Characters That Were Supposed To Look Completely Different

Did you know Elsa from Frozen and Ursula from The Little Mermaid originally looked totally different? From book-to-screen transformations to concept art that went in all sorts of crazy directions, here are characters that were meant to look completely different!

Ursula (The Little Mermaid)

There is no greater Disney villain than Ursula, the half human, half tentacled sea witch, who first appeared in the 1989 film The Little Mermaid. The film was based on the 1837 story by Hans Christian Anderson, where a mermaid who falls in love with a human, trades her voice with a sea witch for a pair of legs to walk on dry land and be with her prince.

In the original story, the sea witch only has a minor part and, while grotesque, was not the villain. But Disney decided this witch needed her time to shine as the perfect story antagonist! So much so that the design team took 4 years to get her design just right!

The witch’s design was always going to be a blend of human and sea life, with the human half on top and tail below. The bottom proved to be the tricky part. The team were inspired by everything from lionfish to manta rays. Versions that made her too glamorous were dropped so that the contrast between her true form and Vanessa, the beautiful woman she transforms into, wasn’t lost.

So, designer Rob Minkoff took inspiration from drag queen Divine, star of 1972 film Pink Flamingos. Look at this punky version by Glen Keane in this image below, perhaps taking a cue from Divine and her love for all things filthy:

And so, it was decided that Ursula would work best as a big, bombastic diva with a larger than life personality. Paired with the black octopus design, she was a hit! Truly an icon.

Genie (Aladdin)

In the late 80s and early 90s, Disney was putting out hit after animated hit, and then they set their sights on The Thousand and One Nights; a collection of classic middle eastern stories, one of which was Aladdin: the story of poor boy who discovers a lamp with a wish-granting Jinn inside. Disney’s 1992 retelling replaced the Jinn with the hilarious Genie, voiced with manic energy by comedian Robin Williams!

However, in Arabic mythology, Jinn are spirits capable of good and evil. Most depictions show them as demonic humanoids with animalistic features like fangs, claws, and horns! And so, concept art of the genie initially followed this darker portrayal, complete with animal hybrids and this sinister-looking creature in the image below:

That all changed when they decided to make the genie a fast-talking impressionist and stand-up. To convince Williams to take the role, they animated the genie’s mannerisms out of his comedy routine, which had Williams in hysterics. The final design they went for was the fun loving genie we know now, throwing out that insidious grin and scaling down the nose.

Captain Jack Sparrow

One of my favorite films to this day is 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl! It has adventure, sword fighting, the undead, and Johnny Depp. No matter how you feel about him now, as Captain Jack Sparrow he stole every scene. It was like the role was made for him, but it wasn’t, it was actually made for someone else!

Writer and co-creator of the franchise, Stuart Beattie, wanted Hugh Jackman to play Captain Jack. The name Jack is even a nod to the Australian actor’s surname, Jackman. Who knows what the films would’ve looked like if Jackman took the role? Maybe we’d have a grizzly wolverine style Jack Sparrow.

Jack was originally your standard pirate swashbuckler, but it was Depp who gave him his drunk, flamboyant personality, as well as dreadlocks. Though according to a report found by tabloid The Express, he had a few whackier ideas that never made it to the film, like giving Captain Jack a blue nose.

Seriously, they claim Depp wanted Jack’s nose chopped off in battle, but incorrectly stitched back on, leading to its decrepit appearance, as well as falling off whenever he sneezed, for added comedy value. That sounds pretty unbelievable, and while it’s considered movie trivia, I couldn’t find the report The Express is talking about. Did they just make it up?

Nevertheless, Depp’s whole approach to the performance was hated by producers, with Disney head Michael Eisner apparently threatening to fire him. However, once the film was released in 2003, Captain Jack was a hit with audiences, leading Pirates of the Caribbean to become one of Disney’s most successful franchises.

Aang (Avatar)

There aren’t many Nickelodeon shows that gained the same level of fandom as Avatar: The Last Airbender. The fantasy saga started in 2005 and unfolds in a mythical world inspired by Asian culture. In this universe, people from different nations have the power to manipulate water, earth, fire, and air. At the center is Aang, the Avatar, who can control all of them.

The show’s development began in 2001, when Bryan Konietzko was planning to pitch a cartoon to the network. Flicking through his old sketches, he found a drawing of a bald, arrow-headed guy clad in mecha armor, accompanied by a cyclopic monkey robot, called Momo 3, and an upright bear-dog, who would reappear as Naga in the Legend of Korra sequel series.

