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As a fair warning, some links might go dead as time goes on. Best efforts will be made to try to keep a viable link but in most causes, a direct quote will be transcribed for each source to mitigate that potential issue.
Batman: The Animated Series
Catmoves Part 1
Source: Anime Superhero Forum, Bruce Timm post
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I was going through some papers recently, and came across a a 15 page treatment dated 9/19/90. As far as i know, it’s the very first proposed BTAS story committed to paper
Quote: 'CATMOVES (Part 1)' by Warren Greenwood and Frank Brunner
Quote: Both of them were artists just finishing up the first season of TINY TOONS. I'd known Warren as a top storyboard artist since my earliest days in the Animation business, and I'd been a fan of Frank Brunner's comics since I was a teenager (HOWARD THE DUCK, his legendary run on DR. STRANGE, various excellent stand-alone stories for STAR REACH, CREEPY, WEB OF HORROR, ALIEN WORLDS, etc). IIRC, they were both 'at liberty' for a few weeks while waiting for the second season to get officially green-lit, and took the opportunity to work up a few Batman story pitches. Besides Parts 1 and 2 of 'Catmoves' , i seem to think they wrote a third treatment, but I don't remember what it was about. I don't have a copy of it directly at hand at the moment (or 'Catmoves Part 2' either).
Quote: Well! There's a lot of wild, intense stuff here, seemingly very much inspired by Frank Miller's edgy take on the character in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of actual Story - it's mostly a string of violent action sequences, with very little character development. It's so far removed from the approach that Eric Radomski and I were thinking of, in tone and texture, that we both figured it was pointless to even have them take a second pass on it.
Quote: Also, even though we definitely wanted to push the envelope in terms of intense action sequences, spooky atmosphere, sophisticated themes and storytelling, the treatment was excessively loaded with things that NEVER would have been allowed in 'Children's Programming' in the early 1990s. Like, not even close! The hyper-violent action beats, the emphasis on dark urban squalor, references to the illegal drug trade, the repeated mentions of Batman's 'deranged' mental state and the overall bleak, downbeat mood — honestly, if we had delivered this treatment to the Execs at WBA and Fox Kids, we probably would have been fired on the spot.
Outline: Read the outline here.
Harley Quinn
Source: Unknown Angelfire site
Who: Paul Dini
Interview Question: It has been rumored that you were originally going to give Harley the alias Columbine. Is this true?
Quote: That was one of the many names running through my head when I was creating Harley. I leaned more toward Harley Quinn because Collie would have sounded too weird.
Riddler
Source: Batman TAS Podcast 5:48-6:32
Who: Marty Isenberg
Quote: And we actually-we had a take on him that they didn't use but I thought it would be really interesting if he was like a teenager like if he was a young arrogant punk right? I just thought he was smarter than Batman and kind of came up with this whole backstory of it where as he was this you know super genius kid who was just totally exploited by a father or stepfather. They never used it but I just thought that was an interesting you know, David Wise came up with the revenge you know the business deal he was cheated on-business deal-and that was his motivation.
Nocturna
When: During season two production
Source: Modern Masters page 46
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Oh, yeah. That storyline in the comics was a really long, drawn out, soap operish kind of thing, and we were going to do at most a two-parter with it, trying to condense the best parts of those comics into one finite story. We never got far with it, because we knew that it was going to be tricky. We called up Fox and said, "We're thinking about doing this story, blah, blah, blah," and the minute we said vampires they said no. "Well what if we--?" "No." [laughter] "What if we never see fangs?" "No." "What if when Nocturna bites Batman it's all in the shadows?" "No. No, vampires, period." "What that's one not worth doing then."
Summary: The episode was canceled after Fox censors objected to the storyline, which would have involved Batman being turned into a vampire and craving human blood.
Source: Comic Scene #46
Released: September 1994
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "For the second season of Batman, we wanted to do a 'vampire show.' There was a character from the 80s named Nocturna, a female vampire. We really wanted to use her in the worst way and I came up with a really neat design for her. It was going to be a two-part episode involving a really sick love story. Nocturna falls in love with Batman and wants to vampirize him so that they can live together eternally as vampires. She puts the bite on him at the first episode's end. Bruce Wayne wakes up the next morning, and says, 'Oh boy, how did I ever get home?' Alfred tells him, 'I found you and dragged you home. Good thing you're safe now.' Bruce feels like he has a really bad hangover. Alfred pulls open the blinds and Bruce starts shrieking because his skin is on fire! He looks in the mirror and sees that he has vampire fangs. The second episode was going to focus on Batman trying to cure himself of the vampire taint. We were going to say he wasn't a supernatural vampire but a biological vampire, with a chemical substance in his bloodstream. He's in the Batcave frantically trying to cure himself and at the same time he's looking at Alfred, thinking, 'God, he looks really tasty.' He's about to attack Alfred, when he realizes, 'This is horrible, I'm not gonna have time to cure myself of being a vampire; I'll have to destroy myself before I'm a danger to anybody!' Alfred says, 'Just calm down. You're too distraught to cure yourself. I'll go get Kirk Langstrom. He's the best guy to help you. Just lie down and relax!' Bruce tries to relax, but he can't control the bloodlust. Batman goes out to Gotham City looking for victims when he realizes at the last minute that he must cure himself. That was as far as we got, but we thought that would make a great two-parter. The Fox Network said, 'Nope, can't do it! First of all, you can't do vampires. You can't have anybody sucking anybody else's blood. You also can't have Batman as a vampire looking for victims, you can't have biological vampires, because you can't have a disease that's transmitted through blood, it's too much like AIDS.' We went back and forth with them on this. We really wanted to do it and they really didn't want us to, so we didn't, but it would have been fun. I'm sure we would have played up all those traditional vampire cliches and put some kind of twist on them, but we never got past the development stage. I would have loved to have done it, but...We get away with monsters easily,. It surprises me, because I think some of our monsters are really scary. Monsters are great, because the network thinks of them as fantasy figures and not things that could exist in real life. The censors are concerned about drive-by shootings; things that a kid can actually get in trouble by repeating in real life. They're actually more concerned about things like parents being divorced than monsters. They don't want any mention of divorce; they don't want kids to think about that. Monsters they don't have a problem with, which is great, because I love monsters. For the most part, the network doesn't like zombies, or any living dead people-even though we have one in the second season, a 2,000-year-old zombie sorceress. It's pretty scary, but the network approved it. Somebody like Clayface isn't really horrifying, he's just gross. He looks like a big walking pile of turds. Two-Face actually scared me, the first time he turned around and revealed himself. There's something about him that gives you a weird chill. It's pretty scary. Still, Nocturna would have made a really interesting story."
Summary: Nocturna wants to live forever with Batman as vampire lovers. She bites him at the end of part 1. In part 2, Batman struggles with his newfound bloodlust, even stops himself from attacking Alfred. Alfred leaves to get help from Kirk Langstrom.
Source: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: Batman did not believe Nocturna to be a 'real' member of the living dead, but actually someone with a rare blood disease.
Source: World's Finest Backstage Alan Burnett Interview
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: "We also wanted to do a Nocturna story - Bruce had drawn a hot model of her - but she's a vampire, which would've involved bloodletting, which was a huge no-no for kids TV.
Link: Newsarama
Summary: What stories didn't they get to do? One idea was a vampire story with Nocturna from the comics. The idea was that that she bites Batman and next morning Alfred comes in and pulls the curtain and Bruce's skin starts to bubble and burn...but Fox said "No vampires."
Source: Wizard #92, page 46
Quote: At the conclusion of the first episode of a proposed two-parter, Batman would return home after fighting the female vampire Nocturna. Come morning, when the sunlight fell on Bruce's legs, they'd start to smoke! Both Fox and WB said no way vampires could be on Saturday mornings, let alone their main character become one.
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 21
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The one that's kind of the famous one is the female vampire story. At that time, vampires were just absolutely forbidden in children's programming. For whatever reason, they just said, "Vampires are off-limits. You cannot do vampires." There was a character that Doug Moench had created for the comics, named Nocturna. I don't think that she was actually a vampire but she was definitely a vampire type. I really wanted to do something with that character. I don't remember which writer I was just kind of banging ideas around with, I don't know if it was Paul or Alan or whoever, but I kind of came up with a quick rough sketch for a Batman/vampire story with Nocturna. Alan verbally pitched it to Fox, and they just said, "Nope. What else you got?" Just literally, flat-out "No." So... okay. "Well, what if it was... ?" We came up with all kinds of rationalizations. And they said, "Nope. Flat-out no. No vampires. You can't do it." So that was it. It wasn't like "Oh, The Great Unmade Episode." We just kind of had a notion. We didn't actually have the whole story worked out or anything. But at the same time, we were kinda like, "Aw, that's disappointing."
Enemy Ace
Source: Wizard #92, page 46
Quote: Originally, there was a plan to show Ra's al Ghul in three time periods -- fighting Jonah Hex in the old west, Enemy Ace in World War I and Batman in the present. The creators couldn't find room for Enemy Ace, and instead just went with Hex in "Showdown"
Firefly
Source: Wizard #72, page 54
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "For a long time, we wanted to use a character who uses fire as a weapon and Fox said 'no' completely," Dini says. "And now we are doing a Batman called Firefly. We did get some censor notes, but...we're using the character."
King Tut
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #31, 1:28:50-1:29:15
Who: Dan Riba
Released: May 10, 2016
Quote: What happens is we really wanted to do King Tut. But King Tut was owned by Fox. He was part of the TV show and not, DC didn't own King Tut and so we were like, "Uh...wait!" They've got--their version of King Tut was Maxie Zeus. So let's do that.
Summary: Crew wanted to use King Tut but there was a rights issue with Fox. They realized there was a similar DC villain called Maxie Zeus and "Fire from Olympus" was done.
Cavalier
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: We've thought about using the Cavalier, and will probably get around to telling his story sooner or later
Killer Moth
Link: Watchtower Database Tweet
Posted: February 15, 2022
Who: Dan Riba
Summary: From what Dan Riba told us, it was only going to be a gag as a wrestling partner for Croc.
Link: Batman the Animated Series Podcast, "Special Guest - Batman TAS Writer Robert N Skir" 52:03-52:33
Posted: March 22, 2023
Who: Robert N. Skir
Quote: You know what Paul Dini wanted to do at one point? He wanted to introduce Killer Moth into the animated series. What he wanted to was have, there's a bank robbery, there's like "You will all kneel before Killer Moth!" Batman just comes in and decks him. And he goes, "Killer Moth. What next?" He was told he couldn't do it because Killer Moth has a lot of fans out there and it's kind of a slap in the face to them.
Huntress
Source: Wizard #31
Summary: Was reported there was a Huntress story.
Azrael
Source: Hero Illustrated #6
Released: December 1993
Summary: Was reported to appear in season 2 along with Jonah Hex, Ra's al Ghul, and Baby Doll.
A lot of 40s villains didn't get past Outlines
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #41 - Paging the Crime Doctor, 1:25:45-1:25:55 mark
Who: Martin Pasko
Posted: November 2, 2016
Summary: A lot of the 40s villains we tried to do never survived past the outline stage because--largely because Bruce didn't think they'd look good in animation.
Ace the Bathound
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #50, 49:37-50:11
Posted: October 2, 2017
Who: Eric Radomski
Quote: At one point and I don't remember where it came from or who had suggest it but they were even talking about giving Batman a dog so he could have a dog in the Batcave. And it was like, "No! What the hell are you talking about?!" But they thought it would be a macho, kinda cool thing but it would still soften him and we were like, "No f**king way. We're not gonna give him a dog." And yet it was in play for a little way. It was potentially going to be one of those 'give a little to get a lot' and fortunately we didn't want to give that one so we ended up not having to.
Link: Watchtower Database YouTube; 42:13-42:30
Posted: October 23, 2020
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: Paul wanted to do Ace the Bathound like on the old Batman show but Bruce was like 'No. No. No,' and finally on Batman Beyond, 'Okay, now he's old. He can have a dog. He would have a dog at this age,' But but he was not allowed to have dog on this series.
Black Canary vs. Catwoman
Link: Anime Superhero
Source: Toonzone November 27, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: ....as for that old never-produced catwoman vs. black canary BTAS story, it never got past the "vaguely-talking-about-the-possibility" stage, nothing was ever even set down on paper...
Source: Robin section of "Batman Animated"
Quote: A potentially intriguing Catwoman/Black Canary team-up was interrupted in midpitch to the network by their demand, "Where's Robin?" When the writers asked if they could omit Robin from just this one episode, Fox obliged by omitting the entire story.
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 22
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: There was a fun Black Canary/Catwoman story we really wanted to do, but the network really wanted to see more Robin episodes, and since there was no place for Robin in that one story, they torpedoed the premise.
Riddler stories
Source: Riddler section of "Batman Animated"
Quote: There at least half a dozen full or partially completed stories in our dead script file that proved ultimately too complex or too silly to produce.
Poison Ivy enslaving Swamp Thing
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 22
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I really wanted to do a story about Poison Ivy enslaving Swamp Thing and forcing him to fight Batman, but the rights to Swamp Thing were tied up elsewhere at that time. I was able to eventually do a version of that story in Justice League Action.
Trap at Stonegate idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Exhausting his final lead in a current case, Batman sneaks into Stonegate Prison in order to question a connected prisoner who refuses to talk. Once there, he realizes that a trap has been set by prison kingpin Mr. Big, who comfortably runs his criminal network from within his cell. As word spreads of the Batman's presence, a riot ensues. Pursued by sworn enemies furious for revenge, Batman fights his way through the bowels of the prison, only to be captured and marched down Death Row and strapped into the electric chair. Luckily, the Riddler springs him at the last minute, not about to have the honor of besting Batman robbed from him by a bunch of low-life jailbirds."
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #13, 1:22:56-1:23:29, 1:23:31-1:23:42
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: July 20, 2015
Quote: And I get to the climax where Batman is wrestling with the ventriloquist dummy and he's actually--it's in a prison and there's this ventriloquist dummy that attacks him when he actually has a wrestling match with it and at that point I went, "NO!" and I threw the thing--I picked it spontaneously up and threw it and it left the door in my office and the brads came undone and so it just flew like confetti./Jean MacCurdy read the script and said, "Yeah, this is a problem." But she said you know, that's when they brought in Alan Burnett and Randy Rogel.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #64, 11:21-11:50
Who: Mitch Brian
Released: April 17, 2019
Quote: It took place in the prison-Stonegate. And Batman kind of gets himself thrown into prison thinking he's gonna solve this case. Then what he doesn't realize is he's been sort of baited into a situation and everyone in prison wants to get him. And so it just becomes like this Batman is pinballed-bounced around from one villain after another as he's trying to make his way out of the prison.
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Released: January 10, 2021
Quote: I seem to remember that Mitch's Stonegate script had Scarface as the main baddie at one point. It was one of the stories we'd commissioned before we had a dedicated Story Editor on staff (meaning Yours Truly was the de facto Story Editor, in addition to all the other hats I was wearing at the time). This particular story wasn't quite jelling and I think Mitch did at least one re-write of it once Sean Derek and Laren Bright came on board. The re-write didn't seem to satisfy anyone so Sean and Laren took a pass over it themselves. Eric Radomski and I thought their re-write still didn't work, and told them that we thought Mitch's previous draft, though still far from ideal, was actually better. Our working relationship with Sean and Laren was already pretty strained at that point, due to various factors ( intense pressure from WBA and Fox to get some workable scripts in the pipeline, as well as just simple incompatibilty issues) but that might have been the actual breaking point.
Man-Bat idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "When innocent tourists are murdered by a huge human-like "Bat", renegade Detective Bullock declares open season on the Batman, not realizing that the murderer is in fact "the Man-Bat"– a product of a misguided scientist's self-inflicted genetic experiments. The Man-Bat flies into a chemical-stealing rampage, hoping to create a serum that will transform him completely into a new species of Bat. Meanwhile, the Batman uses the trail of thefts to deduce the plan and develops his own anti-serum. Then he sets in motion a plan to lure the Man-Bat to a showdown in the skies above Gotham City."
Summary: Probably became "On Leather Wings".
Scarface's Racehorse scheme idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "The demented mind of a meet Ventriloquist snaps and his machine-gun-toting puppet, Scarface, takes over, obsessed with seizing control of Gotham's gambling industry. His crime spree begins with a racetrack heist in order to ruin the opposition, but Bruce Wayne is there watching his racehorse and catches a glimpse of the thieves. Batman arrives and thwarts the robbery, eventually tracing the mad Ventriloquist to an offshore gambling barge which as become a trap to be sprung on the Batman."
Killer Christmas toys
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "When a line of mechanical, killer toys appear in stores just days before Christmas, all signs point to the Joker. As Batman races to find their place of origin, Gotham’s TV reception is interrupted by a transmission of "The Joker's Christmas Eve Special", featuring unwilling guests held hostage with ticking bombs in their stockings. Batman has until midnight to track down the Joker’s transmission spot before the Joker goes off the air and ticking guests go into it."
Summary: Probably became "Christmas with the Joker".
Killer Croc origin story
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "An animal trader is bitten by a rare species of lizard while delivering it to Gotham's zoological gardens and contracts a strange disease that hardens his skin into a bullet-proof hide. His mind is warped with an equal toughness and "Killer Croc" is born, terrorizing the city with the release of reptiles into the sewers and a plot to steal the rare lizard to create an army of invincible followers. But when his theft goes awry, Batman follows him into the reptile filled sewers and uses his detective skills to track him down."
Catwoman becomes the hunted idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Wealthy but cruel acquaintance of Bruce Wayne's has set up a private island where rich sportsmen pay top dollar to hunt rare big cats. When the Cat Woman gets wind of it, she journeys to the island and soon finds herself hunted. Luckily Batman arrives on the same trail and both find themselves the prizes of the hunter's most dangerous game."
Riddler takes over a skyscraper idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "The Riddler has infiltrated the lethal security system of a newly constructed skyscraper and after robbing the building's vault, sits with his loot on the top floor and challenges Batman to come get him. When Batman arrives he discovers that the Riddler has reprogrammed the security system to destroy the Dark Knight and a dizzying array of narrow escapes ensues as he makes his way to the penthouse rendezvous with the Riddler."
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Released: January 10, 2021
Quote: The DIE HARD-ish Riddler outline seemed a little too basic and straight-forward to me - too much action, not enough genuine story, zero character development, and the thought at the time was, "Why is this even a Riddler story? The villain could be ANYONE." Was this one by Michael Reaves or Peter David? I remember that Dini reached out to both of them for stories in the very early days, when he was "half in / half out" of BTAS, and both of them did turn in story outlines, but I don't recall who did what. I seem to remember that David didn't actually write his outline by himself, that he brought in another writer to work on it with him, but I could be totally mis-remembering that. Interestingly enough, a similar "Batman runs a gauntlet inside a skyscraper" story was done by James Robinson and Tony Salmons in an issue of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, right around the same time. And even though Tony was on staff as a storyboard artist in the beginning, I don't think he had access to the aborted Riddler outline, so it's just a pure coincidence.
The Architect idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Locked in the inescapable "Hard Timers" wing of Stonegate Prison, a criminal mastermind know as The Architect is sprung when the impervious walls of Stonegate are miraculously exploded. The Architect dives into the icy waters of Gotham Harbor and never surfaces. Soon, high security buildings everywhere are breached and the Batman attempts to thwart the Architect in an adventure that leads him to the Architect's secret submarine base and a battle below the waters of Gotham Harbor."
Mad Hatter and Wonderland Gang idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "It’s "Cap Day" at Gotham Stadium, where Bruce Wayne and the Gotham populace don baseball caps chemically treated by "The Mad Hatter" and his Alice in Wonderland Gang. As paranoia sweeps the city, the episode becomes a twisted "Batman In Wonderland" as the Mad Hatter's robbery scheme uses the ensuing chaos and a disoriented Batman fights for sanity while trying to thwart the crimes."
Two-Face's Triptych scheme idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "When two panels of a famous triptych are stolen and the third destroyed, a series of similar crimes follow, all based on stealing trios of items. In each case one is destroyed and the remaining two are seized by Two Face. Setting his sights on the trio of Batman, Robin, and Batgirl, he captures Batgirl and lures the Dynamic Duo to his estate, planning to stalk them all and destroy one of the three. But which one?"
Bruce Thwarts Clayface idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Bruce Wayne is personally supervising the deposit of Wayne Industry files in an underground storage facility, when Clay Face's well-armed group of thieves descend into the high security operation. Unable to change into the Batman, Wayne uses the cover of darkness and a flurry of bats from a connecting cavern to convince the villains that Batman is among them. He then must escape unnoticed and return as Batman, hoping to stop the robbery before it is completed."
Blackbeard idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Ocean vessels are falling prey to robberies by "Blackbeard" and his band of modern day pirates. But when an entire ocean liner disappears, Bruce Wayne discreetly charters a cruise following the missing liner's course and finds himself in the Sargasso Sea's legendary graveyard of lost ships. Discovering that Blackbeard and his band converted the liner into a hidden, half-submerged base intending to increase their piracy, it's up to Batman to stop them."
Mr. Freeze's Arctic smuggling idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "After a freak accident in his cryogenics lab, Mr. Freeze is created and uses the lab as a front for the theft of the valuable "ice" called diamond. As museums and jewelry stores suddenly freeze and diamonds are stolen, Batman's detective skills lead him north to Freeze's Arctic smuggling operation and a battle in the snow with the deadly cold foe."
Mad Maestro idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "When the lights come up at Gotham's Opera Hall, the wealthy audience finds all of their valuable stolen. Among the audience is Bruce Wayne and soon Batman is pitted against the Mad Maestro, whose compositions have recently been rejected by the Gotham Musical Academy. Vowing revenge on the judging committee, the madman begins a musical reign of terror from his hidden lair in the Gotham Opera House."
Robin races to cure Batman idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "While investigating a series of crimes attributed to the mysterious Poison Ivy, Batman is poisoned, and he and Robin have only 24 hours to track down Poison Ivy and the antidote. As the Batman weakens in the final hours the salvation of the Dark Knight is entirely in Robin's hands and the clock is ticking…"
Early P.O.V. idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "The mysterious Batman has been sighted three different times in one night by a trio of cops, including Officer Renee Montoya. As the three sit in a coffee shot, each recounts their adventure, prejudiced by their own personality and opinion of the Batman. Montoya leaves, putting elements from the stories together, and realizes that each story is part of what must be the Batman's current case. By calculating his next move, she finds herself side by side with the Dark Knight and helps him complete the criminal case."
Summary: Probably became "P.O.V."
Batman Hysteria idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "The Scarecrow infects Gotham's water supply and jams TV and radio transmissions with images and sounds of the Batman, triggering an epidemic of "Bat terror" in the populace. When Batman is spotted that night, he finds himself pursued by rabid mobs of police and citizens as he attempts to track down The Scarecrow and his antidote."
Zatanna idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Series Show Bible via World's Finest
Quote: "Gotham's most famous illusionist, Zatanna, promises to make the Gotham Mercantile Bank disappear on her televised special. The bank disappears, but when it returns all of the money is gone. Swearing innocence, she is jailed, but Batman's investigation reveals the crime was the work of the Gentleman Ghost. It isn't long before wolfish Bruce Wayne comes up with the beautiful Zatanna's bail bond and although immune to Wayne's charms, Zatanna is soon visited by Batman and the two of them set out to track down the Ghost and the money."
Summary: Probably became "Zatanna" but with the different villain.
10 year old traps Batman in a VR world Idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #5 - What is Reality?, 35:32-36:34 mark
Who: Robert N Skir
Posted: March 30, 2015
Summary: "About a year before when they first announced doing Batman, the idea was what can we do that's new, different, and strange? This is Batman Now. So there was this thing called virtual reality that was out there like 'Hey, what if Batman found himself trapped in a virtual reality world where there's like on this floating platform and there were pteradactyls around him. It's crazy. And then at the end, you find out the guy who's created this world that's trapped him is a 10 year old kid. This is crazy. Marty's like, 'Well, 10 year old is young. BS&P would never let us get away with having a 10 year old as a villain.' So I was, 'Ok, what if we make him 13?' And I don't remember if we wrote it up as a pitch. I don't remember if we sent it in. I don't remember anything else about it other than we had this idea about virtual reality and it didn't happen. It was sort of out there. Then they invited us to write a Riddler episode. And Riddler was already a computer villain. Well, why don't we do a virtual reality story with him?"
Hugo Strange Pitch
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #8 - His Silicon Soul, 62:20-62:47 mark
Who: Marty Isenberg
Posted: May 11, 2015
Summary: Pitched a Hugo Strange story based on the Legends of the Dark Knight arc "Batman: Prey" where Hugo Strange was so obsessed with Batman, he began to think he was Batman.
Gangster Kid Pitch
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #8 - His Silicon Soul, 62:47-63:07 mark
Who: Marty Isenberg
Posted: May 11, 2015
Summary: Robert N Skir pitched a mob story about a gang kid falling through the cracks and Batman tries to save him.
"What is Reality?" Sequel Idea
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #8 - His Silicon Soul, 1:10:52-1:12:50 mark
Who: Marty Isenberg
Posted: May 11, 2015
Summary: Combination of "Awakenings" and "Silence of the Lambs" where all these Riddler crimes were going on while Riddler was still in a coma. They need to wake Riddler to catch the criminal because of heightened stakes. He only responded to Batman's presence. Was hypnotizing guards and doctors with post-hypnotic suggestions then Batman to do his crimes but Batman breaks free. Then Martin Pasko had him shift to working on "His Silicon Soul".
"Lost" radio play pilot cira 1942
Source: Paul Dini Tweet
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I once pitched the idea of doing a "lost" Batman radio pilot circa 1942 with the original animated series voices, but it didn't go for a variety of internal reasons (cost, music rights, distribution, etc.).
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Catwoman-Batman Turning Point Story
Source: Wizard #27
Released: November 1993
Summary: A report there was an upcoming story that redefines the relationship between Catwoman and Batman. Catwoman would have a meaner edge.
Source: Comic Scene #40
Released: February 1994
Summary: A report there was turning point for Catwoman and Batman's relationship.
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 Issues #6 to 26, page 105
Quote: Catwoman's redesign for a spin-off series, now on hold, will show up second season as she turns outlaw.
Joe R. Lansdale's Sci-Fi story on a train with a female Western DC hero
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #27, 1:41:02-1:41:16
Who: Joe R. Lansdale
Released: February 29, 2016
Quote: I did one science fiction...that's all I remember, it took place on a train. And it had one of the other characters from DC Western Universe. A female character, but I can't remember what her name was.
Joe R. Lansdale and Michael Reeve's pitch of villains trying to trap Batman
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #28, 13:53-14:18
Who: Joe R. Lansdale
Released: March 14, 2016
Quote: Michael Reeves and I had one that we wanted to do. I think it was with Paul--Paul Dini? I can't remember. But we had this one with Batman. There were all of these traps. There was this whole story of these guys using gimmicks and traps to capture or kill Batman. And we did--we did several...we made a what's it called...a synopsis. We never could sell that.
Growing Pains idea started with Dick Grayson
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #38, 08:29-10:20
Who:Bob Goodman
Released: September 6, 2016
Quote: And Paul would talk about how, and this dates back to well before Tim Drake, we're talking about the Dick Grayson Robin. This idea that in this version was Dick is at college and living in a dorm and has taken an interest in this girl and she's having nightmares or being haunted by somebody. I don't remember the exact details of that but it was kind of nebulous, he didn't have it figured out, and he, you know, takes an interest in her and tries to help her and what turns out to be true - here comes the spoiler - is that she's a bud that spawned off of Clayface. Um, that where we last saw Clayface in the first 85 was the episode "Mudslide" where Clayface and Batman had fought on bluffs over the sea in a rainstorm and Clayface got too diluted to, you know, washed with water, he couldn't hold his shape anymore and washed out to sea and we believed him dead. Um, that Clayface had survived that but was weak and didn't know if he could hold onto his shape anymore and didn't know if it was safe for him to come out so he created a piece of himself to go to the surface and report back. And when she left him, this girl lost her memory of that's what she was, who she was. And was now the individual we met, and that's what Paul had.
Note: This idea would later be turned into an episode in The New Batman Adventures, with "Growing Pains" and Tim Drake.
Mad Hatter does a Hat based crime
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #42 - See No Evil, 9:08-9:56
Who: Martin Pasko
Released: November 18, 2016
Quote: We broke a Mad Hatter story. I pitched him something. He liked it but he had a lot of changes. Log ot notes. Par for the course. But it was Jervis Tetch/Mad Hatter more from the comics where hat themed crime as opposed to using hats for mind manipulation which is where the character has developed. And so I did all the changes. Alan liked them. And two days later, I have another meeting with him at his office on Hanna Barbera. He was packing up to go to Warner Brothers. And he says to me, "We're not going to do this." And I thought 'there goes that gig.' Right? "Bruce doesn't like the conception of the Mad Hatter. He wants to go in a different direction."
Early Legends of the Dark Knight pitch
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #54, 40:02-40:35
Posted: October 30, 2017
Who: Henry Gilroy
Quote: It was basically kids talking about their--who they think Batman is. The different mythological aspects. And they did that way later. And that actually, I had basically known it was done in the comics earlier by Dick Giordano. Yeah, and it had been done in the comics probably a couple of times so I couldn't take credit. Hey, this is a great idea--story.
Scarecrow and Horror Writer idea
Link: World's Finest
Posted: June 20, 2008
Who: Michael Reaves
Quote: It's a story featuring the Scarecrow, and it's an idea I had back in my TAS days: A well-known horror novelist losing his ability to scare readers, who in desperation makes a Faustian bargain. Trouble, as usual, follows.
Will Murray's The City That Could Not Breathe outline
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Released: January 10, 2021
Quote: Another story that I commissioned in the pre-Sean days was "The City That Could Not Breathe" by an author named Will Murray. I'd known his work as a Pulp Historian and fiction writer for years, and I'd been particularly impressed by his ability to write incredibly authentic-sounding pastiches in other authors' styles. His ghost-written Destroyer novels were pitch-perfect and the "Lester Dent" voice he used for his Doc Savage books was uncannily spot-on. So I cold-called him, told him what we were up to - specifically that I wanted to inject as much classic Pulp Hero action and atmosphere into the series as possible - and mentioned that I'd like him to do a Batman story in the general style of Norvell Page's Spider novels. He turned in his outline just as Sean and Laren came on board. I handed over to them all the stories and scripts that we currently had, all in various states of completion ... and I STUPIDLY didn't follow up with Will. I thought his outline had loads of potential, and DID actually manage to evoke Page's patented apocalyptic "Doomed City" aesthetic (even without the usual ginormous body count common to the Spider books) - but with everything else I had going on at the time, his story fell through the cracks, and I regret it to this day. The only positive side-effect is that he was able to salvage his work by turning it into a pretty kick-ass short story and getting it published in THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BATMAN VOL. 3. So, if you can track down a copy of that book, you’ll get a very good idea of what his "BTAS LOST ADVENTURE" would have been like.
Summary: For a summary of the short story, Click Here
Silent Knight
Who: Alan Burnett
Link: World's Finest Backstage Alan Burnett
Quote: At one point we wanted to do a story without dialogue - "Silent Knight" we called it. Never happened
Link: Newsarama
Summary: On a different note, Burnett wanted to do a "Silent Knight" story with no dialogue, based on Neal Adams' "The Silent Night of the Batman." They were later able to do something similar with the Batman/Catwoman short "Chase Me".
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Shriek" Commentary, 00:44-1:02
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Years and years before we did Batman Beyond, I used to just pop into Alan Burnett's office and chew the fat. And I'd mention to you, 'I'd like to do a villain someday who could negate sound' I would like to do a silent sequence in an episode that was literally all silent. No music, no sound effects, no thing."
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Shriek" Commentary, 20:11-20:14
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: "We had a title. Silent Knight with a k."
The Jokester and Crime Syndicate
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: October 5, 2007
When: During Batman: The Animated Series
Link: Paul Dini LiveJournal
Quote: Anyone digging the Jokester? He was originally a character I had left over from my days on B:TAS. I never got to use him there, so I'm glad we were able to give him a home here. I'm really loving what Sean McKeever's doing with him.
Link: Paul Dini LiveJournal
Quote: To your second, I was playing around with a Crime Syndicate-like alternate world for the original Batman Animated series, but we decided to ground the first couple of seasons in "real world' stories, so we never did the mirror universe/Earth 3 type story. In the notes I made at the time, I created an anti-hero Joker, a comedian who spoke out againt the criminal Batman of that world and was disfigured by the evil Batman in return. Many of the freedom fighters of that alternate Gotham were mirror versions of "our" world's criminals who had been hurt/crippled/scarred in some way by that evil Batman. I never formally pitched the story, so I only now got a chance to pull it out of my notebooks and offer it up here for Countdown.
Morpheus and Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman
Link: Newsarama
Summary: Dini said they had an idea for doing a dream-like Sandman-type story with Morpheus and Death, with Batman stuck between life and death. They pitched to Neil Gaiman, who liked it, but Burnett thought it was too metaphysical. "I would do anything with Paul," Burnett said. "I'd give him as much rope as he wanted - and he'd come in and say 'I have this idea about Harley and ivy together,' and I'd say, 'Go!'" However, he added that they had rules in beginning: "No ghosts, and no Humanitas Awards." (i.e., no Very Special Episodes about drugs and alcohol). "With Ra's al Guhl, we got into that mystic area a bit".
Who: Neil Gaiman
Posted: November 8, 1999
Link: Purple Planet Media
Quote: Paul Dini came up to me one day at a convention in about '91 or '92 and he said he had a Sandman plot, he told it to me, and would I give it my blessing? I said I definitely would. And we talked about five minutes about who we would cast for the voice, and what kind of voice effects we'd do. And that was pretty much that. It never really happened. I think it was after that, it became much more Batman and Robin-y, and there never really was room to do that story. And oddly enough, I bumped into Paul Dini in San Diego this year, in the middle of the screening of Princess Mononoke that we did at San Diego, when I wound up introducing the screening, running back to the main hotel, and presenting some Eisner awards, then running back and doing a question-and-answer at the end of Mononoke. And I bumped into Paul Dini. And he was saying, "You going to write me a Batman Beyond, then?" And I said, "I don't know, it depends if I have time. Why don't you do that Sandman story?" And he said, "What a great idea!" So maybe it'll show up in Batman Beyond then.
Source: Dark Night: A True Batman Story
Released: June 21, 2016; Pages 110-115
Quote: Now, this story opens with Batman having the fight of his life. He's been lured to some remote spot in Gotham. Joker is holding some society bigwigs hostage. When Batman arrives, not only is Joker there, but so is every other one of his major enemies. It's a trap and they all want a piece of him. Ivy snares Batman in thorny vines that shoot out of the ground. Then Scarecrow hits Batman with his Fear Gas while both Clayface and Killer Croc move in to beat the crap out of him. Batman breaks free but everywhere he turns, there's a villain taking shots at him. Joker is loving this. He tells Batman that Harley Quinn is really holding the hostages at his hideout. Batman doesn't have a prayer of rescuing them or getting out of this alive. This is it, Joker tells him. The big villain team-up where they all band together to finally kill their common enemy. Somehow, Batman fights his way to the Batmobile. He's badly wounded, maybe he's even taken a bullet, if we can get away with it. First thing he does is call Robin and give him the location of the hostages. Just then, he hears something ticking and it's a Riddler puzzle bomb stuck to his windshield. Batman hits the seat ejector just as the boom goes off. Whoom! He's shot sky-high and barely manages to clamp his grapple onto a gargoyle way up on the side of a building. The grapple pulls Batman up, and he just hangs there, hovering between life and death.
Then we're inside The Dreaming, the Sandman's kingdom. Batman comes to and finds he's in a sort of negative space. No villains, no Gotham, no pain for that matter. Nothing except him and a girl. Death. It seems that Death and the Sandman are siblings in a sort of dysfunctional family of states of human consciousness. That part's complicated, a little too much for just twenty-two minutes. Anyway, Death goodnaturedly tells 'The Cheater' he's dodged her for the last time. Now she will finally ease him over to the other side. That's when Morpherus, the Sandman, appears. He tells his sister that Batman is his guest in his realm and he asks Death to spare him, for now. Of course, Batman has no idea what these two are talking about. He only knows he's in the middle of some insane dream brought about by his injuries. Death's not happy, but family is family. She hangs back while Morpheus tells Batman he is responsible for more dreams than he knows. Dreams of Batman in all forms pervade human minds.
Acting like a ghost out of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Morpheus shows Batman how his image haunts the dreams of the wicked, scaring more than a few of them into giving up crime. The Sandman also reveals how Batman has instilled dreams of hope in the people he's saved. In his own way, Batman is a powerful agent of the Dreaming. These revelations are things Batman admits he may have felt on some level, but he's always pushed them aside in his mind in order to concentrate on his mission. Morpheus tells Batman he stands at a crossroad. He can follow Death to eternal rest, or he can allow Morpheus to wake him. Neither choice is wrong...but only Batman can make the choice. Batman knows waking means he will have to deal with pain, but he also knows he will heal. He chooses to live. There is a bright light and Batman recoils in pain. Then he's back on the gargoyle, barely hanging on, but we see the light is coming from the Batwing, and it's Robin flying down to rescue him...and the upshot is, Batman survives and goes on, because that's what he does. So let's run it by Bruce and Eric, I want to start writing this one right away.
(Alan Burnett)Hm. It sounds too metaphysical.
I know we said we weren't doing any supernatural stories, but I thought in this case...
(Alan)There's not much action in it, except the beginning. I don't think we can have a character named "Death" in a cartoon. And isn't Neil Gaiman the only one who ever writes "The Sandman"?
This idea's been in my head a while. I even pitched it to Neil at a con last year. He loved the idea of the Sandman being in a Batman cartoon. We talked casting...can we get John Hurt.
(Alan)Look, I know why that story is important to you now. And it was good for you to pitch it. But it's just not for us right now.
Summary: Paul Dini recalls the story was pitched around the time he was working on Mask of the Phantasm in February 1993. It starts with Batman in the fight of his life. He was lured to a remote part of Gotham by the Joker because he took some rich people hostage. It was a trap. Harley Quinn had the hostages back at Joker's hideout. Batman is attacked by his entire Rogue's Gallery and somehow escapes to his Batmobile and calls Robin to get the hostages. He realizes there is a Riddler puzzle bomb on his windshield and it goes off. He fires a grapple line to a gargoyle and clings to it. He enters the Dreaming and meets Death. She tells him he dodged her for the last time. Her brother Morpheus intervenes and tells her he is his guest and asks her to spare him. She obliges. He explains to Batman how he is in a way an agent of the Dreaming and is in the dreams of many, striking fear in criminals and hope in children. Batman admits he knew that on some level but pushed it aside to fight crime. Batman is given the choice to follow Death to the afterlife or allow Morpheus to wake him up. He chooses to live and is still in great pain from the fight. Robin arrives in the Batwing and picks him up. Alan Burnett shot down the pitch for various reasons like it was too metaphysical and they couldn't use a character named Death on the show.
Who: Paul Dini
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 22
Quote: I had an idea for a Sandman story that never happened, though I did depict it in my book Dark Night, so fans did get a sense of what it would have been like.
"The Darkest Knight"
Who: David Wise
Link: TMNT Website
Summary: Pitched a story but was deemed too dark
Source: Cinefantastique: Batman: The Animated Series — The 90s New Dark Knight (Vol. 24 No. 6/Vol. 25 No. 1, February 1994), page 103
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Another episode cancelled after running afoul of Fox's Broadcast Standards and Practices was titled 'The Darkest Night,' in which Batman is hypnotized into becoming the ultimate vigilante. Noted producer Bruce Timm, 'The mildest thing he does is threaten a thug while holding him over a rooftop. After he gets the information he wants, he drops the guy off the roof. Even though Robin is there to save him, BS&P said we couldn't have that happen. We decided that if we can't do the weakest thing, then this show is not worth doing.'
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #40 - The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne, 27:30-43:00 mark
Who: David Wise
Posted: October 4, 2016
Quote: For the full quote, Click Here
Summary: David Wise wrote an outline a little inspired by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, more of a Robin story, got it okayed by Michael Reeves, but by season 2 they were going more light hearted. Batman is rushing to save Mayor Hill at a meet point but there's not Hill and blonde handsome paramilitary homoerotic Hitler youth who are personal militia of Sandford Grisham, a rich right wing extremist. Gases Batman. Grisham thinks Batman is a good idea but doesn't go far enough. Days later, Dick Grayson comes home but Alfred is missing so he goes to the Batcave. Wall of TVs showing all crimes happening. 100 crimes unfolding. Bruce sits and stares at them like a zombie, trying to choose one. Dick asks him if he's okay. Bruce picks one and tears off. Grayson goes with him. Batman hangs a robber off the edge of a building. Robber pleads with him. Batman says 'who says I want to hear anything?' and drops him. Robin snags him and barely saves him. Batman goes back to the Batcave. Robin finds Afred tied up in a closet. They call in Leslie Thompkins. She says it was going to happen someday. Will have to institutionalize him. Dick is skeptical he's gone off the edge. Robin goes to talk to the Joker in Arkham Asylum and mind screws with Robin. Robin is horrified then turns the table on Joker, saying someone will take him out or he might kill himself to stop a bad guy and he'll miss his chance to kill Batman. It will be just an accident not Joker as cause of death. Joker tells him about a drug. Robin does research for an antidote. Batman has been taunting rogues with messages affixed to rocks. As a riff on Batman Returns, for a Penguin scene, a goon would suggest robotic penguins with missiles strapped to their backs. Penguin thinks it's the stupidest idea ever. Batman invites them all to the Gotham Sports Arena for a fight. Robin tries to deliver antidote but Batman is already paranoid. Robin barely dodges a harpoon to the chest. Rogues think it's a trap and decide to leave. Batman shines a spotlight on them, armed with a suicide vest of TNT. Grisham's men have blocked the entrances. A huge fight commences. They pull the vest off Batman. Batman has the trigger and tries to climb to a safe distance. Robin reasons with him, he pauses, then gets him with the antidote. Grisham's mansion is like a hospital, he's dying in his bed. Batman and Robin show up to arrest him but the doctor has just pulled a sheet over his head. Tells them he cared about Gotham.
Rock-A-Bye Batman
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #41 - Paging the Crime Doctor, 49:49-50:04 mark
Who: Martin Pasko
Posted: November 2, 2016
Summary: I can answer that best by quoting the title of one of those scripts in the big box. "Rock-a-Bye Batman," where essentially Batman becomes a babysitter.
Penguin Pictures Presents
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #54, 40:43-41:14 and 41:20-41:33
Posted: October 30, 2017
Who: Henry Gilroy
Quote: Some of the earlier ones I did--I did work on a story called Penguin Pictures Presents. And this was a story that I actually didn't do and it was done...I don't remember who wrote the original script but I had done some rewrite work on it. It was a story about Penguin who actually had a movie studio in Gotham City and, gosh I should have dugi t up and tried to find the outline because it probably would have cracked you up. That was one of the early stories that didn't go on./I want to say he was basically--the rough version of the story was like The Producers' plot. Kind of like he was getting this money and using this money--his movie studio was a money laundering operation.
"The Count and The Countess"
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Summary: Originally this production number was assigned to an episode entitled 'The Count and the Countess.' Producer Timm sent it to a Japanese studio for complete preproduction work as an experiment. He thought it would free up the in-house staff's time for better shows. The overseas studio took months to produce even character designs and a partial storyboard, and those were drawn in a style too off-model to be useable. Production on the first season was nearing an end and with a troubled script and unacceptable preproduction work, the episode was killed. When "See No Evil" was completed (the 57th or 58th show finished), it was assigned the lower production number left empty.
"The Midnight Hour"
Link: Michael Reaves Website via Web Archive
Quote: I wrote "The Midnight Hour" during the second season of Batman: The Animated Series. It was based loosely on an issue of a DC Comics series named Teen Titans Spotlight which I wrote back in 1987 (#14, spotlighting Nightwing, titled "Night Of the Dragon"). After I wrote it, the decision was made that we had already done the "tension between Robin and Batman" riff enough in previous episodes, so this script was never produced. Which I wasn't too happy about at the time, but these things happen in TV Land. I've always been rather fond of the script, however..."
"Mind Games"
Link: Michael Reaves Website via Web Archive
Quote: written by Len Wein and myself during the second season as a sequel to the episode "The Strange Secret Of Bruce Wayne". It was, I thought, a good script that never got a fair chance, since nobody on staff particularly liked Hugo Strange as a villain. While I agree that the good doctor isn't one of the more stellar members of the Rogues' Gallery, I thought the concept of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson forgetting that they're Batman and Robin had both comedic and dramatic potential. Here's your chance to see if I'm right.
"Vigil"
Link: Michael Reaves Website via Web Archive
Quote: This story was developed by Martin Pasko, another one of the B:TAS story editors, and myself in May of 1993. I honestly don't remember the reason it never went to script -- I think the network was leary of Batman appearing too weak. I don't agree, obviously -- I think, all modesty aside, that it would've been a terrific episode. Oh well ...
The One and Only Gun Story
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #14 - Perchance to Dream, 1:07:53-1:08:22, 1:08:52-1:09:00 mark
Who: Alan Burnett
Posted: August 3, 2015
Quote: Well, there was the one that didn't make it to air that's kinda famous is the story about the gun. There was a--we--I think it was Tom Ruegger and another writer, I forget the writer's name, did a story about the gun that killed his parents. And it begins with the manufacture of the gun and it takes you through the various people who had the gun until the mo--the night his parents were killed./It was and I do think the story was published as an extra on one of the DVDs. [Note: This special DVD feature has been debunked]
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #44 - Beware the Gray Ghost, 21:13-23:04 mark
Who: Tom Ruegger
Posted: January 16, 2017
Quote: Well, there is one story that I wrote, probably my favorite of the scripts I'd written. It wasn't early, it was midway through the first season and it was after the Gray Ghost. And it was called The One and Only Gun Story. So this was my original concept and I wrote the whole thing. We were hopeful it would get through but the network ultimately killed it and it's--it's literally... not the point of view of a gun but you follow from fade out--fade in to fade out--this gun and it starts with digging up an iron ore in a location that turned out to be an Indian burial ground so this iron ore is sort of cursed. It gets smelted and used--this particular metal is used to make a gun. And then camera stays on this gun when it's put in a drawer and it goes dark. In other words, we never stay off this gun for the 22 minutes. And it shows its history and it's the gun who kills Bruce Wayne's parents. And it's a gun that plays into different plot lines you see in the series. In the end, Bruce recovers it or Batman recovers it and melts it down and uses the same metal to inscribe on his parents' momuments with some lettering.
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 22
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: [There was] a story about the history of the gun that killed Bruce's parents that again was too strong.
Link: Starburst Website
Who: Tom Ruegger
Posted: July 12, 2018
Quote: There was one story that I wrote that we didn't make, and I don't even know why because I spent a month writing this. Everyone knew I was writing it and they were all cool with it, and yet ultimately the network said, "Too dark, we can't do it." I've spoken about this a little bit before, but it was called The One and Only Gun Story. It started in a mine where different metals are being mined out of the ground, and we follow the metal to the factory where it's melted down and turned to steel and different things. We watch this delivered to a manufacturer - and this is all before anyone speaks -– but we find that where it’s been mined, there's a Native American there saying, "This is sacred land, you shouldn't be there." So, the metal gets turned to a gun. The camera, which has been watching this rock taken out of the ground and turned to metal on a gun, it follows this gun, it gets put in a box, and the next thing we know the box is being opened in a gun store and someone's buying the gun. You follow it home, it's put into a safe, the safe is closed, then blackness. Years pass, then it turns out this is the gun that kills Bruce Wayne's parents. We watch this gun, which gets flipped into the river and fished out by a kid. Ultimately, Bruce Wayne gets hold of this gun and, at the end of the episode, melts it down and turns it into a plaque for the grave of his parents. That's The One and Only Gun Story that the network said, "No, we're not making that!" This is self-serving, I guess, but it was a very good script. It was dramatic. Obviously, they had never aired anything like it. They were just scared. They thought,"“Oh, this is going to get us a lot of attention, and it's about guns, so we're not going to do it."
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: Revised Draft 5/28/91
Posted: July 27, 2020
Lo, The Creeper!
Source: Batman Animated page 144
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: We originally wanted to do the team-up in our first run on Fox, and though several talented writers tried their best, the character never seemed to work at script stage. A few years later the writers and producers spent some time rethinking the Creeper's origin, devising a closer link to the series by making the Joker responsible for Jack Ryder's transformation.
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three page 46
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Yeah, the Creeper show just didn't gel that first time around. We went back and forth on it, and a number of writers took a stab at it. It just never got to a point where we all felt happy with it, so we just dropped it.
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: Outline First Draft 3/10/92, First Draft: 5/04/92
Credits: Story by Gerry Conway, Teleplay by Marv Wolfman, First Draft (Michael Reaves)
Posted: July 27, 2020
The Golem
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: First Draft 6/23/92
Credits: Written by Michael Reaves
Posted: July 27, 2020
Razing Hellbane
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: Outline 12/04/91
Credits: Adapted from a story by Frank Robbins, Written by Randy Rogel
Posted: July 27, 2020
Mama Didn't Raise No Dummies
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: Outline First Draft 6/22/92
Credits: Written by Steve Mitchell and Barbara Petty
Posted: July 27, 2020
Never Say Uncle
Link: World's Finest (PDF download)
Draft: Outline 9/4/91
Credits: Premise by Tom Ruegger, Outline by Garin Wolf
Posted: July 27, 2020
The Ape Man, Randy Rogel's Spec Script
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #24, 1:21:49-1:22:14 and 1:22:19-1:22:30
Posted: January 18, 2016
Who: Randy Rogel
Quote: It was called The Ape Man. And it was a cientist who was working and is able--he lost control and turned--he was quite a formidable opponent to Batman but it had a lot of heart to it. But I do remember the ending to it. It was really cool. And they never made that. Usually your spec script would never get made. That would be very rare because they already have a vision for the show. But I will tell you, the opening of Sub-Zero was the opening of Ape Man./The first time you meet Batman when you go to Gotham City. And that guy breaks the window. And then Batman comes down. I even had it darker you know, um, we had to lighten it up.
Randy Rogel's 2nd Spec Script
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #24, 1:22:31-1:23:06
Posted: January 18, 2016
Who: Randy Rogel
Quote: I wrote a second script which another also really good script. That never got made either that was of a woman. What was the name of that...I have it somewhere. Where she had been---jilted lover. Oh! Was it Harvey Dent? And she--she was busy killing people. And she--she was--she had plans It was a little like Poison Ivy. It may have been too close to Poison Ivy. Yeah, but I remember that one was a cool little script.
Batman Voice Actor Tryouts
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 18, 2021
Quote: From the original BTAS auditions, the only two actors that I can specifically remember out of the dozens and dozens of aspiring Batmans were Sam Jones and Gil Gerard. I thought it was pretty dang cool that we had both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers trying out for the part.
Link: Comics2Film
Posted: March 19, 2002
Who: Corey Burton
Quote: And actually Brainiac came from the fact that I turned in a really good audition for Batman. I was almost Batman.
Clive Revill voiced Alfred for 3 episodes
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume One, "On Leather Wings" Commentary 15:15-15:17, 15:19-15:23, 15:24-15:35
Who: Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm
Quote: (Eric Radomski) I'm desperately trying to remember the guy who played Alfred in this episode./(Eric Radomski) Clive Revill, that's right. Because he was later recast./(Bruce Timm) Yeah, Clive recorded 2 or 3 episodes with us as Alfred, then he went on "Summer Stock." He went on to do it, the play, so he was going to be unavailable for almost the entire summer so we had to go back and recast.
Alternate Title Sequence by TMS
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 30:49-32:18 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: October 4, 2023
Quote: One day I'm sitting there working, and I can't even remember which episode I was working on, but I'm in my office which is right next to Bruce and Bruce goes 'Come here!' and I'm like 'Okay, Bruce, what's the matter?' 'Look at this. Look at this' and he shows me what TMS sent and they took his storyboards and animated the living hell out of it. Where you see the bank robbers? Full detail. Full detail. I don't think Bruce ever sent them a model other than a silhouette but they took it on themselves to come up with this whole style and it was squash and stretch in some of the most beautiful animation you ever saw in an opening. Bruce is like 'Can you believe it? It's like they totally blew it!' and I'm going 'Well, it was supposed to be what it turned out to be.' Oh, no, you you you guys didn't see it. I saw it. I don't know where that footage went. It disappeared but it was TMS on fire like they-they animated everything on ones. It was crazy. Totally way off model. Way off model. Beautiful but way off model, not--it's like it was their own version of Batman: The Animated Series and that got buried. I don't know where that went.
Feat of Clay Part Two
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 01:35:34-01:36:14 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: Feat of Clay part two um just with the--back up what you're saying, I just remembered that script was like again it was like another 50 pages or 45 to 50 pages and it just where it was all about like uh Clayface mimicking um tables and mimicking a chair and he's mimicking a great and he's mimicking you know you know a wash stand or something and uh and then the whole thing with the electricity where like he goes up to the you know he Batman follows the cop down saying 'hey that badge is wrong' and he's chasing him around the streets and then he gets hit by a big electrical line and that's how come we know that he's...
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 01:36:15-01:36:49 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: And also Kevin, you cut the the most important thing that the writer thought was going to sell it was that the cop didn't read the guy his rights and he's like 'no cop would get away with that and and this is you know this where you know the story fails miserably' and nobody watching the episode ever cares Batman just intuitively knows because he's being too rough with the guy that he's not a cop we don't need to we don't need any of that stuff it reads perfectly the way it was recorded.
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 11:08-11:29 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: October 4, 2023
Quote: So I'm there and I read the script and I'm there with Alan Burnett and I go and I say okay I'm gonna have to change stuff because the script, if I remember correctly, he was more like Plastic Man. Like 'Batman walks by a table and the table morphs into Clayface. Things like that.
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 14:12-16:08 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: October 4, 2023
Quote: So I said 'Okay, I'm going to take this part' and this is where Clayface first manifested powers--we first see them and that was a real problem sequence because there are like about five or six pages extra to the script where this cop shows up and Batman goes 'Hey, wait a minute' after he's through and we see that it's seawater and not--yeah, not Crimson Fever--so that's--we enter there and then there's a whole sequence that was cut out by me and it's like... this will be interesting for people to see how when you storyboard what you have to do sometimes and I was the director so I didn't ask for permission. I was you know I asked for permission from Alan Burnett and Bruce and that's it. Boom. Because it's like we don't have time. So the script goes on where this cop comes in. Says, "Hold it right there, Batman. This is my collar. I'll take it from here." And then Batman goes 'Okay' and he takes Germs and he walks downstairs with him and then Batman ponders goes 'Hmm, there was something strange about that uniform. That was the wrong badge or that was the wrong shoulder patch' and then he goes down to the street. He goes 'Where is that cop and oh, there he is' and then they have a confrontation out there. I don't quite remember what happens but Clayface, they end up in a big long fight and something, a car crashes into a telephone pole and Clayface is about to kill Batman and electrical wires hit Clayface. All of a sudden, Clayface can't function and he runs away.
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 26:27-26:52 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: October 4, 2023
Quote: We had one retake. I can only think of one retake and that was because Batman... when the cop takes Germs and leaves, Batman goes and recovers on the table after getting slammed into the ceiling, he runs out and he bursts into the stairwell and the sign above him said "staris" instead of "stairs."
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 27:48-28:12 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: October 4, 2023
Quote: Yeah. Yeah and by the way, the electricity problem? Okay, 10 pages of the script? Maybe, maybe it was only seven but a big chunk of the script out the window. It's like now we're on time. Brad, just have him poke it with an electric thing and it goes through and Brad came up with those abstract sculpture pose to pose of that chunk of clay.
