bond. His entire Rogues Gallery were originally agents of the criminal organization F.O.W.L. (Fiendish Organization of World Larceny), and overseen by the villain Steelbeak. During development, the show became more of a Superhero spoof, with most of the villains independent of F.O.W.L. and Steelbeak demoted to merely an agent. However, much of the merchandise (in particular, the video game by Capcom) kept the original idea of Darkwing's villains all working for F.O.W.L. and being led by Steelbeak.
Duck Dodgers: Lola Bunny was planned to be on the show in early stages. Her design ended up being used in Duck Dodgers Starring Daffy Duck on Nintendo 64.
The Flintstones: A Little Golden Book from 1959, a year before the series premiered, features a son in the family named Junior. In the series, Fred and Wilma were childless until they had a baby girl in 1962.
Some pieces of merchandising for Gormiti: The Lords of Nature Return! used artworks of the Forest Gormiti Florus and Sporius based on their brief appearance in the original concept pilot for the cartoon, that gave them completely different color schemes, and in the former case even a completely different head (final design is a green flower with 5 petals and no facial features, while the concept design is a red flower with 4 petals, eyes and mouth).
Gravity Falls: In an early promo for the series, Journal 3's page about gnomes had a different illustration on it from what ended up being shown in the final version of episode 1. A tie-in replica of the journal that came with an early DVD release of the series used the early gnome illustration instead of the final one.
The first He-Man and the Masters of the Universe action figures were based upon early concepts of the characters (shown in the free mini-comics) that were changed by the time the Filmation cartoon series aired.
The Burger King Kids Meal toys based on Kamp Koral still use the original character designs from The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, as shown by the fact that Squidward wears glasses.
Marvel's Spider-Man:
- The Hobgoblin figure in Hasbro's toy line for the show looks very little like the design used in the cartoon, instead sporting a green mask and purple cap more reminiscent of the Green Goblin costume from the comics. This is due to the toy having been based on an early concept design that ultimately wound up being jettisoned and replaced.
- The toy line for the Maximum Venom season features "Venomized" versions of heroes like Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, and Captain America. By and large, the actual designs in the cartoon look very little like the toys (Miles in particular looks completely different), which were based on early concept art by Patrick Brown that wound up having to be greatly simplified to fit the show's animation style. Of particular note is the merchandise of the Venomized Hulk, which clearly depicts Bruce Banner as the one bonded to the symbiote even though it's actually his successor, Amadeus Cho, who gets Venomized in the cartoon.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- One of the early books refers to Princess Luna as "Selena", which was her original name.
- Many pieces of merchandising used artworks based on concept art, with some design differences such as pegasi having five visible feathers in each wing instead of four, every pony having visible eyelashes on the bottom of their eyes rather than only on top and Sweetie Belle having oval-shaped eyes rather than round. The limited edition glow in the dark Zecora figure released in 2013 takes the crown, since the artwork on her box is literally a colored version of one of Lauren Faust's first sketches for the character which had a narrower head and eyes than the definitive model.
The Apples in Stereo did a Filk Song for The Powerpuff Girls (1998) called "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)" for the Kid Rhino album Heroes & Villans, but the girls use a hotline installed in the Mayor's office instead of a Bat Signal. In two episodes they have a signal (most notably the first episode), but that was an Early-Installment Weirdness-related leftover from the original Whoopass Girls short. Ultimately the song would be used in the Season 4 episode "Superfriends", accompanied by a backup signal first revealed in the episode.
The Simpsons:
- In the original shorts appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show, Bart wore his usual orange shirt. However, concept art for the series proper had him with a blue shirt. Despite him having an orange shirt in the series proper, a lot of merchandise had Bart wearing a blue shirt during the 90s. Urban Legends have mentioned that this was intentionally done to make real products different from bootlegs - however, that is untrue and it's simply a mistake caused by early concept art. He also wears a green shirt during the first few Tracey Ullman shorts, which made it into early video games like Bart's Nightmare and Bart's House of Weirdness.
- The Simpsons Arcade Game features Bart's blue shirt (though he curiously wears the more familiar orange shirt in the opening sequence), but also has frames where Marge can be seen with huge, yellow rabbit ears under her hair. This comes from an unused idea for Season 1 that Marge hid rabbit ears under a wig.
- The Simpsons Xmas Book, which is an adaptation of "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", contains the lines "Why would I like a tattoo that says Moth?" and "And for me, some breath mints... which the family will appreciate, too." Both of these lines were present in the script, but didn't make it to the finished episode.
The tie-in books for SpacePOP were written before the cartoon was made, and the first one has differences like Captain Hansome actually looking like his disguise, Rand being blue, and Chamberlin being very old.
A coloring book based on TaleSpin features illustrations of Colonel Spigot as a lion and Sergeant Dunder as a bobcat. Both characters ended up being warthogs in the actual show.
According to Britt Allcroft, Bertram from the Thomas & Friends episode "Toby's Discovery" was supposed to be a tank engine, but due to financial difficulty in making a new model, Duke's model was repainted and given Smudger's face. Bertram's 2000 and 2011 Wooden Railway models depict him as a tank engine, while his 2016 model depicts him with his tender.
Woody Woodpecker was a victim of this a lot. The New Woody Woodpecker Show, a show revival of the crazy bird, seems that it would be very different from what has been shown in merchandise at the time, but the most prominent thing was the character Space Mouse, a returning character that would be in the show but got scrapped and ended showing up in the PlayStation 1 racing game Woody Woodpecker Racing. Dooley was also in said game using his early design (he has a totally different one in the final version of the show). That also, if not counting the early designs of Wally Walrus, Buzz Buzzard, and some others in the game, the Java Woody game Woody Woodpecker: Wacky Challenge! also used said prototype designs, and the GBC game simple titled Woody Woodpecker used the scrapped show characters such as Windy & Breezy, Inspector Willoughby, and even Oswald The Lucky Rabbit (the latter one with blue fur and yellow pants, probably to differentiate from the Disney one with black fur and blue pants), and the Playstation 2 game Woody Woodpecker: Escape from Buzz Buzzard Park used the early artwork designs of Knothead and Splinter in their HUD and on the minigame slot machine even though their in-game models are based on their final show designs.

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