From this sketch, Konietzko originally toyed with the idea of a series set thousands of years in the future about a trio traveling through space. With his pal Michael DiMartino, Konietzko continued to brainstorm and came up with the idea of a good-natured boy who shepherded a family of flying bison-manatees. He would come from a peaceful past but then be brought to a war-torn present.

But instead of sci-fi, Konietzko and DiMartino decided to have Asian culture, martial arts, and anime be the main influences. The boy’s flying beasts, originally a whole herd of furry manatees, developed into a single flying bison, Appa. With the future element abandoned, the decision to transform Momo from a robot into an animal came about immediately after! While the original cartoon is beloved, I can’t help but think a sci-fi version would also really slap.

Tyrion (Game Of Thrones)

If you like gore, intricately detailed storylines, and a few saucy scenes, then Game of Thrones might just be your jam. The seminal HBO fantasy first aired in 2011, itself based on the "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series from George RR Martin. However, fans of the books will notice how some characters don’t quite match those described in the pages, and fan-favorite Tyrion Lannister is no exception. He’s originally described in the first 1996 book, A Game of Thrones, like this:

His head was too large for his body, with a brute's squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow. One green eye and one black one peered out from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white.

Then, in A Clash of Kings, released in 1998, Tyrion’s nose was sliced off at the Battle of Blackwater Bay. So with this in mind, compared to the relatively handsome Peter Dinklage who portrays him in the TV series, this is closer to how Tyrion should look.

The pilot episode did give him mismatched eyes and lank blond hair, though thankfully that wig was whipped off. George RR Martin explained in an interview that the TV character’s lack of deformities was simply down to time and money. Bringing in make-up and CGI piles up the budget’s cost, and it probably wasn’t crucial for the plot, so it makes sense that they decided against it.

Still, imagine how badass Peter would have looked if he’d gone full Cooper Howard from Fallout? There’s nothing that guy can’t make look cool.

Chewbacca (Star Wars)

Amidst all the aliens in the Star Wars film, none make quite the impression like Chewbacca the big hairy Wookiee. Some of you may have heard how George Lucas was inspired by his Alaskan Malamute, Indiana, for Chewwies character design; however, this might be a load of poodoo!

The initial 1974 draft of the first film’s script described Chewbacca as a huge, grey bushbaby with fierce baboon-like fangs and large yellow eyes, sounds more like a tarsier on steroids. When it came to designing the 1977 film, Lucas hired conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie, who originally drew the character as a large lemur faced man with goggly-eyes and pointy ears; a design so popular it kept reappearing in concept art.

But at some point, Lucas encouraged him to go even weirder. An anecdote from McQuarrie goes that Lucas handed him a bunch of sci-fi magazines for inspiration, where he stumbled on a review of And Seven Times Never Kill Man, written by none other than George RR Martin! It follows a group of religious zealots who try to overthrow a planet populated by hairy humanoids and, does that hairy humanoid look familiar!

McQuarrie reportedly took this illustration by John Schoenherr and redrew it, essentially creating Chewbacca! As for the bushbaby design, this was later recycled for Garazeb Orrelios in Star Wars: Rebels, who even had a cameo in The Mandalorian.

Harry Potter Could Have Been Animated

In 2001, audiences were whisked away to Number 4, Privet Drive, where they met a boy in the cupboard under the stairs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone brought J.K. Rowling’s magical world from books to the big screen. But there were a few hurdles to overcome before any spells were cast.

Originally, Steven Spielberg reportedly pitched a computer animated movie made with DreamWorks with Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osmond voicing Harry. Most aren't keen on the CGI idea unless DreamWorks went down the traditionally animated route instead! Take a note upcoming Harry Potter TV series. Apparently, Rowling and Warner Bros didn’t agree with Spielberg’s vision, and so the director decided to pass on the project.

After which, the books were adapted into a series of live-action films. But even at this point, Harry Potter could have looked completely different. Take the gentle half-giant Hagrid, now unimaginable as anyone else but Robbie Coltrane, was due to be played by Robin Williams! However, Rowling had a strict "Brits and Irish only" casting rule, meaning the Yank was quickly dismissed.

If you thought Snape, the brooding potions master, couldn’t be played by anyone except Alan Rickman, try telling that to the HP producers. Tim Roth was their first choice to play Snape, the brit from Reservoir Dogs and Lie to Me, but he had to pull out to work on Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake! As you know, the role of Snape went to Rickman, Rowling’s first choice for the role.

How To Train Your Dragon

Dragons are awesome. Who wouldn’t want a fire-breathing, flying lizard as a pet? In 2010, many got to live this childhood fantasy of owning one after watching How To Train Your Dragon! Set on the Isle of Berk, Vikings and dragons war against each other. Hiccup is a spindly young lad who befriends the large, cuddly, cat-like dragon with retractable fangs he calls Toothless, bringing harmony to the island.