It's Never Too Late
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #44 - Beware The Gray Ghost, 23:42-24:10 mark
Who: Tom Ruegger
Posted: November 18, 2016
Summary: But there's a great scene, one of my favorite scenes that didn't make it, where Batman has to go see the priest. He sees him in a confessional and they have this conversation then they cut to these altar boys lighting a candle and they see Batman leave the confessional. And one of them says, "Funny, I didn't know he was Catholic." And the network killed it.
Pretty Poison
A Longer Kiss
Source: Animato! Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Quote: Poison Ivy attempts to murder Bruce Wayne's best friend, District Attorney Harvey Dent with a long, deadly poisoned kiss (the length of which was cut by BS&P.)
The Plant Creature
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 75
Released: February 1994
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: It wasn't intentional, but the Venus Fly-trap creature looks like a vagina with teeth. Originally, it looked like Audrey II, and I said 'Naww, let's not do that, what other kind of plant can we do? What if it's like a big snow-peapod?' I started sketching it out, and stopped when I realized what it looked like, but it worked. In a way, it's a very good visual metaphor for what she is, a man-killer.
Restaurant scene
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 75-76
Released: February 1994
Quote: For the scene where Poison Ivy slinks out of a restaurant, and all the men turn to watch her go, the Sunrise animators could not animate her derriere to look as seductive as the producers wanted. The task finally fell to storyboard artist Chen-Yi Chang, who animated the sequence at Warner Bros with cels shipped overseas for Sunrise to film.
How Diane Pershing took over as Ivy
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #14
Posted: January 10, 1999
Who: Diane Pershing
Quote: It was one of those lovely lucky flukes. I had been called in by the voice director, Andrea Romano, on a different cartoon as a guest shot. While I was there, Andrea asked if I'd like to read for Poison Ivy - apparently their first choice for the role wasn't working out and they needed someone right away. I read the part, all the big guys were in the studio that day, and whammo! It was mine. Just for a reality check-I'd been a professional actress for many years by then and had been doing cartoons for ten. I was lucky to be there at that time, but a hell of a lot of hard work went into it before then.
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #46, 15:50-16:14
Posted: February 21, 2017
Who: Diane Pershing
Quote: I had been hired to do a small part on that episode where they introduced Poison Ivy. And apparently, the actress who was supposed to do Poison Ivy couldn't ome for whatever reason and Andrea just looked at me and said, "Wanna take a shot at this?" I said, "Well, okay." And it was my audition. I auditioned. I mean I read the script-(gibberish)-and I did it. And she said, "Okay, you got it."
Link: Anime Superhero post
Posted: January 16, 2021
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Here's the scoop: it was a rare instance of one of Andrea's "Outside The Box" ideas not bearing fruit. Singer Melissa Manchester ("Midnight Blue", "You Should Hear How She Talks About You") was Ivy at the initial record. We had been talking about Ivy's voice having a "film noir / femme fatale" quality. Andrea had heard from Ms. Manchester's agent that she was interested in doing voice acting, and she thought her voice had a sultry quality that fit the "film noir" bill - and we were both fans of her music - and so we gave it a shot. Her voice DID have a lovely, mid-range, "smoky" sound, but acting-wise she just wasn't quite what we wanted. And Dianne was there, she knocked it out of the park, and Bob's your uncle."
Nothing to Fear
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Quote: "It was written by Henry Gilroy, who had never written cartoons before," said producer Bruce Timm. "He was a film editor here and always wanted to get into writing. At the time we didn't have a story editor, so we gave it a go. When he turned in his first draft, which wasn't bad, we had hired our first story editor, Sean Derek. We immediately came to loggerheads over this show. Some of the dialogue she changed wasn't changed for the better."
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 76
Released: February 1994
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: On the model sheets, the original design looked really great. We drew him as if his body was all busted up, giving him this really weird scarecrow posture. We changed him for subsequent episodes.
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #54, 19:13-19:38
Posted: October 30, 2017
Who: Henry Gilroy
Quote: What's interesting though that's in the script but didn't make it into it, wasn't the final script or episode, was like as Batman--the vision was fading, he managed to take his Batarang and flips it up and hits the sprinkler and like kind of turns it on and the idea was rather than the sprinkler bails him out.
Be A Clown
Source: Animato! Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Quote: During the climactic rollercoaster chase, the Joker's lapel flower originally squirted acid, making the scene much more dangerous, but BS&P said that was too threatening and it was changed to the flower squirting gas.
Appointment in Crime Alley
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 78
Released: February 1994
Who: Michael Reeves
Quote: Originally this story was written to satisfy a request by the network. They wanted a day in the life of Batman. We tried to make that work, and realized we couldn't, because you need an engine to drive the story. There had to be reason for us to keep watching.
P.O.V.
Source: Animato! Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Who: Kevin Altieri and Bruce Timm
Quote: Altieri recalled the script was much more complex when he received it: "We cut out flashbacks to Montoya's youth when she was called a liar. And flashbacks to Bullock's youth when he was playing high-school football when his dad yells at him because he was using teamwork: 'Don't be a team player, be a star. Being a team player is for losers. Go out for Number One, Pal." The cuts necessitated the addition of an action fight scene at the end as Montoya tracks the criminals to a warehouse by the docks. "BS&P had a fit because there was so much violence," said Timm. "I had to dance around it by explaining the difficulties created when we took out all those flashbacks. They had us make a number of changes. Originally, the scene where the driller is going after Montoya with the drill went on a lot longer. The guy chased her on top of a big pile of crates and he was ramming the drill into the crates. We got into a lot of trouble with that. (BS&P's) Avery Coburn said it was the most horrible rape fantasy sequence she'd ever seen. We agreed immediately to take that whole sequence out, but because it upset her so much, she really went to town on that whole episode."
The Clock King
Clock King was British
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 78
Released: February 1994
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The Clock King was always planned as 'the most anal-retentive person on the planet,' a straight guy with this little bowler hat and suit and briefcase. We originally intended it to suggest a stiff-upper-lip British gentleman. When the show came back, he was wearing brown. It ruined it for me. He just looked like a normal guy, not a supervillain.
Martin Pasko called it Time See What's Become of Me but Bruce Timm changed the title
Link: Serum Lake The Clock King Commentary, 34:27-34:42
Posted: March 19, 2024
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: It strikes me as being his sort of thing but then Bruce would go "No! Too many words. Clock King." It's like. Introduction to the character. Yeah.
The Last Laugh
Source: Animato! Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: "Other than dialogue, what you see on screen doesn't really resemble the script at all," said Altieri. "In the original, Batman kept getting garbage dumped on him."
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 34:51-35:03
Posted: July 12, 2023
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: The original title of the script was "The Joker: April's Fool" and then we changed that title to "The Last Laugh".
Eternal Youth
No Long Bow!
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #46, 8:46-9:19
Posted: February 21, 2017
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: But the thing that no one will ever see that was cool was because Poison Ivy is the goddess Demeter. She takes the name. I had her hunting him with a long bow. So she's like going, "Sook!" These big shafts are sticking in the trees and stuff. But BS&P was like, "We can't do long bows, it's got to be the wrist crossbow." "Why?" "Because a kid can get ahold of a bow and arrow and actually play this out. It's too close for comfort."
Link: Batman TAS Podcast Eternal Youth Review, 28:37-30:30
Posted: February 9, 2024
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: A change that I did that didn't happen. The whole thing where Poison Ivy is stalking Batman in the greenhouse. I had her doing it with a long bow. She- but she's like the huntress, more Greek goddess kind of feeling and the thing is you can a cross - her wrist crossbow, you have to reload it whereas the longbow is just as fast as you can draw. She's Poison Ivy so she's of course an expert at it. So I had- all the arrows that you see hitting were cloth yard shafts, big - it was all longbow and I think that was much more impressive but the board came back and BS&P says you can't do that, you can't do a bow and arrow. Yes, at that time kids could not get a wrist crossbow. They don't exist. They might exist now. I couldn't even argue it because they went and said it's way too easy for kids to get their hands on a bow and arrow and then I flashed back to me at seven years old and I'm like I got my hands on a bow and arrow and me and my brother stupidly were shooting at shit.
Alfred in Speedos
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #46, 18:46-18:52
Posted: February 21, 2017
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: Brad did the model sheets for Alfred in this particular episode. And what you guys haven't seen is Alfred in the pool in his Speedos.
Kevin Altieri changed the ending
Link: Batman TAS Podcast Eternal Youth Review, 31:05-31:19
Posted: February 9, 2024
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: But the whole ending where the enzyme hits the ground and everything you that that was just me, that wasn't the script. It's like yeah this is how we end it, I don't even remember what the script originally had.
Alan Burnett hated an idea for Two-Face Part 2
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #24, 1:23:28-1:24:03
Posted: January 18, 2016
Who: Randy Rogel
Quote: And then I'd asked him if he had an idea, because it was Two-Face. It was a two-parter. And so I said, "Would you have an idea for the second part?" Second episode. And he goes, "No I don't." So I say, "I do." He says, "What is it?" I told him. He said, "I really hate that." I said, "Well, how about this?" He's very honest. He's very sweet, too. He doesn't say anything mean. He just goes, "I didn't like that. I hate that." So I said, "How about this? I have another idea." He goes, "Oh, that I like." So he gave me a break, he went to Warner Brothers and he hired me on staff.
Vendetta
Source: Animato! Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Frank Paur
Quote: Story editor Michael Reaves' script was edited by Martin Pasko. Paur redid the last act himself. "The original ending had a fight in the sewer between Batman and Killer Croc," said Paur. "Killer Croc escapes to a Seaworld park where he gets knocked into a pool of electric eels."
The Forgotten
Source: Animato! Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: BS&P undercut the script's essential message, as director Boyd Kirkland explained: "There was a sequence at the beginning where Batman is wandering around the city, trying to find out why people were disappearing. It was staged with homeless people hanging around on sidewalks: families, mothers and kids. They made us take all that out of the boards. They said it was too much for kids to see that maybe a woman or a family can be out on the streets. They specifically asked that we only show men as homeless."
Robin's Reckoning Part 1's Death Fall
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Two, "Robin's Reckoning Part 1" Commentary 9:22-9:42
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Originally, I think it was intended, at least from script stage, showing--actually showing his parents, you know, fall to their deaths but the BS&P people were saying, "Absolutely no. You're not going to do that." And so, it just, you know, it's just good fortune that it forced us to come up with a clever way of showing his parents fall to their death.
Link: World's Finest "Dick Sebast"
Who: Dick Sebast
Posted: January 17, 2006
Quote: There's an interesting sidebar to this sequence-one which I feel did weaken the impact. For some bizarre reason, network would not let us portray any strong reaction from the crowd or show Robin crying after his parent's death. They seemed to think that a display of heartfelt emotion would traumatize children, or some such nonsense. The emotional impact of the ensuing scene with Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne is considerably hamstrung as a result.
Heart of Ice
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume One, "Heart of Ice" Commentary 11:33-11:53, 11:54-12:08
Who: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm
Quote: (Paul Dini) When I started writing this script, I told this story before, I wanted to come up with the emotional, I don't know, 'finale' of it. I thought what could be more emotional than a guy sitting in a refridgerated room crying and as he cries, his tears turn into snowflakes. And that scene never really happens in the episode./(Bruce Timm) You know, I was thinking about that the other day, Paul. I bet you wrote it into the script and when I boarded that sequence at the end, I think probably when I got to that point, I literally couldn't wrap my head around the idea of tears turning into snowflakes. So realistically, I couldn't figure out how to do it. I probably just didn't do it for that reason.
Day of the Samurai
Source: Modern Masters Volume 3: Bruce Timm, page 45
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Yeah, we were never planning on bringing him back. Actually, in the script it was a little bit more explicit that he died. It was one of those cases where BS&P said, "Oh, no. You have to be more vague about it."
See No Evil
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Quote: Timm recalled that the script by Martin Pasko was toned down by BS&P. "We were never allowed to put the little girl in any jeopardy. Originally, the climax was supposed to be at a lighthouse and the suit, instead of being just poisonous, was going to explode from repeated use. Ventris was going to be hiding in this lighthouse with his daughter. Batman would have had to race against time to get them. But we were not allowed to do that. That's why she escapes immediately.' Originally this production number was assigned to an episode entitled 'The Count and the Countess.' Producer Timm sent it to a Japanese studio for complete preproduction work as an experiment. He thought it would free up the in-house staff's time for better shows. The overseas studio took months to produce even character designs and a partial storyboard, and those were drawn in a style too off-model to be useable. Production on the first season was nearing an end and with a troubled script and unacceptable preproduction work, the episode was killed. When "See No Evil" was completed (the 57th or 58th show finished), it was assigned the lower production number left empty.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #31, 1:39:00-1:39:34
Who: Dan Riba
Released: May 10, 2016
Quote: If I recall the only one that--most stuff didn't get to script at that point--there was only that one that the See No Evil...and the funny thing was that was one of my last shows but what ended up happening was because it was numbered as 15 because it was the 15th script that was being replaced, it had the same number as the original script so that's why even though it's one of our last shows, it ends up coming up on the first DVD set.
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #41 - Paging the Crime Doctor, 1:25:57-1:26:17 mark
Who: Martin Pasko
Posted: November 2, 2016
Quote: In See No Evil, for example, the only show I'd taken a written by credit, that was originally supposed to be Mirror Master. But Bruce basically said--I'm sorry, the Mirror Man. Mirror Man was a 50s villain in Batman who did things with mirrors Had glasses that were mirrors. And Bruce said, "Even for us, mirrors are too difficult to animate."
Blind As A Bat
Source: Animato! Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: There was a line in the script where he gloats about how much money he would make on the sale of this copter. We altered that to him expressing his reservations about the sale. At the ADR (looping) session, (producer) Alan Burnett wrote a new line for a voice over expressing his regret at building the thing in the first place. We implied that not only had be been blind physically, but he had been blind to what his company was doing.
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #31 - Trial, 1:25:01-1:25:38 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: May 10, 2016
Quote: I remember being really frustrated when the script came in because they turned Bruce Wayne into Tony Stark. And he's not an arms dealer. He hates weapons. How can this possibly happen? Wh-wh-what's going on? And originally what had happened was going to be about a police helicopter. Blue Thunder basically. And the LA Riots had happened and we kinda had to tuck it down and not make it like police so it became a military vehicle. Th--but still it was weird Bruce Wayne selling arms.
I Am The Night
Source: Animato! Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Michael Reeves
Quote: Initially, we wanted to have Robin shot and that makes Batman question his whole purpose, but BS&P said no, I was surprised they said we could shoot Gordon. We couldn't show him getting shot, but that made it more dramatic.
Christmas with the Joker
Source: Animato! Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: BS&P refused to approve the original script. "It started out as a much nastier, really funny script, written by a friend of Paul Dini, Eddie Gorodetsky," said Timm. "When Joker says 'I didn't have a family of my own, so I decided to steal one,' it's a regular family he's stolen, making it more intense and scary.
Heart of Steel Part One
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 01:34:56- 01:35:12 mark
Who: Brad Rader
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: I mean there was one like in um Heart of Steel part one there was this whole bit where we were following the little robot through Wayne Manor. Just like page after page of script and I just cut all of that and yeah you know nobody argued with me.
Duplicant Fights went on in Heart of Steel Part 2
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 94
Released: February 1994
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Originally the Bullock robot sequence went on and on. The board artist Mark Wallace did a great job on it, but we had to cut it all out. That happened with every single robot. Everyone went nuts.
Fight with Batman Duplicant in Heart of Steel Part 2
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Two, "Heart of Steel Part 2" Commentary 17:13-17:19, 17:31-17:33, 17:46-18:08
Who: Kevin Altieri and Bruce Timm
Quote: (Kevin Altieri) The board was so long and there's a sequence of with the killer Batman robot that never made it./(Kevin Altieri) An entire beautiful sequence by Brad Rader./(Bruce Timm) I remember it went on for like... it must have been 30 pages of storyboards. And it was Batman vs. the Batman Robot and I couldn't remember whether that was even in this show at all but I remember we cut it all out and of course, they thought it was too good an idea to waaste and so they wrote a whole episode around it which they eventually did and it was called His Silicon Soul.
Source: Batman TAS Podcast 14:44-15:44
Who: Marty Isenberg
Quote: Kevin Altieri, the director, added this lengthy sequence of Batman versus the Batman robot. In the script, it was just sort of a moment 'there's a Batman robot' and if this doesn't get shot down then it's really going to escalate but Kevin, who was you know very much a strong opinionated guy and still is, that you can't just introduce a Batman robot and not have a fight so you know he boarded out this very elaborate fight between Batman and Batman robot and of course there just wasn't time for it so it-it all had to get cut much to everyone's disappointment so when we were brought into the meeting with Michael Reeves and Alan Burnett, we were told this was the background which I was familiar with.
Source: Batman TAS Podcast 17:55-19:22
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: There is. Brad found the storyboard. Yeah and it's a shame because that--it--I just had---I kept in there for so long. I did not want to lose that because before H.A.R.D.A.C. blows up and everything, Batman, it's like Batman looks up and after all the other ones are destroyed, the last replicant comes out and it's Batman and he just dives at camera and then you cut outside and then you know now that Gordon's safe and Rossum and everyone's outside. Barbara said, "Where are you, going?" It's like "I'm going back to help Batman." And she helps Batman and it's the first time that she actually fights because they're in this boiler room that of course of course the whole, they have to have a boiler room in there and it's just him and Batman fighting. We talked about it. Me and Brad talked about it and Brad drew it but it's like everything that's on Batman like the scallops on his gloves, they come out and he's slashing at Batman and Barbara Gordon comes up behind him and I'm like there's got to be a giant wrench in there so she actually gets his attention with the giant wrench. Bang! You can hit him on the head, it doesn't matter.
Perchance to Dream's First Outline
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 #6/Volume 25 #1, page 84
Released: February 1994
Who: Michael Reeves
Quote: Alan Burnett had the idea of Batman waking up one morning and finding out he'd never been Batman. It was a very TWILIGHT ZONE sort of concept that I really liked. He gave it to (story editor) Laren Bright for an outline, but was not satisfied with her take on it. She didn't take the idea as far as it could go. This is a story about a guy who even though he's been given the opportunity for his most important dream to come true, has to have the truth no matter how much it hurts. He can't live a lie. I rewrite it with that in mind and I assigned the teleplay to Joe Lansdale, who did a terrific job. His dialogue carried the show. I think it's one of our best episodes.
Perchance to Dream's suicide storyboard almost killed the episode
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #14 - Perchance to Dream, 1:15:56-1:17:05, 1:17:25-1:17:28 mark
Who: Alan Burnett
Posted: August 3, 2015
Quote: The thing I know I'd have trouble with is in order to get out of this dream, Bruce has to kill himself. And you know, he chooses suicide. And they do frown on suicide in children's programming. Yeah. So I called and I said, "This is what we're gonna do. He's gonna jump off a roof and we're gonna see the fall and then right as he's about to hit, he wakes up." And they said, "Okay." And then the storyboard came in and the storyboard almost killed that show because it was just too--it was too understandable what he was doing. We had to make it more abstract. So if you look at it, Bruce Wayne sort of runs offscreen, you don't know quite where he is, and the next scene is he's falling and the background is all in limbo./I'm sure the original line was "I'll see you in hell."
The Underdwellers
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Frank Paur
Quote: We had these little public service announcements worked into the scripts, a concept we nixed real quick.
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "BS&P took a lot out of this show," continued Timm. "Originally, the kids were to be victimized by the Sewer-King, but he was not allowed to be mean or tortorous to any of them. The impact is watered down. If we were doing it today, we probably would have decided not to do the show."
The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #40 - The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne, 16:39-16:48 mark
Who: David Wise
Posted: October 4, 2016
Quote: But I didn't do that switcheroo. Robin was not in my draft. Nether was obviously Two-Face and Penguin.
Beware the Gray Ghost
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 39:54-40:16
Posted: May 25, 2023
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: But when Bruce told us the story about the Gray Ghost, he mentioned that Gary Owens would be doing the voice of Gray Ghost and I thought 'Wow, that seemed like Adam West should be doing it.' Bruce went 'Oh my gosh' and then he ran out of the room and that was okay. Then I heard later on Tom Ruegger, who wrote the story, had always intended for Adam West to be the voice and somehow that news didn't get to Bruce or Andrea.
Bride of the Bat changed to Terror in the Sky
Link: Glen Murakami instagram
Posted: October 29, 2020
Quote: "Bride of the Bat" is "Terror in the Sky." Chill the f*** out. Not everything is a conspiracy theory... I imagine the title was changed because it was a spoiler and gave away too much of the plot.
Terror in the Sky
Source: Animato Magazine #26
Released: Summer 1993
Quote: "Sidney Iwanter, the show's liaison with Fox, turned down an earlier script as 'too dark and ugly for a cartoon,'" noted Timm. "Kirk and Francine were on the verge of divorce because of what he did as the Man-Bat. She couldn't live with him any more. In the end they are all in the Batcave, and she bites Kirk injecting him with the mutagen. He becomes the Man-Bat again. The two end up fighting each other and fall into the abyss, killing each other."
Order of sequences in Almost Got 'Im
Source: Animato Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Quote: Author Paul Dini loved working with director Radomski. "He did a terrific job on changing the sequence of the villains' stories from my script so the action would build, with each story more elaborate than the other until the Joker's segment, which nothing can top. It's great and allows the wrap-up with Harley Quinn and Catwoman to be this nice funny release.
Christmas Tree Protest in Almost Got 'Im
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Two, "Almost Got 'Im" Commentary 04:38-04:52
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I just remember this was a big BS&P note because when I wrote this originally, it took place at Christmas time and she was setting Christmas trees on fire as a protest against cutting down Christmas trees so we made it Halloween pumpkins instead.
His Silicon Soul
Link: Batman The Animated Series Podcast, "Special Guest - Batman TAS Writer Robert N Skir" 56:20-57:29
Who: Robert N. Skir
Released: March 22, 2023
Quote: The final line of the episode in the script is "It had a soul, Alfred. A soul of silicon but a soul nonetheless." And the network said you can't do that. You can't say it has a soul because it's kind of like you can't mention God or religion in these shows. Well, talking about a robot having a soul kinda crosses into religious territory and so BS&P was not comfortable with that. They said you need to change this line. And the compromise was it got turned into a question, "You think it had a soul, Alfred? A soul of silicon but a soul nonetheless." To me, okay. Michael Reaves was the story editor. And he hated that change. Hated, hated, hated that change. I loved the change because it's better as a question. And if you end it on a question, that means the audience is left with something that they need to think about. Because it's up to them to answer the question.
Off Balance
Source: Animato Magazine #27
Released: Fall/Winter 1993
Quote: Three different versions of the episode aired, as the show got repeated in the rotation. "The distortion vertigo sequences weren't disorienting enough so we did retakes," said producer Bruce Timm of Sunrise's animation. "While we were waiting for them, we did effects in video with a computer that were real wobbly and quite nauseating. It worked great, but, we did that to just get the show on the air. When we got the retakes back, the film editors cut them into the episode, but dropped the video distortion effects on the whole sequence and that ran. We told them to put the effects back in, which is the version now airing.
What is Reality?
Link: Batman the Animated Series Podcast, "Special Guest - Batman TAS Writer Robert N Skir" 1:16:18-1:16:42
Posted: March 22, 2023
Who: Robert N. Skir
Quote: I had some point where I wanted to give Robin a moment where he's kind of a little sassy with Commissioner Gordon. Like he says something offhand and Commissioner Gordon basically grabs him and says, "Listen, I'm putting a lot of trust in you! So don't be a wise ass with me. My neck is on the line!" It was a wonderful moment but you know they didn't want to play that moment and I totally get it.
Source: Batman TAS Podcast 9:32-9:43
Who: Marty Isenberg
Quote: My answer was two in the front, three in the back which is how I learned it but I think Marty Pasko edited it to two in the front, two in the back, one in the trunk.
Save the Rainforest T-shirt in Harley & Ivy
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #18, 1:32:36-1:33:13
Who: Paul Dini
Released: October 13, 2015
Quote: Actually when I was writing Harley & Ivy, I had wrote in the script. I actually done a little model drawing of that scene where they're hanging out together, they're both--Harley's wearing a guy's shirt and Ivy's wearing a T-shirt where I had actually drawn on the T-shirt, "Save the Redwoods" or something like that. And I indicated that in the script. We got a note from the censors saying that's a confusing message. And I--you know, she's a villain and she's advocating something good. It's like a villain can stand for something good. Certainly, saving the rainforest--I think it was saving the rainforest.
Busy Beavers in Harley & Ivy
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #18, 1:39:12-1:39:20
Who: Paul Dini
Released: October 13, 2015
Quote: At one point, I had--when the Joker discovers them in their hideout, he goes, "Well, haven't you been busy beavers."
The Demon's Quest
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 41:53-42:13
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: July 12, 2023
Quote: I'm sorry but I can't--I'm not doing those changes. We're not having a Xerox machine in the Batcave. It comes over the facsimile-the fax machine-that's how they would do it in this Modern Age. I'm like it's in an envelope with a couple of pictures. That's it.
Read My Lips
Link: Purple Planet Media
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: May 17, 1997
Quote: It was in the first episode with the Ventriloquist character. There was a scene where the Ventriloquist's henchman, Rhino, who is committing a robbery--this is near the top of the show, and he's wearing a mask--the sleeve of his sweater is torn open, revealing a rhinoceros-shaped tattoo. Batman sees this and does a match on the computer, and we had a quick group of images flash by, which were tattoos. One of the images which went by at lightning speed was a sun image, a pointed sun image, and we got a letter from a rabbi who had interpreted that as a Star of David. That was not in the model sheet, and that was nothing that we'd planned, it was a design that was thrown in by the overseas animation studio. We stop-framed it, and saw that it was a sun design and not a Star of David, and we thought, well... Yeah, we just cut it out. We either edited it out or re-animated it. Anyway, it was something that wasn't exactly going to cause controversy, but the person who had seen it was upset by it, and we thought, well, it's a fair cop.
Trial
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 28:28-29:21
Posted: May 25, 2023
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: There was another awkward thing about it was that the voice for Janet van Dorn was replaced after the fact so we cast someone else that was--she did great. There was nothing wrong with her performance but we had sense when we were recording or when we listened to the record that it was a little severe or little stern and the character was supposed to ultimately take Batman's side eventually and be sympathetic and there was something that wasn't as sympathetic in the tone of the voice. Just the way the performance was great, she was a wonderful actress but it's just something about the voice felt cold so they cast Stephanie Zimbalist.
Avatar
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #47, 21-21:18
Posted: February 21, 2017
Who: Kevin Altieri
Quote: And originally Thoth Khepera was supposed to be a guy and we're going like, "A guy? C'mon! You know, wouldn't it be cool if she like rises up from this goo and it's this really hot Egyptian queen?"
Tunnel of Love in Harlequinade
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Harlequinade" Commentary 6:04-6:18
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: And to get to the hideout, they originally went to an old funhouse and they went into a tunnel of love where there were all these deadly gadgets that were coming out and Harley would say, "Duck here!" and an axe would come out, you know.
Joker's Helicopter in Harlequinade
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Harlequinade" Commentary 19:40-19:49
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Because what was this originally in the script? Was it just a helicopter? And then Kevin changed it to an old War War One plane?
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #13, 1:25:32-1:25:57
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: July 20, 2015
Quote: And the climax in the script even if you got a copy of the script, it would say the Joker's in the helicopter. But when I got it, I'd go, "Hey, I'm gonna do, you know, like a Martin Bomber with twin Lewis machine guns in the front. And we'll do the whole Red Baron thing. And Bruce is like, "Yup, sounds good to me." Paul, "Yup, sounds good to me."
Bane
Link: DCAUReview #270, 57:19-57:53
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: July 22, 2023
Quote: There was more and I think that was mostly Mike Gougen but there was more to that scene but just BS&P was "No" but we had the one guy show up with the Tommy gun. We had the one guy show up with the Tommy gun and you see Bane just like knock the – there was more. There was more. But yeah. Yeah, there were like "No, no, don't make it so obvious that--"
Harley's Holiday
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #47, 41:10-41:30
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: September 5, 2017
Quote: There's God... Harley's Holiday. There's a couple of shots that pained me that they had to go. Oh, just more stuff with Veronica Vreeland and Harley and the car. Stuff that I boarded myself and I really enjoyed that part with the dad in the tank.
Mad Hatter at start of Lock-Up
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #19, 1:01:19-1:02:00 and 1:02:11-:1:02:53
Who: Robert N Skir
Released: October 25, 2015
Quote: The original idea was in the real beginning, we see Batman and Robin taking somebody back to Arkham. And when they pitched the idea, they said, "They're taking the Mad Hatter back." And I'm like, "No, no, no. Not the Mad Hatter. He's a puss. No, no, no. You bring in the Scarecrow back. He's the master of fear and if he's afraid, whatever's inside there is going to be the most fighteneing thing ever." And they came back with, "Well, yeah, but we want to work with Roddy." Because Roddy McDowall was doing the voice of Mad Hatter./I wrote this really wonderful thing where they bring the Mad Hatter back. he doesn't want to go in. He's struggling and he grabs Robin and goes, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The nails--teeth that bite! The nails that--" You know. He's railing. He's doing this whole Alice in Wonderland rant and it worked really, really great in the script. I loved it. And then when they did the rewrite on it, they changed it to the Scarecrow, because he's the master of fear and if he's afraid... And I'm like, "Oh, God. Why did I win that argument? I didn't want to win that."
Lock-Up's original title was Cage Without a Key
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #19, 1:01:19-1:02:00 and 1:02:11-:1:02:53
Who: Robert N Skir
Released: October 25, 2015
Quote: And it leads to a line was the original line of the episode, my original title at least. It was called "Cage Without a Key."
Robin trapped in Lock-Up's closet
Link: Batman the Animated Series Podcast, "Special Guest - Batman TAS Writer Robert N Skir" 1:12:53-1:13:24
Posted: March 22, 2023
Who: Robert N. Skir
Quote: There was a gag we were going to do where Robin is looking around in Lyle Bolton's apartment, and that's where he finds the clue that leads them to the ship. But he's looking through the apartment and at one point he goes into the closet and the door slams shut and locks. And he goes "Oh, great. I can see the headline tomorrow 'Boy Wonder outwitted by Closet'." That got, that didn't happen.
Lock-Up accused Batman of being secretly funded by Bruce Wayne
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #19, 1:25:28-1:25:53
Who: Robert N Skir
Released: October 25, 2015
Quote: Well, that was something that was in the script that got cut where the two of them are fighting and Lock-Up looks at Batman and says, "You don't think I know your secret? You don't think I know the relationship between you and Bruce Wayne? He's funding you! I know he's funding you! The same way he was funding me to keep them locked up, he's funding you to catch them!" And that got cut.
Lock-Up ending was reboarded by Dan Riba
Link: Stay Tooned! Presents - Batman: The Animated Series, 59:18-59:26 and 59:27-59:37
Who: Robert N Skir and Dan Riba
Released: September 5, 2021
Quote: And Dan Riba went back and reboarded it. He was really, really good but he went to me. "I know how to make this better".
Quote: I really wanted to nail that idea of him being locked up - in that slot, to focus on that maske he's wearing and make sure that worked right.
The Terrible Trio
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #41 - Paging the Crime Doctor, 55:55-56:18 mark
Who: Martin Pasko
Posted: November 2, 2016
Summary:There were Batman villains called The Terrible Trio. Shark, Vulture, and some other thing. And I remembered that story from when I was a kid. And I had tried--I spent like three weeks off and on trying to break that story to get people to approve it and nobody did. They brought in other people after I moved on who ultimately nailed that character.
Showdown
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #47, 40:31-40:57
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: September 5, 2017
Quote: There's one shot where Ra's al Ghul goes to Arkady and says, "Go take care of this problem." And he goes and he leaves and you see this guy's smug with a saber at his hip. That shot gets taken out. And grabs on the guy's face and the saber and shoves him off camera. And he's got the saber. That's when he gets the saber when he fights Jonah Hex.
Link: DCAU Review Episode 287, 28:40-29:19
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: November 18, 2023
Quote: In the original Joe Lansdale script, Jonah Hex gets put into his cell. He's captured by Ra's al Ghul and Ra's al Ghul goes says lock him up and you know, okay, so the guard closes the gate-this was cut out totally-he just gets put in a cell. But guard slams the gate and goes, "Sweet dreams, Hex." And Jonah Hex goes, "Don't mind if I'll be dreaming about your mother, do ya?" That got cut.
Link: DCAU Review Episode 287, 36:46-37:01
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: November 18, 2023
Quote: There was stuff at the beginning where he's coming into the town. There's more reaction with people. And several of those shots which I just-were animated-I wanted to keep. There's a Bruce had like a hick on a pickle barrel and there's this guy just chomping on a pickle, eating a pickle and goes Whoa! That got cut. There's subtle things with dogs running away from him once they see him. Just all these things leading up to his final reveal that were cut. Which really bugged me. But had to be done. Then there's the one the final one - the final cut this - we get the thing - it was a minute shorter. I do remember it was minute because a minute was like a stab to the heart. So I'm sitting there with Joe Gall and we're editing and we're editing. It's actual cut and splice, cut and splice and we're just trying to get it trying to get it down to time without losing too much.
Link: DCAU Review Episode 287, 38:47-39:59
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: November 18, 2023
Quote: There's the one shot where Duvall's sent by-there's actually more dialogue in there in the bridge of the Phoenix of the ship where Jonah Hex is - all hell has broken loose and it's like so where Ra's al Ghul tells Arkady Duvall - I'm trying to remember exactly how the scene went - but an altercation where no, he's really pissed off at his kid, he's pissed off and he reprimands him in front of the whole bridge. Then there's this guy that Arkady goes 'Go and handle this problem!' and Arkady goes out and walks out and he's looking back over his shoulder and then he sees this guy who's smirking at him who has a saber. He's an officer so he was a saber. And Arkady Duvall is 'Well how do you unsheath a saber?" And I had him grab the saber and the animation was beautiful and he grabs the guy by the face and shoves him off camera and he's got the saber.
Catwoman Spinoff Series
Link: World's Finest, Backstage
Source: Batman Animated
When: 1990s
Summary: Once Batman: The Animated Series proved to be a critically-acclaimed, high-rated hit, the Fox network approached Bruce Timm to create a spin-off series focusing on Catwoman in the early 1990s. Only a small amount of production work was done before the idea was eventually scrapped.
Source: Cinefantastique Volume 24 Issues #6 to 26, page 105
Quote: Catwoman's redesign for a spin-off series, now on hold, will show up second season as she turns outlaw.
Source: Modern Masters page 47
Summary: Timm never pitched it.
Source: Comics Scene Presents #1: Batman and Other Dark Heroes
Who: Paul Dini
When: January 1995
Quote: Dini says. "At one point, we talked about doing Batman-related spin-offs; a Catwoman series or a Robin series. I don't think those are going to happen at the moment. Catwoman is so strong, she could work without Batman. Bruce and I came up with a really good development for her. We take her out of Gotham City and treat her like an adventurer." In the proposed series, Catwoman is a freelance thief/adventurer. "That makes her a deadly seductress. In a Catwoman series, we could really open her up and make her everything we didn't have a chance to make her on the show. Catwoman is really interesting and we would have been able to do much more with her. There was talk of both Robin and Catwoman shows, but the one we really wanted to do was Catwoman."
Link: Comic Book Resource
When: April 5, 2021
Summary: At the time, Pfeiffer's Catwoman was also still fresh in fans' minds. Her performance in Batman Returns helped bring the character back to pop culture prominence for the first time since her appearances in the live-action Batman TV series in the 60s. As a result, there were also talks of Pfeiffer's Catwoman starring in a spin-off film. The animated spin-off series could have synergy with Pfeiffer's return to the role. However, it turned out to be a moot point. Both Pfeiffer's spin-off and the animated series never saw the light of day. The Catwoman solo movie ultimately starred Halle Berry and was an infamous flop. In the case of the animated series, Warner opted to focus its resources on Superman: The Animated Series.
Link: Anime Superhero post
When: November 4, 2022
Quote: My idea for Catwoman was sorta like "Modesty Blaise Versus James Bond" slathered with Hitchcock Sauce. Selina would be up to her usual cat burglar hijinks but in a stylish and swanky 1950s-ish European setting. She'd have a recurring love/hate thing going with a dashing Interpol agent (think Cary Grant in NOTORIOUS but not as dark) - they'd swing from being adversaries to reluctant allies and back again.
Robin Spinoff Series
Source: Batman Animated, Modern Masters page 47
Summary: Success of Batman: The Animated Series, Fox approached for a Robin spin-off, Glen Murakami did conceptual drawings of a slightly younger, more energetic Robin. Didn't terribly appeal to Timm at the time.
Powerpuff Girls wanted to use Joker
Link: Craig McCracken Tumblr
Who: Craig McCracken
Quote: When we did the original series I really wanted to do an episode where the Joker came to town and started committing crimes. The idea was that The Mayor was so excited to have a celebrity villain in town that he actually tried to thwart The Girls from stopping him because The Joker was finally putting Townsville on the map! We wanted to use Bruce Timm's designs from Batman the animated series and get Mark Hammil to do the voice. Unfortunately Warner Brothers said no.
Superman: The Animated Series
1940s Retro Series
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume One, 00:58-1:00, 1:01-1:12, 1:13-1:17, 1:22-1:32 of Disc Two featurette
Quote: (Glen Murakami) Originally, Bruce wanted it to be in the 40's. He wanted it to be a period piece./(Bruce Timm) We did toy with the idea of doing then a very retro Superman show. I actually did a bunch of character designs that were very, very 40's looking. I mean, even more so that what we had done on Batman./(Dan Riba) That would have made the show feel as if it were an extension of the Fleischer cartoons./(Dan Riba) Bruce realized, 'No, this show has to stand on its own.' So instead of having it placed in the past, lt's place it in a sort of pseudo future past.
Link: World's Finest
What: Superman concept art.
Link: World's Finest
What: Clark Kent concept art.
Link: World's Finest
What: General Zod and Ursa concept art.
Link: World's Finest
What: Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lex Luthor concept art in color.
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Comics Scene Volume 2 Issue #54 (January 1996)
Quote: That '40s kind of style would dictate the entire series to me, even when using the more science-fictiony characters like Brainiac. It really would be neat to do Brainiac as a '40s android from Hell.
Perry White
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Posted: June 29, 2021
Quote: Before I got on staff, I wondered the same thing about BT's Harvey Dent design on BTAS, partly since Billy Dee Williams had played the role in the Burton movie, BT actually wanted Perry White to be black in STAS but was vetoed. Funny how things change...
Link: DCUniverseTAS Tumblr
Posted: October 6, 2019
Summary: Model sheet for an African American Perry White.
Jimmy Olsen
Link: Jimmy Olsen Bio Page
Who: Batman-Superman Official Website
Quote: A poor kid from Suicide Slums, Jimmy Olsen quickly learned the rules of the street in order to survive. He grew up fast on his feet, smart with his tongue and if need be, hard with his fists. He's the sharper cool, urban kid our young audiences will instantly root for. In addition, he's Superman's pal, which ain't too shabby, either. Working as a photographer for the Daily Planet has been Jimmy's dream, and even though he's just freelance now, he's after Perry White to hire him on full-time. Even so, that doesn't stop Jimmy from acting like he's already a core member of the staff. When Perry calls Clark and Lois into his office for a secret briefing, it's not uncommon for Jimmy to tag along, nodding his head intently with everything Perry says until Perry notices Jimmy's there and tosses him out. it's not that Jimmy's a troublemaker, he's simply one of those confident, unflappable kids who has no idea that he frequently oversteps his boundaries. Jimmy's a techno-geek and an expert with computers, modems, and of course, cameras. once, when he found himself stalked by gunmen after foolishly breaking into a terrorist base, Jimmy figured out how to rewire a phone modem to broadcast to save Jimmy from the gunmen and capture the terrorist leaders. Superman chewed Jimmy out for getting into trouble, but allowed him to modify his signal device into the wristwatch Jimmy currently wears. Superman will always come if Jimmy needs him, but has also warned Jimmy to use the signal only if it's an emergency. When he's not hanging at the Planet, Jimmy lives with his mother Sarah in a modest Metropolis apartment. He doesn't spend much time there, preferring to be out following up some news lead like his heroes, Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Nothing stops Jimmy once he puts his mind to something. He's impetuous and sometimes foolhardy when it comes to getting that big photo scoop.
Sherman Howard almost voiced Lex Luthor
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Shriek" Commentary, 13:21-13:24
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "He was almost our Luthor."
Clancy Brown originally auditioned for Superman
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: April 27, 2004
Quote: the idea of blight forming/leading an "injustice gang beyond" DOES have a certain appeal....powers was obviously modeled after luthor to a degree (the whole "suave but evil tycoon" thing), and here's a fun fact: when we were casting the superman series, sherman howard was our front-runner for lex; in fact, for an hour or two, he had a lock on the part, until later that day, when clancy brown came in to audition...for SUPERMAN! now, as interesting as clancy would have been as supes, it just didn't quite work, but since we had him there in the booth, we asked him if he'd mind reading for luthor...he half-jokingly grumbled about never getting to play the good guy, and then NAILED luthor instantly....we made a mental note to keep sherman in mind for future parts, and several years later pretty much tailor-made the derek powers character for him....
Jeff Fahey auditioned before Tim Daly
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #25
Who: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm (at Wondercon 1999)
Posted: Week of April 26 to May 1/2, 1999
Quote: As for Superman, they had an actor from the "Darkman" movies that they had a good idea could play the role. When they called him in, the actor had just found out the night before, that a new tv show he was starring in, had just been cancelled, he'd been up all night worried and he'd now been reduced to finding voice work in cartoons. He came in...read one line...stopped…told the guys he just couldn't do it...got up and walked out. Eventually, they found Tim Daly.
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 18, 2021
Quote: Jeff Fahey. Terrific actor. He'd been starring on a TV series called THE MARSHALL for two seasons when he came in to audition. We noticed right away that something was bothering him but had no idea what it was.
He goes into the booth and reads a few lines and he sounds AMAZING. We're all going, "Holy cow, what a voice this guy has!" and then all of a sudden he says, "I'm really sorry, folks, I can't do this” and walks out of the booth. We're all trying to coax him into continuing the audition but he just puts his head down, says "Sorry" again and BAMF! he's gone.
We stare at it each other, stunned - "What the heck was THAT about?" Andrea reaches out to Fahey's agent who apologizes and explains that they'd just found out his series had been cancelled. Apparently he was taking the cancellation really hard. Without putting words in his mouth, we figured it might have seemed like, "Oh great, yesterday I was a Network TV star and today, I'm auditioning for a cartoon." Which WOULD be a big reduction in his weekly earnings at the very least, so - understandable.
Bruce Campbell auditioned for Superman
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 18, 2021
Quote: The only other actor I remember auditioning for Superman was Bruce Campbell. Which was very cool, but none of us were really feeling him as Superman.
Corey Burton auditioned for Superman, Lex Luthor, and others
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: October 27, 2021
Quote: When we were doing voice auditions, Corey Burton came in to audition for everybody -- he auditioned for Superman, Luthor, and everybody else -- and I asked him to do Brainiac and he asked what I was thinking of and I told him something cold and did a version of Brainiac's voice and he went, "Oh, Vic Perrin from The Outer Limits!," which is exactly what I had in my head. So he did it and he got the job. That was the icing on the cake. God bless Corey Burton.
Captain Marvel
Source: Wizard #92, page 46
Quote: "An episode set on the Justice League satellite has been tossed around. An early idea was to begin the episode with Superman and Captain Marvel arm wrestling to pass the time, but Burnett's eventual Aquaman episode developed first."
Source: Toon Zone Interview
Posted March 3, 2009
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "I think that actually goes back to the Superman the Animated Series days. We wanted to do Captain Marvel vs. Superman back then, and at that time, there was a film option on Captain Marvel that made him off-limits to us at the time. But then when we did Justice League, he was available."
Krypto
Source: Comics Scene #54, Jan. 1996
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "Early on, I did come up with a pretty good Krypto story. I had a talk with Bruce where I said, 'I want to do a Krypto story,' and he said, 'NO!!!' I pitched him the story and he said, 'Its pretty good, but NO KRYPTO!!' When he made up his rules on what we will and won't put in Superman, Krypto was at the top of the 'No' list."
Royal Flush Gang
Source: Starlog #259, "Tomorrow's Night"
Posted: February 1999
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: We tried to use the Royal Flush characters on Batman and Superman; we toyed with them, but it wasn't until "Beyond" that we found a way to bring them in.
Spectre Christmas episode, possibly Wonder Woman and Etrigan
Who: Paul Dini
Source: Wizard #59, July 1996
Quote: We have the Spectre Christmas show. We'd possibly like to use Wonder Woman, maybe Aquaman, and some weird ones, too, like The Demon.
Mister Miracle episodes "Scott Free" and "The Greatest Escape"
Who: Paul Dini
Source: Wizard #59, July 1996
Quote: We want to use Mister Miracle in an episode separate from the New Gods two-parter.
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Jack Kirby Collector #21, October 1998, page 20
Quote: There was this Mister Miracle plot floating around for a while but I wasn't happy with it so that was put on hold until we could figure out what to do with it; but I'd love to use Mister Miracle.
Link: World's Finest "Mark Evanier"
Who: Mark Evanier
Posted: August 1, 2006
Quote: There was another episode that I wrote that involved Mr. Miracle but it didn't get made so I used the plot in one of the comic books.
Note: Confirmed via email that the comic alluded to by Mr. Evanier is Superman Adventures #42.
Who: Steve Gerber
Source: Steve Gerber: Conversations (1999), page 197
Quote: Mark Evanier and I also wrote a Superman episode called "Scott Free" (three guesses what that's about) and an outline for a follow-up story called "The Greatest Escape," but I don't think either one was ever produced. WB Animation decided to stop production on Superman series at some point.
Note: Based on the title, the follow-up was used in Superman Adventures #53.
Cat Grant
Source: Wizard #59, July 1996
Quote: To diversify the cast, Cat Grant has been supplanted by a new character Angela Chen, an Asian-American gossip columnist who also has her own tabloid TV show.
Justice League
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998)
Link: Karkull's JL Website
Link: Karkull's JL Website
Link: Karkull's JL Website
Link: Karkull's JL Website
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Link: Watchtower Database Tweet
Link: Watchtower Database Tweet
Link: Watchtower Database Tweet
Link: Watchtower Database Tweet
Summary: The proposed line up was Superman, The Question, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Vixen, Nightshade, Black Lightning, John Stewart Green Lantern, Doctor Fate, Lightray, Supergirl, Mr. Miracle, Flash, Orion, and Wonder Woman.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 20 and 22
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: When we were developing the Superman show, we were playing around with different ideas. So at one point we said, 'Well, what if we did Superman and the Justice League, where every episode would have Superman in it, plus two other members of the Justice League?' I sat down and did designs for a bunch of different characters, even some that had never even been in the JLA, like The Question. We tried to put in as weird a mix as we could so it wasn't just Superman, Aquaman, Hawkman. So that's how that came about, but it never went further than that.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 20
Quote: TEAM MATES: In an unproduced proposal, super couples Green Arrow and Black Canary, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl would've made the JLA roster.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 21
Quote: HOLDING PATTERNS: The JLA (clockwise from top left: Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Orion) have been primed and ready for cartoonland. Will they ever get the green light?
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Quote: The creators ran with that idea only for a week, but in that time TImm and crew explored a number of characters that could appear.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Quote: Had the Warner Bros. team proceeded, here's the JLA lineup fans would currently be enjoying on Saturday mornings: Superman, The Question, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Vixen, Nightshade, Black Lightning, the John Stewart Green Lantern and Doctor Fate.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Batman wasn't going to be part of it. He already had his own show.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Actually, (DC President and Editor-In-Chief) Jenette Kahn put a stop to it. She thought it was not a good idea, since we were just reintroducing Superman to the audience, and she thought teaming him up with the JLA would be diminishing to him. We all kind of agreed with that, so we dropped the JLA idea.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Quote: LINE UP: When a JLA cartoon was first suggested, Bruce Timm designed a number of potential JLAers. They include, starting in the back row, left to right: Lightray, Black Lightning, The Question, Dr. Fate and Mr. Miracle; front row, left to right: Supergirl, Nightshade and Vixen.
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 23
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: The powers that be make the final decision. It has nothing to do with the quality of the product. Just with the mix of programming that the network wants. So this is just to say that JLA is still on the back burner. Someday, if we continue having success with 'Superman,' 'Batman' and all the (other) superhero shows, someday JLA will be done. But just not right now.
Summary: The pitch was ultimate put on the backburner to focus mainly on reintroducing Superman to audiences but Flash, Orion, Supergirl, Aquaman, another Green Lantern, and Doctor Fate appeared (along with cameos of Lightray and Mr. Miracle). They would all return for Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Wonder Woman, The Question, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Vixen, John Stewart Green Lantern, Lightray, and Mr. Miracle would eventually have starring and guest roles on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Nightshade and Black Lightning, however, never made their debuts. A character similar to Black Lightning named Soul Power later appeared on Static Shock.
Jor-El Voice Chip in Clark's sportscar
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Quote: "kenner had been urging us for years to put a talking vehicle a la "knight rider" in one of our shows (they originally wanted us to put a "jor-el" voice chip in clark kent's sportscar in STAS, so he could converse with clark, brando-style)."
Superman Revenge Squad
Who: Dan Riba
Link: Watchtower Database YouTube; 9:15-9:39
Posted: August 5, 2020
Quote: The Superman Revenge Squad is something that was an old thing in the Silver Age and I thought it would be kind of cool to update that by having them worship Superman. They see him as a deity and he turns on them because he doesn't want anybody worshiping him so they have to kill him. It's a cult that wants to kill him. DC was like 'No. Nobody worships Superman.' We don't cross that line with them.
Anti-War Idea
Link: World's Finest "Stan Berkowitz"
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: December 2, 2005
Quote: Only one, an anti-war story. Clark is sent to cover a fight between two small countries over oil, and, when he sees the carnage, he decides to intervene. Obviously, we couldn't show people dying, so I wanted to substitute an art museum and all its treasures being burned to the ground. That's what would have made Clark decide to use his extraordinary powers to stop the war. Once Superman leaves, of course, the two sides immediately go back to killing each other.
Link: DC and Marvel TV Writer Stan Berkowitz! | INTERGANG Episode 01, 1:38:57-1:39:56
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: February 28, 2024 (recorded January 15, 2023)
Quote: I wrote an outline for it. Never wrote a script. It was interesting. It was -- the point of it is you can change the course of a mighty river but you can't change a person's mind. He tries to intervene, he's thinking 'well, I'm Superman. I can make things better' and it's these two small countries -- European countries -- that are just at each other's throats forever and they're always going to be doing that and he realized is he can't help anything. The way we dealt with the lethalness of war is rather than having a bunch of people killed, an errant missile destroys an art museum. Just is burned down. So I discovered after writing that, a freelancer offered a spec script. It was virtually the same thing as what I had and it was amazing because I knew that there'd been no cross pollination between the two of us so maybe my idea wasn't as original as I thought.
Get Funky! and Bizarromania! starring Funky Flashman and Goody Rickles
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: Anyway, when Superman ramped up Paul contacted Sarah and I - we had been working on Space Ghost Coast to Coast at the time - and offered us a script. It was originally supposed to be about Funky Flashman and Goody Rickles, two insane characters Jack Kirby created for his Fourth World books at DC in the 70s, but those plans never panned out.
Link: Evan Dorkin LiveJournal
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: January 7, 2006
Quote: For the full quote, Click Here
Summary: Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer pitched two stories involving Funky Flashman and Goody Rickles in which they tried to make money off Superman's likeness but became a target of Toyman because the former was tied to his origins and Bruno Mannheim. The second would be a sequel with them trying to turn Bizarro into a teen idol.
Invasion!
Link: Evan Dorkin LiveJournal
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: January 28, 2006
Quote: For the full quote, Click Here
Summary: Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer pitched "Invasion!" a two parter of Starro invading the world, taking control of Superman, and the rest of the cast, other superheroes, and the villains working together.
Last Son of Krypton Part 1
There was a different ending
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume One, 20:23-20:42 of "Last Son of Krypton Part 1" Commentary
Quote: And then the last shot we see of him in the thing, we optically darkened 'cause we actually didn't have that shot. We weren't supposed to fade out on that shot originally. We were supposed to fade out on something else and in the editing room, I realized I wanted to see the bably last so we cloned that shot from another place, stuck it in there, and optically darkened it.
Little Piece of Home
Dinosaur almost gifted to Bruce Wayne
What: Pop Up Trivia
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume One, 19:23-19:43 of "Little Piece of Home" Pop-Up Trivia Track
Quote: Producers considered having Superman give this dinosaur to Bruce Wayne, but the idea never made it to screen. This would have paid homage to the dinosaur that stood as a trophy in the Batcave in the Batman comics.
Fun and Games
Original title was "Toys in the Attic"
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #5 - What is Reality?, 1:01:56-1:01:58 mark
Who: Robert N Skir
Posted: March 30, 2015
Summary: "My title for that was Toys in the Attic."
Superman fought a giant wind-up Lobo toy and toys based on Watchmen
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #5 - What is Reality?, 1:04:18-1:05:07 mark
Who: Robert N Skir
Posted: March 30, 2015
Summary: "Superman shows up at the Toyman's house before going to that big barn warehouse. You know he's tracking down the Toyman and he goes to the Toyman's house. He opens the door and there's this giant wind-up toy Lobo waiting for him. And this giant Lobo. They just get into it and beat the s**t out of each other before Superman, you know, lays waste to it, it's just lying there, a pile of junk. I loved that! And they like you know, 'We can't use that because we're gonna use Lobo.' and I'm like, 'Oh man.' And at one point all these toys come flying at him and toys were going to be amalgams of Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan and Nite Owl."
The giant rubber duckie was originally Plucky Duck
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #5 - What is Reality?, 1:06:30-1:06:33 mark
Who: Robert N Skir
Posted: March 30, 2015
Summary: "Okay, you know what that duck was initially supposed to be? Plucky Duck."
Stolen Memories
Mr. Mxyzptlk was going to appear
Who: Paul Dini
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume One, 08:34-08:36 of "Stolen Memories" Commentary
Quote: He didn't make it into this one. We lost him in the second draft rewrite.
Blasts From the Past
Link: Jump on the Bat-Wagon Episode 98, 24:50-25:26
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: November 17, 2023
Quote: Originally that plant was supposed to be a mouse that was going to be torn apart through different dimensions and it was going to hear little squeaks from all--and that was supposed to be like a foreshadowing of the pain that Super--we're supposed to think that Superman might-that might happen to him. The problem with that was we can't do that to a mouse. We'd get mail so we turned that into a plant and unfortunately just died which I think I would still would have preferred to have it sort of torn apart into different dimensions in a cool way. You know, plants can't scream that we can hear.
Link: Jump on the Bat-Wagon Episode 98, 47:41-48:38
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: November 17, 2023
Quote: There's one shot that looked cool but I wish it had been cooler is there's an upshot of Mala and Jax-Ur and the hands all coming up and the intention and I don't know who screwed it up if it was in the layout or what but the intention had been the fists to be far away and the foregrounds and what I saw was just like a clump of fists in the same area like there's five guys all raising their fists up. It's supposed to feel like depth like you're boom boom boom boom boom in the distance and that didn't quite read and I was kind of like 'Oh, that wasn't hard to do, ya just do them with different sizes and what really helps also is to like put shadow colors on them so the foreground guys would be darker so you really get depth and I'm like wow that could have been cooler.
The Prometheon
Link: World's Finest "Stan Berkowitz"
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: December 2, 2005
Quote: The original ending had aliens running across the creature in space some time later. And of course, they can't help themselves from poking this sleeping dog, and, we're led to assume, the whole thing starts all over again. This ending was in the original storyboards, but the episode simply ran too long, so it was cut.