These movies are based on the book series by Cressida Cowell, and when I say based, I mean loosely based. Very loosely. Brought to life by Cowell’s scratchy illustrations, the books open on Berk where Vikings already keep dragons as companions. Dragons are intelligent creatures capable of speech, communicating in their own language of Dragonese.

The heroic Hiccup is mostly the same weedy but intelligent boy, except for the red hair. It’s Toothless who has gone through the biggest change. In Cowell's books, he's a tiny dragon, far too small to ride, and he's anything but cuddly! He’s sarcastic, selfish and has no teeth at all!

Concept art for the film shows a Hiccup and Toothless design much closer to Cowell’s vision, before the team decided to age up the characters, mature the themes, and epicify the story.

The main duo aren’t the only ones transformed by DreamWorks. Hiccup’s smoochy love interest, Astrid, is the movie counterpart to Camicazi, a girl from an all-female warrior tribe and one of the book’s few female characters. Still wish she kept her name, and hair for the film adaptation, that would’ve been wild!

Batman

In the late 1930s, comic writers Bill Finger and Bob Kane wanted to create a superhero who would be the complete opposite of the idealistic, near-perfect Superman and his timid alter ego, Clark Kent. Together, Finger and Kane created a caped crusader so iconic that he has dominated print, TV, and films since his debut in Detective Comics number 27 in 1939. The idea of a "Bat-Man" came to Kane after seeing the villain in the 1926 silent mystery The Bat.

1926 B 086 The Bat Silent {Jack Pickford} Horror by Mark Farmer

Kane told Finger about his superhero concept and showed him a sketch he’d done of this character. And so, the original Batman was much more superman-esque, with a bright red suit, domino mask, blonde hair, and wasn’t going to be scaring anyone. After finding a bat illustration in Webster’s dictionary, the pair eventually came up with a Batman design that looked more like a bat.

They gave him a horned cowl that looked like large sharp ears, a dark suit, and pupilless eyes, to really give this strange new hero a mysterious quality. Practical things like gloves so that he didn’t leave fingerprints and foldable wings were added in later issues. Batman followed in the same vein as the violent, hard boiled pulp comics like the Shadow, Spider and Black Mask.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood is one of those legends whose story has been told countless times. We all have our favorite Robins, but the most unique has to be Disney’s Robin Hood, released in 1973. This Robin is just as heroic as any other, except he’s a fox. The film’s world is populated by anthropomorphic animals, which seems pretty smart to entice children to watch, but it was actually a choice rooted in the film’s troubled production history.

Since 1937, Walt Disney had actually been scrambling to adapt the stories of Reynard the Fox, a trickster figure from medieval folklore who cheats, lies, and straight up murders to get his own way, so the opposite of the hero we know.

Early Disney concepts portrayed the character as the cunning rogue found in folklore, but Walt found that he could never bring himself to give the unscrupulous Reynard a leading role in his own picture. So in 1960, Disney tried to make a musical adaptation of the 1910 play Chantecler by Edmond Rostand.

In this version, the plot revolved around Chantecler, a proud, heroic rooster. Reynard would be a corrupt villain vying to become mayor, as well as a womanizing, or henising, sleazebag, criminal, and thug. Fearful that audiences wouldn’t get behind a chicken hero, the team never got past the planning stage and the project was thrown out.

Disney found it near impossible to give the scoundrel Reynard a cuddly makeover without changing the story completely, so that’s what they did! The vicious crook Reynard became the beloved outlaw Robin, the rooster became Alan A’dale, the film’s iconic whistlin’ minstrel, and the concept of an animal world was translated into the fantastical Nottingham.

Elsa (The Snow Queen)

In 1844, Hans Christian Anderson published The Snow Queen, a simple fairy tale, that follows Gerda’s journey to rescue her friend Kay from the legendary Snow Queen. Then in 2013, Disney came along and made Frozen. Instead of Gerda, this movie focusses on princess Anna, who embarks on a quest to find her sister, the magic snow lady Queen Elsa, who’s accidentally plunged their kingdom, into eternal winter!

While it was a smash hit modern retelling, Disney had actually been trying to adapt the fable as early as 1937, with projects repeatedly stalling. Production on Frozen as we know it started in 2008, when the Disney team tried adapting the story, under the title of Anna and the Snow Queen. This draft was much like Anderson’s version; the hero was Anna, a simple farmgirl, and the Snow Queen was the villainous, albeit fabulous-looking, Elsa.