Link: DC and Marvel TV Writer Stan Berkowitz! | INTERGANG Episode 01, 26:04-26:15
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: February 28, 2024 (recorded January 15, 2023)
Quote: Yeah, it was just a tacked on ending where the thing's floating in space again and different aliens find it and think, "Oh, this could be great. This thing could do all of our work for us."
General Hardcastle was recast and Charles Napier was hired
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 17, 2021
Quote: The late, great Charles Napier wasn't our first General Hardcastle on SUPERMAN and JLU. The first guy we hired was a widely respected TV and film actor, who just didn't work out.
Livewire
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: Instead we were assigned the Livewire intro, which was intended for season one but ended up in season two.
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: I'm not crazy about the episode, I wanted a bigger ending and I think a few things fall flat, partly because of our inexperience and partly because the producers were getting the hang of the series themselves. The earlier shows are stiffer than the later ones. "Livewire" was supposed to be a first season episode, and the early premise had a lot more material about how people were coping with the concept of having Superman in their midst. He was supposed to 'come out' in the episode, appear publicly for the first time and address the citizens of Metropolis, answering public concerns about his being a potential threat, or posing as a hero to cover a plot to invade the planet by his fellow super-beings. I think that lent itself to some more interesting material than what we got, which was fairly standard. There are a few nice bits, but the animation is a little choppy and we had a more explosive, violent ending, which wasn't how it ended up. These things happen.
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: Well, there's the stuff I mentioned before, but that's pretty much it. "Livewire" was supposed to have a lot more about Superman's position in Metropolis and people learning more about him and how his legend was growing, and was to have a more packed ending.
Speed Demons
Source: Wizard Special Edition JLA (1998), page 22
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: I've always wanted to do the Flash, so we decided to incorporate him into Superman. We didn't identify which Flash he was, although I think he's probably the Wally West Flash. He was identified as coming from Central City, so some fans said, 'He MUST be Barry Allen!' Buy y'know, Wally goes back quite a few years, so it's very natural for him to have been from Central City himself.
Monkey Fun
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: Who needed an excuse? Everyone likes monkeys and Titano was already an old Superman character, so it was a natural. I was really pleased with this one, and glad they gave it to us to do. My only regrets about this show was I wished we could have had at least one standard Toho/Harryhausen-type shot of Titano rampaging through Metropolis and causing some major destruction. If you have a giant monster on the loose, you have to show them really cutting loose at least once. All the rampage stuff had to be cut for time. But they should have had at least one, brief city stomp shot to put the monster stuff over a little more effectively. Minor complaint aside, I really like that one, I think it works. I don't think the fans thought much of it because it was a humor episode and Titano didn't constitute a 'cool' cameo, but I really like it.
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: "Monkey Fun" lost some giant monkey city trampling, and a scene where Superman was swallowed by Titano and spit out into a car like a bullet, and finds himself completely covered in giant gurvy monkey spit.
Brave New Metropolis
Lois goes into Luthor statue's nose
Who: Alan Burnett
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Two, 11:29-11:31, 11:33-11:38 of "Brave New Metropolis" Commentary
Quote: I remember I wanted to put her in the nose...Yeah, I wanted to do that Hitchcock joke in "North by Northwest." When she starts sneezing but it never worked out.
The Late Mr. Kent
Link: World's Finest "Stan Berkowitz"
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: December 2, 2005
Quote: A bit of trivia about the episode: the man who witnesses Clark's death turns out to have bad vision, but in the original draft, I took into account that he was an old man, living out in the middle of nowhere, and wide awake at three in the morning. Why? He was waiting for the fairies to come, as he believed they did every night. Yep, the old guy was crazy, not nearsighted, and Clark discovers this at the very end... much to his relief. But I guess Alan didn't want it to look like Clark was somehow exploiting someone with mental illness. So he suggested the new ending, which everybody seems to be pretty happy with).
Apokolips...Now!
Steppenwolf added and ending changed
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 56-57
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Yeah. A, because of my love for Kirby, and B, my affection for the whole Fourth World scenario that he created. The "Apokolips Now" story came out of a number of brainstorming sessions with myself and Paul Dini, in particular. We were sitting around, talking about Darkseid-what about him do we want to use; what would work for us in animation; how to pare down that big, sprawling mythos Kirby did over five books into a half-hour adventure cartoon. We had come up with a couple of springboards of what to do with the character, and then the "Apokolips Now" storyline just came full-blown into my head one day. I took out a legal pad and plotted the whole thing out and handed it to Alan. He handed it off to Rich Fogel to write and it stayed very true to the outline I had done. The only major plot change that Rich and Alan added to it was they added the Steppenwolf character into it, which didn't really change the structure of the story at all, because the invasion of Metropolis was in my outline. But Rich was the one who came with the idea of having Steppenwolf leading the charge.
My original ending was a little more oblique. Turpin was still going to defy Darkseid at the end and say, "You guys can't have this planet. We'd rather die first." At that point Darkseid was just going to to, "I really want this planet. I don't want to just destroy it, so you win." And everybody realized that was too anticlimactic. I had thought of the idea of having the New Gods show up as the calvary at the last second and having that as the reason Darkseid gives up but I rejected it myself because I thought it was too easy and too pat. But Rich and Alan both felt that we really needed to have that.
Pa and Ma Kent were suggested to be killed off in Apokolips Now
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm page 57-58
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: But the minute I said that, Paul said, "Yeah, that's the way to go. So who's he going to kill?" And I thought, "Who better? Ma and Pa Kent." We mentioned that to DC Comics and they said, "Sure you can kill them...as long as you bring them back." But whoever we killed, we wanted them to stay dead or it's a cheat. It was a good thing we didn't kill Ma and Pa Kent, because that would have been just wrong. So who can we kill? We can't kill off Lois, can't kill off Jimmy. We could kill off Professor Hamilton, but none of us really liked him anyway, so we figured if we killed him it would be "Oh, thank you, Darkseid." [laughter] It came down to Dan Turpin. It was one of those weird things, Kirby had just died within the past year or two, and Paul and I had gone to his funeral, so the minute we realized it should be Turpin-we had already based Turpin on Kirby visually-it was "Well, that's what we have to do; we have to kill him." I was able to channel Kirby's funeral into the show. I put Kirby's actual funeral into the show.
Funeral guests
Link: World's Finest Image Gallery
Source: The Krypton Chronicles, page 226-227
Summary: 7 black and white panels of the funeral scene drawn by Bruce Timm with short hand notes of who's who at the funeral. Stan Lee (with an alternate idea of using Funky Flashman), Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, Mark Evanier, Glen Murakami, Dan Riba, Alex Ross, Alex's father Norman Ross, Bruce Timm, Big Barda, Scott Free, Kamandi, Goody Rickles, Nick Fury, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark (and an idea to include the Newsboy Legion) were guests at Dan Turpin's funeral but after the original broadcast, they were edited out. Production art for the scene also indicated Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were slated to appear at one point, too.
Little Girl Lost
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: As for the comics, Sarah had the idea to gather up a lot of material we liked for the Supergirl two-parter that WB cut and work it into a one-shot story for DC. The original "Little Girl Lost" plot was changed significantly fairly last-minute and we had a significant amount of backstory worked up for it as well. In a nutshell, we approached DC, and they went for it. The Supergirl comic was supposed to be a one-shot, but because of scheduling delays with the two-part episode, DC held it, and it ended up becoming a giant-sized issue of the regular Superman Adventures book (Superman Adventures #21 - ed). We did three more issues, including a sequel to the Supergirl issue.
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: The second half was changed fairly last minute and a regular series writer reworked the plot. Originally, Granny Goodness was bringing together wayward teens and training them with Apokolips technology because she was harvesting them as source material for creating new Parademons. It was a riff on Pleasure Island from Pinocchio, where the kids are taken in and transformed into donkeys. Here, the kids were taken to Apokolips to be transformed into Parademon troopers to bulk up Darkseid's army. It was going to be revealed that Parademons were all genetically-engineered beings: Armaghetto inhabitants, slaves, captured aliens (Thanagarians, Martians, etc). We were going to show this huge, Nazi-like Krupp Works for Parademons with beings on chains being dragged into chambers where they'd emerge as soulless Parademons. The two-parter ended with Supergirl and Superman in full-scale battle on. Anyway, from what I was told, a producer who had signed off on the original premise balked and then asked for changes. We had already done several drafts, and after they handed us the new plot, we ended up doing another slew of drafts. It was nuts.
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: I do wish the Apokolips ending was retained. I always thought the giant meteor/comet from space was hokey and made very little sense as a reason for Granny to break the pact and traffic with a bunch of useless kids. Body harvesting kids for shock troops was creepier, made somewhat more sense, and was very Kirby/Apokolips in tone (at least in my opinion).
Link: World's Finest "STAS 10th: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer on Superman Adventures"
Who: Evan Dorkin
Posted: September 6, 2006
Quote: Only some of the Supergirl changes smarted, especially after we went though over 20 drafts, major and minor, between the two scripts. That was a real haul.
Conspiracy Tease removed from "Little Big Head Man"
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Legacy" Part Two Commentary, Around 1:25
Quote: We actually planned on playing up the whole conspiracy thing with Luthor and General Hardcastle. That was gonna be a whole through line in the entire season and in fact we had to take some stuff out of "Little Big Head Man" that actually pertained to that because we thought it was going to air before this and it ended up not being.
Cetea was recast twice and Jennifer Hale was hired
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 17, 2021
Quote: I'm pretty sure I've told the "Three Jennifers To Play One Princess" story before. Our first Jennifer came in to play Cetea the Space Princess in an episode of SUPERMAN, but long story short, it didn't work out. We were lucky to get the amazing Jennifer Jason Leigh to replace Jennifer #1, and she was great. Months later, we needed her to do some ADR and fight walla but she was shooting a movie out of town somewhere and wouldn't be available before our delivery deadline. At that point, Jennifer Hale came in to re-do a few of Jennifer #2's lines and all of her oofs and ughs.
Fish Story
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #36
Posted: Week of September 6 to 18/19, 1999
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: The Aquaman story was supposed to end with a big tidal wave. I wanted to do a scene where a surfer (based on BTAS director Kevin Altieri) climbs to the top of the Daily Planet with this board and waits for the wave while everyone on the streets is in a panic. But Bruce argued that it was too difficult to animate a tidal wave effectively, so Rich Fogel completely rewrote the third act, basically to save the show. I still think about that tidal wave...
Source: Wizard #92, page 46
Quote: The climax was Luthor setting off a bomb on the ocean floor which opens a five-mile crack. All the water in the ocean pours in, and coastlines recede by abut ten miles. As a backlash, this big tidal wave would come in and wipe out the city--and our budget for the year.
Legacy was originally a course correction for the series
Who: James Tucker
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: February 17, 2019
Quote: "Legacy" was meant to be more of a course correction for the show to explore deeper topics with Superman having to earn the people's trust. Themes we tackled in JLU eventually.
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Three, Start of "Legacy" Part Two Commentary
Quote: It was actually supposed to be the first episode of the last season and right around the time we were developing his script, we got the call to do more Batman episodes again which kind of threw everything out of whack and we knew this show was going to be really, really big so we threw it on the back burner and so it became our series finale rather than the first episode of the season. We actually planned on playing up the whole conspiracy thing with Luthor and General Hardcastle.
Who: Paul Dini
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Legacy" Part Two Commentary, 1:30-1:32
Quote: Yeah, because for this last season, we wanted to play with the idea of Superman's alien nature. That he'd done something wrong and he had to earn back Earth's trust.
Paul Dini was going to write all of Legacy
Who: Rich Fogel
Source: Watchtower Database "Aquaman, Creeper, and...a LADY FIREFLY? Oh My! (Writer Rich Fogel)" 14:57-15:15
Quote: It was supposed to be much earlier in the season originally. And Paul Dini was supposed to write it. He was busy with other things and it was not happening so I was brought in to sort of shepherd it through and by the time we actually got it through production, it ended up being one of the last ones.
A kiss in S.T.A.R. Labs in Legacy Part 2
Who: Bruce Timm, Glen Murakami, James Tucker
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Three, 11:38-13:00 of "Legacy" Part Two Commentary
Quote: (Bruce) Here comes the bit when James Tried to steal my kiss because it was scripted that Lois is going to kiss Superman for the first time at the end of the show. So when I got the storyboard for this sequence, when they're standing in front of the Boob Tube, Lois and Ja--Did I say Boob Tube? We're watching it on a TV! Anyhow. Boom Tube. Um, James had y'know drew them both in beautiful silhouette and she kind of stroked his cheek and leaned in and kissed him. And the thing is the drawings were so good and it-- / (James) It took me a week to come up with that shot. / (Bruce) And I was tempted to keep it in, honest. I was torn because it was gorgeous but if we did that now, we got no ending. / (James) My rationale is she doesn't know he's coming back. He's gone off to Hell. / (Glen) I remember you yelling at him. "Hey!" / (Bruce) I did not yell at him. / (James) Actually you came to me very contrite that he had to change it but he was gonna. / (Glen) I remember him yelling about it though. / (James) He probably yelled about -- / (Bruce) I left it in because it was so good. Honestly, I--I went back and forth but it totally would have killed the ending.
Granny's line in Legacy Part 2
Who: Bruce Timm
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Three, 14:00-14:09 of "Legacy" Part Two Commentary
Quote: Now this line here, "I won't leave you wits enough to pick your nose"? Originally, "I won't leave you wits enough to wipe your... and we had to change it.
Turpin was not really killed
Who: Dan Riba
Link: Watchtower Database YouTube; 15:42-15:55
Posted: October 23, 2020
Quote: He was actually supposed to come back but we decided not to because it was gonna mess everything up if we did. But in that last episode he was supposed to be found in the mines of -- working.
Superman and Lashina's bastard son (DEBUNKED)
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: February 26, 2017
Summary: Superman and Lashina were going to have a son on "Batman Beyond". As it turned out, they originally planned on continuing this story in "Batman Beyond" by revealing that Lashina had a son who ended up deposing Darkseid and declaring war on Earth. Lashina fled to Earth to warn the Justice League, and she also told Superman that the new ruler of Darkseid was THEIR son! Superman has knocked her up during his time on Apokolips.
Link: Ask the Maestro (dead link)
Posted: Before or on December 25, 2010
Summary: Dwayne McDuffie debunked the claim this was an unused story.
Link: Watchtower Database "Aquaman, Creeper, and...a LADY FIRELFY? Oh My! (Writer Rich Fogel)," 13:58 mark
Posted: May 23, 2021
Who: Rich Fogel
Quote: I don't recall that ever being discussed in the room at the time. The staging of the scene in Legacy clearly suggests that they were sleeping together, but whether or not anything came from that, we never really pursued that.
Link: Anime Superhero iammattie post
Posted: December 18, 2022
Summary: In conclusion, the story might have been pulled from fanfiction posted on the Toon Zone Forums in the early half of the 2000s and maliciously added into a Wikipedia entry for Lashina, unsourced, and later removed in December 2007.
Evanier-Gerber Outline
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #17
Posted: Weeks of February 22 to 27/28, 1999
Who: Mark Evanier
Quote: At the moment, there are no episodes in production. Steve Gerber and I did an outline for an episode that may go forward, if and when they start making more. But beyond that, I dunno.
Supergirl Spinoff Series
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #19
Posted: Week of March 8-13/14, 1999
Quote: My doubting the truth to the rumors of the Supergirl/Lobo animated series is no more. Bruce Timm confirms that both projects were indeed in the early stages. Although no final decision by the WB has been finalized, the Supergirl series looked less likely to happen but Lobo (oddly enough) "looks real good for a 13-episode commitment this fall," Timm was quoted as saying.
Lobo Spinoff Series
When: Mid/Late 90s
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: Production work was already well underway before Kids'WB! and Cartoon Network ultimate decided not to proceed with an animated series based on the ultra-violent DC Comics character Lobo. Steven E. Gordon did design work for the series' pitch, though concerns over the nature of the character ultimate led to the project never getting the green light. Production for this series took place in the mid/late 1990s.
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #19
Posted: Week of March 8-13/14, 1999
Quote: My doubting the truth to the rumors of the Supergirl/Lobo animated series is no more. Bruce Timm confirms that both projects were indeed in the early stages. Although no final decision by the WB has been finalized, the Supergirl series looked less likely to happen but Lobo (oddly enough) "looks real good for a 13-episode commitment this fall," Timm was quoted as saying.
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #25
Posted: Week of April 26 to May 1/2, 1999
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: Two other projects I developed her this past yeat that were not picked up were Legionaires (As in The Legion of Superheroes, or the JLA?) and Lobo (that crazy idiot biker guy who drives around space screaming). Everyone here was certain that Lobo was a go right up (Why?) until the week when the network finally announced it's schedule to the press. That was another major disappointement to us (Ahhh again).
The New Batman Adventures
Title was Gotham Knights
Who: Paul Dini
Link: Animation Arena
Posted: 1997
Quote: At one point, we were going to call it Batman: Gotham Knights, which would emphasize the fact that Batgirl, Robin, and Nightwing are now part of the ongoing action. But the show itself is going to be called The New Batman/Superman Adventures, because it's going to run six days a week, and it's going to alternate between a new Batman episode and a new Superman episode.
Title Sequence
Link: World's Finest Tweet
Summary: Some story boards and notes from Bruce Timm weren't used in the final version.
Nocturna (2nd attempt)
Who: Paul Dini
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Quote: We'd like to use her, but the network (WB Network) still says 'no' to vampires.
Icemaiden
Link: James Tucker Tweet July 4, 2019
Summary: Mr. Freeze's Icemaidens originated from a conversation the crew had over lunch. It was originally pitched as a single Icemaiden who was eerily silent and creepy like Dr. Phibes' assistant, Vulnavia of "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" and "Dr. Phibes Rises Again" movies starring Vincent Price.
Quote: The Icemaidens idea came from a conversation we had over lunch. As originally pitched, she (we only talked about one him having one ice maiden) was to be eerily silent and creepy like Dr. Phibes' assistant, Vulnavia, instead of the ice pun chatterbox we got.
Ra's al Ghul and Poison Ivy team-up
Source: Paul Dini Tweet
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Actually, it was on my "to do" list. The early replacement of "The New Batman & Superman Adventures" by "Batman Beyond" torpedoed that. Maybe someday, in some other medium.
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Manhunter was never on the table
Who: Dan Riba
Link: Watchtower Database YouTube; 43:30-43:59, 44:22-44:30
Posted: October 23, 2020
Quote: The one that that hurts is the uh, the Simonson, uh, Manhunter because I love those comics, I think that's awesome and the look that I gave was the look that I was like, 'Uh!' And Bruce was, 'Y'know, the comics are great...' but he hated the costume. He always thought it was too colorful and too broad and complicated and whatever so he just didn't think it would make a good animated character...When we were bringing in Creeper and stuff that I think someone mentioned it and Bruce was 'Ah, no! No!' and Glenn was like 'No, Bruce hates the costume,' and I -- you know whatever.
Royal Flush Gang
Source: Starlog #259, "Tomorrow's Night"
Posted: February 1999
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: We tried to use the Royal Flush characters on Batman and Superman; we toyed with them, but it wasn't until "Beyond" that we found a way to bring them in.
Copperhead
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 55:48-55:51, 56-56:10 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: We looked at doing Copperhead. We never did get around to doing Copperhead./I actually had a pretty good outline at one point. I can't remember what the story was but it was a pretty good Copperhead outline that was written when we weren't sure whether there were going to be more episodes coming around.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 56:14-57:12 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: And one I couldn't get Alan to bite on but really like this idea was there in the comics, there's a pair of villains called Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Um, I had the idea of telling the story from the standpoint he's, Boss Tweed is this political character who was doing crimes and Batman knows he's doing crimes but he always has an alibi. Batman can't figure out why he always has an alibi. And we don't reveal it until very late into the story that he has a twin, uh, going on, there's actually two of them and they would have a psychic connection so they always knew what the other knew so Batman couldn't trip them up by saying, "Well, you didn't know this..." or something. So I thought that would be really interesting but we were never able to get that story off the ground.
New Clayface
Link: Animation Arena
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: 1997
Quote: We like the fact that we were able to kill him off, but we're also thinking about creating a new Clayface or some element of him survived without Matt Hagen's personality attached to it. We're still figuring out ways to go with Clayface.
Lady Clayface
Link: Animation Arena
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: 1997
Quote: We thought about that. There's one in the comics, and she's able to do everything old Matt Hagen used to do.
Holiday Knights
Harley and Ivy
Link: Fatman on Batman #21 (dead link), 1:16:26-1:17:12
Posted: December 21, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: In the Harley and Ivy segment, Harley wants a Christmas tree which she wants here but at one point in the comic, she says, "Aren't you Jewish?" and Harley says, "Yeah, but we always used to have a Christmas tree. It looked so nice and pretty and I want one." And they made us take that one out in the TV version because they said, "Well, you're making it sound like Harley is a villain and she's Jewish and you have to have a positive representation of Jewish people and Hanukkah in this to balance it out and I thought, "Well, the only other person we're bringing in is Bruce Wayne's friend Veronica and we've already established her as very WASPy Blue Blood and I al--don't want to do that in favor of keeping a line so I'll just change the line.
Link: Fatman on Batman #21 (dead link), 1:17:56-1:18:03
Posted: December 21, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Actually Harley's outfit got--it was a lot shorter. We had to re-animate this. She was wearing really little tighty whities.
Link: Mathew Valencia Tweet
Posted: November 17, 2022
Who: Mathew Valencia
Quote: Fun fact. WB changed Harley into boy shorts because they thought the originally drawn scene with her in panties might be "too TV-MA" for a younger audience. 13 year old me was very disappointed, but Bruce Timm hooked me up with a b&w photocopied screen grab which I cherished.
Barbara changing into Batgirl
Link: Fatman on Batman #21 (dead link), 1:26:20-1:26:48
Posted: December 21, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: And when DC looked at it, they said, "Nope. No, we can't allow that." Because she's like getting naked with a bunch of other people around. I don't think it was that much they objected to as much as the fact someone could stop and say, "Hey, you're Batgirl!" and her secret identity is compromised. So-yeah-so we put her in a dressing room and it's still a fun sequence because she had to change in a tight place.
Note: In the episode, Barbara Gordon changes into her Batgirl costume between two aisles.
Sins of the Father and Old Wounds were written by Rich Fogel before Lost Years
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #69
Who: Hilary Bader
Posted: Weeks of June 19 - July 1/2, 2000
Quote: First let me clear something up. BOTH Batman scripts - "Sins of the Father" and "Old Wounds" - were written by Rich Fogel alone. I had nothing to do with the scripts. When I wrote "The Lost Years" comic book miniseries both those scripts had already been written. Two of the books are completely new material and I tried to use as much new material as possible in the other three but there are scenes in three of the five books which are – at least in part - adaptations from those scripts. Rich didn't get an "adapted from a script by" credit for some obscure credit reason that I never understood.
Sins of the Father Villain
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 16:21-16:44
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: September 27, 2023
Quote: I do remember that in the early premise stage of it there was some discussion about who the villain should be in this one and at one st--one point it was the Joker. And then we said no. I think Bruce said, 'No, we don't want it to be the Joker. That's too on the nose' so then we switched it to Two-Face and you know and that worked out pretty well.
World's Finest
Source: Wizard Magazine #72, page 54
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: There were a couple of things we wanted to do, that just didn't quite fit, but I think it will please fans.
Source: Batman and Superman Adventures: World's Finest, page 26
Summary: The comic book adaptation contains an additional brief scene after Superman leaves in the aftermath of Lois Lane's kidnapping. It takes place in "World's Finest Part 2" betweeen Superman saying, "Maybe you should have remembered that" and the scene of Joker breaking the Laughing Dragon in half. Alfred says, "I sense a certain tension between you and Superman, sir. Do you question his capabilities?" Bruce replies, "No. Just his judgment. He doesn't grasp the limits of brute strength against a mind as warped as the Joker's." Alfred opens the car door for Bruce and says, "Might I suggest keeping a collegial eye on him?" Bruce agrees, "Exactly what I had in mind."
Cold Comfort
Link: Glen Murakami instagram
Posted: July 29, 2019
Quote: I seem to remember being a big baby about wanting to put a cold bomb inside of the Mister Freeze suit. It would freeze Batman inside the helicopter over the ocean and the head would be able to sneak away. Something like that but I was vetoed...
Double Talk
Barbara's Role reduced for positive inclusion
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #36 - Double Talk, 45:09-45:17, 46:03-46:57 mark
Who: Bob Goodman
Posted: July 18, 2016
Quote: In Double Talk, that Batgirl had a big part in the episode for awhile. I don't kn--is she in the episode in the end now?/And the network had requested that we balance that with a good portrayal of a little person. And so if you remember, the woman who ran the halfway house in Double Talk, I hope I'm right about this, was played by Zelda Rubinstein. And, yeah, I think it was her and so we needed to add this other character and it was a role structurally that was previously going to be filled by Barbara/Batgirl. Um, that since the halfway house was part of the Wayne conglomerate--that it was Wayne Manor's halfway house, that we were going to have Barbara being the one checking on him. She had to for reasons of real estate, drop away to meet that condition.
Note: The role of Mrs. Segar was played by Patty Maloney, not Zelda Rubinstein.
Never Fear
Who: Matthew Valencia
Link: Matthew Valencia Tweet
Quote: Originally titled, "Know No Fear."
The Demon Within
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 62
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Of course, we'd teamed them up previously in the comics-we'd done that annual. The comic book animated continuity is actually different than the actual animated continuity-they'll do things that contradict what we do and vice versa. But for the sake of the Demon story we did in the animated show, we subsumed the annual we had done into the animated continuity just to get things moving faster. We didn't have to have them meet and slow the story down. The story starts as a fait accompli; they've already met each other off-stage and have some history together.
Over The Edge
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 1, 2005
Quote: in "over the edge", barb's impact onto gordon's car was originally staged OUTSIDE the car, with the camera aimed at the FRONT of the windshield (basically the exact reverse angle of the finished shot), with barb landing hard on the hood in the immediate foreground....it WAS kinda shocking and violent-looking, and bs&p wanted us to tone it down....so i suggested shooting the scene from the "backseat" of the car, and they went for it....now, the minute i re-drew the shot, i knew it was probably TWENTY TIMES more horrifying than the original staging, but i sure as hell didn't tell THEM that! that scene STILL makes me jump, whenever i see it...
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 2, 2005
Quote: oh, they DO, always....in the "over the edge" case, they just didn't realise the impact would be worse....all they saw was that barb's figure was smaller and further away from the camera, thus seemingly a "softer" shot...they didn't take into account that putting the camera in the back seat makes the shot much more "real" (we've all seen things from that vantage point, whereas how many of us have driven around on the hood of a car?), not to mention the fact that we're seeing gordon's daughter smash into the hood of his car practically from his own point of view....oh, it's EVIL...sometimes we get lucky...
Frying Oil Vats in Critters
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Four, "Critters" Commentary 11:27-11:45
Who: James Tucker
Quote: This was originally scripted as a, what happens here, this was supposed to be vats full of frying oil so that when this thing happens, the chicken's gonna get fried. Someone made us change it and made it ten times worse.
Mean Seasons
Bruce is aged
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 42:13-42:34 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: In my original pitch for it, we were thinking about this idea of aging and getting older. I had pitched that maybe she has gas or something that turns Batman old and they need to, like, fix him but they still needed to stop this person from doing this. It got a little too complicated so we didn't go that direction.
Calendar Girl in her cell ending
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 48:13-48:50 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: There was an additional scene in the outline that I kind of wished we'd put in just to sort of make it feel more like a Batman episode. My personal feeling is this one ends a little bit abruptly. I mean, certainly it's a strong note to end on but you--you don't have a chance to let it sink in a little bit if that makes sense. And so I did have that--that typical Batman scene of the villain in the cell at the end but in this case, she was marking on the walls, a calendar, the days until she gets out.
Mechanical Dinosaur wasn't as mobile
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 49:55-50:09 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: In the original outline of it, it was a mechanical dinosaur but it was not one that could like roam around the backlot, you know? It was like more like what it would really be if--really be if you were doing something like that.
Pin-Up Boys Line
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 54:17-54:38 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: Another thing that was in the original outline, was just a throwaway line was that her henchmen were the pin-up boys. And I didn't know what those were, I just thought it was sort of funny and I think it was Hilary who came up with the idea of dresssing them up as Chippendale dancers.
Old Wounds Two Ideas Become One
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 48:32-49:21
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: September 27, 2023
Quote: I proposed that Batman brought Barbara into the Bat-Family and that it caused a rift with Dick because of that-of his feelings for her. That made sense to me. Paul Dini had a different idea which was this idea that Batman had gotten to be too much, too much of a badass, too focused on his thing and had this idea for this scene of Batman beating the crap out of a thug in front of his family and in front of his small child and Alan ever being the diplomat and the genius behind the scenes said why don't we do both of them?.
Janus changed to The Judge in Judgment Day
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #32, 14:32-14:46
Who: Rich Fogel
Released: May 25, 2016
Quote: Alan, whose a big Two-Face fan and he really likes that, he sparked to that idea and so we developed it. Originally, it was going to be a character named Janus. Um, but we thought that was going to be a little obvious and so it became The Judge instead.
Mad Love
Note: Several scenes in the original comic book were not adapted into the episode, including Batman's summary of Harley Quinn's life before Arkham Asylum to Alfred Pennyworth in the Batcave, Harley Quinn having a dream sequence about the perfect life married with Joker and having two children just as bad as him, and Joker thinking the other villains in Gotham City mocking him if Harley kills Batman. Some minor lines were changed: Joker says "May the floss be with you!" instead of "Watch those between-mean snacks" when he flees the dentist office. Joker is given a line, "Not again!" when he falls into the smokestack.
Source: Overstreet Fan Magazine #4 (September 1995) "Paul Dini: Back to the Batcave"
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: A lot of people have asked us, 'When are you going to make Mad Love as either an animated episode, or a direct to video movie?' We did think about it. We actually got some of the people in Home Video to look at it. But, ultimately, I don't think it's going to happen, and, more importantly, Bruce Timm and I have cooled on it. Bruce had a very good point early on, which is, 'It is what it is. It's a book.' Batman is a secondary player in this. When you're doing a made for video release, you want a story where Batman and Bruce Wayne are more integral to the plot, more of the attention is on him.
Cassidy was going to become Firefly idea
Who: Rich Fogel
Source: Watchtower Database "Aquaman, Creeper, and...a LADY FIREFLY? Oh My! (Writer Rich Fogel)" 21:04-22:08
Quote: There was one episode that I did I want to talk about briefly which was the Firefly episode. First of all, the episode didn't come out quite the way I hope it would with Cassidy. I wanted her to be a genuine talent. At the time, Bruce was driving in the car and heard some Britney Spears song on the radio and it just annoyed the hell out of him. And so he decided her make her a really bad singer. For me, that threw off the whole motivation of the show off. You wonder why this guy is so obessed with this--where is if she was a true diva belting out this song, you could see her star power then you could see his obsession with her. You clearly see that she was traumatized by the effects of the episode. And so the story I was hoping to tell later on was that she would become the next Firefly. That she was so traumatized by this thing that she became obsessed with fire and tried to become the thing she was afraid of.
Teen Titans Spinoff Series
Link: World's Finest Backstage
When: Mid/Late 90s
Summary: Very few details are available for this abandoned project. The Teen Titans animated series would have been loosely based in the same universe as Superman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Animated Series, with ties to connect the series together. Little production work is available, with the artwork above created by Tommy Tejeda during the mid/late 1990s
Roll Call: Flash, Aquaman, Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Aqualad Kid Flash
Catwoman and Nightwing Spinoff Series
Birds of Prey Spinoff Series
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: The idea of a Catwoman-centric spin-off was reconsidered years later when a Catwoman/Nightwing series was pitched, in addition to a Birds of Prey animated series starring a collection of DC Comics' top female characters.
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #6 - Old Wounds, 37:54-38:14 mark
Who: Loren Lester
Posted: April 13, 2015
Quote: "I think there was talk of a spinoff at one point but it didn't, it never happened and I think they went ahead with a Catwoman pilot. Or something like that. They were kind of going back and forth. Nightwing or Catwoman. And they never picked up again on that Nightwing idea but I thought it would have been a great show."
Link: Flickering Myth
Posted: July 26, 2017
Summary: around the time of TNBA, they talked about adapting a comic called Nightfall that detailed Dick's transition from Robin to Nightwing.
Mathew Valencia recast for Static Shock, Mystery of the Batwoman, and Rise of Sin-Tzu
Link: Watchtower Database " MATHEW VALENCIA - Voice of Tim Drake! | 12th Level Intellects EP #21" 26:18-26:58
Who: Mathew Valencia
Posted: July 16, 2018
Quote: Actually, actually yeah, it was a really kind of an internal change at my acting agency. It turns out Warner Brothers and Andrea did contact my agent to see if I'd be interested in reprising the role as Robin but she never relayed that message onto me because she had been I guess transitioned to another area of the department and that message kind of went just unanswered and the new agents they assigned to me had no idea about it so no one -- the role went to somebody else and I got to continue high school as a normal kid.
Unused Ideas were later incorporated in Batman: The Adventures Continue
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: January 19, 2023
Quote: The next issue began with a germ of an idea that I had a long time ago. I always thought it would be interesting to do a story about what if Batman and Harley Quinn investigate the disappearance of a woman. As the mystery progresses, it turns out they both had a relationship with her. Harley had a relationship with her, and Bruce Wayne had a relationship with her. How would that impact them working together, and how would that fuel the story? How would that play emotionally with Batman because, you know, it's obvious he can't discuss that with Harley? And that's only something the reader is privy to in his thoughts, his reactions, and everything. I just thought, "That's sort of a fun story." It's also fun to show that Harley had other partners before Joker and Poison Ivy.
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: December 5, 2023
Quote: I guess I'll have to. I already used up all my shelved Batman ideas in the BTAC comic book series with Alan Burnett.
Batman Beyond
Pitches that Preceded Batman Beyond
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: the "batman training the jr. jl" thing was just something that was verbally batted around five minutes before we came up with the BATMAN BEYOND concept in jaimie kellner's office..."batman anime" was a completely seperate concept developed by glen, alan, adam warren and me several years later...the "jl/titans hybrid" was a gimmick that we thought might make the jl concept more palatable to kids wb...the idea being that it would be a pretty straight "jl" show, but with a group of younger heroes also on the team, learning the ropes...sounds VERY "superfriends", don't it? and yes, batman would have been on the show...
Source: Comicology #1, page 11
Who: Bruce Timm
When 1998
Quote: "And then there was Batman & the junior Justice League which we didn't like. He'd be training Aquaman Jr. and Wonder Woman Jr. &... By the time we got to that one, our heads were spinning, and we were thinking, "We don't want to do any of those. What do we do? We gotta come up with something quick." And, kind-of on the spur of the moment, I said, "What if we set it in the future?" Because the two things that we didn't like about the proposals were (A) they stomped on the legend and (B) they stomped on our continuity. I was all for kick-starting the show, or starting a spinoff show, but I didn't want to totally throw out the continuity that we'd established. So I said, "What if we set the show in the future, when Bruce Wayne's too old to be Batman anymore, and he has to find someone new to be Batman?" At first we were all aghast at the whole thing; we really loved the show that we were doing at the time, we really loved the revamped Batman."
Source: Comicology #1, page 11
Who: Bruce Timm
When 1998
Quote: "That was something that was pitched to us, we don't come up with that concept. We had a meeting, like, 2 years ago now, with Jaime Kellner, who's the head of the WB network, and there was some concern that Batman had just been around a little bit too long in its current incarnation, even with the revamped look and everything. The shows did really, really well ratings-wise, but [the WB execs] kinda felt that we'd been riding that train for a long time, and there was also a concern that the show was skewing a little bit older than they would've liked, 'cause the advertising is aimed at children. So they were just talking about ways of freshening the show and, y'know, the words "teenage Batman" came up --- "Is there some way that we can get a teenager into the Batman suit?" And, of course, our first reaction was horror. "Teenage Batman? Aaaah!!!"
Source: Comicology #1, page 11
Who: Bruce Timm
When 1998
Quote: "But they had a couple of ideas that they were throwing around that had come from outside sources, which I won't name, one of which was very much like The Phantom. It was kind-of an Elseworlds Batman, where Bruce Wayne was the latest in a long line of Batmen; there was a Revolutionary War Batman, there was a pirate Batman, all of that, and [Bruce Wayne's] just the 20th Century Batman. And we said no, we don't want to do that, that really steps on the legend; Bruce Wayne is the only Batman, at least up until that point."
Source: Comicology #1, page 11
Who: Bruce Timm
When 1998
Quote: "Then one of the other concepts was, like, Speed Racer, basically, it was young Bruce Wayne jet-setting around the world before he became Batman, and the problem with that is that there's no Batman in it."
Source: AnimeFantastique #4
Who: Bruce Timm
When Winter 1999
Quote: "Some of the ideas that we first talked about was doing a young Bruce Wayne show, the adventures of Bruce Wayne before he became Batman. I said, "Well, that's okay, except that there’s no Batman in it." Then there was another concept that was like the Phantom from the comics, where Bruce Wayne was just the latest recipient of the bat costume. We didn't want to do anything like that; we didn’t want to do anything that a) violated the spirit of the comics, and b) wiped out the continuity that we had established."
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Series Blu-Ray Nostalgic Tomorrow, 3:11-3:!6, 3:22-3:34, 3:40-3:45
Who: Glen Murakami
When: 2019
Quote: "One of the ideas was younger Bruce Wayne before he becomes Batman, in a car, driving around./It was just young Bruce Wayne before he becomes--You said they pitched to you a couple of ideas and one of them was a young...Young Bruce Wayne...before he becomes Batman, just driving in a car./And then I think, because of the toy line, there was almost like Batman through the ages."
Naming Designing Terry and Old Bruce
Source: Comicology #1, page 16
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Early models for Batman Beyond, including a "not-quite-final" version of the suit, a head shot of Terry McGinnis, and a more decrepit-looking Bruce Wayne. Timm reported that Bob Daly, the chairman of Time Warner, himself, requested a more distinguished look for the character. "He was right, of course." Timm said, "but I do love this version." And Terry's head shot dates from when the character's name was briefly changed from McGinnis to McGavin, because a producer feared confusion with author Terry McMillian; Terry McGinnis, however, sounded too much like Darren McGavin, star of Kolcak: The Night Stalker, so it was switched back to McGinnis, "which, by the way, is in honor of author Robert McGinnis."
Source: Starlog #282 (January 2001)
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "He's considerably toned down from my first design. My original design of Old Bruce Wayne looked like Uncle Creepy. He was bald, with a nice big scar across his face and liver spots. He was older and had seen some bad times. Bob Daly, then head of Time Warner, specifically requested that Bruce Wayne look a little more distinguished. He said, 'I don't mind him being old, but Cary Grant old, not Boris Karloff old!' Which was fine, we toned him down. I just took my Bruce Wayne design and put 50 years on him."
Before Batman Beyond
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season Inside Batman Beyond, 3:46-4:00, 4:06-4:09, 4:40-4:46
Who: Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett
Quote: (Alan Burnett) You remember the original title? The working title was for a little while...we had to find something else. We knew we did. Even before that. We were calling it "Tomorrow Knight." Thank God./(Bruce Timm) Batman Tomorrow, The Tomorrow Knight, B2./(Alan Burnett) I remember there were four titles in contention at the end.
Alpha Red
Source: Starlog #259, "Tomorrow's Night"
Posted: February 1999
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: Alfred is gone now, departed. We toyed for about 45 seconds with actually having Alfred as the voice of the new Batcave computer, until we looked at each other and said, 'No, that’s too maudlin.'
Link: AnimeSuperhero
Posted: August 26, 2020
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Well — at one point early in the development process, we did briefly toy with the idea of of giving Old Bruce a robot or 'Alexa'-like cyber-assistant/ companion. And then someone got the bright idea that it would be a digitized mega-file of Alfred's own memories and thought patterns, would actually speak with his voice, etc. And then someone said, 'Yeah, we can call him Alpha Red!' We all laughed for like a full minute and then agreed , 'TERRIBLE IDEA, we are NOT doing that'. Rightly so — we all instantly recognised that it would be much more poignant and effective to keep Bruce alone in that big old house with just his faithful dog to keep him company. (And of course, in the JLU episode 'Epilogue' we reveal that Bruce himself has become a cranky but doting 'Alfred' in his declining years, which I still think is an absolutely LOVELY Final Chapter for Bruce Wayne's story.)."
Lava Lamp in Title Sequence
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 29:30-29:44
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "The lava lamp began with something we wanted to put in the main title sequence of the Batman Beyond TV series. And actually shot some footage of the lava lamp with a solarized filter on it. For one reason or another, we never did use it."
Designing Batsuit
Source: AnimeFantastique #4
Released: Winter 1999
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I knew immediately that we had to keep the long ears, and he had to have a bat symbol on his chest, but the first thing I did was to put him all in black, just so he would be an all-black silhouette. I did about ten different designs before I came up with the one we finally settled on. I had one that was a lot more RoboCop-looking, there was a lot more tech stuff over it. Going back to what we learned on the first BATMAN show and the SUPERMAN show, though, we knew detail is not necessarily a good thing in animation. We try to keep the level of detail down so that the show is literally easier to animate and easier to keep on model. So I kept going back to simpler designs, and basically after I came up with the concept of him being all in black and his face being all in black, I wanted to get rid of the cape. Even though the cape is really important to Batman, it's a real pain in the butt from the animation standpoint. It gets in the way of the action. The cape looks great if they animate it really, really well, but if they don't do literally full animation on it, it can look kind-of cardboard and kind-of cheesy. I just eliminated the cape and thought, OK, it's futuristic-what if he flies? What if he has jets in his boots instead of this cape? That's where I came up with the idea of the retractable wings. I like this because, on the one hand, it still keeps him kind of true to the Batman look; he's got like big batwings now. At the same lime, it's a completely different look than he had before. The color scheme kind of suggested itself-classic Dracula colors, black and red. That's how that came about.
Mr. Freeze
Source: Toyfare #20B (April 1999)
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Mr. Freeze: "We were going to have an episode where Bruce Wayne opens his freezer, Mr. Freeze's head is in there in a jar, and he just says, 'Someday, Wayne. Someday I will turn your bones to ice. I will...' and Bruce just slams the door. That's what we wanted to do, but we're doing something else."
James Tucker's Villain Concepts
Source: AnimeFantastique #4, Winter 1999
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: For the villains, we didn't want to just use Joker 2000 or Two Face 2000 or Clayface 2000. We wanted to come up with all new villains that somehow echoed the old villains and at the same time were new, and made sense in this more science fictiony type world. James Tucker did about 30 drawings of all these villain types. I saw one drawing and said, 'Wow! What’s that?!'
Early Melanie Walker concept art
Source: Shane Glines
Link: Shane Glines Tweet
Double Debbie
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 4:45-5:00
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "The Dee Dees actually I--if I remember Bruce, you came up with the idea of a villain way back when we were doing the first season of Batman called Double Debbie. And just two twin sisters who complete each other's thoughts and we never used them at the time. We sort of hung onto them."
Dana dumps Terry
Posted: May 3, 2007
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "actually, that was never a part of "rats!", it was a whole nuther episode that didn't get made...it was intended to counter-act the "terry ditches dana to fight crime" trend, (see "splicers" as well as "rats!")....
murakami-san's idea was to throw a bunch of crime-fightin' obstacles in terry's way as he tries to keep his date with dana, but he actually does get there on time at the end...alan burnett wanted to change the story so that terry DOESN'T get there on time, dana dumps him, and terry ends up with max on the rebound....since we couldn't agree on it, we just killed the story dead...."
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 1:05-1:14
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "And Glen kind of came up with, I thought, was a neat little story, and it was a little story, but I felt, out of all the different--You know, however many we were doing that season, we could afford to do one that was kind of offbeat."
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 1:15-1:40
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "Terry's always letting Dana down, and throughout the story, he's gonna meet her, but then he has to go fight crime or do Batman stuff, but it's important that he gets on this date with her by the end of the episode, and I wanted him to succeed in the end. I didn't have much of a story, and I think the structure was weird, but that was the whole point of it. I mean, he just shows up at the date at the end. It wasn't a big Batman moment."
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 1:41-2:21
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Anyhow, so Glen pitched the idea to Alan, and Alan tried to make it work as a story. Glen and I were in Japan and Alan faxed the outline to the story to the hotel, and I'm reading it and I'm going, "Oh, Glen's not gonna like this." And I get to the end and not only does Terry not make the date with Dana, Dana gets so mad at him, she dumps him, and then Terry goes to Max, and, you know, he's pouring his heart out to Max and they end up making out. And I was just, like--I got furious. Not only was Glen gonna be mad but I was furious. Like...I immediately called Alan back in the States from Japan, and I'm yelling and screaming at him, "You can't do this. If you're not gonna do the story the way Glen was originally gonna write it, then don't even do it!""
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 2:27-2:35
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "You came in dragging the paper next to you and going, "Jeez! What does he want out of this? What does he want? I mean, I'm trying to work with it. But I don't know. It's like...""
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 3:02-3:09
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: "The whole series, the whole life, you know with one girlfriend, one steady. And I just wanted to break that up."
AI Version of Joker
Posted: March 20, 2018
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "Actually Fun Haus was a AI version of Joker I proposed for Batman Beyond when we were developing the show (in a hurry). Inque, Blight and False Face did make it though. Later I brushed it off for b:tbatb when we couldn't use toy man."
Ace was originally a German Shepherd
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Rebirth Part 1" Commentary, 15:00-15:12
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "I remember in the original draft, he was a German Shepherd and I said, 'Nah, he can't be a German Shepherd. He's gotta be a big ugly Hound of the Baskervilles dog.' So I think later on we said he's a Rottweiler-Great Dane mix."
Terry had his own Batcave
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Rebirth Part 1" Commentary, 19:52-20:00
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "Could the little brother be part of the adventure? Could he be in on the secret? Do you think he could have like a secret exit through the closet to the dumpster and the motorcycle could be there?"
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Rebirth Part 1" Commentary, 20:23-20:27
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Oh, that's right. We were gonna have a separate Batcave but we never did."
Barbara Gordon
Posted: December 12, 2012
Link: Fatman on Batman #20 (dead link), 47:39-47:44
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: At one point, I think we were gonna talk about maybe putting a brace on her legs and never really explaining what happened.
Huntress
Link: Purple Planet Media
Who: Bruce Timm
When: September 17, 1999
Quote: I don't think so, for a number of reasons. The only established DC hero that will probably show up in Batman Beyond is the Huntress, just because we think she's an interesting character and we kind of want to do another female crime-fighter along the lines of Batgirl but we didn't want to just do Batgirl Beyond. We thought the Huntress would be a natural. We're actually working on a story for that right now, so the Huntress will probably be on Batman Beyond, but other than that--you'll notice that we did a lot of superhero team-ups on Superman and not very many on Batman?
Jokerz Leader was recast with Bruce Timm as the voice
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete First Season "Rebirth Part 1" Commentary, 12:56-13:12
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "What had happened was the original actor, I don't even remember his name, who played the Joker--the lead Joker, we just weren't happy with him for some reason and I was at the recording, 'Oh, he should sound like this.' And Alan was there who said, 'You should do it.' And so reluctantly, I did it."
Link: Purple Planet Media
Who: Bruce Timm
When: September 17, 1999
Quote: Kind of by default, I became the Jokerz leader, from the pilot. We had an actor cast who wasn't manic enough, so I just kind of stepped in and did it. Everyone said "Oh yeah, that's pretty good, we'll just keep you," and I went, "Oh, okay." So by default I'm now the leader of the Jokerz.
Derek Powers and Blight weren't one person originally
Source: AnimeFantastique #4, Winter 1999
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Blight's name was coined by storyboard artist James Tucker. "I don't think it actually looked like what Blight eventually looked like," said Timm, "but we liked the name. It must have been Alan who came up with the idea of turning Derek Powers into Blight. Then for the look, it was based on the idea of Dr. Phosphorus, a mad scientist guy who had a glowing, see-through skin. We felt that would be a neat look, and it kind of ties in with the Batman mythos in a strange way.
Terrific Trio were straight up villains
Source: AnimeFantastique #4, Winter 1999
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: At one of our villain sessions where we sat around and talked about what kind of new villains we wanted for the series, we toyed with the idea...of turning some heroes into villains, Just round robining and throwing ideas back and forth. We came up with the idea of doing an evil version of a group like the Fantastic Four. Our first idea was that they weren't going to be just tragic, they would be blatantly evil. Working publicly for good, but behind-the-scenes stealing and stuff like that. That storyline didn't pan out, and it evolved into the story that made it onto the screen.
Line change for George Lazenby in Deadman's Hand
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 44:24-45:02
Posted: May 25, 2023
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: If you watch the episode with the Royal Flush Gang, there's a scene where Ten is supposed to be deactivating some-undoing a lock for them to get in through the skylight and in the script it just said-he just said something like 'take your time, take it easy, take your time you'll get it' and then Bruce went 'No, I have a rewrite!' in the record and he writes down 'we have all the time in the world' and he read it and laughed and he's like 'oh, I can do this' and we all had chills when he said it.
Spellbinder was described as a magician
Source: AnimeFantastique #4, Winter 1999
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We got an outline from our staff writer Robert Goodman describing this character and his powers. In the script he was described as being dressed like an old magician with a top hat and cape and everything, and I thought that didn't work. Glen and I spent the better part of a day just throwing ideas back and forth and sketching out ideas for his look. We settled on a swirly design on his face, and that became his whole motif. It became a very Steve Ditko-y kind of thing. The weird coda of the story is that the very next day, one of our artists brought in this comic from the '60s that had Spellbinder in it. We didn't realize he was from the comics, and he showed us a drawing of him, and it was exactly what we drew, even the same color scheme. It was so weird. It was like we invented the wheel without even knowing it. Strangely enough, we'd done the same thing with Phantasm in the movie.
Curare was a Love Interest
Posted: February 17, 2019
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "Curare was not initially supposed to be hideous but I didn't know that when I did the board. Glen Murakami actually wanted her to be Terry's Elektra and a romantic interest down the road. Oops!"
Howard Groote was recast with Max Brooks over the phone
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Second Season "The Eggbaby" Commentary, 5:38-5:47
Who: Andrea Romano
Quote: "We recorded another actor. I truly don't remember who it was playing this role and we just weren't happy with the performance so we auditioned Max over the phone which is a typical way of getting voice talent."
The Last Resort
Posted: March 14, 2006
Link: World's Finest
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Quote: "The Last Resort" was conceived in response to the Columbine Massacre, and it turned out to be the only script the network didn't want to do. It was originally supposed to be a gritty prison story, but a lot of the grit was lost when we made the revisions we had to make in order to get the network to approve the episode.
Slim's weapon in Eggbaby
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Second Season "The Eggbaby" Commentary, 18:59-19:10
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "That guy's weapon was actually supposed to be a leaf blower. In the script, it was described as a leaf blower, so I thought, 'That's not very...dangerous.' I'll make it a sand blaster."
A robot thief story became Zeta
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Second Season Inside Batman, 9:29-9:51
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "I remember a robot story about a robot who was a thief who kept stealing things because it wanted to feel the same feeling - 'By taking this, I should be experiencing the delight a human has in this.' And I really liked that idea. But I just couldn't do anything with it at the time so I gave it to Bob Goodman. And he looked at it and goes, 'I can't make anything out of this.' He changed it and worked it around. That eventually became the Zeta episode."
Cut Ace in the Hole Scene
Posted: August 19, 2019
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "There was a pretty vicious fight storyboarded to show what Ace had gone through before meeting Bruce but had to cut all of it because of network standards but I think the episode works fine without it."
Karros and Richard Armacost in "Big Time"
Posted: October 7, 2021
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "Fun fact: Originally, Robert Patrick was going to voice the villain,Karros, and William Macy was to voice BigTime's shady business man/cell mate but,"thinking outside of the box", we had them swap roles because Macy's voice fit my design of Karros better."
Superman Beyond Ideas then The Call
Source: Comicology #1, page 25
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "All the way through the series," he said, "we kept talking about doing a Superman episode. We toyed around with a bunch of different scenarios, and the problem with Superman is that he's such a big icon; whatever we decided to do with him, we felt that it should be something special. So we got sidetracked, moved onto other things, and towards the end of [production on] the series, there turned out to be a script shortage -- a couple of scripts that [the writing staff] had been working on just went south for one reason or another, just weren't panning out, and so Paul whipped up this Justice League episode."
Why no Wonder Woman in The Call
Source: Comicology #1, page 24
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Superman. Big Barda. We couldn't use Wonder Woman at the time (for licensing reasons).
Posted: August 7, 2000
Link: Comics Continuum
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: There's kind of a licensing problem. If we wanted to do Wonder Woman as a series, we could do that. If it was a guest-shot, it was a little more problematic. I don't really understand it. It just turned out to be easier all the way around. With Barda being a full-time member of the League (in the comics), we figured Barda's from Apokolips and nearly immortal, too, so let's put her in there and it has a link to the contemporary book. We love Wonder Woman. Bruce did that great design of her, which is now a maquette at the Warner Bros. store. At some point, we'll do Wonder Woman. We just need to fight that battle when we get to it.
Why Terry is recruited in The Call
Posted: February 5, 2005
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: a few months back i happened to be discussing The Swiss Cheese That Is "The Call" with alan burnett (i can't for the life of me remember how it came up), and i asked him, "explain to me again why the starro-controlled-superman recruited terry, with the expressed intent of finding out who the traitor was, when he HIMSELF was said traitor?" alan told me with an absolute straight face that it was superman himself (NOT starro) subconsciously fighting starro's influence...i looked at him for a long moment...he grinned, shrugged and said, "yeah, i know...pretty lame, huh?"
Bruce Timm suggested an invalid old Lois in The Call
Posted: January 18, 2005
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: kinda the same deal for lois and supes....true, he's not quite immortal, but 50 years from now, the only signs of aging are a bit of grey at his temples, and he sounds suspiciously like chris mcdonald.....when we were plotting "the call", i actually suggested showing still-young supes caring for his 80-yr old invalid wife lois...i dunno, i thought it was kinda sweet, but murakami, burnett and dini just about "EEEEWWWWWWW!"ed me out of the room....
Ten Becomes Queen
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3, 3:27-3:29, 3:30-3:42
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "I had a different idea for Ten, too./When we see the Royal Flush Gang again, she's now Queen...so Terry grabs Ten, saying, "I thought you were gonna give this up." and then takes off the mask and it's not her. That's the way I thought we could escalate the Royal Glush Gang."
Ra's al Ghul's Voice
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3 Out of the Past, 2:41-2:51
Who: James Tucker
Quote: "We cut it, but you actually had come up with a rationale or some sort of scientific...Remember there was a line that said, "I had my vocal cords grafted." or --"
Unused Stories loosely reused by Hilary Bader in comic book series
Link: Batman: The Animated Podcast #35 - Mean Seasons, 45:26-45:59 mark
Who: Rich Fogel
Posted: July 3, 2016
Quote: It was during Batman or Batman Beyond, anyway, she was writing comic books on the Batman Beyond, she wrote the first run of Batman Beyond comic books and she used some of the stories that we didn't use in the series to sort of springboard off of. And so she asked me a couple of stories that didn't get used if 'I could use those' and if she could use those and I said, "Sure." And so I got like comic book credits I wouldn't have had otherwise which was kind of nice.
Note: Rich Fogel is credited for story in Batman Beyond Volume 2 #8 (June 2000) "Vendetta" and #9 (July 2000) "The Last of her Kind".
Batman Beyond sequel series on Mars
Summary: As S:TAS and TNBA winded down, Kids WB! asked if they could do a Batman trains the Junior Justice League. Batman Beyond was greenlit instead. As Batman Beyond winded down, Kids WB! asked again about Batman trains Junior Justice League. Alan Burnett and Hilary Bader come up with Batman Beyond sequel pitch that took place on Mars. Bruce Timm, Glen Murakami, Alan Burnett, and Adam Warren came up with Batman Anime pitch. Then a Justice League/Teen Titans hybrid pitch with a short reel was made (on Justice League Season 1 DVD set). Bruce Timm talks to Mike Lazzo on the phone, he greenlights Justice League without looking at the reel.
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: when BB was originally coming to a close, kids wb asked us if we had any ideas on how to do a more "kid-friendly" batman show...alan burnett and hilary bader worked up a (i kid you not) "batman on mars" pitch, which was basically just a continuation of BB...terry moves to a colony on a terraformed mars and has kid-friendly adventures there...i was really relieved when kwb showed no interest in it, as i just HATED the concept....
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 12, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: it wasn't the "kiddie" aspect of BM ON MARS that bugged me....it was that it seemed to me to be just a random change of locale for no very good reason (leave alone the fact that i had serious qualms about mars being completely terraformed just 50 years from now)....it was both too much of a change in the BB paradigm, and also not ENOUGH of one, if that makes any sense... i couldn't see any appeal in it...if the mars colony architecture were still in the "frontier" stage (think ALIENS' pre-fab shack town), it just sounded drab and depressing....what kind of crime would terry fight there? rousting drunken settlers on saturday night? and if the colony were much more civilised and advanced, what makes it all that different from BBEYOND's neo-gotham? seemed kinda pontless to me... it felt to me like a general degradation of the BB concept with "desperation" scrawled over it...i would have preferred going the BATMANANIME route, if only because it would have been a whole new fresh start, with barely a tangential connection to the other series...yes, more than likely, it wouldn't have been a very good show...and it CERTAINLY wasn't aimed at our old audience, we knew they'd pretty much reject it out of hand...but remember, we were honestly trying to do a genuinely "kid-friendly" batman show, aimed squarely at the 6-11 year old demo, we were trying (for once) to create a show that didn't skew older....(unlike BBEYOND itself, which was SUPPOSED to be more "kid-friendly", but we knew from the get-go that it wasn't...)
Batman Anime
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Source: Retro-Vision CD Rom Magazine #1, James Tucker circa 2004-05?
Quote: Development was done on a Batman Anime show that kind of reflects on what Teen Titans is now. And we developed a more youth-oriented version of Justice League. Thank God both of those projects never happened, although there's a tape out there of a very kiddified Justice League that included Robin and a teenage female version of Cyborg. It was our attempt to try and do something that wasn't as edgy or as dark as we would normally want to go. At the time, Kids' WB totally passed on the Batman Anime idea and we actually did test animation for the Justice League idea."
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: when we first started talking about JL, the powers that be felt that it should be pitched to kids wb first...knowing their preference for younger heroes, i was hesitant to go there, but we prepared test animation of the "female cyborg" character (glen's idea, if i remember right), and impulse too, i believe, just in case...the robin footage was just just clips from TNBA, i think.... anyhow, kids wb (thankfully, in retrospect!) passed on the BATMAN ANIME pitch...it was a VERY kiddified batman concept, but still not "pokemonized" enough for them....after the pitch meeting, the powers that be realized kids wb wasn't likely to go for JL, even with a couple of young ringers in the line-up, and we were given the go-ahead to pitch it to cartoon network...we cut the "jr. jl" clips from the presentation reel, and subsequently forgot all about 'em.... i have no idea where that footage is now, and it's probably no great loss.... as it turned out, cn never even saw the JL presentation reel, but bought the series just based on a single phone call....
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: the "batman training the jr. jl" thing was just something that was verbally batted around five minutes before we came up with the BATMAN BEYOND concept in jaimie kellner's office..."batman anime" was a completely seperate concept developed by glen, alan, adam warren and me several years later...the "jl/titans hybrid" was a gimmick that we thought might make the jl concept more palatable to kids wb...the idea being that it would be a pretty straight "jl" show, but with a group of younger heroes also on the team, learning the ropes...sounds VERY "superfriends", don't it? and yes, batman would have been on the show...
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: so glen and i were mulling it over and took it as a challenge: was there a way to give kwb EXACTLY the kind of show they wanted, but still make it something that was freaky enough to be fun in its own right? we thought, "okay, rather than doing something that's just a 'baby-step' away from our previous shows, still tied to our direct continuity, etc, what if we do something that's REALLY whacked, that takes place SO far in the future, it's barely related to what we've done before"....("plausible deniability" played a factor here too)... "pokemon" was still super-hot at kwb, so we tried to combine elements of it and other "collect 'em all" anime shows ("cardcaptors", "digimon", etc) with traditional batman elements....we brought adam warren in to help develop it with us (he ended up doing most of the art for the pitch, too)...it took place hundreds of years from now, and revolved around the adventures of an all-new batman, robin and batgirl, all in their early teens....there was some kind of nano-disaster that re-wrote reality, re-creating the old bat-villain archetypes as nano-based monsters....the kids had a butler a.i. named "alpha-red" (that one was just so tacky, we HAD to do it) who also powered all their vehicles...kenner had been urging us for years to put a talking vehicle a la "knight rider" in one of our shows (they originally wanted us to put a "jor-el" voice chip in clark kent's sportscar in STAS, so he could converse with clark, brando-style), so the talking "alpha-red/batmobile" was a no-brainer....do i have to go on? anyhow, kenner LOVED the whole pitch, wanted to get started on the toy-line "yesterday!", but kwb thought it was still too "traditional", it wasn't "out of the box" enough..."batman's still too re-active...does he have to fight crime?" i pointed out that he would be fighting MONSTERS, not criminals.... "what if, instead of three kids who fight monsters, what if the three kids COMPETE about who gets to BE batman?" after a long moment of stunned silence i pointed out that if batman's not protecting the weak from the bad guys, be they monsters or criminals or aliens or what-have-you, then fundamentally, it just isn't "batman" AT ALL.....they allowed that there was probably some truth to that, asked us to give the whole thing some more thought, and invited us to come back and re-pitch it then.....the next day, i called mike lazzo at cn, pitched jl, he said "hell yeah!" and that was the end of BATMANIME...
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 12, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: it felt to me like a general degradation of the BB concept with "desperation" scrawled over it...i would have preferred going the BATMANANIME route, if only because it would have been a whole new fresh start, with barely a tangential connection to the other series...yes, more than likely, it wouldn't have been a very good show...and it CERTAINLY wasn't aimed at our old audience, we knew they'd pretty much reject it out of hand...but remember, we were honestly trying to do a genuinely "kid-friendly" batman show, aimed squarely at the 6-11 year old demo, we were trying (for once) to create a show that didn't skew older....(unlike BBEYOND itself, which was SUPPOSED to be more "kid-friendly", but we knew from the get-go that it wasn't...)
Link: Fatman on Batman #7 "Bruce Timm: The Batman of Batman Artists" (dead link), 51:18-53:58
Posted: July 12, 2012
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: And as it happened, we were developing another show at the same time. We pitched the other show first, Kids WB totally pissed all over it. They didn't want it. And, um, the Consumer Product People were at that meeting, too, and they were really gung ho about it --this show--which I won't tell you about cause you would hate it. No, no, no. Okay, I'll just say this. No, I can't say. It's-no, it was horrible. All right. I'm totally gonna derail this cause you're gonna hear about this now. It was Batman mashed up with like Power Rangers. No, it was like an anime take on Batman. Hey! I didn't make the show. It was gonna-we actually had Adam Warren, the guy from Empowered and Dirty Pair, he actually worked on it with us and it was way more futuristic even than Batman Beyond. It took place like hundreds of years from now in the future. And it was like a descendant of Bruce Wayne and-and all these-all the Batman archetypes, the villains, and Alfred, and everybody they had analogues in this futuristic world but it was all gonna be done in super slick anime and we knew it was really crass and commercial and horrifying. But at the same time we all thought, "Was this could be really crazy fun.' We actually-Alfred was a robot named Alpha-Red. Okay. It was awesome. The toy company loved it. DC loved it. We had this big push and Consumer Products said, "No, no, you have to, Kids WB has to be your first shot at it, they have a bigger audience than Cartoon Network, who was our second choice. So we pitched the Batman Anime show to Kids WB and they hated it because it wasn't Pokemon enough. Dude, it was literally, we gave them the whole pitch and they go, "Well, we like how different this is. We like how you're thinking outside the box but we think you can go a little further with it. So instead of it being these kids who are Batman, Batgirl, and Robin, what if it was three kids competing to be Batman?" No, it's like Pokemon. Yeah. I guess. I don't know. We were like, "We'll think about it." So as we're walking out of that meeting, the Consumer Products guy goes over to me and says, "We're not selling the Justice League to these idiots, we're going to Kids W--Cartoon Network.
Summary: Bruce Timm admits before Batman Beyond there was going to be a Batman series that would have been "Batman meets Power Rangers" that would have had a heavy anime influence. Hundreds of years in the future, an ancestor of Wayne, Consumer Products took Bruce aside and suggested pitching to Cartoon Network
Link: Anime Superhero
Summary: Timm also talked about this elsewhere and said it would've had a teen version of the Justice League. Alpha-Red, butler robot. An anime set in the far future with three kids who become the future equivalents of Batman, Robin and Batgirl. Timm was happy about the idea but Kid's WB rejected it and asked if it could instead be about kids competing to be the next Batman, since they wanted the tone to be more like Pokemon.
Link: AnimeSuperhero Forum post
Posted: August 26, 2020
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Few years later, when Glen Murakami, Adam Warren and I were developing our intentionally cheesy 'BATMANIME' project, Glen and I realized that that series would be EXACTLY the right fit for such a crazytown concept. Alas..."
Link: Glen Murakami instagram
Posted: August 13, 2021
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "After Batman Beyond and before Justice League - Bruce Timm, Adam Warren and I developed a Batman series that never sold..."
Link: Adam Warren Tweet
Posted: August 19, 2021
Who: Adam Warren
Quote: "Unsuccessfully pitched 21 years ago this summer, if memory serves. Golly!"
Justice League Kids
Source: Comicology magazine, Bruce Timm, before Batman Beyond
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Quote: That was something that was pitched to us; we didn't come up with that concept. We had a meeting, like, two years ago now, with Jamie Kellner, who's head of the WB network, and there was some concern that Batman had just been around a little bit too long in its current incarnation, even with the revamped look and everything. The shows did really, reall well ratings-wise, but [the WB execs] kinda felt that we'd been riding that train for a long time, and there was also a concern that the show was skewing a little bit older than they would've liked, because the advertising is aimed at children. So they were just talking about ways of freshening the show and [...one of the potential ideas] was [a] Batman and the junior Justice League, which we didn't like. "He'd be training Aquaman Jr. and Wonder Woman Jr. and...by the time we got to that one, our heads were spinning, and we were thinking, 'We don't want to do any of those. What do we do? We gotta come up with something quick.' And, kind of on the spur of the moment, I said, 'What if we set [a Batman series] in the future?"
Source: Zap2it interview link, after Batman Beyond, Bruce Timm
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Quote: What [the WB network] was really interested in doing was Batman training a bunch of junior superheroes.
Link: Anime Superhero
Source: Paul Dini interview on unknown website
Posted: February 11, 2005
Quote: Everybody wants to see [a straight Justice League adaptation] and we would like to do it, but the suits at the network keep pounding it in that it's the Kids' WB! If we were to do Justice League, all they see is a bunch of adults in suits
Summary: This desire for a "Justice League Kids" show was largely due to corporate thinking, as mentioned by Paul Dini
Source: Retro-Vision CD Rom Magazine #1, James Tucker circa 2004-05?
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Quote: Development was done on a Batman Anime show that kind of reflects on what Teen Titans is now. And we developed a more youth-oriented version of Justice League. Thank God both of those projects never happened, although there's a tape out there of a very kiddified Justice League that included Robin and a teenage female version of Cyborg. It was our attempt to try and do something that wasn't as edgy or as dark as we would normally want to go. At the time, Kids' WB totally passed on the Batman Anime idea and we actually did test animation for the Justice League idea."
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: when we first started talking about JL, the powers that be felt that it should be pitched to kids wb first...knowing their preference for younger heroes, i was hesitant to go there, but we prepared test animation of the "female cyborg" character (glen's idea, if i remember right), and impulse too, i believe, just in case...the robin footage was just just clips from TNBA, i think.... anyhow, kids wb (thankfully, in retrospect!) passed on the BATMAN ANIME pitch...it was a VERY kiddified batman concept, but still not "pokemonized" enough for them....after the pitch meeting, the powers that be realized kids wb wasn't likely to go for JL, even with a couple of young ringers in the line-up, and we were given the go-ahead to pitch it to cartoon network...we cut the "jr. jl" clips from the presentation reel, and subsequently forgot all about 'em.... i have no idea where that footage is now, and it's probably no great loss.... as it turned out, cn never even saw the JL presentation reel, but bought the series just based on a single phone call....
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: June 26, 2012
Summary: stills of footage
Link: Fatman on Batman #7 "Bruce Timm: The Batman of Batman Artists" (dead link), 54:05-55:04
Posted: July 12, 2012
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: So it was funny, because we'd actually animated a pilot for Justice League and we'd actually knowing how much wanted to put kids in it, it was Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern but we also had younger versions of characters like Cyborg. I can't remember who else is in it. So it's-it was almost like Young Justice is now with the older Justice League training the new kids and we animated that and we didn't even show that to Kids WB after that meeting. We said, "Screw that, we're not even gonna bother showing that to them." So I got on the phone with the guy at Cartoon Network who was Head of Programming there and I said, "Hi, we're thinking about doing-", cause I'd met him socially over years, we'd gone outside and had a smoke together all the time-he was always telling me, "Y'know, Bruce, if you ever want to do a show, come give me a call." So I finally give him a call and say, "Hey, Mike, we're talking about doing a-maybe doing a Justice League show..." He goes "Great, how many do you want to do? How many episodes?" I'm like, "Um...26." "Great!"
Source: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Posted: November 28, 2020
Quote: BT left the majority of this pitch to me (in hindsight, as a test to see if I could make it as a coproducer),so I reimagined Cyborg as a girl to add more youth and representation to the team.
The Zeta Project Season 1
Zeta and Agent Lee hunted by Stalker
Link: World's Finest
Posted: August 31, 2005
Who: Joseph Kuhr
Quote: I originally pitched "Taffy Time" as a hunter-hunted story (e.g., Most Dangerous Game) where Zeta and Agent Lee were captured and hunted by a big game hunter for sport on his private reserve. Then Bob Goodman, Rich Fogel and I met and one of them came up with the idea of using the Stalker from Batman Beyond as the villain. Then the network nixed using Stalker and suggested we use Krick, a character Bob had created who was in the show's bible, but whom they hadn't yet used. I was asked to find a "kid friendly" environment in which to set it. I gave them a list of possible locations (abandoned toy factory, futuristic amusement park, water park, museum, etc ...) and Bob liked my suggestion of the abandoned Koala Candy Factory. Bob suggested saying they had packed up and moved to Canada a few months back. We'd seen a lot of jobs shipped overseas, both in and out of our industry, and I believe this was meant as a sly comment on that phenomenon.
Batman Beyond and Zeta vs. Brain Trust
Link: World's Finest
Posted: August 31, 2005
Who: Joseph Kuhr
Quote: During the first season, before I was on staff, Hilary had pitched a Zeta/Terry McGuinness Batman team-up where the heroes saved some kids from the villains known as the Brain Trust from Batman Beyond. For reasons to which I am not privy, that pitch didn't get approved, but in Season 2, after Hilary had moved on to other things, Bob decided to salvage the Brain Trust part of the story and assigned me to rework it and remove Batman and add a bigger part for Ro. This is because the network was no longer interested in a BB/Zeta crossover since Batman Beyond had already ended, and Bruce Timm and company had already moved on to Justice League.
Absolute Zero was supposed to be Season 1 Finale
Link: Robert Goodman Tweet
Posted: March 19, 2017
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: ...though Absolute Zero was supposed to be the S1 finale, so maybe they just didn't like season finales.
The Zeta Project Season 2
Wrong Morph is set after Cabin Pressure
Link: Robert Goodman Tweet
Posted: March 19, 2017
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: Wrong Morph after Cabin Pressure is the intended order; never knew why network aired it the way they did...
Hologram Man
Link: World's Finest
Posted: August 31, 2005
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: In the midst of our valiant efforts came a mandate from the network: If we wanted any hope of getting a renewal, we were to end the season on a cliffhanger. We were told what the cliffhanger had to be - we had to appear to kill Dr. Selig. This was not negotiable. The hand belonged to Andrea Donoso, Selig's assistant. She's the synthoid, not him; and she was charged with the solitary job of protecting him, keeping him alive. He was interested in cryogenically freezing living tissue, without damaging it. He was interested in the regenerative properties of starfish. Self-regenerating cyborgs, who can heal themselves. Synthoids made at least in part of living flesh, that's what you saw being made in the lab at the Knossos (Note: Goodman clarifies that Andrea Donoso herself was a prototype, who received upgrades as they became available). I also knew that if we did come back, the network wanted to take the show in directions I didn't want to go. So even personally, I was wondering if it wouldn't be best to let the curtain go down right then and there.
Did Bennett Hear Selig?
Link: World's Finest
Posted: August 31, 2005
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: Okay, I know if Bennet believes Selig or not.
Why the Series Ended
Link: Watchtower Database, 49:30-49:50, 51:30-51:45, 52:03-52:05
Posted: October 30, 2020 (originally September 2020)
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: The real reason the Zeta Project ended was I quit. And I quit because the network made it impossible to do the show I wanted to do. They were continually pushing over the course of the show and you can see it hurting the show more and more over time. To keep it kid friendly, their version of kid friendly was no fighting, no bad guys, they had it in their heads that kids were scared by fighting on television and didn't want to see it. That kids didn't like bad guys...It had reached a point on Zeta Project between basically by the end of season 2 where I couldn't get any stories through the network except where the bad guy is weather. That's why hurricane. Flood...And the network had gotten to the point where they were dictating.
The Zeta Project Season 3 and Season 4
Was Planned to be 4 Seasons
Link: Watchtower Database, 14:50-14:53
Posted: October 30, 2020 (originally September 2020)
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: Doing what was planned to be a four year arc. We only got to do two of it.
Ro's Mother
Link: World's Finest
Posted: August 31, 2005
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: Zee was searching for his father. If we'd gotten to develop it further, Ro's search was going to focus on her mother.
Infiltration Unit 8
Link: Watchtower Database, 38:05-38:08
Posted: October 30, 2020 (originally September 2020)
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: I had plans for an IU8.
What Kids WB! wanted for Season 3
Link: Watchtower Database, 52:17-52:43, 52:52-53:12
Posted: October 30, 2020 (originally September 2020)
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: The network hated the whole Dr. Selig story from the beginning. They hated the Z--they hated that point, the serialized plot they originally bought. They had basically told us we were doing season three, it was going to be 'resolve all that.' It's why the network wanted me to kill Dr. Selig. And I wanted to leave a cliffhanger he was still alive. They actually forced me to have it seemed to...Their pitch was: we come back, Dr. Selig is dead, that's over and basically turn the show into Scooby-Doo in that Ro and Zee are understood to be good guys solving crimes. And I-I-I said you are welcome to keep doing that. I'm not their guy anymore.
Kids WB! wanted Ro to be revealed to be a Robot
Link: Robert Goodman Tweet
Posted: May 11, 2013
Who: Robert Goodman
Quote: that was one of the twists the network wanted.
Justice League
Was off-limits for years due to Live Action Pilot
Link: Purple Planet Media
Who: Bruce Timm
When: September 17, 1999
Quote: There's a (number of) reasons we're not going to do The Justice League. There's a real big legal reason, actually. For a while there, we weren't even allowed to even think about it, because of that live-action pilot they made a could of years ago. I'm not sure, that may even still be in effect, so there may be a legal reason why we can't do it. But just from a creative standpoint, it's really hard to have that many characters in a 22-minute show and give them all something interesting to do. We found that even on Batman, that it was hard to have Robin, and Batgirl, and Batman all in the same episode. Just staging a fight scene is really difficult, to keep them all busy. You can't ever have Robin just get knocked out, because then you think, oh, why wasn't Batgirl there to help him?
Uniform Costumes
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 73
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: For one mad instant, I toyed with the idea of giving the JL a 'uniform' costume design...I got as far as doing Batman and GL designs before coming to my senses, realizing it would be a horrible, horrible mistake...I did resurrect the concept for the 'evil, alt-universe JL' story, 'A Better World,' a few years later.
Justice League: The First Mission promo reel for Kids WB!
Source: Justice League: The Complete First Season DVD
Summary: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, J'onn J'onzz, Robin/Tim Drake, Impulse, and a teen girl hero created for the reel inspired by Cyborg fight Solomon Grundy, Cheetah, a Splicer from Batman Beyond, Star Sapphire, Mongul, Chemo, and Lex Luthor.
Justice League: The First Mission promo reel for Cartoon Network
Source: Justice League: Paradise Lost DVD, Menu Easter Egg
Summary: Reused animation from Batman Beyond's "Golem" and "The Call, Part 1" and Superman: The Animated Series' "Speed Demons" and "World's Finest, Part 2." as well as old models of Superman, Batman, and Flash are used while rough models for Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, J'onn J'onzz and Hawkgirl appear as they deal with Lex Luthor in the Golem, a robot, Mongul, Chemo, and Sinestro.
Gregory Harrison auditioned for Superman
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 18, 2021
Quote: Further down the road, when we needed to find a new Superman for JUSTICE LEAGUE, James Tucker and I thought we'd found our guy : Gregory Harrison (FALCON CREST, LOGAN'S RUN). At the audition, he sounded WAY different than Tim Daly, his voice much deeper, more 'macho', kinda like Budd Colyer from the Fleischer and Filmation cartoons - which was kinda what James and I were looking for. We'd heard lots of actors with deep 'manly' voices at the auditions but they all tended to sound like radio announcers. Harrison had the pipes but was also a really good actor, seemed strong and dynamic but very natural. He exited the booth, we told him he sounded awesome, and he seemed very pleased. Andrea asked him what else he had going on and he excitedly told us he was embarking on a tour of some stage show. Uh-oh. And just how LONG was this tour supposed to last...? 'Oh, I'm gonna be gone all summer' he said cheerily. We were supposed to start recording the show in about two weeks.
Crap! Back to the drawing board. And besides Harrison, we hadn't heard ANYONE we liked.
Fortunately, George Newbern was right around the corner. He might even have auditioned later that same day. We liked him right away, his audition was really solid and we recognized that he had that same 'Nice Guy Superman' quality that Tim had (and Christopher Reeve too, for that matter). Even though he wasn't the type we'd specifically been searching for, we knew he would be a good fit continuity-wise with Tim's version from the previous show, without sounding like an exact copy.
Dennis Haysbert auditioned for Green Lantern John Stewart
Link: Justice League Revisited Episode 2, 16:53-17:00
Who: Phil LaMarr
Posted: October 17, 2023
Quote: Because the person who auditioned ahead of me was Dennis Haysbert.
Getting Permission to use Wonder Woman
Link: Justice League Revisited episode 1, 16:28-16:41
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: October 3, 2023
Quote: Wonder Woman was the holdout because the Marston estate was--there was a certain kind of deal that DC had to have to pay for her. We almost had Big Barda. It was like we really needed Wonder Woman.
Poison Ivy
Source: Starlog #294 (January 2002)
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The writers have pitched Poison Ivy stories, but I don't want to do them yet. I want to try something different for as long as we can, before we go back to the Batman well.
Captain Marvel in Hereafter
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: May 15, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: that's exactly right, it was just a vague notion that got shot down before we could fully explore it....chances are, that part of "hereafter" would have been played much "straighter" than the deliberately off-kilter lobo version... but actually, i really like how lobo throws a jarring left-turn/ plot-twist/monkey-wrench into the story....in retrospect, capt. marvel seems kinda obvious and ho-hum in the context of a "death of superman" story.... also, however that story would have turned out with capt. marvel in it, it's very likely that we would have "shot our marvel wad", and as a result, "clash" would probably never have come about, at all....so, once again, dc said "no, you can't do that" and we ended up better off all around....funny how that always seems to happen....
Poison Ivy
Source: Starlog
Link: Watchtower website
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The writers have pitched Poison Ivy stories, but I don't want to do them yet. I want to try something different for as long as we can, before we go back to the Batman well.
Kurt Busiek
Link: Ask the Maestro thread
Who: Kurt Busiek
Posted: January 27, 2006
Quote: Question "I have a question for the Maestro -- was Mr. Busiek ever considered by the JLU production team to write an episode?" Answer: Yes. Answer: [Kurt Busiek stepped in and also answered] They were even interested in one of my pitches -- but I just didn't have the time or energy to follow up.
Jeph Loeb
Link: World's Finest Bruce Timm Updates on JL's Second Season
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: June 6, 2002
Quote: Jeph [Loeb] MAY write something for us, but he's pretty swamped at the moment.
Firestorm
Link: Ask the Maestro thread
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: July 7, 2006
Question: "And Firestorm was forbidden by DC, or just didn't make it into an episode?" Answer: We just never came up with a good script for him
Swamp Thing, Tefe, Animal Man, Black Lightning, Phantom Stranger, Spectre, Blue Beetle
Link: Watchtower website
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Answer: [For example], I'd love to use Swamp Thing but he's Vertigo. We were talking about doing Tefe [Swamp Thing's daughter] at one point, but we were told Vertigo was off-limits. [...] We don't have the rights to Animal Man [and] Black Lightning isn't available to us. [...] I was going to use the Phantom Stranger in an episode, but we couldn't get the rights. It was probably a Vertigo thing [...and] I'd love to do the Spectre, but I think we got a no-go on him early on, so I never bothered to try and come up with something for him. Maybe someday [...Finally, with Blue Beetle] we were told it was a potential issue with the radio show rights owners. It just wasn't worth opening the can of worms.
Spectre
Link: Delphi Forums, Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: November 1, 2005 4:51 am
Question: "which character that DC wouldnt allow you to use in JLU would you have wanted to use the most?" Answer: I did always want to do a Spectre episode, but I never came up with anything that excited the rest of the team enough.
Mr. Mxyzptlk
Source: Superman: The Animated Series Volume Two "Mxyzpixilated" Video Commentary, 17:44-17:53
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "We actually toyed with--on Justice League--bringing him back. And we just never came up with story we felt was worth doing."
Starro
Source: Batman Beyond The Complete Third Season Inside Batman Beyond Season 3 The Call Part 2, 3:49-3:55
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Yeah, I think Starro did come up in conversations several times while we were working on Justice League, but, you know, I was never a huge Starro fan anyway."
All-O Squad
Link: World's Finest
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: December 4, 2001
Quote: For a split-second we considered pitting the JL against the All-O Squad--Amazo,Despero, Starro, Chemo and Bizarro--but decided that was too hokey even for US...
Dr. Light Premise was Pitched
Link: Justice League Revisited "Metamorphosis" with Writer Len Uhley, 16:03-16:11
Who: Len Uhley
Posted: April 16, 2024
Quote: One was a very dark one with Dr. Light who's a major baddie in the Green Lantern world.
Secret Origins Part One
Link: World's Finest
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: December 4, 2001
Quote: Originally, in part one of "Secret Origins", General Wells' line, "We can't entrust the world's security to one man" ended with "...especially HIM!" We felt that anyone who hadn't seen "Legacy" would be confused, wondering, "Well, why NOT him? Why does this guy hate Superman so much?" As it is now, it works both ways: either Wells is just being a practical military tactician, or he doesn't trust the guy who almost conquered the world for Darkseid. Similarly, Superman's line, "I've worked long and hard to earn your trust" has different meanings to long-time fans and "newbie" audiences. We're planning on bringing Darkseid back for season two, so we'll more than likely deal with some of those "Legacy" issues at that time.
J'onn's Super Dense ability
Who: Rich Fogel
Source: Watchtower Database "ZETA vs BATMAN and How Warner Bros. Almost Killed JUSTICE LEAGUE (Writer Rich Fogel)" 10:15-10:29
Quote: But he can go in the other direction, as well, which is to make himself super dense. That blue aura was an attempt to come up with a visual language of him becoming super dense. He becomes so dense, he bends the light around him.
Guardian of the Universe was recast and Brian George was hired
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 17, 2021
Quote: The lead Guardian played by Brian George in IN BLACKEST NIGHT was originally played by another actor, someone I'd admired since I was a teenager. Unfortunately, the years hadn't treated him well, and he was just too weak and frail.
Batman hung Deadshot over a building in The Enemy Below
Link: Justice League Revisited, 19:35-19:41
Who: Kevin Hopps
Posted: November 14, 2023
Quote: I think I had Batman grab Deadshot hang him over the building, I don't remember. I might be wrong.
Batman told Deadshot "I know where you live, Floyd" in The Enemy Below
Source: Kevin Conroy at a convention answered a fan question
Who: Kevin Conroy
Posted: Unknown
Summary: During recording the scene, Kevin Conroy whispered, "I know where you live, Floyd."
Wonder Woman was chained, too, with Aquaman in The Enemy Below
Link: Justice League Revisited, 16:52-17:34
Who: Kevin Hopps
Posted: November 14, 2023
Quote: In the first version I had Aquaman is chained underwater and so is Wonder Woman. So in that version that I had, I felt like oh well Aquaman has to make a big choice. He's not going to drown but he knows Wonder Woman will so he makes the sacrifice to cut off his hand to save Wonder Woman. Which I still like because that's a real choice. He wasn't going to die, he didn't need to save her, but he did and that would tell you something about his character.
Orm or Ocean Master in The Enemy Below
Source: Justice League: Justice on Trial, The Enemy Below Part 2 Episode Introduction, 00:23-00:48
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We toyed with the idea of actually turning him into Ocean Master at a certain point. It ultimately came down to a visual, we tried designing his character a number of ways and the Ocean Master design... we just hit a brick wall with that. We couldn't figure out a way to make it really interesting and cool so we incorporated a little bit of that fish motif in the helmet he wears when he usurps the throne from Aquaman.
Superman defeated Mongul in War World
Source: Justice League: Paradise Lost, War World Part 2 Episode Introduction, 01:58-02:16
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: When we got to the ending of the story, I think the way the script originally ended was that Superman did finish off Mongul and unfortunately, that left Draaga's story unresolved so we, you know, went back and forth and tried to resolve the two, you know, storylines and this is what we came up with.
Injustice For All
Link: James Tucker Twitter Post
Posted: September 15, 2021
Quote: I remember when we were breaking this script and were supposedly trying to lean into the camp of it. All my script notes to do so were rejected (but later got used to full effect in BTBATB when I was in charge!)
The Brave and The Bold
Link: Justice League Revisited, The Brave and the Bold with Rich Fogel, 9:12-11:29
Posted: February 20, 2024
Quote: I'd like to get a little bit to the background of how those writing credits ended up the way they did. Paul Dini was originally slated to write this one. He was very passionate about it and wanted to do it and he got through the first draft of the outline and then he had to reluctantly drop out of it because he was dealing with carpal tunnel issues and he couldn't write. So he came into my office practically in tears saying "I'm sorry, I can't do it." And at this point, we were behind schedule. We had all sorts of stories in various phases of production and I'm like, "Oh my God, what am I gonna do now?" So Bruce and I sat down and went over the material we had so far. It wasn't working the way we wanted to so we restructured it and beat it out the way we wanted to and I wrote it up so that was the outline but I still didn't have a writer for it. And I asked--all my A-writers were already on assignment for me so I couldn't double dip with them so I asked around and Alan Burnett was working on Static Shock at the time and he said, "I've been working with Dwayne McDuffie and he's really good and he's just finished an assignment for me so if you want to ask him, go ahead." So I said, "Oh, that'd be great." I was familiar with Dwayne's comic book work but I didn't know him. So I called him up, got him on the phone, "Hey, I'm doing Justice League, you want to do this? We got a story for you." He was like, "Yeah. Okay." And I said "Ok, I'll send over the material and if you have any questions." "Ok." And that was it.
Link: Justice League Revisited, The Brave and the Bold with Rich Fogel, 22:20-23:00
Posted: February 20, 2024
Quote: Well, the original working title was "Gorilla Warfare" and we thought that was a little too cute for the room. And then we were looking at the fact this is really a team up episode with Flash and Green Lantern and, of course, when you think of team up, Brave and the Bold is the team up show. Normally, it was Batman but it was the idea you're pairing two heroes up in an unusual adventure and that's what we were keying off of.
Link: Justice League Revisited, The Brave and the Bold with Rich Fogel, 25:19-26:05
Posted: February 20, 2024
Quote: In the original script, we had him zapped and to him in the lab being struck by lightning which is the Flash main thing and we were like that's good but we need to expand on it so we started talking about what we could do in that idea and getting all these weird psychedelic images that came directly from comic book covers into it and from that seed idea of zapped and a little bit of flashback, we extended that into this whole sequence. I think it was boarded before the script was written then was incorporated into the script.
Link: Justice League Revisited, The Brave and the Bold with Rich Fogel, 28:23-28:53
Posted: February 20, 2024
Quote: That was--"don't heckle the supervillain" was Dwayne's. In the outline, it said "Flash razzies Grodd" so we didn't know what the line was gonna be. So when he wrote that in, I was "Oh my God, that's perfect." Yeah.
Justice Society of America in Legends
Source: Justice League Season One "Legends Part 2" Commentary, 00:45-00:53, 02:10-02:29
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote:We'd always wanted to do an episode that was like the classic Justice League and Justice Society crossover stories they used to do in the comics every year./When DC Comics got the outline for this, they said, "Uh, you can't do that to the Justice Society."/That became our alternate possibility, is to change the characters so they're not exactly the Justice Society. You can clearly tell who they're supposed to be but they're not actually the Golden Age Green Lantern. The Golden Age Flash. And the Golden Age villains.
Link: World's Finest
Posted: Decemeber 19, 2001
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: What happened was this: from the very beginning, we intended our "JSA crossover" to be a modern-day spin on those old Gardner Fox Earth II stories...we wanted to use the golden age jsa, rather than the more recent incarnation, to contrast the "old school" superheroes with a more contemporary take on the characters....teaming-up our guys with the current JSA just didn't seem to make much sense, somehow...what we'd end up with would be just a mega-sized Justice League, with twice as many heroes to deal with....now, taking this course with the story meant that we ended up gently (but affectionately!) spoofing the Golden Age guys, with their old-fashioned primary-colored costumes, their roll call, their teen mascot, their too-good-to-be-true personalities, etc....the fun in the story comes from seeing how the Justice League react not only to the the golden age heroes, but also to the wild Golden Age villains and the whole Golden Age-styled world they live in, like an incredibly romanticized version of the late 1940's...all well and good, we thought we were on to something...the script turned out well, exciting, funny, charming, and oddly moving in its own way...
However, DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz had some concerns with the story...he felt the story as written disrespected the JSA, and was overall an inappropriate use of the characters...we pleaded our case, but we could clearly see his point, too...the DC guys have spent a lot of time and effort in revitalizing the JSA recently, to the point here it's now one of their most popular titles....we certainly didn't want it to seem as if we were saying the JSA was a joke...no disrespect was intended on our end--quite the opposite! We wanted the story to be a love letter to the original JSA, and a bittersweet nod to simpler times...Paul saw OUR point and quickly agreed to a compromise: we'd change the names and designs JUST ENOUGH to make them NOT QUITE the JSA, but still get the point across...they're now the superheroes of "Earth Two-and-a-HALF", if you will...kinda similar to what Alan Moore was doing in his "Supreme" run....
We went back and forth on names for our pseudo-jsa...."justice battalion", "justice squadron",etc, before settling on "justice guild" as sounding closest to the original, while making it different enough to keep the folks at DC Comics happy....
It DID give us a few hairy moments, as all this stuff was happening at literally the eleventh hour...we were actually on the phone with the legal department, awaiting clearances on our new JGA characters' names, AT the voice-recording session...we started recording not knowing what some of the characters names were going to be....!
It's funny how things work out...at first, we were still kinda disappointed that we couldn't use the "real" JSA, but we've come to realize that the story actually works BETTER this way...the "GL", "Flash", and "Black Canary" doppelgangers are fairly close to the originals, but the "Wildcat" clone is almost a Batman/Wildcat hybrid, and the "Atom" character has quite a bit of classic Superman in him as well...so, in effect, we're not just spoofing/paying homage to the the JSA, but also to the Fox-era Silver Age JLA, too...sweet!
So, I know there's been a bit of grumbling about DC Comics not letting us "do" the JSA, but you won't hear any complaints from US...the folks at DC have been an absolute JOY to work with...they've given us an ENORMOUS amount of leeway while letting us play with their toys, stepping in only when it looks like we're gonna break 'em....
Link: Comics2Film
Posted: March 19, 2002
Who: Corey Burton
Quote: That's right. All of us weren't sure if we were going to keep the names we had. Though I believe (one character) actually got to keep his original name. There were just so many characters, so many dazzling actors to remember much of the details, except for me thinking, "Boy, I loved it!"
Summary: Corey Burton was cast as Icicle but at the 11th hour, it was changed to Dr. Blizzard.
Link: James Tucker Twitter Post
Posted: April 23, 2020
Summary: Why JSA wasn't used in "Legends" was because DC was strict about killing off certain characters.
Quote: DC was strict in those days about what we could do. They didn’t want the JSA to "die" onscreen but what we ended up with was better. Also they mixed Ray being called Brainwave after a classic jsa villain but we ended up with Brain Ray which is better.
Link: James Tucker Twitter Post
Posted: April 23, 2020
Summary: Confirms the JSA concept art online is FAKE.
Quote: That was a fake fan draw over of footage (but very good) from the show. The JSA were never actually animated. We had to change it to the guild at script stage.
Link: James Tucker Twitter Post
Posted: April 23, 2020
Quote: DC just didn't want the JSA dying on tv because they'd just launched a new version of the team in the comics and they worried it would weaken sales.
Couldn't use Chemo in Metamorphosis
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 1:02:15-1:02:20
Posted: May 25, 2023
Who: Dan Riba
Quote: And then the Metal Men (movie), they were doing it so we couldn't use Chemo for the Metamorpho show.
Rex Mason was a Fixer and a Bad Guy in Metamorphosis
Link: Justice League Revisited "Metamorphosis" with Writer Len Uhley, 17:53-18:10
Who: Len Uhley
Posted: April 16, 2024
Quote: In an early version I think he was more of a fixer and not a very nice fellow but we ended up softening it and making him y'know too mart by half, kind of full of himself fellow.
Metamorpho died in Metamorphosis
Link: Justice League Revisited "Metamorphosis" with Writer Len Uhley, 52:10-52:14
Who: Len Uhley
Posted: April 16, 2024
Quote: In an earlier version of the outline, he died.
Justice Society of America in Season 2
Link: Lamphost Forums, Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Sun September 5, 2010 2:07 pm
Quote: Question "What ideas were you guys throwing around regarding it? I know on the Justice League commentary you mentioned that one idea was having the original seven including Barry Allen. Had you guys thought about a full roster JSA-type episode?" Answer: The original seven idea was to do an entire episode, including credits, as if they had always been the JLA, and at the end, have then=m save the multiverse, and reveal that one of the worlds they saved was "our" Justice League.
Link: Lamphost Forums, Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Mon September 06, 2010 11:46 am
Quote: Question "wow. for which season was that idea originally?" Answer: We were talking about it as early as season 2 of Justice League. Maybe before, I think it was Bruce's idea.
Return of Orm
Source: Justice League Season One "The Enemy Below Part 2" Commentary, 20:19-20:28, 20:33-20:35
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We talked about bringing Orm back. I don't know why we didn't./We talked about it. I did some designs on it.
James Tucker wanted to use Cheetah more
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: June 18, 2004
Quote: well, my co-producer james tucker kept saying we should bring her back, i kept sayin', "no, she's DEAD, she has ceased to be, she is an ex-cheetah", and lo and behold, someone pointed out that she was in the paddy wagon -- all in one piece, apparently still breathing -- at the end of "i4a"...d'oh!
Dwayne McDuffie wrote a Jon Stewart nod
Link: Official Dwayne McDuffie Page Tweet
Posted: June 12, 2018
Quote: Fun tidbit- #DwayneMcDuffie wrote a John Stewart/GL bit that was cut where after seeing space debris floated by through the window he said, "There it is folks. Your moment of zen."
Wonder Woman Redesign
Link: James Tucker instagram reply
Posted: March 4, 2020
Quote: Both BT and I both worked on this design. I elongated her legs to make her more Amazonian and her face but unfortunately gave her cheekbones that didn’t always animate well so I ditched them in season 2 lol
The Bat Embargo
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: March 22, 2021
Quote: The "bat embargo" was overblown by fans. For Justice League it only meant we couldn't use Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul really because they were in Batman Begins. Instead we were forced to introduce Dr.Destiny and Vandal Savage rather than lean on BTAS villains.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: March 22, 2021
Quote: All I remember is we were thinking of using Ra's in a story and were told no. Whether we had the actual story in place or if it evolved once we decided to use Vandal, I don't recall.
Hawkgirl had a bigger focus in Twilight
Who: Rich Fogel
Source: Watchtower Database "ZETA vs BATMAN and How Warner Bros. Almost Killed JUSTICE LEAGUE (Writer Rich Fogel)" 11:38-11:47
Quote: In the outlines and in the early drafts, there was much more focus on Hawkgirl but it really wasn't working because it had to be a Superman show.
More New Gods in Twilight
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 77
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: To make a long story short, he turned in his outline-I still didn't think it worked. We went back and forth on how we thought we could fix it, and there were other structural problems, I thought, that the show had. Rich had put in all this stuff with the New Gods, with Highfather, and I was all for showing them more, because we had never actually done that much with them in Superman. We had done a flashback to the whole "Pact" thing, but Highfather never even spoke. So I thought it was a decent idea to do that, but he had so little screentime over the course of the story and it seemed to be a tangent away from the rest of the story, which was all about Superman and Darkseid, and I thought it was throwing the story out of kilter.
Forever People Helped Evacuate in Twilight Part 2
Source: Justice League Season Two "Twilight Part 2" Commentary, 09:11-09:17
Who: Butch Lukic
Quote: But during the storm sequence, where--they were supposed to be helping the kids out.
Adam Van Wyk boarded more Batman in Twilight Part 2
Source: Justice League Season Two "Twilight Part 2" Commentary, 10:38-10:46
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: When the big fight breaks out in Brainiac's head, he had like this whole big thing with Batman, you know, shielding himself behind a console trying to rig the thing.
Adam Van Wyk boarded a longer Orion vs. Darkseid fight in Twilight Part 2
Source: Justice League Season Two "Twilight Part 2" Commentary, 10:47-10:55
Who: Butch Lukic
Quote: Well, he also had more of Orion and Darkseid which we didn't need because that would have killed your Superman bit with Darkseid.
Adam Van Wyk boarded Lois roasting in Only A Dream
Source: Justice League Season Two "Twilight Part 2" Commentary, 12:48-12:52
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: He had Superman frying her on screen then turning into a burning skeleton.
Vandal Savage put on the crown in Maid of Honor Part 2
Source: Justice League Season Two Disc 3 Special Features (Push Right for JL logo to appear and press Enter)
Summary: When Vandal Savage broadcast his demands, he initially put on the crown first before he got out his list. The crown part was cut out of the final animation.
The ending in Maid of Honor Part 2 was switched around
Link: Official Dwayne McDuffie Page Tweet
Quote: In the #JusticeLeague ep "Maid of Honor" #DwayneMcDuffie originally had the last two scenes switched in the script. #DwayneMcDuffie thought Princess Audrey's chilling last line to Vandal Savage promising to eternally torture him should have been the end of the episode & Batman and Wonder Woman bantering about dancing should have come before.
A Better World started out with Crime Syndicate
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 00:21-00:25
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We originally planned it to be pretty much a straight-up Crime Syndicate story.
Link: Anime Superhero
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: February 10, 2005
Question: fun fact: "a better world" STARTED OUT as a straight-up crime syndicate story, but evolved into something else while we were "breaking" the plot.....
Source: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - Sneak Peek at Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, 3:32-3:37
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Couple of times we had tried to do stories with the Crime Syndicate.
A Better World had Justice Lords replacing League one by one
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 00:42-01:42
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: And as we were plotting the story out we realized this story got a little bit weirder and it became a little bit more about the actual Justice League guys. We realized it would better not make these guys the actual Crime Syndicate. They should actually be our basically guys in an alternate timeline and they went a different way. The thing is about the Crime Syndicate is they're straight up evil. They're not good at all. They're genuinely evil. And it's much more interesting and dramatic to shine a darkness shade on our actual characters so we came with with this storyline. I remember at one point we had all sorts of weird ways to take this story. At one point, we talked about the possibility of the Justice Lords having infiltrated our universe and slowly replaced our guys one by one. And they only found it out halfway through the story.
A Better World might have had a Justice Lords main title sequence
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 1:48-1:49
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We were gonna do a Justice Lords main title, yeah.
Rejected Justice League uniforms used for Justice Lords
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 03:23-03:30, 03:34-03:36
Who: Bruce Timm and James Tucker
Quote: (Bruce Timm) Well, even when we were starting on Justice League, you toyed with the idea of coming up with a uniform look to the Justice League's costumes./(James Tucker) And you brought them out and they worked for this.
The Terror Beyond
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 78
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: So the original story was, at the end of part one, they seemingly defeat the monster, they fly back towards Metropolis, and they get back home and realize that whatever they had done to defeat the monster has unleashed a portal and now there's a full-scale invasion of our dimension from these Lovecraftian beasties. Part two would not have Aquaman in it, but would have Dr. Fate, just to keep our guest-stars down to a minimum per episode. The writers totally did not like the story. They thought the gimmick of it-the fact that it was two seemingly unrelated stories that are connected by a thread in the cliffhanger-they thought it was a little odd. They just could not see the story. So I kind of gave up on that, but then I mentioned, "You know, we're got Aquaman here and Dr. Fate, we've basically got two-thirds of a DC Comics alternate universe version of the Defenders." Little light bulbs started going off over everybody's heads. I said, "All we need now is the DC equivalent of The Hulk." Somebody mentioned Grundy and it all went off from there. It was a weird, fun thing.
Killer Frost's Identity
Link: James Tucker Twitter Post
Posted: October 21, 2020
Quote: "We never discussed which version to use but given there was no Firestorm in DCAU, and all the comic book Killer Frosts are connected to him, I'd say the DCAU is a separate creation."
Wild Cards
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: May 5 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: it was VERY tricky to storyboard....we originally wanted to "play fair" and have ALL the camera angles in joker's telecast be from actual live "on site" cameras (like those first few shots that you mentioned) but it was just too limiting, we needed more "coverage" (variety of camera angles) just to keep the thing moving; we had to start "cheating" the angles pretty quick, and tried to cover it with joker's line about setting up "hundreds of cameras all over vegas", and showing the occasional cameraman "accidentally" being seen in someone else's viewfinder....
yes, boarding it was difficult, and editing it was a NIGHTMARE...just getting joker's down-in-the-corner readout to synch-up with the "in scene" clocks turned out to be way trickier than we thought it would be (we had to call a whole lot of very precise re-takes just for that)...we realized AFTER the ep had been tele-cine'd (i.e. completed) that we'd made a logical error: after the first "fake" bomb blows up, joker's corner countdown was still visible, which prematurely tipped off the audience that there were more bombs...d'oh!...so, we had to go back in, remove the countdown for a few scenes, started it back up when joker says, "there ARE 25 bombs".... also, i hated to do it, but we had to technically break the "real-time" rule during the cliff-hanger, since gl's bomb blows up twice, once at the end of part one, once at the beginning of part two....we actually had to GO BACK in time a few seconds to see the bomb go off from batman's vantage point (fortunately, no one seemed to notice this slight discrepancy)....
also, the animation, for whatever reason, was somewhat soft when we first got it back, the timing was off, etc....the whole thing just kinda LAY there....we probably spent more man-hours in the editing bay on that particular show than any other JL episode...it seemed like practically every single shot needed some kind of trim or "speed-up" or "slow-down" or re-take...also, we felt ace's final psychedelic assault on batman just wasn't weird and unsettling enough, and since we don't have access to after-effects, we just messed around with it on the avid...after some experimentation, we ended up double-exposing a clone of each scene over the original, slightly out-of synch (off by 4 frames, if i remember right), which created a nice jittery strobing "after-image"....pretty effective, i thought...
even the sound mix was tricky...normally, when someone's talking in voice-over on the jl com-links, we put a radio filter "futz" on it, to approximate how the chatter would sound from the receiver's p.o.v....as we were mixing, i realized that since the show was "live", any comlink chatter would have to be picked up from the imaginary "mic" on the person speaking....in other words, joker's film crew wouldn't be picking up "p.o.v."- sounding audio....so, we had to remove the radio futz...there were lots of little things like that all throughout the making of that ep, that just drove us crazy....
Comfort and Joy
Link: Fatman on Batman #21 (dead link), 1:07:53-1:08:12 and 1:08:16-1:08:27
Posted: December 21, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I did do two cards that explain where Wonder Woman and Batman are. One is Wonder Woman sitting, you know, communing with nature because it's a spiritual thing like solstice. The other one is Batman sitting in the Batcave with all these girls around him. So there's Zatanna sitting on his lap and Catwoman's cuddling around the neck. And Talia's pouring him a drink and he's going, "More Bat-Nog, ladies?"/It got cut. I wrote it up and sketched it and put it in with all the index cards and I was flipping through the cards and was showing them to the guys and I was, "How about this?" and they said, "No."
Link: Paul Dini Official Website "Comfort & Joy Notes"
Posted: December 25, 2017
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: another Green Lantern stumbles by.
Summary: A drunk Green Lantern was going to stagger past John and Shayera.
Victor Rivers wasn't original voice of Hro Talek
Link: Anime Superhero post
Posted: January 16, 2021
Quote: "That did happen several times over the years. An actor just wasn't working out - a suitable replacement was right there in the room - during a break, Andrea would discreetly ask them to stay after class - we'd finish recording with the first actor so as not to embarrass them in front of the other actors - and after everyone else had left, we'd record the replacement. That was how Victor Rivers ended up as Hro Talak in "Starcrossed", for instance."
Link: Anime Superhero post
Posted: January 17, 2021
Quote: "What I can say about the Original Hro Talak actor is that it was one of the biggest professional disappointments of my career. I’d been a huge fan of the actor in question for decades. Andrea and I had tried to get him to come play with us for years and years, but his agent was always “Oh no, he wouldn’t be interested” and then, finally, when we were casting “Starcrossed”, we got lucky and booked him to record all three episodes in one massive session, along with the rest of the cast. Andrea and I (and our co-producers and directors) were thrilled. We knew pretty early on while recording the first episode that it wasn’t going to work. He underplayed every single line in a calm, quiet voice, barely above a whisper. Andrea tried every trick in her arsenal to try to inject some energy into his performance, but it just wasn’t happening. So, during the break between episodes, we reluctantly made the decision to finish recording the episodes with him, for appearances sake (SAG rules required us to pay him for all three anyway, whether we actually recorded him or not) and have Victor Rivers re-do the Hro Talak lines after we let everyone else go. (And thank god, Victor was MAGNIFICENT.) To this day, I don’t know if our Original Talak was just nervous because he wasn’t used to voice acting, or if he was just having an “off” day, or what. In retrospect, it’s also entirely possible that we’d simply miscalculated. We wanted Talak to be a strong, commanding, almost “macho” presence, and the actor in question DOES have an extremely powerful presence on film. But looking back, quite a bit of that power is a physical thing — it’s in his look, his body language, his facial acting — he rarely raises his voice. He doesn’t need to. But in animation work, an actor’s voice is the ONLY tool they have to convey personality and a range of emotion. So, for our purposes, it was just an unfortunately bad fit. For years, I didn’t want to mention his name in the context of this story, out of professional courtesy. He sadly passed away about a year and a half ago...and I’m still reluctant. Even though he’s gone now. Like tears in rain."
Justice League's Escape in Starcrossed Part 2 was longer
Source: Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie, Deleted Scenes
Summary: Superman is still weak as the Justice League flies out of the Thanagarian ship and Flash uses his super speed funnel to dampen the rough landing in Metropolis.
J'onn fought a Feathered Serpent in Starcrossed Part 3
Source: Justice League Season Two "Starcrossed Part 3" Commentary, 07:25-07:36, 07:31-07:49
Who: Butch Lukic and Bruce Timm
Quote: (Butch Lukic) I remember we also had J'onn fighting a giant snake in this sequence that got cut cut./(Bruce Timm) In Bob Smith's original storyboard. Well, it was scripted, too. We had him fighting this whole feathered serpent but we just didn't have time for it so it neded up on the cutting room floor.
Note: The deleted storyboard can be seen third in order in the Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie, Deleted Scenes.
Hawkman was originally in Starcrossed
Source: Justice League Season Two "Starcrossed Part 3" Commentary, 09:37-09:45
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Because originally we wrote it with him in mind. It was originally supposed to be the real Hawkman and DC Comics said, "You cannot do this to this character. You cannot make him this evil."
Source: Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie, Hawkman: From Comics to Cartoons, 00:05-00:24
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Our original intention was to actually use the actual Hawkman character from the comics. We wanted to use the name Hawkman. We wanted to use his Thanagarian name which was Katar Hol. While he wasn't an out and out villain, he was definitely what you would consider a heroic character. He was somewhat of a bad guy.
Idea to destroy Oa in Starcrossed
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 01:28-01:41
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: This whole bit where we destroyed Oa. We'd actually talked about doing in Starcrossed Remember? Early on, we talked about the Thanagarians destroying Oa.
John encapsulated Hro in Starcrossed Part 3
Source: Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie, Deleted Scenes
Summary: John Stewart traps Hro Talek in an orb construct but he overpowers it with his axe strikes then the part when John makes a shield construct happens.
Hro Talek backhanded Shayera off screen in Starcrossed Part 3
Source: Justice League Season Two "Starcrossed Part 3" Commentary, 15:14-15:21
Who: Butch Lukic
Quote: I boarded that off screen at first and then--you drew it. I didn't want it.
Hro Talek rammed Shayera into a wall in Starcrossed Part 3
Source: Justice League Season Two "Starcrossed Part 3" Commentary, 16:08-16:21
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Originally, instead of zapping her with his axe, he grabbed her by the face and rammed her head into the wall.
Batman rigged Watchtower to fall in Starcrossed Part 3
Source: Justice League: Starcrossed The Movie, Deleted Scenes
Summary: Batman goes around consoles and prepares to destabilize the Watchtower from orbit.
Static Shock
Icon Pitch turned into a Static Pitch
Link: The Oklahoman
Posted: April 6, 2001
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Milestone's characters took a few trips around Hollywood before finding a fit with Static. At one point, McDuffie said, a pilot was optioned in which producers tried to make the Milestone "look as much like the X-Men as possible." Another pitch involved Icon, Milestone's super-powered, 8,000-year-old alien who on Earth is Augustus Freeman, a conservative black lawyer. Alan Burnett, now the producer of "Batman Beyond," wrote a script for an Icon movie. While that particular project didn't happen, it cemented a relationship between Milestone and Burnett, who would continue to pitch Milestone properties. Static came about during another pitch for Icon, this time for an animated series. "They had comic books around the room for the network executives," McDuffie said, "and they're looking at them, and they're like, 'Can Icon be 15 years old?... They've decided that kids only like to see kids.... I said, 'No, Icon can't be 15, because he's 8,000 years old.' And they said, 'Can he be an 8,000-year-old 15-year-old?' "I slumped my head into my hands," McDuffie said. Then the executives' interest was sparked by Static. "They're like, 'Oh, there's this kid on a garbage can, can we do him?' And because Alan is really good at doing TV, he's talking about Icon, and in the middle of the sentence, all of a sudden, the entire pitch became a pitch about Static." Even after Static had been decided upon, there were a few bumps along the way. "They actually made him a year younger, because 15's too old, he's now 14." McDuffie said. "At one point they wanted to do a live-action and cast the kid from 'Home Improvement,'" McDuffie said. "and there was another pitch where he was going to be adopted by a white family." But the "Static Shock!" on the air is remarkably similar to the comic. "They changed his costume, which initially I hated, but now I like," McDuffie said.