While the concepts have her looking more like a cold, blue-skinned version of Cruella Devil, Anna looks practically the same. How come? Well, in this version of the story, The Queen wasn’t related to Anna, and would kidnap Kristoff, who in this draft was just a dark haired kid. But the team hit snags with the snow queen, as they struggled to make her a compelling bad guy.

At some point, someone had the bright idea to make the characters sisters who ruled over a kingdom, changing the queen from a blue skinned baddie to a more Anna-looking alternative. The plot was changed again, now the Queen would’ve turned to the dark side after being scorned by a man, causing her heart to freeze over. Elsa would crash Anna’s wedding out of envy, kidnap her, and then wage war on their kingdom with an army of evil snowmen!

Elsa has gone through a variety of looks to reflect her wicked nature, some designs depicted her as a femme fatale with blue skin, and some gave her a spiky, gothic style inspired by singer Amy Winehouse. The biggest character change came about with one inescapable song.

Originally intended as a villain song, the filmmakers thought "Let it Go" made Elsa too sympathetic, so they flipped the character, and the film, on its head. She became a misunderstood hero who’s terrified of hurting others. Thankfully they let that character design go!

Give Him A Ring

Of all the characters in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, Gollum, or Smeagol, to his friends, kind of stands out. He was once a hobbit, like the kind Elijah Wood plays as Frodo, who was poisoned and manipulated by the incredibly powerful One Ring. The creature he became was masterfully played by Andy Serkis.

In early editions of the 1937 book, the Hobbit, writer JRR Tolkien never went into huge detail about the creature’s appearance, or even his size. When artists came to illustrating, this resulted in all sorts of interpretations. In 1962, Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, most famous for creating the Moomin books, drew Gollum as this terrifying giant crowned in a garland of leaves.

Aghast at Jansson’s illustration, Tolkien decided to retroactively clarify the character’s appearance, and in the Hobbit’s second edition described Gollum as a small, slimy creature. However, within The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, descriptions of Gollum contradict each other, with some passages describing him as black and dark, while others depict him as pale and even frog-like. To address this inconsistency, Tolkien eventually provided a note to illustrators, clarifying that Gollum was pale-skinned but wore dark clothes and was always seen in poor light.

When film adaptations came along, movie makers decided to put their own spins on the character. Take this bioluminescent creature in animator Gene Deitch’s 1966 short adaptation of the hobbit:

First Animated Hobbit - directed by Gene Deitch, produced by Rembrandt Films by RembrandtFilms

Later in 1977 and 1980, the designers on the Rankin-Bass Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films hopped on the amphibious description and turned Gollum into a mutated toad.

The Return Of The King (1980) - Gollum's Death by Animation, Stick Figures And Live-Action Fan2007

In 2001, Jackson opted for pasty skin and bulging eyes but skimped out on the clothes, though at least they covered Gollum’s lower half with a loincloth! And, you know, didn’t make him a literal toad.

Jean-Claude Van Damme As The Predator

The 1987 film Predator follows Arnold Schwarzenegger and his beefcake buddies as they’re hunted down by an otherworldly foe: a colossal, dreadlocked, tusk-gnashing, outer-space psychopath! But, if you’ve followed the format of this article, you’ve probably guessed that this awesome design wasn’t how the character was supposed to look.

When shooting started, the creature was a wiry reptile with a crusty exoskeleton, backward bent legs, and insectoid head. Its movements were supposed to be athletic and agile, skulking through the jungle like a ninja. Action star Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast to play the horrific part, thanks to his martial arts expertise. Before taking on the role, Van Damme was told the makeup would be minimal, then they put him in this costume in the image below, and he hated it.

The costume was so restrictive that he could hardly walk, let alone show off his trademark kicks and flicks. To make matters worse for the actor, the Predator uses a cloaking device to make itself invisible for more than half the film. As you can see from this hilarious footage of the Predator below in an orange suit, which would be digitally blurred later:

PREDATOR - Original Suit with Jean-Claude Van Damme by Stan Winston School

Eventually, the insect design was scrapped and the muscles from Brussels hustled back to Brussels. The crew needed a replacement monster, and they needed one fast. Schwarzenegger recommended his friend Stan Winston, who’d he worked with on The Terminator. In just six weeks, Winston and his team crafted the iconic-looking beast complete with praying mantis mandibles, which were actually a suggestion put forward by director James Cameron.

To play the alien, they hired Kevin Peter Hall, who measured over 7 ft tall and made Schwarzenegger look stumpy! And with that, the ultimate Predator was born. Thank god they went with that and not the orange monstrosity, consider me Van Damme glad about it!

If you were amazed at these characters that were supposed to look completely different you might want to read about cartoon characters in real life! Thanks for reading.