Black Lightning and Soul Power
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Sun December 06, 2009 1:23 pm
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "Was Soul Power from the Static episode "Blast from the Past" a homage to Black Lighting?" Answer: Yes. It was originally planned as a team-up, but we couldn't get permission to use Black lightning, so we ended up doing something quite different from what we had planned.
Link: First Comic News
Posted: September 29, 2016
Who: John Semper Jr.
Quote: Well that was a story I really wanted to do. I had had this idea. That actually started with my idea. I've always had this idea of looking at super-heroes when they got older. I had done it with Spider-Man we did a thing called six forgotten warriors which I wrote that was my idea. When I cam over to Static Shock I thought. What would it be like to do that similar kind of story at this time in the world of Static Shock. It grew, it just grew. Adam Beacham came in and did the first draft on the script as I recall. I think though that he had worked from my original idea because remember pitching that to the network well before we had gotten close to doing the script. So it was a lot of fun. I really loved that episode. I loved working with the legendary of Brock Peters, the late Brock Peters. Its not often you get to work with an Academy Award, I know that he was nominated I can't remember if he won. He was a high caliber actor and we also had other actors involved in that episode that I thought were really strong, Terrance Stamp, the legendary Terrance Stamp. That was a great episode, everything about it stood out for me. It was one of my favorite episodes.
LL COOL J
Link: vHive Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: December 7, 2005
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "Was it ever pitched to have a more adulterated rapper such as fifty cent or someone in static to be a villain?, i know there was lil romeo but he wasnt a villain and definently couldnt be considered adulterated." Answer: I do not think "adulterated" means what you think it does. The only other rapper I remember being pitched for Static was LL Cool J, which sounded like a fun idea to me. The network passed on the pitch, though.
Milestone Heroes
Link: vHive Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: January 22, 2006
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "Why didn't Hardware, Icon, or Rocket ever appear on Static Shock?" Answer: WE toyed with all of them but the Network wanted them to be teens.
Teen Titans crossover
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Sun August 01, 2010 7:55 pm
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "My question is this, you and the other incredibly talented contributors on Static Shock obviously had an idea of what you wanted to do with an apparent Titans in the DCAU (evidenced in references made in "Hard as Nails" and "Romeo in the Mix")... so who exactly would comprise this team in YOUR mind?" Answer: We had no idea. At the time, the plan was to have Titans cross over with Static shock, but we needed the episode before the Titans show would have been ready. Someone suggested Justice League instead, and we were off to the races.
Gear spin off series pitch
Link: Delphi Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: November 22, 2005 2:47 am
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "Do you think that Gear could carry his own super hero show?" Answer: Yes. I actually pitched one a couple years ago.
New Static Shock series Pitch
Link: Delphi Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: November 28, 2005 9:28 am
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "Have you ever pitched static as being with she-bang and gear in a continuation to static shock, like what happended to batman after batman the animated series into batman gotham knights?" Answer: Yes
Adventures-style Comic Book pitch
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: July 21, 2004
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Question "They never did get around to a "Static Shock Adventures" book, and that's a shame. I'd have bought it." Answer: Nope. I begged DC to let us do an Adventures-style book (it's their choice, contractually). They said, "no." Repeatedly. I ask them pretty much every three months. I'll try again at San Diego.
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 29, 2004
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: I wish I knew. Milestone Comics would very much like to do a Static Shock Animated comic but DC has repeatedly passed on the idea. Maybe if enough fans ask. In the meantime, there's always Mucha Lucha.
Sunspots
Link: Justice League Revisited Episode 3, 10:15 to 11:30
Posted: October 31, 2023
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Quote: And the line I gave him. I couldn't think of one. Usually it would be "Holy shit!" or "Jesus! What happened?" but for TV the line became, "I better get airline miles for this". Or whatever it is. "I better get mileage plus for this." Well, Susan, you're the only person whoever laughed at that. Even I knew that wasn't that a funny a line. But I got a note from the new executive at Warner Kids. The note being "can you replace that line?" And I thought, "Yup, they knew it wasn't funny." The issue wasn't humor. The issue was that when someone says "I better get frequent flier miles," they're demanding so the line they wanted was, "I hope I get frequent flier miles." "Ok, this is going to be like this for the rest of Static." So Rich had already offered me the job so I went over across the hall and said I'm taking it "How soon can I start?" I started right away. That was the end of me on Static Shock. It was that one line that did it because you could tell they would be meddling in everything all the time.
Hard As Nails
Link: Animation Insider via Comics 2 Film
Posted: January 21, 2003
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Oddly enough, they were not my first choices to be the heavies in the episode, Killer Croc was. At first I wanted to do more of a slugfest, and Alan and I tossed around a few ideas with Croc, and later Bane, being the leader of a gang of Bang Babies. Then we realized the story was getting close to plots Alan had already done before on Static and that we had done together on Batman, so we decided to tell a story that focused on one girl trying to deal with her mutation and turning to the wrong people for help. Alan suggested H & I, and I said, "What, again?" That said, it took me about four seconds to get into the story. The girls are a lot of fun to write and I'm never at a loss for ideas for them.
Toys in the Hood
Link: World's Finest Semper on Static/Superman in "Toys In The Hood"
Posted: May 1, 2003
Who: John Semper
Quote: "It was the usual combination of happenstance and circumstance," says Semper. "Alan Burnett wanted to have Shaquille O'Neal come on as a guest star again this season. Shaq had done an episode in an earlier season (before my time on the show), so Burnett wanted to bring him back. I thought it would be fun to bring in Superman and have Shaq and Superman meet for the first time. That would make it a bit of history, since Shaq is such a Superman fan. This took a bit of convincing on my part, but finally Burnett seemed okay with the idea." Easier said than done, it proved. "Well, it all seemed good in theory," says Semper. "But we could never connect up with Shaq. No matter how hard we tried, he was totally unreachable during his off season. The most ironic thing was when he unexpectedly turned up at the Tower Records right next to where Warner's Animation is located. He was buying CDs, just like any other customer. Somebody in our studio who was over there spotted him, came back and told Burnett. Burnett went racing over to see if he could find him, but Shaq had left before he got there. So, again, no Shaq." So the creative team decided to continue without the famed basketball player. After all, going ahead with the most iconic superhero of all time did not seem like a problem.
Justice League Unlimited Season 1
Idea to Tweak Main Seven's Costumes
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 03:49-04:13
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: And in fact actually, I think for season 3, we brought up the possibility of again redesigning the characters. Not necessarily to make them all uniform but to kind of give all their costumes a little bit of a tweak. And I mentioned it to DC Comics President Paul Levitz and I barely even finished the sentence before he said, "Not the Big Three. You can do it to Green Lantern. You can do it to Flash. Not the Big Three."
Idea to change Wonder Woman's Hairstyle
Source: Justice League Season Two "A Better World Part 2" Commentary, 04:10-04:!8
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We were trying to give Wonder Woman a new hairstyle.
Tried to cast James Marsters
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: December 14, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: see the "jlu rumor thread, part 4" for casting info...as for james marsters, we tried several times this past season to get him on JLU, came REAL close once, but his ANGEL shooting schedule kept getting in the way....maybe next season....
Van's entrance in For The Man Who Has Everything
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: August 13, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: (by the way, we made a conscious effort to make clark's family life not TOO perfect...someone here made a valid criticism of "a knight of shadows", to the effect that j'onn's family was just too idyllic to be at all believeable, and we took that to heart....once again, the internet is your friend!...thus, van's a little bit contemptuous of farmer dad, even talks back a bit ("i know, i KNOW") and dad gets ticked off at him over the krypto-poop incident...jor-el and clark even have a testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"), hinting at some argument in their past....we wanted clark's home life to have as much verisimillitude as possible...it really took some fine tuning at the script stage...for instance, in the first draft, van entered the story by jumping into bed with his parents, merrily blurting "happy birthday!"...it's a subtle thing, i know, but it just didn't feel "honest"...being a husband and dad myself, i KNOW it's not all sunshine and bliss 24/7...also, notice that there's no background score throughout the entire first segment of clark's dream....we were REALLY tempted to play warm, copeland-esque "americana" under it,to establish how happy he was there, but decided to play it "straight", with just ambient bg noise, etc, to immediately immerse the viewer in clark's world....)
Mongul in For The Man Who Has Everything
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 8, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: okay, originally, we wanted to re-design mongul COMPLETELY for "ftmwhe", to make him scarier, more massive, etc, but ran out of time, so we settled for adding some darker colors here and there to his outfit.....good call, by the way, i think you're the first person to have spotted the slight design tweak....
Clark's 'I Promise' line in For The Man Who Has Everything
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: August 9, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: so glad you brought that up....yeah, george really nailed it....it's funny, his original line reading of "i promise you, i'll never forget" that we animated to was pretty darn good, but we had him do it again in looping just to see if we could squeeze just a bit more emotion out of it...he did a number of takes that were all pretty fine, and i finally said, "george, i'm not hearing the tears", and he gave us that little extra bit of voice-cracking/choked-with-emotion delivery....everyone in the recording booth went "WOW" at the same time, spontaneous goosebumps literally crawled up my arms....i'm glad to see george finally getting the props he deserves....
Fearful Symmetry
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: September 11, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: funny "uh oh" story....we originally wanted question to be singing the second verse: "uh oh, fell in love again last night after i swore off men..." not that we wanted to imply that question was gay (though obviously that would more than likely have been a hot topic here on TZ!), we just thought it woulda been funnier, as if he's not even noticing what he's singing.... bs&p actually allowed it, and jeffrey was game...unfortunately, the syncopation of the music kinda fights the rhythm of the lyrics at that point-- "last NIGHT af-TER i swore off MEH-ennn" -- and it was just a bit too hard for jeffrey to get the hang of it, so we just had him do the first verse instead... the fact that jeffrey ISN'T a trained singer (like, say, kevin conroy) actually makes the bit even better, i think....i love when he strains for that really high part :"IT JUST HAPPENED...yyyou walked in my doo-oor..." it's a great little "character" bit, one of my favorites in the entire dcau canon....gotta credit bob goodman for that one....
Joe R. Lansdale was approached to write
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #27, 1:04:30-1:04:37
Who: Joe R. Lansdale
Released: February 29, 2016
Quote: I was approached once for the Justice League when it, later on when it became Justice League Unlimited.
Paul Dini's original idea pitch for "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 01:56-02:23
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I remember I had pitched an idea to Stan about Wonder Woman vs. Circe and it was very much a traditional adventure episode and I think it was way too heavy and grim with her turning the men of the Justice League into animals and then Wonder Woman had to hunt them down and Zatanna had to go after Circe. That sort of thing. It got pulled way back and reimagined into something a lot more fun.
Bruce Timm suggested Wonder Pig in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 00:24-00:55
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Actually, I recall this was during the time when you were supposed to be working on a Justice League video and we just came up with ideas for the season but you were basically gonna focus on the video and we had worked on an earlier story that featured Clayface and Firestorm and then there was this story that was Wonder Woman-centric and I think you came in and said, "Oh, just have Circe turn her into a pig." And you walked out.
Scrapped Joker and Harley Cameo in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 21:22-22:01
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: What happened was because this episode starts in Gotham City, after Wonder Woman is cursed, you cut out the side of wherever Batman was and the Joker is there with his gang and you know, total nonsequitor but he's breaking into a bank or something and he's saying, "Well, we got a big stunt and I'm going to leave a trap for Batman. This will be really terrific," and then you see Batman, he doesn't exactly see the Joker. He kinda walks the other side of the alley with the pig in his arms saying, "It'll be okay. I know somebody who can help you. I'll take you there. Just calm down. Everything will be fine." And the Joker kinda watches blankly and kinda, "That's it! Pack up! We're leaving. No, no, we're done! We're done. Goodbye." Harley starts to say something. "No, nope, we're done. We're done. Let's go."
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Posted: March 23, 2020
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: More because it didn't fit tonally. It was fun to write & the crew had a laugh, but the episode had plenty of comedy already. More would have diluted the seriousness (what little there was) of the plot, and potentially the emotional pay-off between Bats and Diana at the end.
"Lulu's Back in Town" was altered to "Circe's Back in Town" in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 20:27-20:33
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Paul's original draft, he had actually changed the lyrics on "Lulu's Back in Town" to "Circe's Back in Town" and they said, "You cannot change the lyrics. That is the one thing..."
James Tucker did B'Wana Beast's growl in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 10:03-10:09
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Oh yeah, James was doing that "grr" -- the Bob Hope growl because Peter Onorati couldn't quite do it.
Bruce Timm was recast to voice Gladys' husband in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 11:02-11:08
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Originally it was Jack Carter but it sounded too much like the guy from the thing so it was me doing--replacing him.
Medusa's original design changed in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 13:23-13:40, 13:58-14:01, 14:01-14:02, 14:03-14:04
Who: Bruce Timm and James Tucker
Quote: (Bruce Timm) You had done a design on her but you weren't happy with it. It was kind of a typical Medusa and I think you did have "I Love Lucy" playing in your room and I went, "Ah, Tallulah Bankhead, make her look like Tallulah Bankhead."/(James Tucker) I had to re-board her sequences though because we changed her design, it didn't quite work./(Bruce Timm) You had to highlight the hair./(James Tucker) Little bits of acting.
Cut line in slaughterhouse in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 18:07-18:11
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I think originally you had some kind of a line but it was just 'okay, that might be gilding the lily.'
Zatanna tricked Circe at end of "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 19:08-19:21
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Well, originally, Paul had written it in such a way I think Zatanna like tricked Circe into being defeated or something and I went, "Ah, no! This is a farce. You have to end on your craziest joke ever." And so I came up with the idea of Batman having to sing.
Hippolyta was in "This Little Piggy"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "This Little Piggy" Commentary 20:57-20:58, 21:02-21:07, 21:08-21:15
Who: James Tucker, Bruce Timm, Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: (James Tucker) Hippolyta was in it./(Dwayne McDuffie) It was a very funny sequence we had to cut and I hated cutting it and we just couldn't make it fit./(Dwayne McDuffie) It was something [Bruce] you added in--
Triangulation changed in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 03:18-03:21, 03:25-03:30
Who: Bruce Timm, Joaquim Dos Santos
Quote: (Bruce Timm) I remember the way it was boarded originally I went, "Ah, it's really boring, it's gotta look a little bit more high-tech." Yeah./(Joaquim Dos Santos) Yeah, that was your idea and me just plugging away on it and Robert kind of pulling his hair out for a couple weeks on it.
Kryptonite chunks looked like tap lights in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 06:23-06:27
Who: Joaquim Dos Santos
Quote: And I remember initially when this was boarded, all these chunks of Kryptonite looked like little tap lights.
Atom had no SFX in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 07:25-07:35
Who: Joaquim Dos Santos
Quote: I remember that shot was actually a retake because initially he came without any of his Atom FX.
Fire had to be covered up some more in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 11:40-11:46
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Yeah, we did have to call a few retakes to cover her up a little bit more because she was a little too naked.
A.M.A.Z.O. vs Wonder Woman, Flash, Steel, and Ice was longer in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 13:11-13:23
Who: Joaquim Dos Santos
Quote: This scene actually went on longer but had to get cut for time. We had actually had the heroes doing stuff to him-fighting off-and to cut it for time--
Kilowog in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 18:44-18:54
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Although I did intend to redesign Kilowog's face, the rough I had got inked. I meant for the costume to go on the old model but anyway...
Green Lantern Hirunan in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 18:24-18:27, 18:32-18:33, 18:34-18:36
Who: Bruce Timm, James Tucker
Quote: (Bruce Timm) I thought there was one that Tommy made up that doesn't actually exist./(Bruce Timm) The girl with the weird line around her mouth./(James Tucker) But then we painted her to match a girl.
Link: Tommy Tejada Blog
Posted: Januaey 25, 2007
Quote: I created this one as an incidental Green Lantern Corps character for a Justice League episode. To my pleasant surprise WB used this sexy Green Lantern on other episodes also as an incidental character.
Shayera's line in "The Return"
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 22:22-22:33
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I remember just that dialogue exchange took us several passes to figure that out--what should her entrance be exactly.
Discarded Ideas for Shayera's return
Link: Justice League Unlimited Season One "The Return" Commentary 22:34-22:52
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We had many different scenarios. We had a bunch of ideas where Shayera was. We had one idea where she would become the resident guardian angel of like a small South American town. We had this one crazy idea where one of the planets that had gotten wiped out by the Thanagarians' wormhole things came back for revenge on her.
The Greatest Story Never Told
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: September 12, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: there are no more all-out comedic episodes this season, or next, for that matter...that there were three comedies this early on in the season is the result of a series of flukes more than anything else -- it's too complicated to go into detail here, but here's a tiny "for instance": the booster gold story started out as a "straight" FIRESTORM story....it was never our intention to turn JLU into a bi-weekly jokefest....the show's gonna be pretty "straight" action-adventure from here on in....
Link: World's Finest (scan of Wizard Magazine Issue #173)
Posted: March 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We really would have liked to use Blue Beetle, especially when we did that Booster Gold episode. The rights weren't available.
Link: James Tucker Tweet (set to private)
Posted: August 22, 2023
Who: James Tucker
Quote: If it helps, their stuff was mostly re-written....heavily.
Summary: Andrew Kreisberg's script was heavily re-written.
Dark Heart
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: December 18, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: what was SUPPOSED to have happened was that, during the time superman was off-site picking up the atom, the nano-alien assimilated the entire mesa and expanded into the surrounding area, including the area beyond the trench....i freely admit that the visuals didn't quite make that clear (one big glob of nano-goo looks pretty much like another, and the increased scale didn't really "read")....
there are other visual gaffes scattered throughout the episode (but i'm sure as hell not pointing 'em out!)....let's just say that for such a seemingly simple plot, you guys have NO IDEA how extremely difficult and labor-intensive this episode was to do....for me, it was all worth it, for that sublime vigilante/shining knight moment alone....
Atom line in Dark Heart
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: December 20, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: and as for atom not quipping while riding in the Wonderbra: we DID have him saying something originally, but bs&p asked us to delete it...it was something like "just don't take any deep breaths!"....we knew we were pushing our luck anyway, so we didn't mind losing the line, nosiree, not one bit...
Bruce Timm voicing Grundy in Wake the Dead
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: December 16, 2004
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: anyhow, what happened was this: mark was in new york doing a play on broadway when "wake the dead" was to be recorded...we DO occasionally record out-of-state actors via phone-patch when we have to, but it's quite a bit more expensive (studio and technician fees are doubled, for instance, and ma bell charges an arm-and-two-legs for HER services), and seeing as how grundy only grunts and roars in the episode (and i've "stunt-doubled" mark's grundy in the past, with some success) i figured i could handle it this one time...if grundy had actually had to say real dialogue, we would have used mark, and damn the extra expense....
Spectre and Phantom Stranger
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 22, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: the reason behind the spectre and phantom stranger's JLU absence has nothing to do with religious issues or anything of that sort....more of that fan speculation-turned-rumor-turned-accepted lore that i love so much....it's simply that dc said we couldn't use 'em, period...
Link: Transcript of Wizard Magazine Issue #173)
Posted: March 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We wanted to do a Phantom Stranger story, but we couldn't do that. We wanted to do the Spectre, and we couldn't use him. Those were the main ones. But it's fine. It’s not like we don't have a zillion other characters we can't use.
Firestorm
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: April 2, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: i think i've mentioned this before, we definitely WERE planning on using him in JLU, but it just never worked out...."the greatest story never told" started as a firestorm story, but as we were breaking the story it became more and more comedic, and we soon realised it would work better with booster gold in the lead.... and actually, we had started with a quite different story altogether that we ended up killing at the outline stage...it was going to be firestorm's origin, with a jl vs. clayface "a-plot" mixed in, but it just wasn't working, so we threw it out and started over from scratch....after several more false starts we wound up with the "greatest story" plot, and then had to replace firestorm to make it work....
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: April 2, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: and THAT'S why he never showed up at all, not even as a "seat-filler / red-shirt" hero -- james and i both did a few firestorm sketches and quickly decided WE didn't really care a whole lot for his costume either! if his story had actually gone through, we would have HAD to find a way to transform the basic design into something we found visually appealing, but still retained some of the original motifs...for sure we would have kept the flaming head (you can never have too many of those) and DEFINITELY would have lost the puffy sleeves.... but when we killed the story, we realised we already had enough "background" heroes, and didn't need to bother cracking the "firestorm" code...
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: April 3, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: firestorm's ongoing "one-sided dialogue" with prof. stein was, of course, one of the things we liked the most about the character, the one signature gimmick that makes him unique (among dc heroes anyway -- the gimmick is obviously a blatant lift from mar-vell / rick jones)...but it made the story-break process even harder and more complex -- setting up ronnie raymond's back-story, introducing the professor, showing the accident that fused 'em, showing him discovering his new powers and dealing with the prof.'s disembodied voice in his head PLUS having a real JL action "a-plot", and ending with firestorm officially joining the JLU -- that's a helluva lot of story to cram into 22 minutes... one of the "false start" story ideas we toyed with for a hot minute: we were thinking of doing a story with firestorm and professor stein narrating the entire episode in "director's commentary" style.....but soon realised it would be just way too confusing to a non-geek audience, without having already set-up the firestorm gimmick in a previous episode...not to mention having TWO disembodied voices narrating the story would almost completely cancel out the effectiveness of prof. stein's usual presence...
Source: Wizard #179
Release: September 2006
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: I wanted to do Firestorm and cast ("Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist" stars) Jon Benjamin and Jonathan Katz as Ronnie and Professor Stein.
Plastic Man
Link: John Trumbull Facebook post reply
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: August 26, 2020
Quote: Well at least Plastic Man was mentioned ...but Sam Register had optioned him for a cartoon series headed by Andy Suriano...the pilot is included on the Plastic Man animated series DVD...which also features my talking head.
Black Lightning
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Brian Cronin
Posted: August 30, 2021
Quote: In any event, after I did the Comic Book Legends Revealed about Blue Beetle not being allowed to be on Justice League Unlimited, Tony dropped me a line to note that the same was true for Black Lightning. He said that Justice League Unlimited's head writer, the late, great Dwayne McDuffie, told him personally that McDuffie had asked to use Black Lightning and was told no.
"Misfortune Cookies"
Link: J.M. DeMatteis Blogspot
Posted: November 17, 2017
Quote: I scripted seven episodes of that series-including an adaptation of Alan Moore's classic "For The Man Who Has Everything"-but there was almost an eighth. One day, way back in 2004, I got a call from two of the show's incredibly talented writer-producers, Stan Berkowitz and Dwayne McDuffie. They'd cooked up an idea-based, in part, on the Oreo addiction Keith Giffen and I had given to J'onn J'onnzz during our original Justice League International run-and wanted me to develop it into an outline. At first I thought they were putting me on-the story, especially J'onn's arc, was pretty outrageous, even by Giffen-DeMatteis standards-but they were dead serious. I remember sitting in my office taking notes as the two of them laid out the beats of the wonderful, and very funny, plot-which, had the episode made it to air, could have been the JLU equivalent of Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles."
I say "could have been" because, after I fleshed out Stan and Dwayne's tale and wrote a detailed outline (trying to do justice to the brilliant absurdity of their idea), the Powers That Be gave "Misfortune Cookies" a very enthusiastic thumbs-down and the story was consigned to limbo-and that's where it's been for the past decade.
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: July 6, 2021
Quote: It was a story you guys handed me that dealt with Martian Manhunter and his cookie addiction called "Misfortunate Cookies." Dwayne and Stan got me on the phone and gave me the basics of this story and, at first, I thought they were pulling my leg. But we took it and developed it and I wrote the outline and, for whatever reason, it was decided that we were not going to do the story. I put the outline on my website a couple of years ago and it's a big, fun, goofy story and the running thing is J'onn's addiction to cookies and he becomes a ticking time bomb and basically blows up.
Hal Jordan in Alternate Universe Story
Link: vHive Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: January 2, 2006
Quote: Question "Is Hal Jordan off limits to Justice League Unlimited and does that character firmly fits into the show's contiunity?" Answer: The one time we asked to use him, DC said "yes." I have no interest in using him again (with the exception of one alternate universe story we talked seriously about doing this season but decided against) but I can't speak for Bruce and James.
Less Flash
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 24, 2006
Quote: a little bit of both "a" and "b", actually.....
a) fact is, it IS very difficult to schedule recording times for actors who have regular prime-time gigs (strangely enough, it's actually been even harder to get carl lumbly in the studio, even though his show is shot here in town, not in vancouver)...michael's always been very cooperative, whenever he's in town he always lets us know in advance, in case we need to pick him up for adr or whatnot, and when he's in vancouver for extended periods, we record him over i.s.d.n. phone-patch (which unfortunately is technically a pain in the arse and pretty expensive as well)...and poor carl, i can't tell you how many times he's raced across town from the ALIAS set, run into the recording booth, jammed through his lines and then zoomed back to ALIAS....whenever i think of carl, i see him panting for breath....since season one of JL it's been very rare that either of them has actually recorded their lines with the rest of the cast...but they've been absolute pros, both of 'em (and just generally swell guys, too, i love 'em both to pieces)...
b) more to the point, it wasn't necessarily that we didn't know HOW to write the flash, it was more that we weren't 100% happy with his characterisation in the two seasons of jl, and wanted to give him a bit of an overhaul....there were a few flash-centric story springboards that we toyed with during season one of JLU, but none of them panned out...meanwhile, other story ideas WERE working out better so we concentrated on those, put flash on the back burner and before we knew it, season one was almost over, sans flash....
we made sure to bring him back prominently early on in season two, and didn't even end up tweaking his personality as much as we'd expected to....he was still "goofy comic-relief guy", but not as blantantly....also, he truly IS the most difficult superhero to write, we ALWAYS end up "cheating" his powers-usage with varying degrees of success (as EVERY writer who has ever written flash has always had to do, whether it's for comics, live-action or animation)....
and no, no one ever told us "smallville" was more important than JLU (though, it'd be a hard point to argue if they HAD, in the bigger scheme of things) and no, michael isn't and never has been under any kind of "contractual obligation" to appear in any set number of episodes, our va contracts don't work that way.... .
The Bruces figure out how to stop Chronos
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: Febuary 1, 2005
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Last time I'm getting into this, either it works for you or it doesn't (like Superman flying) but a time machine has to be able to communicate with itself achronally to work at all. Batman (with help from old Bruce, but it was edited out) took advantage of this. At the end, Chronos never gets to press the belt control, time loops before he touches it and he is unaware of anything unusual happening. What Batman did is retroactively program the belt to, instead of carrying David to the Watchtower as it did in part one, put itself in an infinite loop of about 10 seconds duration -which is what we saw at the end of part 2.
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 31, 2005
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Batman didn't know what conversation he dropped Chronos into, but as you suggest he did know (from the belt's activity log) to loop Chronos just before the trip that brought him to the Watchtower. He chose that point hoping to minimize changes to "our" timeline. If Batman simply returned Chonos to that point without the belt, Chronos would simply build another belt and attack again -this time with preknowledge of Batman's strategy. I imagine Chronos took several shots at various JLU members before finally succeeding in killing them. Batman looped Chronos because it was the only non-lethal way to protect the timestream.
Link: The vHive Forum Dwayne McDuffie
1/4/2006: Question "After "The Once and Future Thing," on another site I raised the question in a review of how could Batman re-program Chronos' device being that it's computer code probably hasn't been invented yet."
Answer: It's just a sequence that was cut for time. Our Batman and old Bruce come up with the plan. Computer programming by the time of Batman Beyond is pretty much telling the computer what you want it to do, waiting for it to assemble efficient code to do it, then testing the program. The hard part was getting past Chronos' security software. Hard for young Bruce, that is, old Bruce has been doing this for fifty years longer than our guy. He added the part of the program to breach Chronos' security, copied the thing onto a commercial 12 terrabyte DVD and they were off.
Shayera's new costume
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 15, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: i was SO tempted to keep her in her "wake the dead" outfit, i thought she looked awesome kicking zombie ass in her civvies....but ultimately decided she needed something a little more practical, so she WILL get a new outfit....no mask, though; she's far too pretty to keep covered up....
Justice League Unlimited Season 2
Jim Steranko's Mister Miracle pitch
Source: Back Issue #104
Released: June 2018
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I believe Steranko pitched an idea about Mister Miracle, but I don't remember the details. I kind of think the resulting episode had very little to do with what was pitched, but I could be wrong.
The Ties That Bind
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 6, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: none of us ever liked "miracles happen" as a title, but we couldn't come up with a better one til very late in the game....we almost called it "escape velocity" at one point, but liked "ties" just a wee bit better...."the ties that bind" as some have noted, is a little on the "typical" side, but it IS appropriate for the ep...we love to use titles that have more than one meaning whenever possible ("the return", "the savage time", "a knight of shadows" etc), and that certainly applies in this case...to see HOW it applies, well, you'll have to wait a few days...
The Balance
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: April 26, 2005
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: FYI, there was a joke in that sequence, cut for time or lameness, where Wonder Woman asks her how she knows about angels. Shayera shrugged, explaining that she'd "read the book."
Birds of Prey in Double Date
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: December 6, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: as mentioned already, we planned to use barb in a "birds of prey" one-off, which, when we found out we couldn't use her, got completely re-worked into the much better "double date"....other than that, we had no plans to use BTAS characters in JLU (other than the occasional villain cameo)....there aren't any BTAS-centric stories we were dying to tell that we couldn't because of the embargo....
Link: Toon Zone
Posted: May 2, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: nightwing only had a TINY cameo in the original premise... short version: barbara gets injured, batman says "rest up, get well, NO CRIME-FIGHTING, YOUNG LADY" -- she's not just in a wheelchair, she's in traction -- barbara gets restless, defies batman's orders and starts working on this week's nefarious plot on her computer (some nonsense about kirk langstrom creating an army of man-bats) -- she realizes she needs "mobile" help, calls dick grayson -- cut to dick's apartment, where he's making out like crazy with some gorgeous new gal, the phone rings and rings and rings, he distractedly picks up the phone (still making out), barbara starts to talk, he doesn't even hear her, just drops the phone back on the cradle, barbara gives her phone the stink-eye and growls, "DICK!" (at which point barbara recruits black canary and huntress to be her "field agents" and she herself assumes a temporary "oracle"-type role -- the army of man-bats gets their butts soundly kicked, yada yada yada....and for the record, gail simone had nothing whatsoever to do with that version of the story....all in all, "double date" is a MUCH better story)
Tobias Whale was very briefly in outline of Double Date
Link: CBR Forum (dead link)
Link: TZ Forum (quote of above)
Posted: 2005
Who: Gail Simone
Quote: When we started this JLU thing, Tobias Whale was VERY BRIEFLY in the outline, but for whatever reason, they wanted to change the character to someone closer to Helena's origin (and I'm told there's a connection one of the other DCU animated shows), so they swapped out Tobias Whale (even though his name still ended up in some of the promo stuff) with a similar character they already had, but had not yet named, I gather. Those guys at the show had a LOT of respect for Tony and his characters, and said so often.
DC said "No" to Tobias Whale in Double Date
Link: World Famous Comics-Tony's Online Tips
Posted: April 16, 2005
Who: Tony Isabella
Quote: As I understand it, Tobias Whale was to appear in the episode as it was originally conceived. Much later in the process of actually putting the episode on the air, DC Comics either requested the character not appear in the episode or outright refused to allow him to appear. However, this was so late in the process that apparently some other big nasty crime-boss will appear in the episode who may or may not bear some resemblance to my creation. Shades of Black Vulcan!
Quote: He's not appearing on the show. The last word I had was that DC had refused permission for JLU to use him, much as they had earlier refused to allow either JLU or Static Shock to use Black Lightning. If Tobias *does* appear on the show, I'm supposed to get a percentage of whatever DC makes from licensing the guy's appearance. I can always use a few extra bucks.
The Outsiders
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: October 9, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: sorry, wrong again...we DID discuss the possibility of batman leaving the league (or even going over to cadmus' side) but dismissed it right away.... we had the luthor/brainiac thing planned pretty early on, definitely by the time we did "doomsday sanction" (why else would we have spent so much time in that ep setting up his presidential bid?)...
Link: vHive Forum Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: January 16, 2006
Quote: Question "I think you or Bruce Timm mentioned at one point that the Outsiders were going to show up in what would become the Cadmus arc as a little group Batman put together. Why was that plan nixed, and who might the Outsiders have included?" Answer: We briefly discussed having Batman leave the League and starting his own team of "Outsiders" to combat the League, if need be. It didn't go very far.
Source: Justice League Unlimited Season Two Cadmus: Exposed, 15:29-15:33
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: At one point, we talked about Batman actually switching sides.
Source: Justice League Unlimited Season Two Cadmus: Exposed, 15:34-15:38
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: He was going to split off and be his own team and gather up some loose heroes we had.
Teen Titans
Link: Delphi Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: November 6, 2005 7:48 pm
Quote: Question "Are there any plans to have a JLU/Teen Titans team-up either on tv or on a dvd?" Answer: We talked about it a couple of years ago, but couldn't figure out how to do it.
Link: Derrick Wyatt Tweet
Posted: August 28, 2020
Quote: "The Teen Titans would fight Darkseid in our show, and the JLI would have taken on Mad Mod."
Link: Derrick Wyatt Tweet
Posted: August 28, 2020
Quote: "At one point they decided that the “crossover” would be two stand alone episodes. One where the JLU Titans show up (Bruce style) in their Justice League show, and the reverse for our Titans. So there was a crossover without mixing continuities."
Link: Ben Jones Tweet
Posted: August 28, 2020
Quote: "My suggestion was Mad Mod gets his hands on Apokoliptian technology so his illusions become real, which I realized after the fact was pretty much just the ending from Batman Vs Hulk where Joker gets infinite power from the Shaper of Worlds. But I still think it could've worked."
Link: Bruce Timm reply on AnimeSuperhero Forums
Posted: August 28, 2020
Quote: "Really not quite sure what Derrick is talking about here."
Quote: "Once upon a time, WB president Sander Schwartz wanted to do a two-part JL /TT crossover event. I can't recall if Glen Murakami liked the idea or not but James Tucker and I weren't keen about it at all and Sam Register, who was the CN Production Exec at the time, didn't like the idea much, so it was pretty much a non-starter."
Quote: "Knowing that Sam wasn't into it, we knew it was gonna go away sooner than later so we didn't even bother thinking about story ideas. I think we got as far as discussing how to deal with the inherent incompatibility of the styles of the two shows. We toyed (for about a minute) with the idea of having the Titans drawn in the "JL/ BT /DCAU" style in the JL half and the Justice Leaguers drawn in "TT / Murakanime" style in the other half, as if it was a two-part COMICS crossover, with John Buscema, say, drawing all the characters the "Marvel" half and Jim Aparo drawing them in the "DC" half. But no one seemed very excited about that approach either.
Quote: "Maybe Derrick is talking about some other JL/TT crossover that I'm not aware of."
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: September 6, 2021
Quote: "A DCAU Titans show was never a thing but we were asked to consider a JL/TTcrossover episode (or movie) but Bruce and Glen thought that was a bad idea / unfeasible because the shows had totally different styles and tones."
Mystery in Space became Hunter's Moon
Link: James Tucker instagram reply
Posted: April 17, 2020
Quote: The working Title was Mystery in Space but DC nixed that which is how we ended up with Hunter's Moon.
Link: JL Watchtower
Note: Originally from DrawingBoard.org but it is a dead site and the original link could not be located.
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: 'Mystery in Space' has been re-titled 'Hunter’s Moon,' and does not feature Adam Strange. Sadly, he's one of the characters that is currently off-limits to Justice League Unlimited. I know, it's a bit disappointing, sorry, but even though Adam's not in it, it's an excellent episode, filled to the brim with savage action and sexy 'shippy-ness.'
Link: JL Watchtower
Note: Originally from one of Dwayne McDuffie's forums but the original link could not be located
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: I wanted to use Adam Strange, but I never came up with a pitch that Bruce liked.
Question and Lois Lane team up
Source: Justice League Unlimited Season Two Cadmus: Exposed, 15:04-15:23
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: At one point, we knew the Question was to be the one to unravel the whole Justice Lords thing. But at one point, we were talking about him teaming up with Lois Lane of all people during that whole investigation then we realized it wasn't all that important.
Waller's wording in Panic in the Sky
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: July 11, 2005
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: And the line did add something: the assurance to every viewer that no innocents were killed. IIRC, I tried to be cute about it first draft, by having Waller say no one was harmed (but she was only answering a specific question about Cadmus personnel). I thought we could skate on that but I didn't get away with it. They wanted to be crystal clear: no one was injured.
Lex Luthor puts his brain in A.M.A.Z.O.
Source: Justice League Unlimited Season Two Cadmus: Exposed, 13:54-14:00
Who: James Tucker
Quote: For the longest time we thought the big thing was Luthor putting his brain in Amazo.
Speed Force theme in Divided We Fall
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 3, 2007
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: actually, mike mc cuistion originally DID score the "speed force" sequence with a revved-up version of the "flash theme", but i didn't like it much...it was fun and exciting, but nothing more than that, kinda "typical"....it wasn't nearly as "grand" or "epic" as the scene called for...basically, the "flash theme" is just too bouncy and light-hearted by its very nature, it has no "gravitas" whatsoever...i told mike "this isn't about flash being fast or about him being a fun guy...it's about him pushing himself harder than he's ever had to before, doing everything he can to prevent a crazed all-powerful demi-god from destroying all of creation...this is the moment when wally steps up from 'comic relief' to 'a-list Hero' with a capital H"...and that's exactly what he delivered on his second pass...as for it being "unlikely that they would've made up such an awesome piece for just one moment", well, that's what mike, kris and lolita DO, they try to make EVERY moment as awesome as possible (and knock 'em clear out of the park nine times out of ten)...
Clark reveals his secret in Divided We Fall
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 22, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: yeah, we originally wanted to have superman finally reveal his secret i.d. to lois at the end, woulda been a nice little bit of fanservice, a little last-minute icing on the cake, but it was OFF-POINT....clark humbly agreeing with lois that superman is "only human" (therefore allowed to make mistakes as long as he learns from them, and never loses touch with that humanity) is EXACTLY the correct way to end the episode (and the season)...
Justice League Unlimited Season 3
Not Using the name "Legion of Doom"
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 17, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: dc specifically requested that we not ever use the term "legion of doom" in an episode to describe the super-sized baddie orginization, as they felt it sounded too corny/old school, and instantly conjures up memories of SUPER-FRIENDS....i don't think alex ross and co. are allowed to use it either in their current JUSTICE comic, though "updated hardcore legion of doom" is clearly alex's agenda........y'know, i can't say that i disagree with their logic completely, it IS a prettty corny name....personally, i felt that the audience would have accepted it without tarnishing our "hip and modern" street cred, but didn't feel it was a battle worth fighting....at least we got to keep the stylin' darth vader-head hq...
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 17, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: fwiw, all of us here at wba refer to them as the legion of doom or "the l.o.d. guys" for verbal shorthand, when we're breaking stories or whatever, and even use the term in the scripts (in scene desriptions, etc) for simplicity's sake, just never in spoken dialogue....
Aquaman in Another Shore
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 22, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: another example: aquaman was going to be the main-focus character in "to another shore" in its earliest embryonic form...when we were forced to replace him with diana, BANG, suddenly the story became something richer, deeper...we added j'onn's sub-plot at that point (which wouldn't even have OCCURRED to us with aquaman at center stage), and long story short, that episode sings a much sweeter song than if the "aquaman embargo" hadn't been in place....likewise, i highly doubt dc would have let us kill off black manta later on in "dead reckoning", but his replacement doppleganger devil-ray was fair game....
Green Arrow singing in Another Shore
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: September 27, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: nope, it was dwayne's idea, written into the script...it then took three actors to realise the gag.....kin took a shot, but couldn't quite get the tune right; i sang it, and that's what the overseas guys animated to; in post we decided my vocal quality didn't match kin's enough, so lex lang pitched in and looped the final version....
Patriot Act
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 26, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: before editing, general threw sgirl at shiny, shiny didn't even try to catch her, just kept after general....seemed very un-chivalrous to us in the editing room, so we cut the scene short to eliminate the sgirl toss....lord sidious probably noticed that the UN-EDITED shot appears in the previous ep's end-credits (THERE'S your "easter egg", karkull)....
Bizarro in Dead Reckoning
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 20, 2006
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: someone would probably figure this out before long, but if you look closely at some of bizarro's close-ups, you'll notice a faint scar on his forehead, indicating that as part of grodd's "upgrade the villains" program (see "to another shore"), lex performed a little brain surgery on bizarro to make him more controllable...didn't work out quite as planned, necessitating giving him his marching orders in classic bizarro "backwards logic"....
Devil Ray's death in Dead Reckoning
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: February 18, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Haven't watched this in years but, if memory serves, pretty sure we had to restate or edit some of Devil Ray's demise because it got flagged by broadcast standards.
The Great Brain Robbery
Link: World's Finest Matt Wayne Discusses Justice League Unlimited
Posted: March 17, 2007
Who: Matt Wayne
Quote: Regarding the Legion of Doom, we never once call the villains by that name onscreen. We had planned to have Flash use it as a hyperbolic way to refer to Grodd's new Secret Society in "The Great Brain Robbery." You know, "Luthor's got some kind of, I dunno, Legion of Doom." or whatever, and then we'd have the name stick. But a mid-level naysayer at DC thought the name was too corny, and that it must never be uttered.
The Key was a Brainiac construct
Source: Justice League Unlimited Season Two, Justice League Chronicles Alive!, 8:58-9:12
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: You remember, originally it was going to be the Key. He was going to be the key. The Key was going to be a construct of Brainiac's that we were somehow going to bring Darkseid back.
Justice League Unlimited Season 4 Ideas
Journey through Time
Source: Toyfare #108, Page 61
Quote: We had talked just briefly about doing 12 more episodes. We had an idea of doing something that would be a season-long journey through time. It would give us a chance to revisit a bunch of DC hereoes from different periods. We'd go to the far future and see the Atomic Knights, have an adventure with Enemy Ace uring World War I, or do something again in the Old West. And there was also talk of possibly doing a while season taking place in the Batman Beyond universe.
James Tucker's Idea
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Fri December 24, 2010 4:02 pm
Quote: Question "I herd you thought it was going to end at Justice League, then they wanted JLU, then you thought they only wanted the CADMUS arc, then they said they wanted 13 more episodes. So, I was wondering if you thought it was possible they would want more episodes after the last episode?" Answer: The thought had occurred to me. James Tucker had a pretty strong idea where he wanted to go if we continued, and I planted the seeds of his proposed season in "Alive."
Quest in space
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: July 6, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: ...I remembered that one of the thoughts we had about continuing the show, before we were discontinued, was to send [the Justice League] out into space on a quest and explore.
A few approaches but no final decision made
Link: Ask the Maestro Dwayne McDuffie
7/05/2006: Question "If by some twist of fate JLU had been renewed did you guys have any ideas or plans for what direction you'd want to go in or is that just something you think about at the time?"
Answer: We'd talked about a few different approaches. I don't think Bruce had come to a final decision, as we hadn't received any input from the network yet.
Timmverse Movies
All Villains Direct to Video Movie
Source: Wild Cartoon Kingdom #2, December 1993
Quote: Still, one of the proposed stories by Timm and Dini in the preliminary stages of production had Batman up against every one of his villains while trapped inside Arkham Asylum. And the criminals put him on trial. "That story would have made a good hour episode," offers Dini, "but we didn't know if it would make a good movie because the more we kept working with it, the more self-contained the one setting inside Arkham got." Batfans will be happy to note that this way-cool idea was paired down into a new half-hour episode. "But that idea had at least nine major villains going after Batman," continues the co-writer
Source: Modern Masters page 49
Summary: All the villains like in the Batman 1966 movie. Alan Burnett shot it down, might have had germ of idea for Mask of the Phantasm, idea later used in "Trial"
Source: Animato magazine (1994)
Summary: The producers were, in fact, planning to make it longer... it was the story they originally wanted for their feature-length film. But "we figured we could do all the cool bits we wanted to do in a half hour," says Paul Dini.
Two-Face Direct to Video Movie
Source: Overstreet Fan Magazine #4 (September 1995)
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: The first two issues are a Two-Face story. It's a pretty strong story that at one point, I was considering using for the Batman animated movie.
Source: Wizard #51 (November 1995)
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: This is a wrap-up story we debated as a popular candidate for the animated movie. We decided to go with the Phantasm idea for the feature, but I've always had a fondness for this one. I decided to dust it off and use it in the comic book, as we had stopped production on the cartoon series. It's also unique because instead of Two-Face versus Batman, it's Two-Face versus Bruce Wayne. It kind of redefines their relationship.
Source: DCAU Review Discuss This League Vol. 3, 32:30-32:47
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: December 23, 2023
Quote: The Paul Dini script was really good. That actually became one of the Batman Adventures. Which has the return of Grace. It was a sequel to "Two-Face" basically. This is where Two-Face stuck in jail with Joker.
Summary: Scrapped idea for a Two-Face movie to conclude his arc but passed over to make Mask of the Phantasm. Paul Dini repurposed it for "Two Timer" in The Batman and Robin Adventures #1 and 2.
Martin Pasko pitched Ten-Eyed Man
Source: DCAU Review Discuss This League Vol. 3, 31:26-31:46
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: December 23, 2023
Quote: I remember we where had this meeting where Paul Dini had a great idea kinda of a Harley Quinn-Joker one. And I rememebr Marty Pasko talking about a character whose eyeballs were on the ends of his fingers. Yeah. And I'm like 'Yeah, that's not...' and--
Masks (later known as Mask of the Phantasm)
Link: World's Finest Unproduced Scripts
Link: World's Finest Outline
Draft: Outline First Draft 10/19/92, First Draft 11/04/92, Second Draft 11/06/92, Revised Drafts 11/12/92, 11/13/92, 11/17/92, 11/20/92, 12/2/92, 12/16/92, 12/17/92, 12/21/92
Credits: Outline Written by Alan Burnett
Posted: July 27, 2020
Link: World's Finest Unproduced Scripts
Draft: 12/21/92
Summary: The start is more detailed of Batman gliding to a spot and listening in on Chuckie Sol's meeting. On page 18, Andrea leaves the graveyard on a motorcycle after she meets Bruce. On page 20, the tied up security guard is a woman. On page 37-38, Buzz Bronski is buried alive in the grave by a dump truck rigged by a rope he tries to use to climb out of the grave. On page 40, the papers Arthur Reeves presents to Commissioner Gordon are polygraphs. On page 77, Sal Valestra tells Joker he caught Batman spying on him a couple days ago. On page 85, Bullock is in a squad car eating and is startled by the explosion at Valestra's condo. On page 95, Tall Man is sitting in a car with a deck of cards on stake out while the Beaumonts escape into the woods behind the estate. On page 99, Bruce figures out Tall Man and Joker are the same person with the Batcomputer. On page 100, there is a flashback to the origin of Joker. On page 106, Reeves is told he was lucky his secretary found him in his office. On page 110, Joker continues joking around after he tells the operator he was disconnected. On page 111, Joker channel surfs on his television before "flirting" with Hazel. On page 115, Joker throws a mixer at Andrea's face. On page 117, Batman uses a grappling gun and jet-powered batarang to destroy the wind turbine. On page 123, Batman tells Joker he will see him in hell before he crashes Joker on his jet pack. On page 124-126, Joker is pinned by rubble after falling through the globe. Andrea presents a canister that emits black smoke.
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Source: Comics Scene #43 (June 1994), page 33
Who: Eric Radomski
Quote: "But, to keep it within a 'PG' rating, the only thing they suggested was toning down sound effects in two areas: A tombstone falls and kills one of the gangsters, and it sounded, they felt...too crunchy." Radomski chuckles. "They didn't want to hear all of the bones crunching."
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 00:34:49-00:35:04 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: In the rough cut, The Tall Man is in shadow and I think they decided to not do that, so that was retaken to show him. I thought it was too obscured. I think originally they wanted to obscure him more.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 00:37:17-00:37:28 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: And then the script, he crushes it. Looks up to heavens and goes "No!" like Darth Vader and it's like thank God they took that out.
Summary: When Bruce gets the ring returned to him, he looks up at the sky and shouts "No!"
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 00:38:07-00:38:14 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: It's funny. Originally we panned up his body-- I don't--that's I did-- interesting they altered that.
Summary: When Bruce puts on the Batsuit for the first time, it was going to pan up to him with the cowl on.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 00:53:26-00:53:40 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: I came up with that bit. I wanted the kiss to be longer and then be interrupted by her elbow like hitting the horn and and be startling but it's like with the shorter kiss it didn't really read that well.
Summary: Dan Riba thought Andrea hitting the horn would be funnier if the kiss were longer.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 00:54:19-00:54:28 mark
Who: Dan Riba
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: Originally, there were like all red pencils and I was like 'no no no,' it has to be the one that he picks up when he realizes...
Summary: When Bruce sits down and discovers the hit man and Joker are the same person, his cup was full of red pencils. Dan Riba changed it to one red pencil.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 1:28:40 mark
Posted: September 11, 2023
Summary: Storyboards show Joker placing bombs throughout the fair grounds.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 1:34:55 mark
Posted: September 11, 2023
Summary: Storyboards show Joker throwing the portable mixer at Andrea's face then jumping through the glass.
Source: Comics Scene #43 (June 1994), page 33
Who: Eric Radomski
Quote: Later, the Joker is fighting Andrea, and he belts her on-screen three times. They wanted those punches toned down-not animation-wise, but sound-wise, because they were crunchy. That's pretty much the only limitations they put on us.
Link: DCAU Review Discuss This League Vol. 3, 46:33-47
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: December 23, 2023
Quote: The script was written by Michael Reeves and he was pissed off at me because he's went like "everything's big, they're on giant typewriters, they're doing this, they're doing that - jumping on these big tires, big this, big that" and I'm like "No, they're Godzilla and King Kong in a miniature city of the future."
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #47, 29:20-29:27
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: September 5, 2017
Quote: Well, you guys missed on him taking the Chrysler hat off and jabbing Batman through the shoulder.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 01:38:51-01:39:09 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: Another thing that never made it out of storyboards is where he takes that thing--and he doesn't--he's gonna stab Batman and Batman rolls to the side. In the original board, he doesn't roll aside. He's stabbed through the shoulder yeah oh and he has to yank that thing out when he says "Joker" and he pulls the spike out.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #47, 29:33-29:37
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: September 5, 2017
Quote: There was a lot more slicing up by the auto gyros. They really cut him up.
Source: Comics Scene #43 (June 1994), page 35
Who: Eric Radomski
Quote: We had one scene after the first rough cut screening where Batman gets clipped by this autogyro. The overseas animators had a little bit of fun with it. Blood squirted out of his arm, and when it flew out, it made a web-like shape, so it hung up in the air a little while, and they thought, 'Well, that's too much.' We agreed. He still gets cut and blood still comes out, but it goes away quicker.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #47, 29:38-30:12
Who: Kevin Altieri
Released: September 5, 2017
Quote: And there's one cut I really wish they put back in and they edited out because it's too gruesome. Was where after the Joker leads Batman outside, outside of the City of the Future pavilion, and he opens up the door and I have Batman's feet step into frame, and this pool of blood drip drip rolls around his feet and it's growing pretty fast. And you pan up, and there's Batman holding something under his chest so he's really hurt and he's bleeding. You know, they cut that pool of blood at his feet.
Link: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Crew Commentary 01:09:43-01:09:59 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: September 11, 2023
Quote: And then there's a sequence coming up that was cut out where they actually--Batman actually rescues The Joker while they're inside the globe and that was boarded out but it was never animated.
Link: A Conversation With Kevin Altieri, 2:42-3:53 mark
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: September 26, 2023
Quote: Then they're inside and I thought it was a nice touch and this wasn't really scripted so another reason why it was probably cut but I always thought it was a nice touch. There's the Joker. He's knocked senseless. There's Batman, he's bleeding. He's been cut up from before and he's now he's bashed right through. They're sitting inside the globe and then you see that the jet pack is on fire and it's still attached to the Joker and Batman crawls to the Joker and goes through all the trouble of unhooking him and then just dragging him to safety. Taking less of his strength, kicking out the backside of the globe and dropping the Joker to safety and that's what leads the Joker to say his famous line "For once I'm stuck without a punch line." The fact that after all this he's being saved by Batman and that's just the kind of noble soul that Batman really is so I think that's the only thing that's missing by not having that be.
Link: DCAU Review Discuss This League Vol. 3, 50:16-50:43
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: December 23, 2023
Quote: Now Batman is laying there, just trying to hang on to consciousness and the Joker looks at him oh with absolute love and pulls a knife on him and he's starts crawling towards--and they're like "No, no, just Andrea shows up. That's too much."
Link: DCAU Review Discuss This League Vol. 3, 44:27-44:32
Who: Kevin Altieri
Posted: December 23, 2023
Quote: The original print was about 5 minutes longer.
No S:TAS DTV Movies
Link: Boyd Kirkland Interview 4/1/1998
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: I asked Paul Dini this question, and he said there were no plans at this time. WB Home Video plans to release "World's Finest" on video this August. The sales of the last Superman video (Superman's origin story from the series), were very disappointing. The way things work around here, though, you can bet that if Tim Burton's live-action Superman movie is a big hit, then an animated Superman movie would be more likely.
Batman vs. Bane Direct to Video Movie
Source: Batman Animated
Summary: Scrapped idea for Sub-Zero
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #24, 1:30:57-1:31:58
Who: Randy Rogel
Released: January 18, 2016
Quote: He had an idea of using Bane. And so I sat with him. I go, "Bane would be be good. But what we should do is make him the Terminator." So in other words, he is such a formidable opponent that Batman--you can't kill him and he's coming for you. And so that's really scary. And so every time Batman engages him, he gets hurt more and more. So by the fin--the end of it, Batman's in a really bad way and Bane can't be hurt so it was really exciting. At the same time, I introduced a sub-plot with Robin and Batgirl who were dating in their alter-egos but did not know they were each other, you know. So when they would meet as Robin and Batgirl, he didn't like her. He thought she was an amateur. So it had some humor to it. So we wrote this really great little script. And--and it might have, yeah, it was a script because I had a really detailed outline form and we did it to script.
Source: Back Issue! #99 (September 2017), page 20-21
Who: Randy Rogel
Quote: So we wrote this terrific script. I mean, I really loved this story. And there was this lovely B-plot going on between Dick Grayson and Barbara. Bruce asks Dick, "Does she know?" You're going to tell her the truth about yourself. It wouldn't be fair to her. She has to know you're going out and fighting crime at night and you might get yourself killed." So that was all building underneath. And somewhere in the middle of all that we got called over to Warner Home Video. I remember this meeting very well. They said, "Hey, the studio just signed Arnold Schwarzenegger to do the Batman movie, and he's going to play Mr. Freeze, so that's who we want the villain to be." I said, "We already wrote it with Bane." One of the other guys in the room said, "Well, can't you just use your word processor, and where it says 'Bane' just switch it with 'Mr. Freeze'?" I looked at him and said, "It doesn't work that way. He's a completely different villain." I shook my head, "Never mind, we'll just write a new script."
Link: Watchtower Database "The SUBZERO Sequel + Other Batman & Animaniacs Secrets with Randy Rogel! (Interview)"
Posted: November 15, 2020
Who: Randy Rogel
Summary: At the 10:42-11:04 mark, Randy Rogel reveals he envisioned Bane as the Terminator in that Batman couldn't make a dent in him. As they squared off in the script, Batman gets more wounded and injured. The B-plot was Bruce Wayne falling in love with a woman but it wouldn't work out if he didn't tell her his secret.
Quote: I said, 'You know what? He makes me think of the Terminator.' So why don't we make Bane basically the Terminator? And you can't kill this guy. Throughout the story, he keeps engaging Bane and every time he gets more and more wounded, more and more injured. And at the same time, I had this kind of alternate story going with Bruce is in love with a woman and it's not going to work out if he can't tell her he's Batman and so it was just a terrific story and it worked great.
Sub-Zero could have been in theaters
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #24, 1:38:37-1:38:40
Who: Randy Rogel
Released: January 18, 2016
Quote: There was talk of releasing it in theaters.
Sub-Zero recasting of Batgirl
Link: Boyd Kirkland Interview 4/1/1998
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: We tried to get her [Melissa Gilbert], but she was unavailable due to other acting commitments. However, I think Mary Kay Bergman did a great job for us in that role.
Sub-Zero's Original Ending
Link: World's Finest "The Role of Mr. Freeze In The Animated Universe"
Quote: The movie, which was produced by Boyd Kirkland and Randy Rogel, was originally supposed to conclude with the cure and redemption of Mr. Freeze. The original ending was bittersweet, with Mr. Freeze being cured by the Wayne Foundation, and able to hold his beloved Nora again, but then being led away to spend the rest of his life in prison. The original ending packed a tremendous emotional punch, and conveyed a very positive message, but Warner Bros. asked Kirkland and Rogel to revise the ending. The ending was altered so only Nora Fries was cured, and with Victor to live in seclusion.
Paul Dini wanted to write Sub-Zero
Link: Animation Arena
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: 1997
Quote: If I have any sort of credit on the film, it's script consultant, which wasn't really story editor. Basically, they went back and looked at a couple of Mr. Freeze episodes I wrote and took their cue from that. I was tied up with other projects. There was some friction about that actually. I really wanted to do it. I felt if this movie was going to happen, I really wanted a part in writing it. It was one of those things where it was just a time commitment. Randy Rogel wrote it. He's written a lot of great stuff for Animaniacs and some good episodes for the show; he wrote the Two-Face stories and "Robin's Reckoning." He really delivered the goods on this one. Boyd Kirkland had a hand in the shaping of the thing. I did a few weeks' work on it, sort of like an unofficial story editor, going over the story and suggesting some changes here and there. I went to a couple of the recording sessions and added a few things here and there. But my involvement with the actual story was very slight, other than providing the original stories they took their cues from and going in and making a few suggestions.
Sub-Zero Cuts
Link: Toon Zone
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: 1998
Quote: I don't have the official list, though based on a conversation today with Subzero writer/producer Randy Rogel, he said they were going to trim out a few seconds of overly violent action and tone down the idea that Dick and Babs were spending the night...
Sub-Zero's TV Edits
Link: World's Finest Tweet
Quote: Did you know Kids' WB! made small edits to "Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero" when it aired on the network in 1998? One edit, when Dick Grayson asks Barbara Gordon to a festival, Kids'WB! cuts the dialogue "for the weekend" to avoid implying an adult relationship.
Link: World's Finest Tweet
Quote: Did you know Kids' WB! made small edits to "Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero" when the network aired it in 1998? One edit, during a scene with Batgirl fighting off muggers, tries to tone down the violence by removing Batgirl's kick to a thug's... ah... valuables.
Batman: Arkham Direct to Video Movie
When: Late 90s
Link: World's Finest
Summary: Originally scheduled to be a follow-up to the Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero animated movie, Batman: Arkham was shelved to make way for the acclaimed Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker direct-to-video title. The plot for this animated feature involved Batman and Robin facing off against a collection of Arkham escapees, in addition to Bruce Wayne finding himself falling in love with a new love interest. Production on this ultimate scrapped feature was so far along that extensive casting was already completed. While all of the Batman: The Animated Series voice cast would have returned, Angie Harmon was already hired to voice Bruce's love interest before the movie was ultimate cancelled. Designer Steven E. Gordon did character design for the feature, with Boyd Kirkland attached to write and direct.
Link: Comics2Film
Who: Paul Dini
Released: April 13, 1999
Quote: The basic storyline of our recently canned animated Batman movie involved the Joker and Bane, both prisoners in Arkham, who team up to escape and seek revenge on Batman. Bruce Wayne is involved in a heavy romance before this happens, and is seriously considering retiring the cape and cowl to get married when he's attacked. Robin is seriously injured, but plays in important role in helping Batman before the story is over. The story was full of non-stop action and eye-popping visuals, as well as had a lot of heart and romance. I had one of the best studios in Japan lined up to animate it, with a bigger budget than I had for Sub-Zero. It would have been great. Needless to say, I'm extremely disappointed that it won't be made.
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #25
Posted: Week of April 26 to May 1/2, 1999
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: The basic storyline of our recently canned (Sealed, trash, thrown away, rubbished, demolished) animated Batman movie involved the Joker and Bane (Is this a coincidence or am I dreaming?), both prisioners in Arkham (For the 6 billionth time), who team up (With each-other or with Bruce Timm) to escape and seek revenge on Batman (Who else?). Bruce Wayne is involved in a heavy romance (With a cut girl?) before this happens (Then his new girlfriend abandons him when Bane and the Joker crash one of their dates), and is seriously considering (A face-lift) retiring the cape and cowl (And the suit and belt) to get married (Yeah, right, it’s probably another one of Poison Ivy's creations) when he's attacked (During a date and his girlfriend leaves him). Robin is seriously injured (Did it damage his bug eyes?!?!?), but plays an important role in helping Batman before the story is over (Meat Grinder, Potato Pealer, Onion slicer). THe story was full of non-stop action (Oh, make us feel WORSE why don't you!) and eye-popping visuals (AH! STOP STOP! Your beginning to sound like an advertisement!), as well as had a lot of heart and romance (Oh, MAN!). I had one of the best studios in Japan lined up to animate it, with a bigger budget than I had for "Sub-Zero". It would have been great (Sigh). Needless to say, I'm extremely disappointed (Of Course!) that it won't be made (OF COURSE!). Oh, Well - time to move on.
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: February 12, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: actually, i seem to remember the "virtual joker" being in the "BATMAN : ASYLUM" script that boyd kirkland and randy rogel wrote.....but i could be wrong...
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #24, 1:44:28-1:46:27
Who: Randy Rogel
Released: January 18, 2016
Quote: At this point in the middle of it, was it -- I think -- did I go back to the Bane story? Can't remember because I remember there's this funny scene where Batgirl and Robin are running into each other and getting in each other's way. In fact, I saw--remember The Incredibles? He--she's going "I had him!" "No, I had him." Remember that? They're arguing. And at one point, he's talking--things are getting really serious between Barbara and Dick. And so Bruce is the one who says, "Are you going to tell her that you're Robin? Don't you think she has the right to know that? Because you know, she may not want anything to do--she'll think you're going to get yourself killed." He really puts the heat on it. And so he goes, "Maybe you're right." So at one point, when she comes to visit, he says, "I have something to show you." Because in an earlier scene, I'd had where he called--as Robin--"You're a rank amateur." He said something like that to her. So he takes Barbara and he takes her down to the Batcave. And she's standing there stunned. And he's kinda there with a smirk on his face. Basically the subtext is, "Yeah, I'm Robin. I'm cool." And she turns around and slugs him right in the mouth. He goes down. She goes, "What do you mean I'm a rank amateur?" And he goes, "Oh...wait a minute! You're--you're--" That's when they find out who each other is. And right in the crux of that, boom, they--Bane is on the attack and they have to forget about that and get to the business, and so they're working together only they now know who each other is. And there was this whole issue of can we make a family in this? One of us can get killed. It was a terrific script but we ended up never being able to do it.
Batman: Mad Love
Source: Overstreet Fan Magazine #4 (September 1995) "Paul Dini: Back to the Batcave"
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: A lot of people have asked us, 'When are you going to make Mad Love as either an animated episode, or a direct to video movie?' We did think about it. We actually got some of the people in Home Video to look at it. But, ultimately, I don't think it's going to happen, and, more importantly, Bruce Timm and I have cooled on it. Bruce had a very good point early on, which is, 'It is what it is. It's a book.' Batman is a secondary player in this. When you're doing a made for video release, you want a story where Batman and Bruce Wayne are more integral to the plot, more of the attention is on him.
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Early Dee Dee concept art
Source: Shane Glines
Link: Shane Glines Tweet
Edited Version of the Movie
Link: Fatman on Batman #20 (dead link), 46:05-47:15, 48:20-48:27, 48:52-49:06
Posted: December 12, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: We were given cart blanche to write and make the movie we wanted. And then the death scene of the Joker and the flashback was a very strong scene, also implying the Joker tortured Robin, who was a minor at the time, to the breaking point, you know. It's really strong stuff. And what happened was when we got close to the release, people were wondering, "Is this gonna be bad? Is it going to traumatize kids?" And everything. And it ultimately came down to even though this wasn't going to air on Kids WB, for whatever reason, we had to show it to one of the executives at Kids WB. And she said, "I'm going to run that. I'm not going to promote that. Not in good faith. You got a kid picking up a gun and killing somebody on my network." Well, at that time they needed it for promotion. You know wat happened was they needed to get Kids WB onboard to advertise it. To promote it./That point, they said, "It's too strong. You gotta fix it. You gotta go in and take--"/We had to go in and make Kids WB happy. And so we came up--we wrote and boarded a sequence they approved where basically the Joker does die but it is more a result of him bringing it on himself than Tim killing him.
Opening Fight
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 69
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Also, that opening fight scene with Terry and the Jokerz gang in the warehouse, it just went on and on and on-and it's still pretty long. It's a very long sequence. That was one of the major sticking points when we were doing the cut version of it. The home video people said, "Reduce the length of this by half. The fact that it goes on so long is creating an aura of unending violence." So my editor, Joe Gall, and I, we loosely translated what they said into reducing the number of blows that were thrown. [laughter] We didn't actually shorten the length of it by half-we reduced it by maybe a quarter of a third-but we took out every other act of violence. If there was a shot where Batman threw three punches, we would have him throw one or two. It still came out long, but I think it's a terrific sequence. We wanted to do that from the very beginning.
Return of the Joker Opening Credits
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 6:43-7:07
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "The reason the titles looks so simple is because we literally ran out of time. We had originally had an idea for a little more elaborate title sequence and just didn't have time to do it but fortunately we had the services of a talented young computer animator named Brian Woodward who actually works at the Warner Bros. Feature Animation. He generated these titles for us literally like overnight last week."
Bonk Twitched
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 13:59-14:14
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "There was actually after Joker shot Bonk the first time, there were a number of scenes with Bonk's corpse in the foreground twitching in his death throes and it was a bit too much for our friends in home video so they asked us to take it out and we reluctantly agreed."
Woof was originally a dog Splicer
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 16:28-16:29
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "Originally, he was a dog."
Cut Scene of Old Bruce visits Arkham Asylum Ruins
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 47:27-47:46
Who: Bruce Timm
Note: The storyboard animatic can be seen in the special feature section of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, "Confidential Batman Footage" and read in full in The Official Screenplay.
Quote: "He did this one really great sequence where Bruce in present day Gotham goes to the ruins of Arkham Asylum and makes a grim discovery there and it was a really neat scene. It was almost completely silent and moody and we unfortunately had to cut it for time because it was really one of the few sequences we could cut without disrupting the story flow so you don't miss it."
Deleted Storyboard with Jordan Pryce
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 47:53-47:56
Who: Glen Murakami
Note: The storyboard animatic can be seen in the special feature section of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, "Confidential Batman Footage."
Quote: "He boarded another scene with Pryce, too, that was--"
Note: Scene can be read in The Official Screenplay.
Dirty Dancing in the Nightclub
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 25:29-25:36
Who: Curt Geda
Quote: "Even in this sequence there was a guy in some dirty dancing with the Dees."
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 68, 69
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: It wasn't more than ten or 15 seconds, something like that./The Dee-Dee dance sequence was something I went through on the nickel-and-dime pass, where I was literally going through shot-by-shot, taking stuff out. The Dee-Dee dance stuff was great, and I love cute girls dancing-I'd have loved to put that in the movie-but it obviously didn't add anything to the story. It was just eye candy, so it was out.
Drink Machine became Lava Lamp
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 29:30-29:44
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: "That was originally supposed to be a soft serve machine. A three story tall slurpee machine people were drinking out of at the bottom. But it just evolved into a giant lava lamp actually with better design elements. There's lines about people drinking or something and just took it all out."
In Flashback, Robin's screaming was heard as he was tortured
Link: Watchtower Database " MATHEW VALENCIA - Voice of Tim Drake! | 12th Level Intellects EP #21" 31:50-32:31, 32:50-32:58
Who: Mathew Valencia
Posted: July 16, 2018
Quote: Actually, before we even got to shooting, there was an alternate version of the script where Robin doesn't just get turned into Jay, he also gets tortured by electrocution and they had to cut that out because of a child protection right advocates. They got involved and they were like, 'you can't be showing little kids getting tortured on TV. This is dark, even for Batman.' And so we had to go ahead and we had to like rewrite the whole script to sort of just gloss over that. Oh, now, he's just Jay because reasons.
Quote: There was a lot of Robin lines were just "Ah!" screaming and they're like you can't be doing that.
In Flashback montage, Batman beat up the Penguin
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 35:21-35:28
Who: Paul Dini and Curt Geda
Quote: "(Paul Dini) Batman beats up the Penguin./(Curt Geda) Penguin's lair. It was between 20 to 30 pages."
Note: Scene can be read in The Official Screenplay.
In Flashback, Joker's Apron was Kill The Cook
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 42:00-42:02
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Originally, his apron was Kill The Cook."
In Flashback, tools on Operating Table was changed
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 42:11-42:28
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "The operating table had more surgical implements on it or instruments on it and it made the scene a little bit too over the top scary and so we replaced the real sharp nasty stuff with silly things like plungers and cream cheese and bagels."
Break You line in Flashback
Link: Fatman on Batman #20 (dead link), 1:06:34-1:06:44
Posted: December 12, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: That was one line I put in here, Batman said, "I'm gonna break you--I'm gonna break your neck." And he started to do it and we said, "Eh...change it."
Knife Thrust in Flashback
Link: Fatman on Batman #20 (dead link), 1:10:33-1:10:42
Posted: December 12, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: I think we had to cut the knife thrust into his leg but I wanted it to be 'that's where Wayne got the limp.' He tore right through the muscles of the leg.
Tara Strong and Andrea Romano subbed for Mathew Valencia in Flashback climax
Link: World's Finest "The Bruce Timm Interview: The Sequel"
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: ....the climax of the flashback in "ROTJ" packs a wallop, Tara and Andrea Romano (subbing for Matt Valencia) are downright astonishing....
Link: Watchtower Database " MATHEW VALENCIA - Voice of Tim Drake! | 12th Level Intellects EP #21" 34:23-34:34
Who: Mathew Valencia
Posted: July 16, 2018
Quote: No, they definitely had me try it out quite a few times. I just didn't have the acting chops to pull it off and I threw in the towel to my everlasting shame.
Cut Scene of Police Rounding up Jokerz
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 1:10:04-1:10:14
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "There was a sequence here we cut before it was animated of the cops showing up and rounding up all of the Jokerz outside which we cut for time."
Note: Scene can be read in The Official Screenplay.
Idea to put in a line that Dana was also at Gotham Hospital
Source: Batman Beyond Return of the Joker Commentary, 1:12:04-1:12:16
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "We wanted to show Dana in the hospital after Terry left Tim's room. We thought of that when we were in the Orient. We wanted to put in a line after he meets with Bruce saying, "Well, I'm going to check in on Dana." Or something. Just didn't have time for it."
Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker The Official Screenplay
Link: Click here to see transcript
Summary: Deleted scenes and alternate lines cut from the final version of the movie.
Catwoman Beyond Direct to Video Movie
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: July 19, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: the catwoman bbeyond dtv thing was NEVER scripted, it never went beyond a 45-minute impromptu plotting session between glen murakami and myself....nothing was ever even written down on it....
in its original (if nebulous) form, it was too similar to both "mask of the phantasm" and "return of the joker" in several key plot-structure points....but even before we had a chance to iron any of that out, the home video dept's unbridled apathy towards any more bbeyond dtv projects made the whole thing moot....
as we were plotting out the tail end of the current JLU season, i brought the basic idea up to my co-producers, we quickly realized how it could make a really nifty off-the-wall "bonus" episode (as merlin missy correctly surmised, we did have BUFFY's "restless" episode in mind, season-finale-wise....also, the "flashback" structure was very much inspired by tim minnear's excellent FIREFLY episode "out of gas", as well as the "three cathedrals" episode of WEST WING)....it actually works WAY better as the coda to this season than as a stand-alone bbeyond film, in fact we were able to solve a lot of of its inherent problems by grafting it onto the cadmus plot.... [However], as we were plotting out the tail end of the current JLU season, I brought the basic idea up to my co-producers, [and] we quickly realized how it could make a really nifty off-the-wall 'bonus' episode. [...] We did have Buffy's 'Restless' episode in mind, season finale-wise; also, the 'flashback' structure was very much inspired by Tim Minnear's excellent Firefly episode 'Out of Gas,' as well as the 'Three Cathedrals' episode of West Wing. It actually works way better as the coda to this season than as a stand-alone Batman Beyond film; in fact, we were able to solve a lot of its inherent problems by grafting it onto the Cadmus plot.
"[In the Batman Beyond DTV], instead of Waller, Selina Kyle herself was going to be the one who cloned Batman. Staying much closer to the 'Boys from Brazil' set-up, Selina hedged her bets and created lots of Bruce Wayne clones, and systematically murdered their parents when they reached the proper age. Most of them didn't become manic-depressive crime-fighters, only Terry and one other-a young boy she adopted and raised as her own son. There was going to be a creepy 'Manchurian Candidate' aspect to their relationship, with the aging (but still disturbingly kinda sexy) Selina coaxing the kid into becoming an uber-messed-up avenger of evil.
"Selina's 'son' was going to be the main bad guy 'muscle' of the story-a twisted version of Terry / Bruce, with his own 'dark superhero' outfit and everything. The plan was for him to be bumping off criminals from the Batman Beyond Rogues Gallery, and possibly even an old-timer like Edward Nygma, thus setting the plot in motion (this part was always a bit too 'Phantasm' for me, but I did like the 'Manchurian Candidate'-ness of him).
"This version of Selina had, at some point in the past, 'seen the light,' after years of Batman nagging her to use her talents to help people instead of just helping herself. She eventually realized he was right, but with 'born again' zeal, decided Batman himself didn't go far enough in punishing criminals; she needed a Batman who would help her eliminate criminals (i.e. kill them dead) and set about creating one. These were going to be 'true' Bruce Wayne clones, not nano-engineered 'sons'; in fact, that had a whole lot of problems built into it, which we would have had to figure out if we'd ever gotten a greenlight:
If Terry were an exact clone of Bruce, why didn't Bruce recognize him immediately when he showed up fighting Jokerz outside his gate?
Since Lil' Matt is patently identical to Terry, how could he also be a clone? Wouldn't make sense for Selina to have artificially inseminated Mary McGinnis twice, five or so years apart.
How did Terry's parents escape being murdered when Terry was eight years old?
"Dwayne's 'nano-engineered sperm' idea neatly solved all these problems. [In addition], there were other aspects of the story that would've needed some massaging; for instance, Selina never seemed particularly tech-savvy, so the bonkers clone plot seemed like a bit of a stretch for her (but perfect for Mrs. Waller and her Frankenstein leanings). [Also], Bruce was going to discover the truth about 'dark avenger guy' being a clone of himself, put two and two together, and realize [that] Terry was also a Bruce clone and try to shut Terry out of the case, but that bit was way too similar to what we'd just done in Return of the Joker.
Terry thinking he was 'cursed by Batman,' blaming Bruce for ruining his life, even suspecting that Bruce deliberately set the whole thing up, breaking up with Dana... all these bits originated in that impromptu brainstorming session with me and Glen Murakami. The Terry / Dana breakup bit was kinda cool: Terry and Dana go to the wedding of one of her cousins, and you know how people get at weddings; Dana starts hinting that they should think about getting hitched (after they graduate, of course!) and, surprisingly, Terry's not completely adverse to the idea: part of him would actually like to settle down with this girl he obviously adores and live something of a normal life, but then he finds out he's Bruce's clone, thinks he's cursed, doesn't want Dana to have anything to do with him, [etc.]. Terry deciding to change the Batman paradigm by actually marrying her at story's end was something we added when writing 'Epilogue.' I honestly don't know how we would have resolved the Dana / Terry thing if we'd made the Batman Beyond version. Anyhow, that's it in a nutshell
Link: Watchtower, ep50
Summary: Selina made lot's of Bruce Wayne clones, systematically killed parents at proper age, only success was Terry and one other - a creepy Manchurian Candidate raised as her son - bumps off Terry's rogues gallery.
Posted: August 7, 2000
Link: Comics Continuum
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: They're very encouraged by the way Return of the Joker is looking and I think they want to at least investigate doing another direct-to-video Batman maybe a year from now. So we're doing some plotting now, working up a few outlines, things like that.
Worlds Collide Direct to Video Movie
Link: World's Finest "The Bruce Timm Interview: The Original, Uncut Version"
Posted:June 12, 2004
Quote: Well, there IS a JL DTV in the works....kind of. What happened was, the Home Video division commissioned us to write a JL DTV, right around the time we were gearing up for season 3. Dwayne McDuffie and I came up with the story, Dwayne wrote a terrific script, I designed loads of new characters, we started story-boarding, Andrea Romano had assembled a KILLER cast, and we were just getting ready to record it, and then Home Video slammed on the brakes, and it was put on the shelf for the time being. This is a GOOD thing, really! The original plan was to do the DTV and season 3 concurrently, but, long story short: we would have been stretched WAY to thin. JLU is a difficult enough show to do by itself, without having to prep a feature-length movie at the same time. Home Video is still interested in making it, apparently, so hopefully it'll happen.
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: September 18, 2009
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: yep, CO2E basically IS the old WORLDS COLLIDE script -- it's like 95% or more intact -- major difference being the swapping of john stewart for hal jordan -- and since john didn't have a very big part in the original script anyhow, it didn't impact the overall story in any important way (we'd just come off "Starcrossed", remember, where he'd gotten some major face-time, so we felt it'd be good to let him take a bit of a breather)
WORLDS COLLIDE was always intended to be "Continuity Lite", to appeal to the broadest audience possible, to be comprehensible to people who hadn't necessarily seen every episode of JL or people who didn't even get Cartoon Network -- (remember, at the time, the season set dvd's were still a ways off) -- so there never were very many overt continuity callbacks in the script to get rid of
as to why we didn't just make it a straight-up "DCAU" film? simple answer : ZERO interest from the folks at Home Video in re-visting the old continuity -- they've invested several million dollars in establishing the new "DCU" dvd line as its own thing, so why muddy the issue by bringing back the old continuity?
putting it bluntly, getting a "DCAU" version of WORLDS COLLIDE green-lit just plain wasn't gonna happen at this time -- PERIOD.
so -- i could've just waited another five years to see if anybody at Home Video changed their minds (and run the risk that they might NEVER do so) -- or i could grab this opportunity as my last best hope of getting WC on the screen practically intact (but with new designs and new voices), and obviously that's what i chose to do
and by the way, regardless of what gregory says in that video clip, it was totally my idea to dust off and tweak the WC script for the DCU series -- he's blameless here -- any effigies that get burned will have blonde hair, glasses and very tall foreheads, okay?
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: February 23, 2010
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: When we were preparing "Justice League Unlimited," and actually very shortly after we shut down "Justice League," the idea was to do a movie that would bridge a lot of the continuity between the two shows. It was a big change just going from six to 60 members, and answering questions like, "Where did the teleporter come from? And where did the new satellite come from?" I wrote it, and we realized that putting "Justice League Unlimited" together was a much bigger production and challenge than we thought of ahead of time and we just didn't have the manpower to do both the show and the movie so we put the movie on the shelf. But Bruce [Timm] really never gave up on it. He kept trying to do it over the years, and I guess the right opportunity came along and he called me up and said, "Hey, we can do this if we base it on the comic books and not the animated version. Would you be interested in re-writing it?" And I was very interested.
The storyline didn't change very much. The characters changed a bit. Some of the motivations changed. Mostly what I did was cut out stuff that was intended to set up the mysterious new "Justice League Unlimited" show, which later enjoyed 39 episodes, but at the time we started, we were leading into [JLU], so there was a lot of stuff that was supposed to erase questions. I took that out, but I'd say 90 to 95 percent of it is the same story.
We actually made up a fake president, who we thought was going to be president in "Justice League Unlimited," just because we knew we were going to do some political stuff
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: February 22, 2010
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We finished up the first "Justice League" series and we got the order to do another season of the show. Cartoon Network had asked us to re-brand the show and to not do anymore two-parters, and they left it to us to figure out what that meant: re-branding the show. We came up with the idea of expanding the roster of heroes and doing more stand-alone episodes, but with an overall arc, and all that stuff that eventually became "Justice League Unlimited." At the same time, it was kind of planned that we were just going to jump into that new iteration without a whole lot of explanation. It was like we went from seven heroes to 50 some odd heroes and one Watchtower to a whole system of floating Watchtowers over the Earth. We actually wanted it to be a bit disorienting like that. "Ooh, wait a minute, what happened?" But we did plan on eventually on telling that story of what happened in between the two series.
Right around the same time that we were developing "Justice League Unlimited," we came up with this story, which at the time was called, "Worlds Collide," which explained how the two series connected and what happened in between, and we used the Crime Syndicate from the comics, who are a group of supervillains, who are kind of like the evil alter egos of our guys and the main antagonists of that story. [When] we wrote the script, the idea was that we were going to do both the movie and "Justice League Unlimited," simultaneously. We knew we had a longer lead time on the movie, so we knew it was going to come out on home video some time after "Justice League Unlimited" premiered, but that was OK. But ultimately, for one reason or another, just as were getting ready to get a green light on "Worlds Collide" - we actually already had the cast in place - we were getting ready to pull the trigger on it and the plug got pulled. They said, for whatever reason, "We don't think we should go ahead with this."
But we had the script lying around that we really, really liked that Dwayne [McDuffie] had written, and it kept coming up in conversations. It was like, "It's a shame that this script exists and we can't do it. What should we do with it?" Should we put on one of the other DVDs as a pdf file, just so people could read it? Or should we turn it into a comic book?
DC was all excited about doing it as comic book miniseries for a while there, but ultimately all of that stuff fell through and, years and years later, we were working on these DCU movies, the DTVs, and we had a couple of scripts that were in development that weren't quite gelling. We had a slot open - we really needed a movie for the first quarter of '10 - and we have to get something in the works. All along, I'd been going, "We've got 'Worlds Collide.' It's still sitting there." And they said, "Yeah, but it's too close to the TV continuity. Yadda, yadda, yadda," and then I happened to be reading one of the current "Justice League of America" comics that was coming out at the time and, weirdly enough, Dwayne was writing the comic at the time. I was flipping through it and I was like, "Wait a minute. A lot of the people, who are in the Justice League, at the moment, in the comic were a lot of the characters that we played up a lot on the series, like Black Canary and Vixen. And I happened to notice the design of the Watchtower that they were using was our Watchtower from the animated series. It was almost like the two continuities had kind of weirdly merged. So I got the idea that, without a whole lot of trouble now, we could actually retro-fit "Worlds Collide" into a DCU movie with minor alterations - the biggest, of course, being swapping out John Stewart for Hal Jordan, and obviously, we'd have to go in and redesign the characters because we didn't want it to be exactly the same style than the TV series. But ultimately, Dwayne's original script was about 95 percent intact and everybody signed off on it and away we went.
Curiously enough, James Woods was the one person that actually ended up playing the same part that he would have played if we had gone ahead with "Worlds Collide" all those years ago. Back in the day, he was our choice for Owlman. Unfortunately, he and Andrea Romano, and I think even Dwayne, they might be misremembering it, because I'm pretty sure we had cast him as Owlman. They're saying he was originally cast as Lex Luthor in the earlier version, but I'm pretty sure he was Owlman. Everybody else, we had a completely different cast in mind. We, frankly, thought he was a longshot. He's a big name actor and he's really, really good and too expensive. But at the time, he signed on for it, and years later, I was like, "Well, he was our original choice for Owlman. Let's see if he would still be interested." And he still was, and there we were
And actually, at the time, when it was still "Worlds Collide," we had gotten pretty far down the line in terms of developing the character designs for the Crime Syndicate and some of the other characters, and I didn't want to have to just start completely from scratch again. It's basically just the ending from the original movie that literally leads into "Justice League Unlimited."
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Sat January 23, 2010 5:59 pm
Who: Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: It would be interesting, the draft includes some Milestone guest stars that DC Comics made us take out. It also ended with the JLA line-up that I was told would be my comic book JLA line up in February, had I continued on the book. None of that's in there, now
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: Sun January 24, 2010 6:52 pm
Quote: Question "can you tell us what milestone character's that where going to make a cameo's in the justice league crisis on two earth's movie." Answer: Static in the first three drafts, Icon in a couple of the later drafts.
Link: Lamhost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted: August 9, 2006
Quote: Question "You also said there was an "origin" for her Invisible Plane that might show up in an episode. Where'd it come from?" Answer: That origin was written into a so far unproduced Justice League direct to video. I'm mum, just in case we ever get to do it.
Link: Lamphost Forums Dwayne McDuffie
Posted Mon January 10, 2011 9:08 pm
Quote: Question "On Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, when Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash meet the alternate Luthor; Superman checks up on their universe's Luthor, who is still in Stryker's. In the World's Collide script, how did the Justice League's Lex Luthor make an appearance, if any?" Answer: He's at a signing for his new book "Into the Light," de rigueur for his impending presidential campaign.
World's Collide to Crisis on Two Earths
Link: Lamphost Forum Dwayne McDuffie
Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:38 pm: Question "How many drafts did you go through and how long did it take to get the final script done? Is there something that ended up getting cut you wish could have been in the story?"
Answer: 7 drafts, about 6 years. The Static/Icon cameo.
Link: Lamphost Forum Dwayne McDuffie
Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:52 pm: Question "can you tell us what milestone character's that where going to make a cameo's in the justice league crisis on two earth's movie."
Answer: Static in the first three drafts, Icon in a couple of the later drafts.
Link: Anime Superhero Bruce Timm
Posted: February 10, 2021
Quote: Funny you should say that! JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS was originally titled CRISIS ON EARTH 2, but the marketing folks were concerned that people might think it was a sequel to some movie called CRISIS ON EARTH. That it might hurt sales, if people didn't want to watch a sequel to a movie they hadn't seen. I thought at the time that they were WAY over-thinking it, but I guess it was a valid concern after all.
Justice League/Teen Titans Crossover Movie
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: September 6, 2021
Quote: "A DCAU Titans show was never a thing but we were asked to consider a JL/TTcrossover episode (or movie) but Bruce and Glen thought that was a bad idea / unfeasible because the shows had totally different styles and tones."
The Brave and The Bold Direct to Movie
Elongated Man, Greem Arrow, and Zatanna
Link: World's Finest James Tucker Interview about "Bold Beginnings"
When: 2003-04
Quote: WF: To the main story. Why were these particular heroes chosen - Green Arrow, Plastic Man and Aquaman? JT: This story actually started out as a DTV (direct-to-video movie) script written years ago that was to feature the Batman: The Animated Series-version of Batman in a The Brave and the Bold-type movie featuring three segments consisting of Batman teaming up with Elongated Man, Green Arrow and Zatanna written by Paul Dini and Alan Burnett. I'd place it around the time of Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, either right before or right after, I don't recall. For whatever reason the script didn't get produced and it sat on the shelf for years. Fast forward to our third season. We were a bit behind of getting in a finished script for our deadline and had gotten a hold of the script for the aborted DTV. We took two of the segments and adapted them to what became the Green Arrow and Plastic Man (formerly Elongated Man) segments in the episode. Steve Melching wrote the rest of the episode and did a great job of condensing those segments and creating a great framing device using Aquaman's thwarted efforts at telling his story. I thought the episode turned out well, especially given considering it's convoluted path from a 75 minute DTV to a 22-minute TV show.
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Paul Dini
When: November 23, 2003
Quote: That's something that was started two years ago by Alan Burnett and myself, but was put to the side when they finished 'Mystery of the Batwoman.' It's a lot of fun. It's a Batman team-up with a lot of heroes.
Link: Dark Horizons
Who: Paul Dini
When: November 9, 2004
Quote: He said that there were plans for a big original Batman animated movie with Justice League cameos but that has been scrapped, and a Justice League straight to video movie was also dropped. Basically any new projects talked about with the original DC animated universe are either scrapped or on hold until further notice.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #21, 1:14:55-1:17:14
Who: Paul Dini
Released: November 24, 2015
Quote: I did have an idea for, after we did Mxyzptlk in Superman, Alan Burnett and I actually wrote a direct to video that was never made. It was parceled up here and there. We used some other ideas but it was a direct to video and the last time I looked at it, it was sort of 'Batman's Interesting Team-ups' and framework was Batman is on a mission somewhere and Robin has been told 'stay in the cave, this is too dangerous' and Robin wants to quit because 'Batman isn't taking me seriously.' And Alfred told him of three times he had to team up with another hero and how that worked out. So there was a Batman-Superman team up with Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite that was a lot of fun and was Bruce Wayne goes to Clark Kent and goes, "I think I'm going nuts." "Why?" "Well, because I've been having these hallucinations." And he explains what they are. And Superman is, "You're not crazy. It's a guy. I know the guy." And it turns out it's not Mxy doing it. It's actually his cousin, you know. We made Bat-Mite his cousin who was a Batman fanboy. So it was big 'who can outdo each other,' and you know they're causing massive destruction. And Superman and Batman are trying to stop them or outthink them or something. There was that initially. That was the--a big part of that direct to video. The other team ups were Batman and Zatanna in an actual magic story against Klarion the Witch Boy. And that you know, it was okay. It was a little weak episode. It was okay, 'here's a short one.' But it was--it didn't--I wouldn't have made it the same way. I would have dropped that segment out and put in Green Arrow or doing something else. You got magic magic in the first one. You got more magic in the second one. And the third one was Batman and Plastic Man. And then versus the Ventriloquist. It's crime and fun and weirdness. So but that was dun, it was just never produced.
Link: Batman Animated Podcast #21, 1:18:17-1:18:42
Who: Paul Dini
Released: November 24, 2015
Quote: Direct to video was he had a gang and there was a girl in the gang and she was flirting with Scarface and somehow this was not happening with the Ventriloquist so the Ventriloquiest was kind of coming onto her and she was encouraging his attention and the Ventriloquist was the odd man out and it was very weird.
Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 03:12-03:21
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: This is what I remember. I remember that at one point, you had it on a plot point that the star suit was actually a map. It was going to be space-time coordinates--
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 36:32-36:41
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Well, originally there was a line of dialogue where he mentioned it because Batman is looking at it going, "Oh, because this-this is his room because there's the toy." But we took that one out because we felt it wasn't necessary.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 46:48-47:00
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Well, originally when she went to meet them. I don't think it was in the forest. And, yeah, as we're plotting it out, I went, "Yeah, it should be in the forest because it increases her terror. It deliberately calls back--
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 47:06-47:09
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: It was like a junkyard and that was nothing.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 50:46-50:59
Who: Eric Carrasco
Summary: Jessica sending a coded message to alert the Green Lantern Corps of the ruse wasn't always in the script.
Quote: There was a moment where it was going to be--wear her ring around upside down or a bunch of stuff that would not have read unless you were--
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 53:40-53:42
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: Oh, also, we were going to have her arm cut off.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 53:46-53:50
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: And then she'd have the construct arm.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 56:16-56:29
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: And originally we designed this whole underground cellar, you know, and we realized we don't need it. We went back and forth on what it looked like. Yearh, it was neat but it just slowed us down.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 1:00:18-1:00:26
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I'm going to own up to this one here. This Skeletor line. I didn't like the original line so I changed it. I don't know if it works but whatever.
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 1:00:30-1:00:37
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Originally, it was he said, "Oh, Batman is it? What exactly are your powers?" And I think he said, "Good study habits."
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 1:03:31-1:03:36
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: At one point, we had a base of the rocket that was gonna launch the thing...
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 1:03:37-1:03:47
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: There was a whole rocket that was going to send the Emerald Eye into space. Early on. And the jets of the rocket were shooting down on Batman and Mano.
Discarded or Changed Portland scenes in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Source: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Commentary 28:07-28:15
Who: Bruce Timm
Summary: In Portland, Batman originally fought Mano and Tharok in the parking structure.
Quote: That was originally a Batman moment. Originally that was boarded to be Batman and I thought, "You know, we need to give Mr. T a good moment. So you know, let's make that Mr. T."
Link: Watchtower Database September 2020 24 Hour Birthday Stream
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: At 54:36, Eric Carrasco revealed at one point, Star Boy was going to get thrown into the Keep Portland Weird wall.
Discarded Batman arc in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database "FATAL FIVE Writer Eric Carrasco - DELETED SCENES + Where is Supergirl?!" 21:00-22:21
When: April 3, 2020
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: There was a moment when they walk into the Hall of Justice League statues and there's a little joke about you know it doesn't look anything like me that Batman makes there. There was a longer version of that where they walk in there's a statue of everybody except Batman and Jessica and Miss Martian are sort of like, he doesn't remark on it and he sort of just slinks away and they come to him and they're like "you know there's a lot of reasons that there might not be a statue of you like because you know maybe you don't die. Maybe it's people probably remember what you did" and Batman's been a little disappointed that he doesn't have a statue of himself in this gallery and then at the end when he fights Mano, there was supposed to be a moment where Mano was like "Superman and Wonder Woman, these are all legends where I come from but I have no idea who you are. How does that feel like to be someone that nobody remembers?" And Batman is basically just like "it's the only thing I've ever wanted. It's for people to think I'm an urban legend and never be known and stick to the shadows and all of that stuff and if you don't know me, you don't know how to fight me" and that is when he sort of does all the pressure points and take him on. It was a little moment that got cut for time.
Discarded Wonder Woman arc in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database September 2020 24 Hour Birthday Stream
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: At 29:45 to 31:25, Eric Carrasco revealed there was a Wonder Woman plot. She went to go consult with the Fates but learned the Greek gods were leaving for another dimension because they foresaw that the future was erased. They invited Wonder Woman to join them because soon her items like her bracelets would no longer work. The plot was a crisis of faith and she would learn she is Wonder Woman without the gear.
Discarded Superman arc in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database "FATAL FIVE Writer Eric Carrasco - DELETED SCENES + Where is Supergirl?!" 26:10-26:20
When: April 3, 2020
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: Superman had a whole thing about how he felt about the future and cynicism versus optimism. He went on this whole story with Mr. Terrific.
Link: Eric Carrasco Tweet February 18, 2021
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: And an earlier draft had Superman give a short little speech about how he gets his powers from the sun, and now every time he flies, every time he catches someone falling, Star Boy saved them too.
Discarded WonderBat Moment in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database "FATAL FIVE Writer Eric Carrasco - DELETED SCENES + Where is Supergirl?!" 24:50-25:30
When: April 3, 2020
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: There was a very tiny WonderBat moment in one of the script which is I think just in the climactic battle, there was a very obvious concern like Batman got kind of injured in the fight and Wonder Woman was very concerned about him and came to his rescue and it was one of those action movie things where it wasn't you know they didn't sit down and declare their feelings for each other. There was no kiss on the cheek, there was no This Little Piggy moment. It was just seeing that moment for the shippers of which you know I'm one and just having a moment where you could see that these two people really care about each other and maybe even a little bit more than friends. That moment didn't end up making it.
Bloodsport replaced a new character in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database "FATAL FIVE Writer Eric Carrasco - DELETED SCENES + Where is Supergirl?!" 30:46-31:12 and 31:17-31: 37
When: April 3, 2020
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: We actually might have complicated one by putting this version of Bloodsport in early on. We just introduced a new character who was taking over the newsroom in early drafts of this and then it was switched to Bloodsport which actually may have complicated the continuity more but that was sort of one of the places where that started to feel a bit more like the Gotham of old and then Arkham was the big place where stuff had to fit.
Quote: It was a character that I imagined in my brain pan that... it was an entirely made up.
Miss Martian's Origin Story in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five
Link: Watchtower Database September 2020 24 Hour Birthday Stream
Who: Eric Carrasco
Summary: At the 15:30-16:41 mark, Eric Carrasco revealed he independently came up with a backstory for Miss Martian. Since White Martians did not exist in the continuity, Miss Martian's origins have something to do with a race of Martians that did not live on Mars. For example, in DC Comics canon, Martians live elsewhere like on Saturn.
Link: Watchtower Database
Posted: July 11, 2021 (Recording from April 2019)
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: I have what I would do, and what I think it is. I will say that my plan for the comic book, if anybody were to ever do it, or if they were ever to ask me to do another one of these movies, would involve a bit of a mystery around her, sort of the way it was treated in Young Justice. And that would be part of why Batman was kind of hesitant, that J'onn basically dropes her off on Batman's doorstep, and then goes off to help with the Rann-Thanagar thing with John and Shayera without telling Batman the full story. You said basically the three options for it, right? That it's Imperium, or that it is she is an actual Green Martian, or that White Martians are a different thing. But I will also say this... There were also Martians on Saturn in the comics. So since there was a Martian colony elsewhere in the comics, it might be fun to explore that in the animated world, since Mars had a different backstory in the Timmverse. That would be where my head would naturally go, which is always back to the comics.
Quote: I kept thinking about exploring it on Supergirl with our version of M'gann. And that, I will say appealed to me while I was writing this movie. But, there was so much cut from this movie that, like, to think about adding something like that to it was just, like... In truth, all you needed to know was she was Martian in some way, and she wanted to be a member of the Justice League. Beyond that, just had that head canon thing. It's, uh, it's a Saturn thing. But that's literally just me. I don't think I even brought it up to any of the rest of the team.
Summary: At 17:45-18:41 and 20:29-20:48 marks, Eric Carrasco had an idea that Miss Martian was from a Martian colony on Saturn and J'onn J'onnzz left her with Batman without telling him much before he left to help with the Rann-Thanagar conflict. Carrasco had a plan to explore the mystery of her origins in a tie-in comic book and it was similar to Miss Martian's arc on Young Justice but the tie-in never came to pass.
Mattel TV pitches
Wonder Woman and the Star Riders
Link: Sarah Dyer website via Web Archive
When: 1992-1993
Who: Sarah Dyer, Jose Garcia-Lopez
Quote: Yes, it's the strange and bizarre saga of the world's most elaborate, nonsensical, and ultimately unproduced all-female action figure line (and marketing concept). And it goes something like this:
In 1992, for reasons I can't guess, Mattel decided they wanted to do a line of toys based around Wonder Woman -- but not based on her actual history or character! -- accompanied (of course) by a cartoon and other tie-ins. Their original idea seems to have been a resuscitation of the She-Ra concept, with a little Captain Planet-style environmentalism added, and Wonder Woman shoved in for name recognition. (I also wouldn't be surprised to find out there was a little Sailor Moon influence at work as well -- while that's pure speculation on my part, Sailor Moon was already a huge success in Japan at the time, and Mattel worked closely with Bandai and had to have been aware of how well the franchise was doing.)
So, they went to DC and WB Animation to develop the show that would be a vehicle for the toy line. In late 92, the concept went through several revisions as WB tried to pull together a pilot, DC worked on the promotional comics (which were to be inserted into Barbie boxes, as well as who knows where else) and Mattel worked on their toy designs. Long-time DC comic and licensing artist Jose Garcia-Lopez (see his Superpowers work at the Superpowers archives) was even tapped to do the character designs. Finally, enough was settled for Mattel to put together a presentation for the Feb 93 Toy Fair. The line was supposed to launch in September of that year, accompanied by a half-hour animated special, which would then be put out on video, and tie-in comic series and other merchandise. Unfortunately, the whole thing collapsed not long afterwards -- I can't trace the actual fatal blow, but my guess would be that they couldn't find any takers for their proposed cartoon (animated shows geared towards girls are virtually unsellable -- even today I know of cartoons being shopped around that no-one will produce because "conventional wisdom" dictates that shows geared towards girls will fail). But as the pilot was never even made (supposedly it got as far as storyboards and some test animation, although I'm not sure if that's true), it's also possible that orders were so low on the toy line Mattel decided to pull the plug -- it had been about five years since the last girl's action line left the shelves, so retailers might have been hesitant about trying the line out. It's also possible that the concept was so weird -- marketing-driven without much thought to logic, a mish-mash of other shows and toy lines, an almost unrecognizable Wonder Woman -- that cooler heads prevailed and put the concept out of its misery.
With so many strikes against it, I'm amazed that anyone attempted to market this concept in the first place, and (I think) it's completely bizarre that toys were actually shown and promoted before the property they were based on had even materialized. In fact, a Feb 93 article in the Wall Street Journal calls the line "an unusual venture" because of Mattel's attempt to do a female action line, which at that point hadn't been seen for several years. To help clarify things for those who might have been made nervous (and to think Xena would appear just a few years later!), a spokeswoman for Mattel stressed that the line would be nonviolent and that Wonder Woman would have "lots of hair to comb."
But lots of hair couldn't save this Wonder Woman. And so this ill-fated chapter in the history of female action figures drew to a close (as Wonder Woman fans around the globe breathed a sigh of relief!)
Star Lily of the Star RidersThe Star Rider concept went through a lot of incarnations in its brief existence, and the final storyline doesn't really have a good explanation for the term, "Star Riders". As things stood when the line ended, you have your choice of two universes for Wonder Woman and the Riders -- in the version which would have been seen in the cartoon (and presumably followed on the published comics and toy info) the "Riders" are a group of four teenage girls from around the globe who were all born with nature-controlling superpowers, who suddenly are called to "fulfill their destiny" as Star Riders along with Wonder Woman (who is apparently also one of the chosen ones -- she's a very young Wonder Woman, with none to little of her normal DC background). They're taken to the mysterious Starlight Castle in the sky by winged horses and given costumes, new names, new hair colors and some nice accessories by a disembodied voice, Starlight (all of this directly from the She-Ra mythos, by the way). Wonder Woman doesn't get a new name, but she does get a new costume along with her new friends, and as a natural-born leader takes charge. They're informed that a great evil has attacked the Earth, in the form of their soon-to-be arch-nemesis Purrsia (who is far more Catra than Cheetah), accompanied by her evil kitty pal Panthera, and they must stop her and protect the world. As it turns out, there's these magical Star Jewels protecting the earth, which Starlight created eons ago. And Purrsia is trying to steal them all to impress her boss, the evil and mysterious Darkness (think Queen Metallia crossed with Satan). Starlight has now activated the Star Riders to save the jewels and protect Nature from evil (it's hard to tell if their existence was somehow engineered by Starlight or if they are simply the best candidates for the jobs). They now must learn to use their powers, cope with their new duties, learn to get along, fit in with other teenagers in their regular lives, and of course constantly fight Purrsia and save the Star Jewels from her. You can pretty much figure out what would have happened for the rest of the series from there.
Promo ComicHowever, the early promotional materials (WB/Mattel's presentation folder and the actually-released mini-comic) give us a universe quite different, one based on an earlier version of the storyline, in which the Star Riders don't have human secret identities, but are a sort of secret guardian system for the planet, known only to the Queen of the Amazons, who's sent her daughter to join and lead them. Instead of being humans who become superheroines, they're more like heroines who adopt secret identities to live among humans -- Princess Diana is a doctor; Solara (actually a sun goddess of the aztecs or something like that) is a photographer; Ice (a princess of the quasi-norse-legend Ice Folk) is a part-time writer and illustrator who holds down a day job in an ice-cream parlor; Dolphin (princess of an aquatic race) works at "Ocean World"; and Star Lily (the last survivor of a secret paradise-like land) works as a florist. Their powers are pretty similar as Star Riders, although in this incarnation poor Star Lily can only make people fall asleep! In this version, Purrsia is simply a greedy evil sorceress from another dimension who wants all jewels. It's suggested that she could have been a heroine of her world but didn't live up to the task -- and that she may be redeemable. She seems to be more or less a rogue Star Rider who wants to lead the group and may be redeemable. (Although it's hard to tell -- in the promo comic there's a big lapse in logic -- Purrsia tells Panthera, who's a bumbling cat instead of an assistant here, that she wants to be a Star Rider, and in Wonder Woman's lasso she says she want to join their sisterhood and renounce evil. Now I've never heard of a version of the magic lasso where you could actually lie when wrapped up in it -- but apparently Purrsia's figured out how, 'cause as soon as she gets into the castle she cuts the power and makes off with a Star Jewel. Oh well, I guess she's just really evil!) You can see the entire comic for yourself at Themyscira, along with the character descriptions given in the presentation booklet. Personally, I prefer the later "official" version, and the following character descriptions are based on that:
(going clockwise from) Wonder Woman: a young, relatively-new-to-man's-world WW gets a new costume when she becomes one of the Star Riders, and gets the Wonder Wand, which gives her some supernatural powers including flight and the ability to "bring out people's innate goodness" (ahem, couldn't be from Sailor Moon, could it?). She also gets the coolest horse, Nightshine, who's a winged unicorn, rather than the "plain" winged horse everyone else gets. (Again, shades of She-Ra!) She wears bustier, boots and tiara in the classic WW style, with tights, tutu, and cape added.
Solara: even more predictable than Ice's "cold" nature is Solara's fiery temperament, and believe it or not, she's a hot-blooded Latina teenager (from Mexico, to be specific). No stereotypes there, folks. She has the powers of the Sun, including a serious sunblast she can do from her chest, and she can control temperature. A warm pink and orange color scheme (including dark pink hair) mystifyingly works for her.
Star Lily: the protector of nature is also the token non-white character -- an African princess who says things like "hey, girlfriend". She controls nature with very Poison Ivy-like powers, making things grow out of seemingly nowhere. She has a big floral-design thing on her back. At odds with her close bond to organic things, she seems to be the one most interested in the Starlight Castle's technology.
Dolphin: a perky, cute American high school girl who has absolutely nothing to do with the DC character. She's the "ocean" character, who can make bubbles. Strong bubbles. And big ones too. If she does anything else, I haven't seen it evidenced in the final material -- but early concepts include a "sonic scream". Pale blue hair, a fan-tail skirt and a Mera-like tiara complete her particular ensemble.
Purrsia: the evil nemesis of the Star Riders -- she lives in a dark castle in another dimension, able to move back and forth with the aid of Panthera (she can't do it on her own). She's an evil sorceress type, who like all cartoon villains is rather ineffectual. She has a fur trimmed skirt and cape, and a magic mask which allows her to see things that are invisible to the naked eye-- a sort of x-ray vision, if you will.
Ice: another American high-schooler who is predictably emotionally detached -- she is the, uh, "ice" character (and again has nothing to do with the DC character she's named for). She can create ice blasts, freeze things, make things out of ice -- she's probably the most powerful of the four younger girls -- but she's the one who gets a power wand to increase and focus her abilities. For some reason, she's pink and white -- not colors I think of as "ice-like"...but I suppose they didn't want to repeat Dolphin's color scheme. Ice wand and cape accessorise her Frosta-like outfit.
It was reported at the time that Supergirl was later going to be added to the line, but after reviewing the line's history, I doubt that was ever actually planned, especially as the development never got as far as planning a series. Room was left for additional riders, but more likely they would have been created by Mattel.
The Toys
The figures are as closely descended from the She-Ra line as the actual characters themselves, using similar accessories, powers and deco. But they're based on a much more doll-like figure than the She-Ra line was -- I'm not sure what these 6" molds were originally created for, but this is their first appearance. They have since been used by Mattel in the Disney Princess line, the "Four Corners" doll family line, and in the girl's adventure line "Tenko and the Guardians of the Gemstones" (which is possibly the closest thing to the Star Riders we'll ever see -- incorporating the powerful magic gemstones concept and the magnetic jewel feature planned for the Star Riders). But unlike these later cloth-dressed dolls, the Star Riders were designed like the She-Ra line, with painted-on basic costumes accessorised with add-on skirts, wands and headdresses (as well as above-mentioned magnetic jewel accessory).
As far as "action features" go, Dolphin apparently had a "bubble power", which looks as though it works by pumping bubble solution through her midsection (the 3rd She-Ra had a bubble power action, but it was based on a gun -- Dolphin's action reminds me of Mermista's water spraying feature instead); Ice has an ice wand and "ice" sound effects; Solara's chest lights up with her solar blast; and Star Lily has the spinning attachment that formerly belonged to Castaspella (from She-Ra).
Starlight CastleIn the playmate/pet department, Mattel also showed Wonder Woman's steed, Nightshine, and one of the basic winged horses, Cloudancer; as well as Purrsia's companion/assistant Panthera. You can see from the photo of Nightshine that the horses are definitely made from the basic horse mold used in the She-Ra line. (And I assume that Purrsia's cat would have been cast from the Clawdeen mold as well.) However, the Starlight Palace, while obviously based in concept on the She-Ra line's Crystal Castle is all-new. I'm not sure why -- the castle is described as in the clouds and otherwise sounds like the Crystal Castle. But the Starlight Palace is smaller and cheap looking. I can only guess that either Mattel didn't want to be so obvious by re-using the Crystal Castle mold -- who knows how many people still had one in their homes and wouldn't appreciate seeing it re-used, or the Crystal Castle was simply too elaborate and expensive to be feasible in 1993 (especially as part of an unproven line.
The toys also reverted back to the original designs for the characters -- for some reason, in the promotional materials, big logos based on the character's initials have been imposed onto the designs. But the toys are back to basics:
Source: Back Issue! #16, page 79-81
Posted: June 2006
When: 1993
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: Even as the toy line and comics were being developed, work had begun in earnest at Warner Bros. animation for an animated WWSR television special, to debut in September alongside the toys. Producer Boyd Kirkland recalls that Louis Simonson had written a character "bible" for the toys. "I got involved with it as we were just kind of wrapping up the initial Batman: The Animated Series run," Kirkland says. "This project, I guess, had been kind of kicking around the studio that had one or two other guys messing with it a little bit. And they brought it to me and asked me to produce and direct it."
Kirkland brought aboard a past comic author, Marty Pasko, to work with him. "We had a big kind of pow-wow meeting at which Marty was involved with. And Marty starting writing a story based on the premise that they had developed. I was working with him, coming up with the story, and in the meantime, started doing artwork, character designs and model sheets, all of which had to go through both DC and Mattel. And Mattel was really calling the shots, I mean to a large extent on all of this stuff, on how they want it to look, and that sort of thing, even to the point of color keying. Like most of these kinds of toy-motivated projects, they want stuff to look as much like their actual product as they can get, and colored the same way."
Unhappy with Pasko's script, Kirkland wrote his own. "I wrote another script, and showed it to all the powers that be on the project, and they decided to go with mine. And we went to production, had the whole thing all storyboarded and recorded, we cast it and shipped it overseas. It was being animated in Japan at Studio Junio, I think. I flew over there to Tokyo and handed the show out, and it was in production over there for probably a good eight weeks or so. In the meantime, I think, from what I've heard, Mattel was pitching the show at various toy shows."
Like the toy line, the WWSR pilot was very girly. "The whole toy line, and approach to the project, was to appeal to girls of a certain age group, which is why it incorporated things like flying ponies with the long manes and tails, and all centered around magic jewelry, emblems of jewels, and that sort of thing," Kirkland says. "So the girls would have that kind of stuff to play with. And there was a sort of a headquarters, like a floating castle in the sky. It was going to be in a playset that these heroes operated from. So the Wonder Woman thing, essentially, was just kind of borrowing-from my perspective, at least-a well-known character and tacking her on to this whole scenario, and she was going to be the leader of the group.
Each of them had different powers and it was connected with a particular jewel. These were all, essentially, young, teenaged girls who needed a leader, and Wonder Woman became the leader of the group.
"It was going to look different. They came up with a specific look for her that was sort of reminiscent of the Wonder Woman, but it was different when she was functioning in this show. She had a skirt on and had a little more pink her costume than red. I ran out of variations of pink, color-keying this show. (laughs) That was all at Mattel's request. You know, they'd done all the focus-group testing with the little girls and decided that pink was color for a lot of this stuff."
Ex-Disney artist Steve Gordon designed the show's character sheets and models. Kirkland notes that, "it's very nice, a classic-looking kind of stuff." The show itself was "either going to released as a half-hour special on television and/or a direct-to-video release. So ideally I think they would have done them both. They would have tried to get it on-air as a special, after-school special, or something like that, and then release it as a videotape."
But in the midst of the excitement and work-on the toys, the comics, and the animation-Wonder Woman and the Star Riders fell prey to an enemy they couldn't defeat with all the jewel-powers at their disposal: disinterest.
"I guess they were just getting kind of a lukewarm response from the retailers who were antsy about a female-oriented kind of product," Kirkland says. "I guess they had a lot of leftover inventory, or hadn't had a good experience with She-Ra and some of the earlier attempts at this sort of thing."
Rick Taylor notes that few people at DC Comics were sad to see the show end. "I remember that negative feedback the DCU editors had about the project. They thought it 'made no sense' and 'didn't fit the Wonder Woman they were selling.' My feeling was that they were trying to cross She-Ra with Wonder Woman by way of Barbie. Since Mattel had the girls toy market all wrapped up, it seemed like they had a handle on it."
Rather than disinterest in the toys, Taylor says that a more legal deathtrap killed the project. "Ultimately it fell apart over who owned the animation. Whether the toys would have been successful remains to be seen. All I remember is how dead-set against it the DCU boys were and I could think was 'you don't own Wonder Woman and what's the worst that could happen, DC could make a fortune off this?"
Kirkland notes that the animation on the WWSR Special was well underway when the axe fell. "(It) was practically all animated. They were about to the point, overseas, of starting to paint cels on the show. So they were within, probably, a month of production overseas, of having a finished show, when Mattel made the decision to not move ahead with the toy line and stopped the production. It was never shot. Overseas, they usually didn't go to the expense of shooting a pencil test of just the line art. They wait until the whole thing's in color before they shoot it."
The only actual color animation done for the WWSR show was a 30-second promo, which shows a caped Wonder Woman jumping off the top of the Starlight Palace and landing astride Nightshine, then flying off into the candy-colored clouds. The animation has been shown publicly only once, at a San Diego Comic-Con panel hosted by this author.
Steve Gordon's Character Designs
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Ice
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Panthera
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Pursia
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Senedra
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Solara
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Wonder Woman
Link: The Art of Steve E. Gordon Facebook
Posted: August 4, 2012
Who: Dolphin
Other TV Pitches
Batman And The New Robin unproduced series
Link: Michael Thorner Flicker
Posted: May 13, 2012
Who: Michael Thorner
Quote: Nelvana, at one time Canada's largest animation house, briefly had the rights (or were gunning for the rights) to develop Batman. The executive team asked anyone interested to pitch some character designs, so I did. I got positive feedback on it, but the next thing you know, Nelvana no longer had rights to Batman, and were going to produce Beetlejuice instead. (To great success I might add, but still... I was disappointed I wouldn't get a chance to work on the Dark Knight.) And the rest is history. Warner Bros. Animation, and the visual style of Bruce Timm, along with Paul Dini's great scripts, creatively redefined Batman for a generation.
Source: Modern Masters Volume 3, page 34
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The year before that he had done some freelance work for Nelvana, who was developing Batman. This was during a real fallow period in Batman's history, way before the movie happened, and no one had done a Batman cartoon in 15, 20 years--unless you count Superfriends. Batman was just laying there and nobody knew what to do with him. Somehow Nelvana got ahold of it and they pitched to one of the networks a very kid-friendly Batman show. Bob had done some presentation artwork for that.
Link: Dan DiDio Facebook
Posted: June 23, 2015
Who: Dan DiDio
Quote: Another relic from my days in ABC Children's Programming. A pitch cell from Nelvana when they had, for a brief moment, the rights(or at least I think they did) to pitch a Batman animated series.
Link: Critical Blast
Posted: February 2, 2016
What: Download of series bible
Summary: A Batman animated series was pitched in 1987. It was titled "Batman And The New Robin" and was to star Batman and the second Robin Jason Todd. Nelvana never produced it. J. Michael Straczynski wrote a series bible for it with at least a pilot and four episodes plotted out. Michael Thorner was a concept artist. Bob Camp did some freelance work. Nelvana lost the rights to Batman, or never had it, and shifted to Beetlejuice. Other characters that would have appeared were Alfred Pennyworth, Jason's robot nanny Miss Chandra, Commissioner Gordon, Special Assistant Frederica Miles, Vicki Vale, Nightwing, Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman, Cat-Man, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Two-Face, and The Ventriloquist.
Boyd Kirkland worked on Metal Men, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman series
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #25
Posted: Week of April 26 to May 1/2, 1999
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: Other DC properties I have developed here in previous years that the network has passed over (Ahhhh) are (Drumroll please) Wonder Women (Not to excited about that), Green Lantern (That would be okay), and The Metal Men (WHO?).
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: August 2, 2004
When: After Batman: The Animated Series
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: boyd kirkland produced XMEN: EVO and, of course, the BATMAN:SUB-ZERO dtv...here's a little-known fact: after B:TAS, he spent several years developing several dc properties for animation, including METAL MEN, LOBO and even WONDER WOMAN...in fact, the WW pilot was actually being animated when the powers-that-be pulled the plug...alas....
Source: Back Issue! #16
Posted: June 2006
When: June 1994 and Late 1990s
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: Over the decade following WWSR's cancellation, Boyd Kirkland continued trying to get Wonder Woman into animation. He pitched a comics-faithful Wonder Woman to Kids' WB three times in the late 1990s, but they "just always passed on it, never interested in it. But Jean McCurdy (head of WB animation) really wanted it to happen. I mean, she wanted a female action hero on air for girls. The one that I was developing was more of just the hardline, hardcore action-adventure-type approach. It wasn't completely the old Wonder Woman, it wasn't completely George Perez or even John Byrne. I wanted to take it back a little bit, kind of like with Lynda Carter where she was powerful, and strong, and could jump long distances, and all of that, but couldn't launch and fly like Superman.
Young Aquaman
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 12, 2005
When: Mid/Late 90s
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: it was indeed "young aquaman", NOT part of the established dcau, completely different style, etc....it was in development for kids wb for awhile, they ultimately passed on it, it's now seemingly in permanent limbo....
Link: Comics Continuum
Posted: December 2, 2002
Who: Alan Burnett
Quote: They're interested in his younger days, as he becomes Aquaman. The show will be called Aquaman, but they're interested in developing how he became Aquaman. It's for The WB, but it could be end up also on Cartoon (Network). They're starting to work together on programs, so they like to have shows that are applicable to both. So, we're struggling with two different animals here. So Aquaman, in the development that we've been doing, we're trying to get them to come together - and we have. It's finally happened, where DC likes what Warner Bros. likes. But it took three or four bibles to finally get to it.
Kamandi
Source: Jack Kirby Collector #21, page 20
When: October 1998
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I don't know how that rumor even got out! That's something we've just started talking about among ourselves. It was a kind of a truthful rumor. We talked about it once, when we finished the new season of Batman and we hadn't yet got the pick-up on Superman or Batman. We were just going through the whole list of DC characters that we had the rights to, and we thought, "What would be a good series for kids?" I just immediately thought of Kamandi. I thought Kamandi would be a great kids' show. We never really did much more on it than that; we just talked about the possibility that we might do it. Then we got busy doing the new Batman and Superman, and kind of put it on hold for a while, but I'd still love to do a Kamandi show. I think Kamandi is a great character. It's actually my favorite Kirby comic from the DC era. I like the New Gods and Mister Miracle and everything, but there's something about Kamandi. I think it's his best writing.
Source: Comicology #1, page 25
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "I'd wanted to do an adaptation, literally, of [the comic-book series]."
Source: Comicology #1, page 25
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "We actually pitched it to the WB, and they were kind-of intrigued by it, but, y'know, they wanted to mess around with it a little bit. The first thing that they wanted to do was change the art style; I said, "This is what I want it to look like," and they went, "Really?" If you're not a comic-book fan, some of the Kirby stuff can look a little bit weird. And they were concerned that there's not a really strong female character in the series; you have Flower & Spirit, but they're, like, half-naked dumb girls. So they said, "Could we invent a new character that could fulfill that function?" I didn't want to tamper with it at all."
Source: Comicology #1
When: Spring 2000
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 12, 2005
When: Mid/Late 90s
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: if you read that COMICOLOGY interview a few years back, you know pretty much the whole story....it was pretty much an off-the-cuff verbal pitch, with color blowups of kirby comic art....the lady from kids wb seemed very confused while looking at the art: "i kinda like the premise, but, um...you want it to look like THAT?!"...also, they wanted to add a strong female supporting character, and since there really AREN'T any in the original comics, and i wanted to stay as faithful to the comics as possible, we reached a quick impasse, they lost interest....it would have been WAY too violent for them, anyway, i think, it's probably best it didn't happen....
Legion of Superheroes (Bruce Timm)
Link: Anime Superhero post
Posted: November 4, 2022
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: We got word that KidsWB was interested in doing a DC Action show for kids, so I pitched LOSH to them as "Star Trek With Teenage Superheroes" but they didn't bite. I also pitched Kamandi at the same time, which surprisingly, they were a bit more intrigued by. But they ultimately passed on that too.
Legion of Superheroes (Boyd Kirkland)
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #25
Posted: Week of April 26 to May 1/2, 1999
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: Two other projects I developed here this past year that were not picked up were Legionaires (As in The Legion of Superheroes, or the JLA?) and Lobo (that crazy idiot biker guy who drives around space screaming). Everyone here was certain that Lobo was a go right up (Why?) until the week when the network finally announced it's schedule to the press. That was another major disappointement to us (Ahhh again). Unfourtunetly, the network never showed much interest in Legionaires (Even in Saturn Girl?). I really liked (Saturn Girl) what we were doing with it, and know it would have been a great show (Amen brother!).
Link: Anime Superhero
Posted: January 11, 2005
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: various incarnations of "legion" have been pitched, a few times....i'm kinda surprised it hasn't happened yet, honestly....."teenage STAR TREK with superheroes" is a high-concept pitch that practically sells itself....it'll probably happen one of these days....
Legion of Superheroes (Rich Fogel)
Link: Watchtower Database, 10:08-10:35
Posted: November 1, 2022
Who: Rich Fogel
Quote: We were pitching two projects to them at that point. I was pitching a Legion of Super-Heroes show. Sort of as a 90210 kind of superhero thing but they were worried that it was going to continue to skew too old. They were all about like what their demographics were so they chose Zeta Project and figured well you know, it's a robot and it's a teenage girl and how much fun can that be? We had the edict none of the episodes could take place at night.
Rocket
Source: Reddit AMA with Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti
Posted: November 2, 2021
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Greg's been a big fan of Rocket since she first appeared, and once developed an entire show where she was the lead with Denys Cowan back in the 90s. It didn't sell, unfortunately, but given the chance to use her in YJ, Brandon and Greg jumped at it.
Legion of Superheroes
Source: DC FanDome Legion of Superheroes Panel
Posted: September 12, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: It was designed as a Superman-centric project to kind of tap onto the, um, uh, Superman Returns movie. That's what it started out as then it kind of evolved into its own thing...Oh, no, they came to me. I was coming off of Justice League Unlimited, the last season of that, and, um, originally the show was supposed to be for Cartoon Network and so we did a whole different pitch for them. And then I guess on a Friday, they said "no." And then on a Monday, Kids WB! which was, uh, around said, "Yeah, sure, we'd like a Superman show." So that's how we got on there. But that meant I had to completely change the pitch in a week. To suit them. It was a little older skewing originally and then for them, y'know, we had to young it up...Then second season, we went back to more of what I originally envisioned.
Justice League
Link: Dave Johnson instagram
Posted: January 31, 2013
Who: Dave Johnson
Quote: Old WB Justice League show designs that were rejected.
Summary: two Batman designs, armored
Shazam!
Source: Wizard #108 (September 2000) page 72
When: December 1999
Summary: there was a small article about a shelved series titled "Shazam!" Alex Ross and Paul Dini were co-producers and did brief preliminary work on it in December 1999. Ross did one piece of art, seen in the article, of Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel Jr. Dini likened the art style to C.C. Beck meets Powerpuff Girls. Ross admitted he was trying to do "something very very different from Bruce Timm's style." Back then, there's still the rights issue with Captain Marvel and TV animation conflicted so it was shelved.
Doom Patrol
Source: Toyfare #108, page 61
Summary: LONG rumored Doom Patrol spin off mentioned
Pitch involving Green Arrow
Source: Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, page 81
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Bruce drew this Green Arrow design as part of a development pitch "around 2000, I think, between Batman Beyond and Justice League."
Angel and The Ape
Source: Modern Masters Volume 3: Bruce Timm, page 111
Quote: Bruce (Timm): "We toyed with developing Angel and the Ape for animation." One of Bruce's designs done for the pitch.
Gotham High
Link: Jeffrey Thomas and Celeste Green blog
Posted: January 3, 2011
When: Early 2000s
Who: Jeffrey Thomas and Celeste Green
Quote: Hey everybody! We have a huge treat in store for you this week from the Jeff and Celeste vault of awesomeness. Batman is both mine and Celeste's favorite superhero and some time about a year and a half ago, we were approached to create a spec series based off of an old drawing of mine that we then sent to DC. Unfortunately, the project got lost in the sea of all the other Batman related projects in the works. But hey, it was still fun to make.
The Story Synopsis: We all go through incredible changes as teenagers: growth spurts, bad skin, a sudden insatiable need to uphold justice and avenge your murdered parents... Well, that is if you're Bruce Wayne. As if being a freshman at Gotham High wasn't tough enough, Bruce's insomnia and technological fascinations are taking their toll. Instead of spending his time studying, he has begun to obsess over an emerging personality trait: Batman. But under the watchful eye of his guardian and steward, Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce is forced to put his intelligence to good use: graduating high school. But given his classmates, can Bruce survive Gotham High?
Summary: pitched this very different take on the Batman mythos to Warner Bros. Animation in the early 2000s. Based on an old sketch by Thomas, Gotham High recast the usual heroes and foes found in Batman's world as high school students. The show would look at Wayne's insatiable need to uphold justice and avenge your murdered parents ... while dealing with typical issues that come with being a student. Under the watchful eye of his guardian Alfred Pennyworth, Wayne is forced to focus on graduating high school before he can take to the night skies ... that is, if he can survive the experience. Thomas said the unique idea sadly got lost in the multitude of Batman pitches Warner Bros. Animation executives hear every year.
Harley & Ivy
Link: Shane Glines Tweet and Shane Glines Tweet
When: 2003
Posted: July 24, 2020
Quote: Sometime around 2003 WB contacted me to do concept designs for a cartoony Harley & Ivy pitch.
Summary: Guardian was also among art.
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Harlequinade" Commentary 4:04-4:08
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I think Paul actually written a Harley and Ivy pilot for somebody.
Source: Batman: The Animated Series Volume Three, "Harlequinade" Commentary 4:36-4:50
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: When I developed Harley & Ivy as a series, it was for late night TV and that gave someone for her to play off of but if it's Harley solo then they have to give her a family and you know, crazy relatives who are wackier than she is, and you don't really want to do that.
Justice League International
Link: J.M. DeMatteis Tweet
Posted: April 7, 2018
Who: J.M. DeMatteis
Quote: There was talk, a few years back, of a JLI animated series spinning out of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, but it never came to be.
Green Lantern
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 21, 2014
Summary: Greg Weisman talks about his and Brandon Vietti's unused Green Lantern pitch. Charlie Vickers would have been the lead, pretty much every Earth Lantern you can think of would have gotten in there eventually, a lot of extra-terrestrial Lanterns, and Hal Jordan would have had a prominent role in the pilot.
Link: Flash Talk TV Podcast 22
Posted: July 12, 2014
Summary: Greg Weisman reveals there was a covert ops unit in his and Brandon Vietti's unused Green Lantern pitch.
Link: Shanlian on Batman Episode 64, 43:40-44:58 mark
Posted: June 7, 2016
Summary: Greg Weisman reveals Arisia and Arrkis Chummuck were in his and Brandon Vietti's unused Green Lantern pitch. Hal Jordan and John Stewart were limited to cameo appearances so they made Charlie Vickers in lead role with young Green Lanterns in training.
Zatanna
Link: Paul Dini Twitter
Posted: April 3, 2017
Summary: Zatanna pitch, some art, never got off the ground
Inferior Five
Link: Charlotte Fullerton-McDuffie Twitter
Posted: February 2, 2021
Who Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: #DwayneMcDuffieTrivia Years ago #DwayneMcDuffie and @amerrill2 (the voice of Brak) developed a pitch for an INFERIOR FIVE television show!
Link: Andy Merrill Twitter
Posted: February 2, 2021
Quote: Also....we almost made it to the pilot phase but that last meeting we had with the bigger execs it all fell apart. It was insane. We had been talking about it for weeks and then all of a sudden, it was as if nobody had heard about it.
Link: Tom Brevoort Twitter
Posted: February 2, 2021
Quote: I remember that! They tweaked Dumb Bunny into having summer/winter identities as Beach Bunny/Snow Bunny.
Link: Andy Merrill Twitter
Posted: February 2, 2021
Quote: We did. And we drastically changed the character of "Dumb Bunny" to a more badass intelligent female hero. Dumb Bunny was just a dumb blonde, which was insulting to us.
Batman: Year One
Link: Ask the Maestro Forum (dead link)
Posted: November 1, 2005
Who Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: Not that big a list if you eliminate the originals (which I am, as I'm still repitching most of them): A "Batman: Year One" pitch, designs by Denys Cowan, bible by me that came VERY close to happening a couple years ago.
Kamandi
Link: Ask the Maestro Forum (dead link)
Posted: November 1, 2005
Who Dwayne McDuffie
Quote: I've done development work on Thundercats, Ben Ten and Kamandi, but in each case the folks who hired me ultimately went in a different direction.
CG Batman pitch
Link: Alexander Kubalsky deviantArt
Posted: November 14, 2011
Summary: Penguin vehicle concept designs for a Batman CG 2010 pitch.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: February 5, 2014
Summary: Penguin vehicle concept designs was not part of James Tucker's pitch.
Batman No Man's Land pitch
Link: Coran Stone deviantArt
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Posted: August 18, 2011
When: Mid 2000s
Who: James Tucker and Coran Stone
Quote: So James the Terrifically talented Tucker producer of "The Brave and Bold" series was starting work on the new Bat show and decided to take a chance on the new guy....Me! So I became character designer. I was floored as **** and had a ton of ideas for the darknight and fellers so I spent about 4 or 5 monthes cranking out a ton of of batty shizz! I did way more than any man should ever do and worked sometimes two nights straight without sleep on that stuff. This is the sucky part> Unfortunately one of the heads at cartoon network felt that the concept was to dark and it got scraped. I of course thought that sucked ass but (back to good stuff) at the same time felt happy as hell that I had the one and a mill chance to work on a Bats series.
Summary: An animated series based on the acclaimed Batman comic storyline "No Man's Land" has been a popular premise, with multiple attempted made. The piece of artwork above, by character designer Coran Stone, is one of the more notable attempts. Stone said he was selected by producer James Tucker to do the character designs for a "No Man's Land"-based cartoon, but the project was ultimate scrapped since it was considered "too dark." Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network opted to eventually go a more lighter route with Batman: The Brave and The Bold. Stone spent roughly five months working on production artwork for the series, in the mid-2000s before it was inevitably cancelled.
Link: James Tucker deviantArt
Posted: March 6, 2014
When: Mid/Late 2000s
Who: James Tucker
Quote: This was a painting done to pitch a proposed series based on No Man's Land. The painter's name escapes me, but I'll post their credit when I do some research. Anyway, it was deemed too dark by the suits. Knowing what I know now about CGI production, it would've been a nightmare to produce. Bullet dodged, but the painting is nifty! Pencils rough by Coran Stone.
Summary: A second attempt to create an animated series based on the "No Man's Land" comics was attempted, this time with a CG-animation bent to it. Also stalled for the dark premise, James Tucker would have been producer for this mid/late 2000s series.
Link: The Batman Universe Video Interview
Posted: July 24, 2010
Summary: helmed by James Tucker, in CGI, and radically different in tone compared to Batman: The Brave and The Bold.
Link: Dark Knights deviation
Posted: August 18, 2011
Summary: Coran Stone was selected by James Tucker to be Character Designer. Stone did designs for four to five months. One of the heads at Cartoon Network felt the concept was too dark and scrapped it. Stone reveals one design, a group shot of Batman, Nightwing, Robin/Damian Wayne, Batgirl/Cassadra Cain, and Catwoman.
Link: Dark Knights deviation comment
Posted: August 19, 2011
Summary: The scrapped concept had a vibe similar to an arc from the comic books in 1999, "No Man's Land" which depicted "the edge of the end in Gotham."
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 30, 2019
Quote: Years ago, I was pitching a Batman No Mans Land show that didn't sell, I was very inspired by his [Enrico Marini] art on Gypsy.
Source: Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film and Beyond, page 327-328
Released: October 2019
Summary: The Nolans approved the pitch, Batman was going to be the "sheriff" in town, the city was being taken over by the villains like Joker and Penguin, Nightwing and Oracle were Batman's main allies, the Batcave was destroyed, and Oracle drove through the city's sewers in a mobile Batcave.
Superman/Batman pitch
Link: VoicesFromKrypton article
Posted: July 11, 2013
Summary: Mitch Watson reveals there was a second pitch before the final version of Beware The Batman was greenlit. It was a light-hearted Superman/Batman show that focused on Batman and Superman in their 20s and early on in their careers. Clark Kent was a trainee reporter coming to Gotham City and he meets Bruce Wayne. Clark and Bruce become friends, but Batman and Superman hate each other. Then they realize who each other is and get on the right side and end up living in the same building.
Link: The Nightfly with Dave Jusknow, 23: 40 mark
Posted: November 5, 2017
Summary: Mitch Watson reveals the light-hearted Superman/Batman show involves Bruce and Clark meeting, ending up in jail after a bar fight, and then the duo living in Bruce's high rise penthouse. Wonder Woman was also supposed to show up and be in the same city, some relationship was going to occur between the trio, and was basically described as being partly inspired by Gossip Girl.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: May 2, 2020
Summary: Cartoon Network wanted to greenlit the pitch but the "movie people" told them 'Batman and Superman didn’t exist in the same universe' so it was killed.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: May 2, 2020
Summary: James Tucker confirms his involvement in the pitch.
Source: Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film and Beyond, page 327-328
Released: October 2019
Summary: Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor are old college friends who reunite when the latter goes to Gotham. Clark arrives in Gotham investigating some shady dealings but doesn't know Lex is behind it. Bruce and Clark hate each other but respect each other as Batman and Superman. They compete for Wonder Woman's affections. They find out Lex is the villain and team up against him. The pitch was approved by Cartoon Network but the Warner Bros. film division stepped in and had it shelved on the grounds it was too similar to their plans for Batman v. Superman.
Knightfall pitch
Link: SciFi Now
Posted: August 21, 2013
Who: Mitch Watson
Quote: The first version was an Escape From New York kind of thing, which was a lot of fun, but I agree it was probably too dark for where they wanted to go with the show.
Link: The Nightfly with Dave Jusknow, 23: 40 mark
Posted: November 5, 2017
Summary: Mitch Watson reveals he also did a Knightfall pitch before Beware the Batman was greenlit. It had the tone of "Doomsday" and Superman was supposed to be in it.
Nightwing pitch
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Link: Ki Hyun Ryu deviantArt
Link: Ki Hyun Ryu deviantArt
Link: Ki Hyun Ryu deviantArt
Link: Ki Hyun Ryu deviantArt
Link: Mel Zwyer comment
When: 2009
Posted: July 2, 2012
Summary: Before Young Justice designs were released
, an animated series based on Nightwing was in the early stages of production in the late 2000s before the work was ultimately shelved for Young Justice. Design work for the series was being handled by Ki Hyun Ryu of The Legend of Korra. The series would have followed the adventures of Batman sidekick Nightwing, aka Dick Grayson. Teen Titans member Raven would also be a regular part of show's supporting cast.
Wonder Twins
Link: Cartoon Hullabaloo Tweet
When: Years Ago
Posted: January 6, 2018
Summary: Cartoon Hullabaloo pitched Wonder Twins years ago after Warner Bros. Entertainment asked them to take one of their old properties and re-imagine it as a new cartoon. Art by Kyle Carrozza included.
Shazam
Link: Cartoon Hullabaloo Tweet
When: Years Ago
Posted: January 6, 2018
Summary: Cartoon Hullabaloo also pitched a Shazam series. Art by Matt Kaufenberg included.
Batman and Carrie Kelley
Link: Jennie Hoffer Instagram and Jennie Hoffer Instagram
When: Around September 2018
Posted: September 18-19 2018
Summary: Jennie Hoffer pitched a show with Batman and Carrie Kelley as Robin.
Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth
Link: Evan Dorkin Tweet
Link: Evan Dorkin Tweet
Who: Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer
When: 2011
Posted: October 10, 2018
Quote: The good news: We got the okay to finally talk about a big secret project that [Sarah Dyer] and I worked on and are extremely proud of. It's one of the best things we've ever done. Oh, but here's the bad news: We can talk about it now because it's dead and will never happen.
Quote: So, back in 2011, we were hired by Warner Bros to write a bible/pitch for an animated series called: KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer On the Road in "The World That May Be!" An adventure/comedy, aimed at pitching it to the Adult Swim.
Quote: Our bible ran 25 pgs, worked up motivations for Kamandi's globe-hopping, incorporated every animal tribe, every region of his letters-page map, every supporting character from Sacker to Flower to the gorilla Superman cult.
Quote: We even got them to let us bring OMAC and Brother Eye in, the latter having a very important role. Sarah reworked how the Tiger kingdoms worked, we worked out a way to "de-Planet of the Apes" the gorilla tribes, extended the K bunker system and had a long, long game plan.
Quote: The opening blah blah for the pitch goes : "Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth is a post-apocalyptic action comedy which follows the adventures and misadventures of a teen-aged boy forced to survive in a strange world of human-like talking animals, mutants and monsters...
Quote: He and his traveling companions (talking animals and a psychotic robot) undergo a journey that's a mash-up of Kirby, Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy. Along the way there's exciting action, thrilling adventure, black humor, a whiff of satire and...a lot of raging hormones.
Quote: The biggest hurdle was how to make sense of Kamandi's wanderings, give the thing a through-line, punch up the supporting cast's goals, and update Kirby's 30's WB back lot movie tropes for outfitting Tigers and gangsters, etc (and riffing on Planet of the Apes/Kong, Westworld).
Quote: For ex, Sarah worked out that Tuftan's tiger tribe took over the remains of the Medieval Times franchises and based their feudal system on that skewed history. Sackers Dept stores were Walmart-like chains, w/Sacker himself seemingly in each region, ala Sidney Fields.
Quote: Kamandi realizes Ben Boxer et al are a little too nutty about the SCIENCE, Tracking Station has a Scientology-whiff about it. Brother Eye has malfunctioned and is using Kamandi for his own purposes, luring him across the US w/the promise of finding female companionship.
Quote: However...Kamandi never gets laid. Never. THE LAST FULLY-HUMAN BOY ON EARTH is universally cock-blocked by fate or design. His frustration leads to poor-decision making. his chronic masturbation...well, you get the idea. He is a miserable wreck throughout the series.
Quote: The only lady interested in Kamandi is Flower, who they free from Sacker's store. Tuftan and Canus push the two together constantly -- to Kamandi's delight -- not knowing what the viewer knows -- Flower is part of a tribe of cannibals who eat their mates. So, problematic.
Quote: The command K-Bunkers across the country hold old Earth tech and supposedly human survivors. Kamandi is searching for Kamanda, a girl supposedly in the A bunker. Kommando, in O Bunker, is a main antagonist, mix of Henry Rollins/Bill Paxton's Chet who takes over the gorillas.
Quote: Here's Flower-as-scary-cannibal. She eats a guy she was caged with at Sacker's. She's nice otherwise! Like Mizuki's Cat Girl, now that I think about it.
Quote: We did create new characters for the series. SCRUFFY Scruffy is Kamandi's dog, the last of a line of dogs kept in the Command D bunker, probably the last domestic "normal" dog left on Earth. Scruffy is a wonderful pet and friend. Scruffy gets eaten in the first episode.
Quote: Not great concepts for Brother Eyebot, the poorly-constructed (by Kamandi) avatar of Brother Eye. Brother Eyebot/Eye functions as an unreliable Jiminy Cricket, a Wimpy/Rat Man character, who malfunctions and has a deeper agenda besides just being a little robot AI shit.
Quote: I mean, imagine getting paid to write a Kirby bible?: "South America - fragmented by the Great Disaster, some of the islands are home to various arcane groups, including The Jaguar Sun Cult And Hotel Chain (with several locations on the mainland) and The God Watchers".
Quote: Ep idea: Princess Quest: Brother Eye sends the team on a side quest to save a princess & obtain a special weapon. Kamandi's all over this, especially the princess part, as she's described as being human, and beautiful. Perhaps she's a bunker survivor, perhaps even Kamanda?
Quote: What our heroes don't realize is that Brother Eye has suffered a glitch and is sending them "dungeon master"-like instructions from a role-playing video game his system is running. These bogus instructions lead to dangers our heroes didn't bargain for. And no princess.
Quote: "Kamandi is captured by a human mutant cult who intends to sacrifice him to a Minotaur-like monster who lives inside a labyrinth that was once an huge Ikea. The mutants all have Ikea-like product names, live life according to the Ikea ethic, and worship the goddess, Ikea".
Quote: "Brother Eye told Kamandi his grandfather died. The truth is, Buddy Blank disappeared after Brother Eye tried to download himself into him to create a living avatar. The experiment was a success but the patient fried, transforming him into the wandering entity known as OMAC".
Quote: This got long, it's been bottled up. Wish I could publish the whole thing, I really loved what we did. Unfortunately, when pitched around, it was supposedly deemed too funny for an adventure, and too action-oriented for a comedy. Oh, well. What could've been, and all that.
Quote: One more bit of Kamandi series trivia: We renamed Tuftan's father...Gruftan. I don't care what you think. It's brilliant and stupid and I love it. And since the series only airs on Earth HOF, it doesn't matter.
Unknown Pitch for Timm series
Link: Evan Dorkin Tweet
Who: Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer
When: 2011
Posted: October 10, 2018
Quote: While our Kamandi pitch was making the rounds, we ended up writing an equally extensive bible/pitch for a WB Bruce Timm project -- which imho also kicked ass. And also, as is usual, never went anywhere. Then we wrote the DC NATION Metal Men shorts and that was that.
Shazam
Link: Jake Castorena instagram
Posted: April 18, 2019
Summary: Jake Castorena helped develop a Shazam pitch with Mark Fujita. Shazam designs included.
Superman Family
Link: Newsarama article
Posted: April 22, 2019
Summary: Vinton Heuck pitched a Superman Family series while he worked on Young Justice: Outsiders. Heuck described it as a family friendly version of Superman Rebirth with Jon front and center. He sought to combine the current stories with a lighthearted tone inspired by the Silver Age stories like Lois and Jon dealing with Superman being turned into a Super-Merman. Sean "Cheeks" Galloway did character designs on the final pitch. The cast included Kong Kenan, Jon Kent, Damian Wayne, Mr. Mzyzptlk and Natasha Irons as Steel. Two pieces of pitch art also depicts Steel, Kelex, Batman, Krypto, Streaky, Captain Carrot, Bizarro, Supergirl, and Parasite.
Two Lauren Faust Pitches involving Hal Jordan and Jessica Cruz
Link: Lauren Faust Tweet
Posted: February 28, 2022
Summary: I recycled/repurposed this relationship dynamic from two previous projects that didn't make it through. Glad it got to see the light of day!
New Trinity Traveling the Multiverse
Link: Jerry Garylord instagram
Posted: January 7, 2020
Quote: Todays post is a peak at some art i did for a pitch at #wbanimation . I wanted to do show that focused on alternate versions of #superman #batman and #wonderwoman . The show would have followed their adventures across the multiverse as they visted familiar earths and strange new ones. The hero designs are loosely based on versions of the characters that ive seen in the comics accept for batman. That one was a fresh take as far as i know.
Summary: Jerry Gaylord pitched a show with alternate versions of the Trinity traveling through out the Multiverse. Superman is the grandson of the original, he grows up with the legacy but hasn't earned it and takes it for granted. His character arc was becoming a hero. Batman is from a "Neo Japan Earth" where everything is neon and futuristic. Unlike the standard Bruce Wayne, he did not come from wealth but he did see his parents killed in front of him as a boy. He's Batman with all the intelligence, wit, and cunning but none of the resources. He tries to make Neo Gotham a better place. He has a Bat-Cycle.
Link: Jerry Garylord instagram
Posted: March 30, 2021
Quote: That's why I'm reposting this alternate universe version of the #dctrinity . These designs are part of pitch I did at WB a couple years ago. I was really excited about the concept. This young group of heroes lost in the multiverse trying to prevent a new #crisisoninfiniteearths . I would have featured Ultraman from the #crimesyndicate as a recurring bad guy and used as many obscure characters as possible in the series as well as created new ones.
Reply: Nubia is a real DC character. She was created in the late 60s. Batman's cape is just a scarf with a very graphic look. No magic, but that sounds cool. He is a stripped down version of the character. Batman, but if he wasnt rich.
Reply: I act6pitched this as a series before Jonathan Kent got aged up. But this Superman is from the far future. He would be Jonathan Kent's grandson. He is a reluctant Superman who doesn't fully appreciate the legacy his family set. He would grow during the series to become worthy of the "S"
Reply: A more creative batman working with what he has at hand
House of Batman
Link: Shawna Mills website
Posted: May 3, 2020
Summary: Shawna Mills and Dan Echo pitched a Batman series titled "House of Batman" which featured Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, Titus, Batgirl Alfred, and Andy. It centers around Batman living the family life while they fight crime in Gotham. Character and style overviews included.
Batman
Link: Kristafer Anka Tweet
Posted: October 17, 2021
Quote: Batman designs I was hired to do for a tv show pitch back in 2019.
Link: Kristafer Anka Tweet
Posted: October 22, 2021
Summary: Robin, Joker, Riddler, and Scarecrow concept art.
Quote: Unused Robin + Villains from same 2019 Batman project.
Link: Sam Bosma Tweet
Posted: October 21, 2021
Summary: Batman and Robin, Scarecrow, Penguin, Catwoman character designs.
Quote: Some unused designs from a 2019 pitch for you-know-who.
Shazam
Link: Shawna Mills website
Posted: April 2, 2020
Summary: Shazam! was Shawna Mills' second pitch but the covid-19 pandemic happened. Billy Batson turns into Fawcett City's newest superhero Shazam and hones his skills in the Rock of Eternity video game. There is a looming threat of Black Adam and the Seven Deadly Sins. There is a new transfer student named Pandora who is really one of the three immortal faces of evil who is faulted for releasing the Seven Deadly Sins upon the world thousands of years ago. Wolfgang is the popular boy at school who has it out for Billy and has a crush on Rocky, T.A. is the new exhange student who seems to hate Billy and might be Theo Adams, Freddy is Will's foster brother and smart alec best friend, Jules is Rocky's best friend and "not so secret" admirer of Freddy, Rocky Ruiz is the teachers favorite and Billy's study buddy and always under pressure to do her best. The Wizard! (aka Mamaragan) is the last of a council of beings who controlled magic from the Rock of Eternity, cast Pandora into a life of lonely immortality, and who's daughter corrupted his first champion, Black Adam. Geeks over modern trends. Digitized into a VR game, he trains Billy. Billy finds the game triple marked down in a bargain bin covered in dust, plugs it in his computer, and gets digitized into the game. Pandora helps Shazam now and then but wants to re-obtain her box and undo her past deeds. Style overview and 16 episode first season breakdown "First Sin Pride" included.
Wonder Twins
Link: Kat Hudson Tweet
Link: Kat Hudson Tweet
Link: Kat Hudson Tweet
When: July 17, 2020
Posted: July 17, 2020 (Reposted December 1, 2020)
Summary: Kat Hudson pitched Wonder Twins but it was too tonally and visually similar to the DC Super Hero Girls television series. Follows Janya and Zan's origins of just escaping an Trans World Intergalactic Circus, wrestling with a stowaway alien monkey named Gleek, becoming unwitting thugs-for-hire for Grax, a megalomanic bent on galactic domination, and crash-landing on a backwater planet called Earth. They are taken in by Professor Nichols, who seems to be stuck in the 1970s, and attend Happy Harbor High School where they befriend Wendy Harris and Marvin White as they try to blend in as foreign exchange students. Deal with attacks from Grax and Dentwil the circus owner. Try to prove they are worthy to join the Justice League. Janya claims to be the level-headed twin but as fercious as some of her animal counterparts. Puts up with Zan's scheming and dreaming but brings him back down to earth. She is super intelligent, super loyal, and super powered. Zan always has a plan, is super curious, and often leaps before looking. Zan and Janya activate their shape shifting powers by bumping fists. Janya can turn into any native animal species of a planet she is on and Zan can turn into any form of water. Gleek is a super smart monkey that keeps the twins together. Wendy Harris lives with her uncle Detective Harris who trained Batman. Always wants to know what's going on, figure out a mystery, and is slightly suspicious of the two new twins in school who claim to be from Norway but lack the accent. Marvin White is Wendy's best friend, a little dopey but super caring and thoughtful. He often follows Zan's lead in his scemes. Wondy is Marvin's loyal canine companion and Gleek's unofficial ride. Dentwil is mostly a con man and cheapskate who often skimps on ship reparis. Grax wants to rule the universe and often recruits different alien species to be his acolytes. He sets his sights on Earth and the Justice League. Detective Harris is no nonsense and definitely influenced Batman's bubbly personality. Jason Rusch is one of the smarter sutdents at Happy Harbor but also the dual superhero Firestorm. Courtney Whitmore is a spunky and high spirited captain of the lacrosse team is is the superhero Stargirl. Mari Jiwe MacCabe is the mean girl but is the superhero Vixen. Dolphin is the shy quiet girl on the swim team with a mysterious past. Zan may have a crush on her. Professor Carter Nicols is a sweetheart but his tastes are a little dated. He found the twins when they crash landed on Earth. The Hall of Justce is the Justice League of America's headquarters, located in Happy Harbor, and is a beacon of truth, justice, and all that. Professor Nichols lends his kids' old rooms to the twins but he hasn't redecorated for awhile. Several stories were developed. "Clean House" was about Dentwil taking on a disguise as Happy Harbor's new janitor so he can search for the twins. "A Spot of Envy" featured Janya outsining Mari in class and in every sport. The Legion of Doom villainess Cheetah appears and kidnaps Happy Harbor's top scientists forcing the girls to team up. "Kitty Kaper" features Gleek and Wondy running across a group of actual cat burglars working for Catwoman. "A Dolphin Tale" has Zan meeting Dolphin and falling in love and learning how to listen instead of barging ahead.
Superfriends
Link: Jerry Gaylord instagram
Who: Jerry Garylord
Posted: August 5, 2020
Summary: Jerry Gaylord was involved in a Super Friends pitch. Art of Batman, Robin/Carrie Kelley, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg.
Link: Jerry Gaylord instagram
Who: Jerry Garylord
Posted: August 6, 2020
Summary: Art of Superman and Wonder Twins.
Link: Jerry Gaylord instagram
Who: Jerry Garylord
Posted: August 8, 2020
Summary: Art of Joker, Lex Luthor, and Cheetah.
Link: Jerry Gaylord instagram
Who: Jerry Garylord
Posted: August 10, 2020
Summary: Art of Reverse Flash, Sinestro, and Killer Frost.
Wonder Woman DC Universe series
Link: Comic Con YouTube, 3:44-4:26
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: March 27, 2021
Quote: Me and Jim were pitching to DC Access which doesn't exist anymore, a Wonder Woman series and I wanted to do World War II again which I hadn't done in 20 years, you know since Justice League adventures but that didn't last and this was before the Wonder Woman's first movie came out, you know, live action one but it didn't go so eventually we started doing these DTV movies, we had to pitch to DC at least seven or eight pitches of story ideas of where we're going to take the movies or the DTVs and this was one of them but by then we'd already incorporated the Justice Society.
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: March 30, 2021
Quote: This was my whole intention when we had to pitch to DC storylines we were going to produce for the DC Animated Universe -- obviously, we've got to do Batman which we ended up doing as The Long Halloween and we restarted a new version of Superman -- this came about because I wanted to do a World War II story with Wonder Woman, because I initially had a pitch with DC Access to do a Wonder Woman series based in World War II. And this was before the first Wonder Woman movie came out; while we were pitching it, we found out that they were doing a World War I take on Wonder Woman. And I thought it would be good to do this as a series, but the development didn't last long because they didn't think Wonder Woman had legs, not until the movie came out that they realized "Oh s**t, this is a moneymaker." So I just took some of the ideas that we had for that series and applied them towards this film.
Source: Justice Society: World War II "Adventures in Storytelling: Justice Society: World War II", 1:12-1:19
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: April 27, 2021
Quote: My wife, Sharon, she did some presentation art at the time for it. She had Wonder Woman stabbing a bunch of Nazi zombies.
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Who: Tim Sheridan
Posted: August 13, 2021
Quote: I did some work on this! It was pretty damn cool, if I do say so. I think some concepts made it to JSWWII, but not the story, so I'd say it's still lingering out there BEGGING to be produced. (There was a big twist/hook/jaw-drop reveal that I wish people could have experienced!)
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Who: Tim Sheridan
Posted: August 13, 2021
Quote: I have to check my files to confirm, but I’m fairly sure it was 2017.
Batman DC Universe series
Link: Comic Book Resources
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: June 18, 2021
Quote: Here's the thing with Chris -- I originally got him for The Long Halloween. Me and him were actually going to be doing a DC Access Batman series which never took off and, when I got him back with Warner Bros., the first thing I told him was that we were going to have to do The Long Halloween.
Lobo HBO Max series
Link: Olan Rogers LinkedIn
Who: Olan Rogers
Posted: September 30, 2021
Quote: Here are a few pieces from a DC animated project for "Lobo and Crush" Coty Galloway and I had pitched and sold in 2020. We had been in development for the past couple of years on it. We were excited to push these characters emotionally and add this whole new layer to them. We had lots of fun working with WarnerMedia, DC Comics, and HBOMax on it; It may live one day, but for now, it's time to develop new projects with new partners!
Red Hood
Source: Jeff Trammell Tweet
Posted: November 2, 2021
Who: Jeff Trammell
Quote: Randomly thinking about last year when I pitched an adult animated Red Hood show that I described as "John Wick meets Bojack Horseman". This pitch was also before I wrote Red Hood for DC Comics, which you can read in the new DC Comics Truth and Justice TPB, available in comic stores on Nov. 30th!
Teen Titans
Cyborg
Link: Glen Murakami instagram
Posted: February 14, 2019
Quote: Early development drawing of Cyborg. More George Pérez inspired costume design. I was also trying to channel Talos from Crusher Joe... Before the Kikaida version. (2001?)
Starfire
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "Rob [Hoegee] also had an idea for a story of her going back home and realizing that she had changed. That was another thing; Starfire ended up not being like all the other Tamaraneans. In some ways, she was the outsider among other Tamaraneans. On Tamaran, she wouldn't quite fit in as well as she did on earth. We realized that about all the Titans. In their own worlds, they don’t quite fit it. So that’s why them coming together as a group made so much sense. That's the spin we put on it."
Slade
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "I think we talked about it – but it never seemed right to me. It didn't seem important. It amazes me that people are so fascinated by that. They feel that have to know who Slade is."
Summary: The crew talked about unmasking Slade but to Glen Murakami, it never seemed right or important.
Wintergreen
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "We had Wintergreen in the first episode, and then we never see him again. We talked about several different things concerning Wintergreen. We were going to change that character. It just got too complicated. It was hard enough to establish Slade, that, in the end, we didn't have time for any of that Wintergreen stuff."
Red X
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: May 2005
Who: David Slack
Quote: "We had some extensive discussions about that when we worked on it. Ultimately, I decided it was more fun to not get in that. Glen had some ideas in mind about revealing some things. In hindsight, I do think it was a fun idea to let the audience guess."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "We went around and around and around as to who that character was. But I never thought that was important. He was such a strong visual. I don't think it's important to know who is under the mask."
Quote: "Yeah. We did. We actually came up with someone who it might be. But I’m not going to tell you."
Link: World's Finest
Posted: January 2021
Who: Teen Titans Production Team
Quote: "Just who was the second Red X in Teen Titans? None other than the second Robin himself, Jason Todd! Former members of the series production team confirmed for The World's Finest the identity of the second Red X. If the show continued, Teen Titans series team members state there were plans to explore Red X's real identity and his relationship to Robin, though no concrete plots and stories were devised."
Terra
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "I think we even talked about bringing "Terra" back during the Trigon storyline. But that didn't make sense; It didn't organically work with that. I was just too many things to try and do. And y'know, I really like the character. But sometimes that alone isn't a good enough reason to bring a character back."
Krypto
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY originally started as a Krypto story."
Titans Tower
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "We did talk about who funded the Titans Tower."
Bruce Wayne
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "I had an idea – really early on – about a Bruce Wayne story."
Separated Man
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "There was an early Titans bad guy, the Separated Man. That was sorta similar to our Plasmus story. Originally, my concept was: Plasmus is a big monster, it gets separated into individual parts and then the Titans fight the individual parts. So my original drawings had the Titans fighting the individual parts… Like fighting just his hand or just his head. And then I looked back at that Separated Man story and I was like, "Oh my God. That's really similar to that first story.""
Honey Bun
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "Derrick Wyatt wanted to use Honey Bun and Mister Twister."
The Ant
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "We talked about the Ant."
The Scorcher
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "We talked about using that biker character, The Scorcher. And then we realized that he’s similar to Jonny Rancid."
Omega Men
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "Rob [Hoegee] talked about doing an Omega Men story. And we were thinking about Starfire going home and tying the Omega Men into it. But every time we talked about doing a Starfire arc, it would get absorbed into a story."
Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone
Link: Derrick Wyatt Blog
Posted: August 10, 2006
Who: Derrick Wyatt
Summary: Captain Thug, Dead Pretty-Boy, Witchie Poo, and Prosthetic Lass
Quote: "Here are some Teen Titans designs I did for fun based on Adam Warren's "Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone" comic. I had hoped at one point that we could use them in the show sometime. There was some discussion of it, but ultimately it didn't happen."
Season 1 "Divide and Conquer"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: September 2004
Who: David Slack
Quote: "I originally had more in there; I was going to do something with Cinderblock using that cannon against Titans Tower. But Glen suggested pulling that out."
Season 1 "Sum of His Parts"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: May 2005
Who: David Slack
Quote: "There's been some cases that we had change the name. Like Fixit from SUM OF HIS PARTS was originally Psimon [a psychic villain in the comic book series]. But we thought we had changed him so much he deserved a new name. We didn't want to lose that [Psimon] character, and we didn't want to corrupt him too much."
Season 1 "Switched"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: September 2004
Who: David Slack
Quote: "Another interesting tidbit from that episode: We originally toyed with the idea of letting Hynden Walch do Raven's voice and Tara Strong do Starfire's voice when they switched bodies. And we tried it out in the recording session. But both those women are so talented that we couldn't tell the difference. There was only something slightly off. Hynden does a really good Raven, and Tara does a really good Starfire - so we couldn't really tell the difference. In the end, we just decided to go with the original plan."
Season 2 "Winner Take All"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: October 2004
Who: David Slack
Quote: "We thought about doing Jericho - but we were concerned we wouldn't have time to deal with his powers in such a short time frame. He requires a bit of explanation. Plus, with Jericho there's the sign language thing. We'd have to make sure we got that right. Who else were we looking at? We had a long list of guys. We originally had 10 and slimmed it down to 8. And we ended up doing a three-way match - which added some excitement. We had to keep it down for various reasons. We had to keep to a budget. Like the amount of voice actors and that kind of stuff, too. We had character designers about to die [laughs]. I think once we brainstormed the list of people, we let more practical concerns take over."
Season 2 "Fractured"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: October 2004
Who: David Slack
Quote: "Originally, we had Beast Boy speaking Japanese, but we decided it would be funnier - and easier - if he spoke backwards."
Kimberly Brooks auditioned for Bumblebee
Link: The Ship It Show, 7:57-8:06
Posted: May 26, 2021
Who: Kimberly Books
Quote: "And you know what, I did audition to play Bumblebee in your show, Teen Titans -- 'cause there was another Bumblebee, right?"
Season 3 "Deception"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: May 2005
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "Originally, it was intended to be both Starfire and Cyborg going undercover. It actually began a lot lighter. But as a character study, we thought it worked with Cyborg a lot better. The fish-out-of-water aspect with Starfire didn't seem as interesting as the Cyborg elements. So once we used Cyborg, it made sense that Brother Blood would be the headmaster. And that would be a good way to set up his agenda for the season. So once we decided on Cyborg and then using Brother Blood, it fell into place from there."
Season 3 "Betrothed"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Amy Wolfram
Quote: "Yeah, that ended up getting trimmed down. That was in the feast scene in "Betrothed." The two girls kiss Beast Boy and Cyborg and learn the language that way, and we just ended up not using that little bit."
Season 3 "Titans East, Part 1"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: May 2005
Who: David Slack
Quote: "We know we wanted to use Speedy and Aqualad in there. We thought about Wildebeest. But then we thought that Cyborg would be the strong guy on the team. We kicked around a number of characters. When we originally talked about doing Mas y Menos, we talked about doing a female Flash character. We thought it might be easier to create our own. And then there's discussions about whose powers complement whose."
Season 4 "Mother Mae Eye"
Link: Ben Jones Tweet
Posted: March 25, 2021
Who: Ben Jones
Quote: "There was a whole sequence in the storyboards in which the destroyed gingerbread cookies frosted themselves together into the mutant cookie versions but I had to cut it for time."
The Lost Episode
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 11, 2012
When: May 2005
Who: David Slack
Quote: "I do remember when we were first talking about it, Glen and I had this whole idea of the Titans jumping from cereal box to cereal box. But that wasn't ultimately what Post wanted."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: November 2005
Who: David Slack
Quote: "MOTHER MAE-EYE has a really interesting story. After Amy Wolfram, Lou Hirshorn, and Joelle Sellner so successfully did a musical number in BUNNY RAVEN, we wanted to do a whole musical episode. We ever went so far as to break the story for that one during season three. But after we talked to the guys upstairs about it, it just looked like we weren't going to be able to afford to do it. They were game, but when we looked the budget, we knew we just couldn't do it well. So we set that idea aside. But the character we originally envisioned for that episode became the inspiration for Punk Rocket - which we used in the [Post Cereal] webisode [THE LOST EPISODE]."
Season Five
Link: Titansgo.net Interview
Posted: November 19, 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Prompt: What the original 20 episode plan was
Quote: "At that stage we weren't to the level of detail that would have given us specific episodes, but as I recall, we had planned to bring Slade into the storyline."
Quote: "Okay... here's what I wanted to do: and keep in mind that this may very well never have happened, but at least it's what I wanted to do... The BOE is not doing well in their efforts to stop the titans... making a mockery of evil... A shadow enters their hq... Mallah looks up, Rouge is shocked, Immortus flinches... Just as SLADE knocks over the brain... His canister hits the floor and shatters... Mallah scoops up the pulsating brain (just like the comic book cover). Slade calls them fools. "Let me show you how it's done". And from that point on, they're working for HIM!"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "The fifth season at one point was going to be 20 episodes. We were going to have Slade and the Brotherhood team up at one point. We didn't get to use the Brotherhood quite the way I wanted. We didn't get to use the Chief. I wanted to use him, but we just didn't have time. I wanted to bring back Robotman for another story. There was a lot of stuff we wanted to do. I do like evolving the characters and changing the characters. I wanted to bring back Thunder and Lightning. It would have been cool to bring Red Star back. Sometimes you wish certain characters were established better. It's just that, you're going so fast when you're making the episodes. Either we ran out of time or the story took us in a different direction."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "Actually, we were also told at the beginning of season five that the fifth season would be it, but it wasn't until we were finishing up the season that they started to think about ordering some more. Originally season five was going to be twenty episodes, and after Amy and I arced out a pretty ambitious twenty-episode season, they cut it back to thirteen. So we had to go back and do some changes."
Season 5 "Homecoming, Part 1"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "We talked about it, and it would have been nice. I think Glen [Murakami] even did some designs for The Chief, but I think when it came down to it, it was an added element that complicated things too much."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "We talked about doing a fully unique opening sequence with the Hive characters. It was an early idea that was fun. We had the same idea with the Doom Patrol back in "Homecoming," but we ran out of time, so we thought it’d be cool to just have them interrupt it."
Season 5 "Go"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "But Cyborg, in particular… I was pushing for the scene [from the comic] where he pushes the insanely high pole vault [and realizes he can no longer compete with regular humans]. We ultimately realized we wouldn't have time for that. We ended up compromising and putting him in that hooded track suit, and that would be enough. That would show the transition of him initially covering up who he is, and then later shedding it."
Season 5 Finale
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: David Slack
Quote: "Originally, our big battle finale was going to be a three-parter, and it just didn't quite work in three parts, so it was really fun to do an origin episode. I think it also made sense to do it at that point; it shed light onto what was going on in the arc of season five. It went back and showed us a lot of things we were curious about."
Season 5 "Titans Together"
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "In mine, there was a lot [of scenes cut]..Someday, maybe I can slip you the script and you can see it all. It was mostly in the final battle royal."
Season Six
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "If we did a sixth season, we would have probably used Phobia. We would have used Mister Twister. I wanted to do another Mad Mod episode. We talked about Ravager for the sixth season, I think one concern with using her, was making it too similar to Terra. But we did talk about using her."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Amy Wolfram
Quote: "And had we done a sixth season, we would have definitely expanded on all these characters. Argent would have had her own Titans Tower in London."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Amy Wolfram
Quote: "Yeah, definitely. They wouldn't have all stayed at Titans Tower. We had this idea that there would be Titans Towers all over the world in each sector of the world. So we would keep our core five, but also expand and get to know these new characters, and have them mix and match-up. We felt that season five was like their graduation. They have sort of moved on and started to make new friends. When that happens in life, you may have a new best friend, or a new friend at work, and things like that, so it definitely would have opened up their world even more so than in the first five seasons. "
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Amy Wolfram
Summary: Amy Wolfram and Glen Murakami worked on a short proposal for season six called "New Teen Titans".
Quote: "Yep, it would be called New Teen Titans. I worked on it over the summer. It was really cool! [laughs] And it builds on what we established in season five. It was really going farther and farther with some things we were developing. Plus, now after this season, we had so many characters to explore and to work with. So that would have been a lot of fun. Glen and I did a mini-bible for it, and we had about twenty-four main characters in it. We had our Titans, plus Titans East, and the new ones we had brought in for the two-parter."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
When: December 2005/May 2006
Who: Amy Wolfram
Quote: "Well, we were working on the proposal just when season five ended. That was through the summer. And then we were just waiting to hear. Then in mid-Fall, we heard that Cartoon Network decided not to renew their option to do any more, so that was it."
Link: Titans Tower
Posted: July 15, 2012
Who: Glen Murakami
Quote: "And if we were going to do a sixth season, we talked about turning Speedy into Arsenal. It was going to be a surprise."
Link: Derrick Wyatt Blog
Posted: February 9, 2006
Who: Derrick Wyatt
Quote: "What if Teen Titans had gotten a sixth season? Well one episode discussed was none other than the return of Robin's extra-dimensional doppleganger, Larry! But this time Larry is teamed up with his super buddy, Silkie! Talk about a two-fisted tale with an extra helping of maggoty goodness."
Link: Titansgo.net Interview
Posted: November 19, 2006
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "At the beginning of season five, we were told that it would be the last batch of episodes ordered. In fact, we were slated to do 20 rather than the usual 13. Amy [Wolfram] and I (along with David [Slack] and Glen [Murakami]) mapped out a pretty ambitious season arc - with 20 eps, you have that luxury. After we planned everything out, it was, "Oh, by the way, now we're only doing 13". So we had to make some serious modifications to end up where we did. We also knew that season five would be the last one. This was from the very beginning. Also the reason we ended with "Things Change". Now here's the part you want to hear about: we had almost completed the writing phase - I think I may even have been done - it was just Amy [Wolfram] finishing up TC. Sam Register at CN proposed the idea of doing a "rebranding" of the series. This was only development. By that time, I had already moved on to develop Legion of Super Heroes (remember - we were told there would be no more). I needed a new job! David [Slack] had gone to Law and Order, so the development of a possible new show went to the very capable hands of Amy [Wolfram]. Along with Glen [Murakami], and with Sam [Register]'s input, they did a proposal that was sent to the brass in Atlanta. Ultimately they declined. So in many ways, and as hard as it is to imagine, the show was never technically "cancelled". There was an 11th hour possible reprieve, but it never came to pass. Had a season 6 been a serious possibility, we wouldn't have ended season 5 the way we did. As for what a "new show" would have been, my understanding is they were planning to expand the team with all the new characters. So there you have it."
Link: Derrick Wyatt Formspring (dead link)
Posted: Before March 31, 2013
Who: Derrick Wyatt
Summary: Season 6 would have included the monster fought in "Things Change" and setting up international Titans Towers.
Link: Derrick Wyatt Tweet
Posted: August 28, 2020
Who: Derrick Wyatt
Quote: "I barely remember any season 6 design stuff. I remember working on a little ghoul kid for a London villain. I wanted to see the London tower. Still do."
Link: World's Finest
Posted: January 2021
Who: Teen Titans Production Team
Quote: "Just who was the second Red X in Teen Titans? None other than the second Robin himself, Jason Todd! Former members of the series production team confirmed for The World's Finest the identity of the second Red X. If the show continued, Teen Titans series team members state there were plans to explore Red X's real identity and his relationship to Robin, though no concrete plots and stories were devised."
Link: Comic Book Movie (Note: Article is not fully verified)
Posted: April 8, 2021
Quote: Season 6 would have seen NEW Teen Titans fighting along the core group of Robin and the gang. These included heroes from the land, sea, and air and even from other dimensions. From prehistoric caveman ingenuity to high-energy blasts, each hero possesses a different superpower and a unique way of looking at the world. New Teen Titans would have included Aqualad, Argent, Bumblebee, Bushido, Gnarrk, The Herald, Hotspot, Jericho, Kid Flash, Kilowatt, Kole, Mas y Menos, Pantha, Red Star, Speedy, Thunder and Lightning, Tramm the Fish Boy, and Wildebeest. Rather than the five core Titans always working together, the sixth season of Teen Titans would have seen the new team mixing and matching.
Quote: Some of the possible match-ups discussed included: Robin, Speedy, Aqualad, Kid Flash: The original Titans from the comic book joining forces for a mission.
Quote: Kid Flash, Mas y Menos: An episode dedicated to speed as the fast heroes work together.
Quote: Wildebeest, Jericho, Gnarkk: Mismatched and non-speaking heroes who have to figure out how to communicate with each other for a mission? Sounds like there was potential for many a laugh with this one!
Quote: Hotspot, Kilowatt, Redstar: These personalities joining forces sounds like a recipe for an explosive episode!
Quote: Raven, Starfire, Kole, Argent, Bumblebee, Pantha: Yep, you've got it. An all girl's adventure...
Quote: With the Brotherhood of Evil taken care of at the end of season 5, who did Warner Bros. Animation plan to put in front of the Teen Titans for season 6? Nope, not grown-ups. Their plan was to have the team face other "cool, hip teenagers." This new clique of teenage villains was going to be led by Athena, the popular golden girl with the Midas Touch to give superpowers, and take them away, depending on her mood.
Quote: Villains included The Boyfriends, Athena's ever-changing roster of suitors. Each with different superpowers, weapons and costumes to suit Athena's situation and mood (the Jock, the Brain, the Theater Guy, etc.). We also would have seen Athena's posse, The Robot Girls. Mean and beautiful girl robots that take care of Athena's dirty work. Equipped with interchangeable weapons and parts, they would have proved to be a handful for the team, when they weren't quarreling over who was the prettiest.
Quote: Season 6 would have also seen other groups of teenagers as throwbacks to previous villains, including the "Mad Mods" and a "Battle of the Geeks" as new nerds attempt to replace Control Freak.
Quote: With so many new Titans joining the roster, the sixth season of Teen Titans would have seen several new Titans Headquarters. Each of which linked together by a new Cyborg-designed (and maintained) high-tech communications system, including a global conference room for debriefings.
Quote: Titans Tower East: Home to Titans East (Bumble Bee, Speedy, Aqualad and Mas y Menos), this tower is located on the East Coast and has all of the amenities of the original Titans Tower.
Quote: Titans Subterranean Base: Home to Kole and Caveman Gnarrk, this high tech tree house is designed especially for Gnarrk's low-tech sensibilities, including easy to use extra large, hieroglyphic buttons.
Quote: Titans Headquarters London: A quirky, offbeat London flat hidden in the middle of Big Ben, this is home to Argent and a European base.
Quote: Titans Undersea Base: This underwater coral reef is home to Aqualad and Tramm the Fish Boy.
Quote: Several new storylines were in store for Season 6, including a Holiday episode, a stunt episode compromised of a hodgepodge of weird shorts which could have included "Planet Soto". We've included a few of the fleshed-out storylines below. DIMENSION X: As ARGENT is fighting the devious criminal JACK FOG in London, she is joined by fellow New Teen Titans ROBIN, BEAST BOY and THE HERALD. After nabbing the bad guy, Robin debriefs the rest of the team (including CYBORG, who along with electrical engineer KILOWATT is installing a new communications system in the Subterranean Base for KOLE and GNARRK, and RAVEN and STARFIRE who are off training unruly THUNDER and LIGHTNING). But when The Herald opens a portal for their return trip, he unknowingly creates a rift in DIMENSION X, allowing a microscopic, freeloading creature to travel with them to Earth. The creature multiplies exponentially, and in the end the New Teen Titans must battle the creature and repair the rift. But as one portal closes, another opens, allowing the foreboding entrance of this season’s new villainess, ATHENA, a cool, popular golden girl with the Midas Touch to give superpowers (and take them away).
Quote: THE OUTSIDER (two-parter): As the various teenage superheroes join together to form the New Teen Titans there is one geeky teenage OUTSIDER who just doesn’t have what it takes to join Robin and his team. So he turns to ATHENA, who grants him superpowers to use against Robin. But as he gains strength and popularity with his new powers (including becoming one of Athena’s Boyfriends), will his new status go to his head?
Quote: THE BATTLE OF THE GEEKS: At a Comic-Con like convention, the Geeks realize that one of their founding members is missing. And with “Control Freak” away, an ultra-nerdy battle begins for the “One Remote to Rule Them All”. Who will be the new King of the Geeks? Will it be… Beast Boy?
Quote: THE MAD MODS: In a psychedelic, swirling Mad Mod world, a hip gang of Vespa riding Mad Mod groupies has picked up where their idol Mad Mod left off. Like any great tribute group, they dress like Mad Mod, talk like Mad Mod, walk like Mad Mod and plot the destruction of the Teen Titans, just like Mad Mod.
Quote: TRUTH OR DARE: A simple game of Truth or Dare at an all-girl slumber party turns into a game of life and death for RAVEN, STARFIRE, BUMBLE BEE, ARGENT, KOLE, and a boy-crazy PANTHA as the girls take on ATHENA and her ROBOT GIRL posse.
Link: Rob Hoegee Tweet
Posted: April 12, 2021
Who: Rob Hoegee
Quote: "We were planning on using the expanded universe of heroes we established by the end of S5 but this seems dubious. I had already moved on to develop Legion at this point so Amy did the S6 development (which didn't go very far as I recall)."
Link: Derrick Wyatt Tweet
Posted: April 12, 2021
Who: Derrick Wyatt
Quote: "Some of it seems kind of familiar. I remember the idea for more international T Towers, and I remember a new British villain kid that could have been Jack Fog. The Dimension X stuff was supposed to tie into the creature from the final episode with Terra"
Link: Brianne Drouhard Tweet
Posted: April 12, 2021
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Quote: "I don't remember much, but I do remember helping w vis dev on a major character who isn't mentioned here at all... so... a mystery."
Link: Ben Jones Tweet
Posted: April 12, 2021
Who: Ben Jones
Quote: "The new villain from Dimension X who gives characters super powers was definitely a part of it. The further this article goes the less familiar the details sound, but I never read the full pitch, so I can't say either way."
Link: Eric J. Pringle Tweet
Posted: February 11, 2023
Who: Eric J. Pringle
Summary: The end tag for Teen Titans Go! To The Movies was leaked online so less people went to theaters. Executives looked at the numbers and weren't convinced to renew Teen Titans for a sixth season.
Quote: I believe the intent was to create a buzz for s6, but the day of the release someone recorded this clip in the theater and posted it online giving fans no reason to see it for themselves. Thus the movie didn't reach the numbers WB wanted to see to convince them to renew TT. Oops.
The Batman
Villain designs
Source: Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film and Beyond, page 320-322
Posted: October 2019
Summary: Unused Riddler designs looked similar to Cluemaster. Another reimagined him as a short, bald man. An unused Penguin designed had him as a Japanese elderly man with a wagasa umbrella. An unused Scarface design had him as a pale behemoth who carried Arnold Wesker around. An unused Bane design was more grounded, but had translucent parts in his arms. Jeff Matsuda compared his final design to a mosquito that swells and turns red when feeding on blood.
Legion of Superheroes Season 1
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 2" Audio Commentary, 16:30-16:46
Who: James Tucker
Quote: He was supposed to be Superboy first season and then we found out we couldn't do that and so we changed--we had to re-record all his lines and she was Superman season one but looked like Superboy.
Legion of Superheroes Season 2
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 1" Audio Commentary, 2:02-2:06
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We wanted to go with Darkseid but they said, "No. He's been done." Which is kind of shocking.
Superman X
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 1" Audio Commentary, 2:12-2:18
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We toyed with making him half-Superman, half-Luthor.
Dark Victory, Part 1
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 1" Audio Commentary, 18:38-18:58
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I originally wanted that to literally be a crown of thorns. I remember I wanted it to come out as Kryptonite but uh, you know, like jagged Kryptonite but they were like "Ooo, wait a minute, that's not even subtle."
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 1" Audio Commentary, 20:30-20:43
Who: James Tucker
Summary: There was an actual scene showing Brainiac impaling Imperiex but they had to cut around it.
Quote: Actually, it was animated. We had to cut it. No, there is somewhere on some editor's floor, there is a--well, it would be a video tape I guess but--
Legion of Superheroes Season 3
Link: Comic Book Resources James Tucker
Posted: April 9, 2008
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We left it unresolved on purpose. This ending was going to bridge into the third season. And the way we leave it, Brainiac 5 has to redeem himself. So that's what he would have been doing in the third season. When we left, he has a lot to clean up. I'll put it that way! With that in mind, it ends with Brainiac 5 having to deal with the repercussions of what he did when he was evil. He'll be on a quest to redeem himself with the Legion. But he may or may not go back to the Legion. That is what we would have explored in Season 3. I don't think it was a detriment having Kel-El be added to the cast because originally the idea we pitched to the network for the second season was to introduce Mon-El because they wanted a suped-up Superman. They basically wanted a kick-ass, bad-ass Superman. I pitched an idea of a future Superman, a clone of Superman from the future, who would come back to the Legion time, to enlist their help, which is basically the flip of what we did Season 1 when we had the Legion go back to Smallville and get Superman. Of course, for third season, we were under no obligation to have him come back. We had aged Superman up. The second season happened about three years after the first one. We had our Superman actually look and feel like Superman. So we didn't really need Kel, although he probably would have showed up here or there. "Tucker also had plans to introduce fan favorites like Wildfire and Dawnstar in Season 3. " And we have given some other characters the spotlight, like Blok. He's a favorite of mine, and hopefully we would have given the girls more screen time. I had some plans for a Ferro Lad story too, where we would have introduced his twin brother.
Link: World's Finest
Posted:
Who: James Tucker
Quote: As far as future story arcs, we would most likely have devoted time to Brainiac 5's quest to redeem himself after the events of the season 2 finale. I personally wanted to introduce characters we hadn't had a chance to yet. Legion simply had too many characters to do justice to two seasons. Michael and I had also talked about Ferro Lad's twin brother showing up in an adaptation of "The Ghost of Ferro Lad" story, and I wanted to introduce Wildfire into the Legion as a replacement of Kell-El. Legions seemed to work better with a loose cannon of the team.
Source: Legion of Superheroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray, "Dark Victory, Part 2" Audio Commentary, 20:01-20:10
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Now that he was human, we wanted to explore what that meant and what, you know, how he could redeem after attempting to destroy the universe.
Batman: The Brave and The Bold
Bruce Timm passed on it but recommended James Tucker
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 14, 2018
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Years later, Sam Register, president of Warner Animation, though not at the time, approached me to do a new take on a Batman cartoon to tie into the second Nolan Batman film, The Dark Knight. I later found out that Bruce Timm himself recommended me for the gig after passing on it himself.
Link: Anime Superhero post
Posted: November 14, 2022
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: Brave and Bold: Sam Register invited me to lunch, asked if I'd be interested in doing a Batman show aimed directly at younger kids. I said I personally wasn't, but that I thought a Batman show for a younger audience was a good idea in theory. I suggested that it would make sense to really go for it - don't just do "BTAS Lite" or "BTAS For Kids", do something radically different than BTAS, to the point that even the toys would instantly look much different on the shelves at Target. While I liked Jeff Matsuda's designs for THE BATMAN a lot, I thought the style of the new show should be pushed even further away from the BTAS paradigm. Put Batman in gray and blue, like Adam West or the Dick Sprang comics. Sam was digging the general idea and then it hit me - "You know who'd be the perfect guy for this: James Tucker." And of course I was right.
Invasion of the Secret Santas!
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: July 15, 2013
Who: James Tucker
Quote: yes.didnt have the rights to Superman characters then so I used an unused character I developed for Batman Beyond, FunHaus.
Summary: James Tucker reveals FunHaus started out as an idea for Batman Beyond, a virtual reality Joker but Bruce Timm was set on Jokerz. For "Invasion of the Secret Santas!", Toyman was planned to be used but Superman characters were off limits so FunHaus was developed and used.
Enter the Outsiders!
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: June 2, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I barely remember but I think the intent was to use Sleez at first because I always tried to use existing characters from the comics but for whatever reason (licensing?), we didn't/couldn't. So Slug is an original character inspired by Sleez.
Mystery in Space!
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: November 19, 2017
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: Just because you are so nice, here is the original tag that was cut for time. Hope you like it!
Transcript: Alanna
How can we thank you for all you've done for Rann, Batman?
Batman
It's Aquaman who really saved the day. In fact, he's in the council room right now, trying to help along the peace process.
Adam Strange shakes his head.
Adam Strange
Aquaman may be a true hero, but it would take a miracle worker to make any progress in there.
Just then, the council room doors crack open again and Aquaman can be seen with one arm around Sardath and the other around Kreegaar. They are all SMILING.
Aquaman
...and the squid says, 'Flounder? I don't even know her!'
Sardath and Kreegaar
(Hysterical Laughter)
Kreegaar and Saradath both BURST out in hysterics as Aquaman hits the punch line. Clearly, both sides agree on one thing: they LOVE this guy! The door swings SHUT.
Adam Strange and Alanna watch in amazement.
Batman
You were saying?
Batman smiles at Adam and Alanna as we FADE TO BLACK.
THE END
Menace of the Conqueror Caveman!
Link: James Tucker Tweet (set to private)
Posted: November 29, 2022
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We wanted it to be Vandal at first but DC wouldn't let us for some reason then we changed it to the Shazam villain, King Kull, no go with that either so we settled on an amalgam of Vandal and Kull, hence Kr'ull.
Long Arm of the Law!
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 14, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: The dialogue-less teaser that featured Plastic Man was actually meant for the beginning of our Music Meister episode, but when that episode went long (making it the only B&B episode without a teaser) we repurposed it for this episode. Also, that meant that we ended up with a teaser featuring a character that's also in the main story, but oh well.
Chill of the Night!
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Primarily, At the recording, I realized that we had Poison Ivy in the episode, and Julie had only done Martha Wayne so we hastily wrote some dialogue for Julie to record as Poison Ivy. It was fine but by the time it came to ADR "Chill of the Night" we knew we were going to feature Poison Ivy in the teaser to the "Mask of Matches Malone" and the characterization of her in that was a lot different than what Julie had done at the recording originally. She kind of gave Poison Ivy a really tough, not very seductive voice. So ultimately we got Jennifer Hale to record the Poison Ivy voice to more closely match what Vanessa Marshall ultimately ended up doing in "Mask of Matches Malone" episode
Link: Fatman on Batman Episode 17 (dead link), 37:51-38:16
Posted: November 21, 2012
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Originally, it was going to be like Christmas Carol. We had three mystical characters and it was the Spectre, uh Adam Strange--Phantom Stranger and Zatanna. And they were each going to represent different points in Batman's life. And then ultimate--we realized we had too much story and we made the Zatanna bit kind of like a cold opening. So we got her off the table early so it was like the Spectre--
Link: Brianne Drouhard Tweet
Posted: June 23, 2020
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Quote: Hamil made Dini change a line in the middle of the record, The Spectre said "..I think..", Hamil brought up The Spectre KNOWS EVERYTHING, & would never say "I think."
The Mask of Matches Malone!
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 14, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We got the script in and it was kinda short. By this point in the series, the inmates were running the place, so it was nothing for me to say, "I think we need a song here..." I think I gave Michael the suggestion that one of the lyrics could be something about Flash being too fast, and his eyes lit up and he totally got what was needed. I ended up storyboarding the song as well, because every superhero show needs a musical number every now and then! Unfortunately, the episode aired overseas before it could here in the States, and the network flew into a tizzy and never aired it even after we changed a few scenes to be less "on the nose." It's on the Blu-ray, though, in all its uncut glory.
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 2010
Who: James Tucker
Quote: After the song premiered in Australia and was so heavily commented via the message boards online, I assumed there would be some changes to it before it aired here. As it stands now, only one shot was altered and I really think it's an improvement. When Michael Jelenic wrote the song for the episode, our intention was to do a "Cole Porter"-type song, fun, sophisticated and with clever wordplay. So I see anything that adds to the wit of the song as an improvement. The new shot is just better across the board and I wish I had storyboarded it that way to begin with.
The Criss Cross Conspiracy!
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 14, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: This one is a personal favorite because it features the '50s era Batwoman, or at least, my version of her, since we weren't allowed to actually use her name, "Kathy Kane." Apparently, the kiddies would confuse her with the more recent gay version of the Batwoman character, who some thought was not kid-friendly enough. Anyway, I dubbed her "Katrina Moldoff" in honor of Shelly Moldoff, the prolific Silver Age Batman artist. The plot concerned gender switching and manages to... ahem... "homage" both the Star Trek episode, Turnabout Intruder, AND the Billy Wilder sex comedy, Some Like It Hot.
Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!
Link: Ben Jones blog
Posted: March 2, 2011
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: Normally we don't have much in the way of deleted footage, but Bat-Mite has a knack for messing up our normal schedule one way or the other. This time around, when we finished the storyboard, we found that it was a couple minutes short of a full show, so we had to scramble to make some stuff up to patch up those gaps. We put back some of the gags that had initially been cut from the Batboy and Rubin section, James wrote the bit where Bat-Mite magically adds fight scenes to the Scooby section, I wrote a shark safety PSA, and James came up with one last thing - a commercial parody that we would have squeezed into the act break during the manga section. First, a little history - for those who didn't live in Canada in 1987, you might have missed these department store commercials (although they were being rediscovered on the internet around the time we were working on B-MP:B'sSC). They were directed by the amazing Greg Duffel in Toronto at his Lightbox Studio, with designs by the great Ty Templeton. That's also Greg as the voice of Robin, by the way. As a side note, these commercials eventually led to Greg's studio being hired to do some test animation that was used to sell a little show you may have heard of called Batman: The Animated Series. So along with all of the other stuff, James wrote a script for our own fake commercial, and we whipped this little number up (pardon the crudeness of the drawings, I had to bang it out pretty quick)-But then, a funny thing happened - when we added all the new stuff into the show, we were actually a minute OVER. So we cut the commercial, since it was easiest to lift out and also, it saved us from doing a bunch of new designs in an episode that already had to be completely re-designed three times over already.
Knights of Tomorrow!
Link: James Tucker Tweet (set to private)
Posted: November 22, 2022
Who: James Tucker
Quote: This episode had a whole bit showing Nightwing taking over as Batman fighting an older Penguin but we cut it at boards for time. It was ultimately redundant but it would’ve been cool to see. We used it later in Batman:Bad Blood though
The Malicious Mr. Mind!
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 14, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Originally titled Meet the Marvels! - a title I loved dearly but understood why it didn't fly with the powers that be - focused on Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. In hindsight, I'm just thankful we were able to call him Captain Marvel in the first place!
Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!
Link: Ben Jones blog
Posted: April 27, 2011
Who: Ben Jones
Quote: Before the Weeper, we considered the Mad Monk, as a villain who predated the Joker, and the Mad Hatter, for reasons I can't remember.
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: James Tucker
Quote: There weren't any firm plans to use Hugo Strange except for that cameo in "Knights of Tomorrow" that I recall but in "The Vile and the Villainous", instead of the Weeper, the original idea was to use Mad Hatter as the over-the-hill villain that Joker helps. I vetoed that because The Weeper seemed a better counterpoint to The Joker in the context of the story and also I'd remembered that they'd teamed up in the comics before. I really couldn't envision The Mad Hatter being that much older than Joker as the story required. It would have been nice to see the Mad Hatter in a teaser though but he was in several cameo parts throughout the series.
Shadow of the Bat! - The Ending
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I made that call. Originally all the events in the story were to have actually happened, Batman had indeed been turned into a vampire, and everything you saw on screen had happened. However, once the show came back from being animated and was edited, the third act and the ending really felt really anti-climactic to me. Up until the very end, the atmosphere of horror, dark comedy and dread had been effectively established, but in the original ending had the sun simply come up and everyone gets cured. It felt off to me that the sun wouldn't destroy the vampires rather than be the cause of them being cured. Granted, technically they were synthetic vampires, but I really felt that final image of the JLI on fire had to be in the context of them being incinerated by the sun rather than being cured and the only way to do that was in the context of it all being a fever dream that Batman was having. So I made the call to re-stage the ending where the audience doesn't know Batman's dreamt the whole thing until the very end, whereas originally the audience would have known from the middle of the third act that all the JLI had to do was wait for the sun to come up to be cured.
Also another reason I wanted to go the fever dream route was that then we could really lay on the sound efx, like the sickening crunching sound Batman makes when he's biting Black Mask, and really go to town on all the really scary horror music we used. My concern was, if Batman was doing all this stuff for real in the story, then there was the potential for Broadcast Standard to request we pull back on the bells and whistles that would really make the episode horrific even though the script and board were approved. It has been known to happen in the past. This is all very subjective stuff on my part and Michael Jelenic disagreed with me on the revision. I think if we'd had a longer format to tell the story and a longer time for the resolution, then the original version would have been fine, but because this episode is really packed with every vampire movie gag, we just ran out of time to set up a resolution that didn't feel rushed. As it is, I view the epilogue as a homage to the old horror movie, "Mark of the Vampire" where at the end we find out the vampires in the story were just actors. I don't think the final solution was perfect by any means, and given how off the wall this season was, I wished we had just ended the episode with them all burning up on the bridge of the satellite! Roll credits! Then next week everyone's back to normal. Now that would have been a true horror movie ending. I recommend to the fans that truly hate the ending to turn the episode off right before the final scene with Batman recovering in the sick bay.
The Battle of the Superheroes!
Link: Ben Jones Formspring (dead link)
Posted: March 14, 2011
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: Arthur Jr. will appear in season 3. He was originally set to appear in "The Battle of the Superheroes!" but has since been moved to another episode.
Title Changes
Link: J.M. DeMatteis blog reply
Posted: April 11, 2017
Who: J.M. DeMatteis
Quote: Except for "The Last Patrol," they all had different titles, Yojimbo. "Day of the Dark Knight" was "Knight Shift." "The Eyes of Despero" was "The Odyssey of the Ring." "Hail the Tornado Tyrant" was "In His Image" and then "The Birth of the Tornado Tyrant." "Revenge of the Reach" was "Revenge of the Scarab."
Unused Teaser/Main Plot/Setting Episodes
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: February 5, 2016
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Rip Hunter time travel teaser Doctor Who parody/Guy Gardner made evil by Sinestro - becomes Parallax/enter Alan Scott original Green Lantern/space
Quote: Inferior Five/Aquaman The Barbarian ft Claw the Uncoquered/Pytharia Pre-historic
Quote: Batman+Robin vs Crimson Avenger+Wing (Green Hornet+Kato)/Jonah Hex sequel? w/Two-Face in Old West/Old West
Quote: Green Arrow gets his goatee/JLI vs. Royal Flush Gang+Roulette/Blue Beetle gets recruited by Teen Titans-/Vegas
Quote: Batman/Unknown Soldier/4 Teaser The Challengers Doom Patrol Metal Men Batman
Quote: Wonder Woman dammit/Batman as Vampire vs Nocturna?/Gotham/Transylvania
Quote: Batman+Teen Titans Nightwing-Speedy-Kid Flash-Aqualad/Batman+Suicide Squad/Space
Quote: Batman w/Catwoman/Ditko Show-The Question/Odd Man/Creeper/Hub City or Bludhaven
Quote: Shazam teaser/Kamandi Klik Klak Race adaptaion/Earth A.D.
Quote: Batman-Ragman/Superman Wonder Woman Batman OR Suprema-vs JLI (Wonder Woman parody)/Washington D.C.
Quote: Batman+Flash (Barry Allen)/Supernatural heroes- Deadman/Spectre/Dr. Fate/Demon/Zatanna-/Adapt Batman/Joker Wildcat story
Would have done
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: August 22, 2017
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I wish we'd got to adapt the Kamandi story where Klik Klak died. I'd started an outline but we ran out of time and episodes
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: July 24, 2018
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Had we gotten around to a full Titans episode, B:TBATB would've had Golden Eagle AND Betty Kane Flamebird on the team!!
Link: 13th Dimension
Posted: November 15, 2018
Who: James Tucker
Quote: I was lucky enough to do many of the Silver Age stories that inspired me, like the Joe Chill story or Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, but the ones we didn't get to that come to mind were a '60s B&B story where Wonder Woman and Batgirl fight over Batman. It's horribly dated and sexist but of course we would've spun it differently, and made a commentary about its backwardness. It also featured Copperhead, one of my favorite DC villains. I'd have also loved to have done a Batman/Swamp Thing team up based on the '70s Wein/Wrightson story. I think it could've been a great horror-based episode. I also liked the B&B team-up that featured Atom, Green Arrow, Joker and Two-Face in the '70's.
Toyed with bringing Music Meister back
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: James Tucker
Quote: We toyed around with bringing him back but never locked down a real story that really had to be told. I think it was best that we left the audience wanting more of him.
Ambush Bug was offlimits until Season 3
Link: Ben Jones Tweet
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: Ben Jones
Quote: That was his first and last appearance - they said no for 2 seasons, then @GeoffJohns cleared it for us in time for season 3
Michael Jelenic wanted to do a Haunted Tank epsiode
Link: World's Finest
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: Michael Jelenic
Quote: Although, I did really wanted to do a whole episode centered around Haunted Tank, but James wasn't feeling it. I believe the character may have been a little too absurd for him to devote a main plot too. I on the other hand still think Haunted Tank could have been as popular as Aquaman.
Michael Jelenic wanted to write himself and James Tucker into an episode
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: July 21, 2021
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Loved seeing that Aparo and Haney put themselves in the story. Jelenic kept wanting to write us into an episode but I wasn't that into the idea.
Ben Jones wanted to use Animal Man and Shade
Link: War Rocket Ajax Podcast (36:46-1:18:00)
Posted: January 6, 2012
Who: Ben Jones
Justice League International spin off
Link: J.M. DeMatteis Tweet
Posted: April 7, 2018
Who: J.M. DeMatteis
Quote: There was talk, a few years back, of a JLI animated series spinning out of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, but it never came to be.
Sooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and The Bold
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: January 10, 2018
Who: James Tucker
Quote: My original pitch included cameos of Scooby villains but that was to close to another Scooby movie that was being made so we had to change it.
Jeremy Adams wrote a spec script with Richard Dragon titled "Dragon" in order to be mentored by Jim Krieg
Link: Flickering Myth
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: In fact, the first spec script that I wrote was a Batman: Brave and the Bold and it was Richard Dragon and Batman that I sent to Jim Krieg years and years ago. So I always look at him as a martial art hero, kind of that American Ninja.
Link: Jeremy Adams Tweet
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: No, I’m sure he hasn't. It was part of @jim_krieg's initiation process to have him mentor me.
Link: Jeremy Adams Tweet
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: I'm looking at it now. The Cold open is with "Fire" and Batman stopping Mr. Freeze. Ooof this is rough. Here's some excerpts...
Link: Jeremy Adams Tweet
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: ON BATMAN as he SLAMS HIS FIST into the henchmen, TRACKING with the SLIDING henchmen backwards to the feet of Mr. Freeze.
ON BATMAN
BATMAN
By my calendar Winter is still a few months away Freeze!
ON FREEZE
MR. FREEZE Not for long Batman. My Mega Freeze Ray is going to turn the world into a perpetual popsicle, and there is nothing you can do to stop it! HAHAHAHAH!
FIRE (O.S.)
Are you sure about that?.
Link: Jeremy Adams Tweet
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: CLOSE ON: Richard Dragon smiling.
RICHARD DRAGON
You might be the loudest Ninjas I've ever heard.
We ZOOM OUT as Richard slides out of his jacket, NINJA STARS and ARROWS pin it to the nearby STORE FRONT.
Wide on Dragon has he stands in the MIDDLE OF THE LIGHT in a karate pose.
RICHARD DRAGON (CONT'D)
Well...what are you waiting for?
RICHARDS POV: Ninja begin creeping into the light. All carrying Various weapons.
SFX: VROOOOOM!
Link: Jeremy Adams Tweet
Posted: January 5, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: Okay... last one. I had totally forgotten about this. How obscure. It's Richard Dragon, Doctor Darkk, Shiva and Batman. lol. And there's a giant crab laboratory.
CLOSE ON RICHARD unable to suppress a grin.
ON SHIVA
SHIVA
You think this is funny Dragon?
WIDE as Richard gets to his feet.
RICHARD DRAGON
No. Not funny. Just well planned.
ON BATMAN/NINJA as Batman stands up in the crowd of Ninjas and pulls off the Ninja suit.
BATMAN
Shiva, you and the League are done!
Young Justice
Choosing Members of The Team in season one
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 19, 2014
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: As I've stated before, there was a list of over fifty teen DC heroes, all of whom were considered, at least briefly. We then cut that list down considerably to more or less the folks that became members of the Team that you saw in Season One: i.e. Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian, Speedy/Red Arrow, Artemis, Zatanna and Rocket. Others that were briefly considered for the final cut include, as I recall, Donna, Garth, Mary and Cissie. But Donna was declared off-limits (at that time). Kaldur replaced Garth. Artemis' backstory offered us more interesting secrets than Cissie's might have, and three archers (Artemis, Roy and Oliver) seemed like plenty to start with in one series. Finally, our developing plans for Captain Marvel in Season One worked better if Mary was not yet part of the equation. As planned, Garth guest-starred (and had a nice role in Legacy). And we managed to slip a Cissie cameo in, with bigger plans for her later, if we had gotten more seasons/episodes/issues. We had planned to include Mary and Donna in Season Two, but as I've already discussed, Phil Bourassa just didn't have time to design them both for the sake of a couple cameo appearances. We had more plans for both of those characters, as well, but never got the opportunity. Heck, we had eventual plans for nearly everyone on the original list of fifty-plus.
Choosing Members of The Light
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: January 13, 2016
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: For the record: It was Brandon Vietti who wanted Klarion in the Light. Not that I disagreed, but my initial choice had been Wotan. But Brandon pointed out we needed a "kid" on our villain team, and as usual, Brandon was right.
Wonder Dog in season one
Link: Brandon Vietti Tweet
Posted: March 4, 2013
Who: Brandon Vietti
Quote: Wonder Dog was scripted into S1 but cut for time.
Musical Episode
Link: Comic Book Resources "DC Animation Pits "Justice League" vs. "Young Justice," But It's All Love"
Posted: March 31, 2016
Who: Greg Weisman
Summary: Weisman said there were plans for a "Young Justice" musical episode before "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" aired "Mayhem of the Music Meister" and the producers felt they "couldn't touch it."
Rejected Pitches for Spin-Offs
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 22, 2013
When: Late 2012s
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: During that period, Brandon and I (both separately and together) pitched all sorts of further Earth-16 properties, including (but not limited to) a third season (of course), animated spin-offs featuring Arsenal and/or the Arrow Family, a comic book entitled Earth-16, the Black Manta Celebrity Hot Tub shorts, a direct to DVD movie, etc. Brandon even pitched a YJ meets Scooby movie. Unfortunately, none of these were in the cards.
Dick Grayson Story
Link: Chris Jones Tweet
Posted: April 29, 2023
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: I know that Greg had a story he always wanted to tell with Dick Grayson before he turned 18 that we never got to do on the show or in the comics. It would be nice to go back and tell that story.
Terrors
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: November 18, 2011
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Originally, there was a subplot in the episode that I had a personal affinity for. But we had to cut it for time. So it'll wind up appearing in issues #14 & 15 of our companion comic book.
Auld Acquaintance
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 31, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Summary: The Joker was originally considered to appear in "Auld Acquaintance," controlling the Justice League. But for a variety of reasons (mainly budgetary; they needed Klarion anyway for the "magic stuff"), they switched him out for Klarion.
Choosing Members of The Team in Invasion
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 31, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Summary: Lieutenant and Sergeant Marvel were originally considered to be on the Team in Season 2. But with only 20 episodes, several intended arcs were cut or reworked to have occurred during the Time Skip: a Marvel Family arc, a Red Tornado arc, and a Zatanna arc. With nothing to do anymore, Mary and Freddy were slotted into the Time Skip.
6 episodes cut from Invasion
Link: Greg Weisman Tweet
Posted: September 1, 2023
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Okay (A) not a cliffhanger. And (2), the short answer is the toy line did not do well. Mattel cancelled the toy line, which is what paid for the television series. Since we were mid-production on S2 when that happened, our episode order was cut from 26 to 20 and we were done.
Link: Greg Weisman Tweet
Posted: September 2, 2023
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: The order was cut before we broke those episodes. Don't know what would've been in them. The 20 we did make would've been spread over 26, and we probably would've fit in a Red Tornado episode, a Shazam episode and gotten more quality time with Robin, Wonder Girl, etc.
Bridal Shower omitted guests in Satisfaction
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: November 27, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: There were two other characters I REALLY wanted to include at the shower, but unfortunately that would have added four more designs to Phil's total for the episode, and he just didn't have time for them. But one of the reasons I chose to write this episode was so that I could introduce those two characters. Didn't work out that way, but it was part of the initial "incentive".
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 12, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: They were Donna Troy and Mary Bromfield.
Endgame
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: February 27, 2017
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: It might have helped if we hadn't cut the dialogue in "Endgame" where he [Wally] says he wants to come out of retirement and go back to the hero life. Have it all with her. We cut it because we thought it telegraphed his death too much. But maybe that was a mistake. It might have changed things a touch for you. Or not. Probably not. But (shrug), that's all I can think of that we might have done differently. I'm pretty happy with what got on screen.
Young Justice Comics
Rocket
Link: Chris Jones Tweet
Posted: May 22, 2019
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: I would have loved to have gotten to feature her more in the comic. I know there had been plans...
More Talia
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: April 16, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Talia interests me too. We'll (eventually) be seeing more of her in the comics.
Green Lanterns and Martians
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: March 22, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: We do indeed have thoughts about Green Lanterns and Martians. Some of this would have been dealt with in the comic (either the YJ:I comic that was cancelled or the Earth-16 comic that we pitched but was not picked up) and/or in Season Three (which was also not picked up).
Two-Face
Link: Nerdy Show #160
Posted: November 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Scarecrow
Link: Dynamic Buzz, 2:16-3:27
Posted: May 3, 2013
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: We were talking about maybe trying to do the Scarecrow at some point in Young Justice.
Sequel to Captain Atom Story
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: February 13, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: We will eventually come back to this storyline in the comics...
Unused Arrow Family Story was #20-21
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: April 16, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: See issues 20 and 21 of the YJ companion comic.
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: June 13, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: The Original plan was to finish all the stories set DURING Season One before rebranding the book. But TPTB at DC understandably decided that since the television show has already been rebranded, we shouldn't wait that long to rebrand the comic. And given that, I wanted to launch the rebranding with a BIG story that featured all - or nearly all - of the Team. So the Green Arrow, Black Canary, Artemis, Red Arrow story (set after episode 114), I originally had planned as a two-parter for issues 20-21 will have to wait.
Link: World's Finest
Posted: February 19, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Well, the Arrow Family arc would have adapted the Earth-16 version of the DC Showcase short film that I wrote, which featured Green Arrow, Black Canary, Merlyn, Count Vertigo, Henchy and Perdita. But it also would have involved Artemis, Red Arrow's life as an unwitting mole and the death of Perdita's father.
Unused Marvel Family Story
Link: World's Finest
Posted: February 19, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: The Marvel Family story would have introduced Billy's three best school friends: Freddy Freeman, Kit Freeman and Mary Bromfield.
Link: Dynamic Buzz, 2:16-3:27
Posted: May 3, 2013
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: One story that was in the planning stages and ended up, you know, we weren't able to get to it is we were going to do a two-parter of the Marvel Family. Captain Marvel appeared in show and I got to throw him in the comic. But we were going to do a story that gave you the whole Marvel Family and told the origin story and all that and I would have gotten to do the designs for the Young Justice versions of Captain Marvel, Jr. and Mary Marvel and Shazam and all that stuff. Our Captain Marvel Jr. was actually called Lieutenant Marvel. But he was going to be Freddie Freeman and the whole thing.
Link: World's Finest
Posted: December 16, 2013
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: We never got to do the Marvel Family storyline that Greg was planning, which would have told Captain Marvel's origin and would have introduced Mary Marvel and Freddie Freeman as a version of Captain Marvel, Jr.
Link: Chris Jones Twitter
Posted: August 22, 2018
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: Had we gotten to that story in the comic, this print is based on the character designs I would have submitted.
Players
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: December 30, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Icon was originally one of the abducted along with the two Captains, the two Supers and Wonder Woman. I was forced to rewrite him out of issues 21-25, and I do think it loses something in terms of chemistry and interaction. Same with Rocket, who was with Zatanna throughout. But NOTHING was lost from a plot standpoint. The story didn't change.
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: January 6, 2014
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: This I did sweat, and originally I had planned to show a scene where we see a "BLANK" body-suit adapt to match the person it was replacing. But there just wasn't the page space when it came down to scripting the issue. (Bummer, huh?)
Rejected Digital Comic Pitch
Link: Geek Cave Podcast #41, 32 minute mark
Posted: March 5, 2014
Who: Chris Jones
Summary: A comic pitch done that was basically season three under DC's Digital First line.
Link: Chris Jones Tweet
Posted: May 29, 2014
Who: Chris Jones
Quote: @Greg_Weisman & I pitched to DC a continuation of the series in comic form, using story ideas intended for Season 3 but... DC wasn't interested. If they saw enough interest (aka money to be made) they could always change their minds.
Young Justice Legacy
Link: Young Justice Legacy, Sharon Scott Blog: The Note That Changed Everything
Posted: October 26, 2012
Who: Sharon Scott
Quote: THE NOTE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
Last time I discussed getting the parameters of the story organized for Young Justice: Legacy, and with those in place, it was time to start building a game story…
I still strive to follow the advice I got early in my writing career, which is to write stories that I would want to see (or in this case, play) myself. So, I knew I wanted the game story to start small and build in magnitude, like a good action film. It needed to have a strong central problem that would sustain the player’s interest for the length of a game, and would compel them to travel the world in order to solve it. It needed to feel like it fit within the YJ universe. It needed to have a memorable boss fight (and boss) at the end, and on top of all that, it had to incorporate the 5-year gap events we wanted to tell.
I know that, initially, that must seem like a tall order, but I have to admit, it’s just this sort of "puzzle" that excites me as a writer. [That isn’t to say fulfilling it wasn’t hard, but there was still plenty of room to "play" within the requirements, and I like to think each struggle I have makes me a better writer than I would be otherwise.]
But back to the story development...
From a story-building perspective, I felt the core of the story would begin with the villain and what peril he or she posed to the YJ team. And given the nature of the DC universe, it made sense to (eventually) escalate the danger to a global threat.
Here are a few examples of early villain/global threat concepts I submitted to WB:
- Lex Luthor is collecting pieces of the Spear of Reckoning, an ancient Greek weapon with the power to destroy the world.
- Ra's Al Ghul is combining the Blockbuster serum with basic elements to create a monstrous, lethal elemental army.
- Desaad is using magna-disk technology to create an Apokoliptan weapon of mass destruction.
Hopefully, you can see the general creative thread. They all had potential, each with a different set of benefits and challenges.
Initially, I was leaning toward the Spear of Reckoning storyline because Greece automatically evokes a sense of ancient history and mythology. Since superhero universes, as a whole, are intrinsically futuristic, it seemed a rather cool juxtaposition to have the threat be some sort of ancient weapon. Also, breaking the Spear up into pieces would give the YJ Team a very clear macro-objective: collect the pieces before the bad guys can execute their plan.
[Other details were already forming as I brainstormed the spear idea as well, as I had some familiarity with DCU’s use of the characters from the Greek pantheon. Some of my initial thoughts were that the Spear could actually be Zeus's lightning bolt, and that Wonder Woman would be a natural and useful source of information as the story unfolded.]
Turns out WB liked that general concept as well, but with one very important NOTE...
They didn't want the origin of the weapon to be Grecian. In the world of Young Justice, Zeus is a nice guy, and a supporter of mankind. So he wouldn't make for a suitable villain.
They wanted something older, something even more ancient.
They even made a couple of suggestions.
We needed story concept approval as quickly as possible, and it really couldn't wait a whole other week for the next conference call. I remember being in the conference room, ticky-tacking away on my laptop, looking up possibilities while the meeting continued. Story wasn't the only approvals on the agenda that day, so there were other things to discuss…
Ultimately, what they were asking for wasn't just a cultural change. It meant coming up with a new "weapon" as well, which needed to fit the game, as well as organically fit the culture it was coming from.
In my search, I came upon a lead on an ancient myth that I thought we could wrap the whole story around. Not only did this new idea give the project a more unique visual style, it inherently suggested more interesting locations for the Team to travel to, and even hinted at a story that could sort of turn the Earth-16 universe on its ear – but still made complete sense AND met WB's needs.
To boot, the myth was singular to this particular ancient culture and provided the game with a distinctive boss to fight at the end of the game.
By the end of the call, I presented the new idea (with a bit of on-the-spot improvisation, if I'm being honest), and within in the next hour, we had ourselves a game story.
Whether WB intended it or not, The Note had just made the whole game stronger.
Yep, we were officially on our way...
Sharon
Young Justice Season 3
Tiamat and its creators
Link: Comics Online (dead link), 6:33-6:53
Posted: June 11, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Summary: The 12th villain from Young Justice: Legacy will play into Season 3 if the show is renewed.
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: January 31, 2014
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: We had plans, but I'm not going to be specific.
Starfire was discussed
Link: GamerFitNation, 8:24-8:28 mark
Posted: August 17, 2012
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Starfire is a character that we're talking about for season 3 if we get a season 3.
Onyx
Link: Jerome Moore deviantArt
Posted: March 10, 2013
Who: Jerome Moore
Quote: Season Three promised lots of new surprises and new additions to the cast, including a character of my own creation./t's a character I originally created for DC Comics, so that would mean Time Warner owns it. Yes, I am able to post a rendition of the design, once I'm finished a bit of refining./Yeah, I really wanted to see about introducing Onyx into the YJ universe, hopefully putting her back on track with what Joey Cavalieri and I originally did with her, and exploring new possibilities that differ from what DC eventually did with and to that character.
Link: haydenclaireheroes "Life After Young Justice with Special Guest Greg Weisman", 22:34-22:38
Posted: January 10, 2014
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Onyx is one. We talked a lot about bringing her in.
Wonder Twins
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: April 29, 2013
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: And here's a spoiler: we also have very specific ideas for our version of the Wonder Twins, Zan & Jayna, for Season Three.
Mia Dearden
Link: CBC Spotlight Ep 13 (dead link), 21:46-22:05
Posted: March 22, 2014
Who: Greg Weisman
Summary: Had plans to bring in Mia Dearden/Speedy.
Tye and Asami were going to be in Illusion of Control
Link: Ask Greg
Posted: September 1, 2022
Who: Greg Weisman
Quote: Out of Universe, the original plan was for them to attend. But it was decided that for production purposes, we just couldn't handle adding two more characters to an already crowded field.
Nevermore
Link: Matthew Bordenave Tweet
Posted: August 27, 2021
Who: Matt Bordenave
Quote: Figuring out how to pull off that legion reveal took a day cuz originally she was putting a plate of pie down on the table before it w chanted it to coffee
Green Lantern: The Animated Series Season 2
Link: CBM Article
Posted: October 17, 2011
Summary: At NYCC Panel, Bruce Timm says "Maybe" to appearances by John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, and Sinestro. He later asserts that Rayner is not currently on the table to appear on the show but everyone else is on the table. Hal Jordan returns to Earth later on in the season.
Link: CBR Article
Posted: October 21, 2011
Summary: Bruce Timm hints if there is a season two and three, two several possible ideas discussed are "Justice League in space" and introducing more DC characters.
Link: The Nerd Diaries Interview
Posted: May 25, 2012
Summary: Interview with Giancarlo Volpe reveals he and Jim Krieg planned out four seasons and want to introduce all the Lantern colors and Green Lanterns from Earth.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: October 14, 2012
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals the staff has a take on Kyle Rayner but adds they need more time to be able to add him to the roster.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: October 26, 2012
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe hints there are more stories to tell about Steam Lantern.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: November 24, 2012
Summary: There is a planned story about Alan Scott and 'hopefully it will be revealed in a later episode.'
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Twitter
Posted: January 5, 2013
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe states Alan Scott is from the Anti-Matter Universe.
Link: Jim Krieg Tumblr
Posted: January 22, 2013
Summary: Jim Krieg posts writer board for "Prisoner of Sinestro" and talks about the episode. There was a different tale conceived under the restraints Sinestro was off-limits due to the live action movie but Bruce Timm advised them to go for Sinestro. The original story might be used for a future episode.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: February 2, 2013
Summary: Black Hand was talked about being used on the show.
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: February 23, 2013
Summary: Writer Ernie Altbacker pitched using Lobo for the show.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: March 16, 2013
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals there was preliminary story/writing meetings for a season two before news of the show not being renewed.
Link: Newsarama Article
Posted: March 21, 2013
Summary: Season two concept art for Blue Lantern Razer.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: March 23, 2013:
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals there was some debate if Hal Jordan met Hawkman or not. It was decided it would saved for a later episode.
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: April 8, 2013
Summary: Jim Krieg hints in the next season there was 'a little job' for Alan Scott to do.
Link: Blog of Oa
Posted: March 17, 2014
Summary: One hour Green Lantern: The Animated Series retrospective with Giancarlo Volpe and Jim Krieg: what would have been in season 2 - Alan Scott, John Stewart in the first half, Kyle Rayner probably in the back half, Volpe had a take on Rayner as a Green Lantern fanboy, do more Sinestro stories, a version of Blackest Night, in broad strokes the first half was Yellow and the second half was Black, the show's body count would come to play in Blackest Night.
Link: Panel 2 Panel
Posted: March 20, 2014
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe talks Green Lantern: The Animated Series, JLA Adventures, and other shows he's worked on: did block out some of season 2 on index cards.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: September 28, 2014
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe hints Soranik Natu would have very likely appeared had the show continued.
Link: Fan Bros vs. Giancarlo Volpe podcast 39:38-40:37
Posted: February 5, 2015
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals one of the planned storylines for John Stewart involved Sinestro framing Hal Jordan. While Sinestro was doing devious things in the Green Lantern Corps, he blamed it on Jordan. Jordan would be excommunicated and go on the run as a fugitive. John Stewart was to be assigned to hunt Jordan down. Inevitably, Jordan would clear his name and with Stewart, he would confront Sinestro.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: February 9, 2015
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe hints planned storylines fugitive Hal Jordan was an 'early event'.
Link: Hall of Justice Episode 2, 34:18-34:31
Posted: June 2, 2015
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals there was talk of getting Phil LaMarr to reprise the role of John Stewart.
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: June 23, 2016
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe posts an unused work in progress concept design of Arisia.
Link: Albert Moy
Retrieved: November 13, 2023
Quote: Unused piece to promote season 2 of the series, unfortunately the series was canceled, piece is 8.5 by 11 inches.
Summary: Marker promo art by Bruce Timm of Sinestro in Sinestro Corps suit, Hawkman/Katar Hol, and Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and Arisia.
Green Lantern: The Animated Series Video Game
Link: Giancarlo Volpe Tweet
Posted: August 14, 2014
Summary: Giancarlo Volpe reveals there was a Green Lantern: The Animated Series video game in the works and it would have featured the Controllers.
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: August 16, 2014
Summary: Jim Krieg notes they were shown the video game in beta and it was going to be a MMORPG.
Beware The Batman
Katana Design
Link: Glenn Wong instagram reply
Posted: November 9, 2019
Quote: From Beware the Batman. Here's my early concept art for Katana. For some reason, I was stuck on the idea that she was kinda like Batman's Kato. Which makes absolutely no sense. Katana being Japanese, not Chinese. Of course, for the final, we went with Shane Glines's beautiful design for Katana!
Anarky
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: July 29, 2020
Quote: FYI, when Mitch, Glen and I first broke this story, the idea was that a mysterious and rather giddy masked youth joins Batman in his fight. We would mislead the audience into thinking, "Oh, this is the Robin origin." And then, BOOM. Wrong! It's Anarky! Oh, well.
Oracle
Link: JayBee & Milly YouTube, 1:30-1:44
Posted: October 5, 2022
Who: Mitch Watson
Quote: After Scooby, I worked on a version of Batman where I wanted to do the character of Oracle from the comic books in a wheelchair and that also got killed because they said they didn't want to show characters in wheelchairs. They said it's depressing.
Season 2
Link: Glen Murakami instagram
Posted: August 24, 2021
Quote: Beware Season 2 (2012) - Rough color drawing.
Quote: BI wanted Katana to become Nightwing and Barbara Gordon to become Robin... I doubt DC would have approved... You gotta "Swing for the fences."
Teen Titans Go!
Season 2 Earth-3 Pitch
Link: Marly Halpern-Graser Tweet
Posted: April 26, 2022
Quote: Probably a funnier story is that when I was pitching episode ideas for Teen Titans GO! season 2, I pitched an episode where Robin goes to Earth 3 and was told, "No one understands that alternate Earth stuff, we don't want to do anything with that."
Season 2 Time Travel Story
Link: Merrill Hagan Tweet
Posted: April 26, 2022
Quote: Early in TTGO, I had a time travel story that Jelenic wanted to use to make a red Nightwing and blue Nightwing from two different futures. Red Nightwing fought Robin to lead the Titans. It was very funny but SUPER confusing. We ended up changing Nightwing to George Washington.
Season 8 TV Knight 8
Link: Careen Ingle Tweet
Posted: March 2, 2023
Quote: For whatever reason, WB said we weren't allowed to use the name 'Diaper Plus', so I had to come up with a whole list of diaper-related names to send to Legal. I think 'Diaper Supreme' was the only one that cleared.
Season 8 Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary
Link: Eric Pringle Tweet
Posted: October 12, 2023
Quote: I'm happy to see it's appreciated given the amount of time it takes to do that effect on Chowder in Flash for the second he's on screen.
Summary: The delay in airing the two parter was due, at least in part, to fix the pattern on Chowder's clothes and to fix Ed's outfit from a fanart design to the official design.
Justice League Action Season One
Began as a solo Batman series
Link: /FILM
Posted: July 23, 2016
Who: Butch Lukic
Quote: Originally we were supposed to be doing a new Batman series but me and Alan got together, and Paul Dini I think. Eventually a week later it was suggested we do a Justice League show instead because there was a gap between a new series plus the movie that's going to come out. So we got the go ahead to do a Justice League series but there's one catch. It's going to be 11-minute episodes.
Paul Dini did help develop
Link: /Starburst Magazine
Posted: 2018
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Oh, it was a lot of fun. Initially with Justice League Action, I was developing the show with Alan Burnett early on and nobody was sure if the show was going to sell or not. It was sort of like, "We think we're going to be doing another superhero show. We think we're going to go in this direction. We think we're going to do shorter episodes and really focus on sharper stories that have a funnier skew." I think the DC characters can lend themselves to that very well, so it was challenging not to think in the 22-minute format. It was also kind of liberating that you could basically take an incident between Superman and Wonder Woman, or Joker and Luthor, or Batman and Zatanna, and just mine that for a lot of comedy, a lot of character, a lot of action, and just see where that led you. And also, there were no restrictions to who we could or couldn’t use. Suddenly, characters who had been off limits – like Swamp Thing – it was more, "Sure, use him, make him part of the group. You wanna bring in Firestorm? Great! He's kind of a wise-ass, he'd work well with Batman." Most of the episodes were tremendously fun to do as we had that access to the entire DC world and you could bring in literally any character, even the most obscure ones, and write something interesting for them. I just thought the show was very refreshing, and it was fun working with Kevin and Mark again. Creatively it was very stimulating. It actually felt like The Animated Series again because I could go into Alan Burnett's office and be, "You know what would be really funny? Let's do Ferris Bueller's Day Off with Joker and Luthor. Joker's gonna take his pal Luthor out for the best day ever and they'd just have a day off." And Alan was just, "If we can have it by next Tuesday, great!" Then we'd spend a few minutes discussing the plot, what's the story, and then we'd go off and write it. It was just fun. We wrote fast and fun, and we did a bunch of those. Then at some point in the production I just sort of felt, "I'm having some fun, but it's time to go." And then I left to take another project.
"Zombie King"
Link: Shane Glines Tweet
Posted: June 17, 2020
Quote: First Zombie roughs, second pass to make them less scary and final frame.
"Galaxy Jest"
Link: Superman Homepage (deadlink)
Posted: September 21, 2016
Summary: Troy Baker was originally cast as the Joker. Mongul was originally to be voiced by Imari Williams but apparently he was re-cast.
"Play Date"
Link: Will Ruzicka Tweet
Posted: November 14, 2016
Quote: I did the whole Street Fighter parody opening for JLA. Here's my storyboard, a screenshot from Youtube and of course the SFAlpha 2 opening.
"The Trouble with Truth"
Link: TheCaliNerd YouTube (deadlink)
Posted: July 21, 2017
Summary: In a cut scene from "The Trouble with Truth", Superman held out a chair for Athena.
"Battle for the Bottled City"
Link: Shane Glines Facebook (deadlink)
Posted: January 23, 2017
Summary: Shane Glines posts Zod, Faora, and Quex-Ul rough design. Zod's design had to be changed because it resembled Michael Shannon too much.
"The Fatal Fare"
Link: DC Tweet/DC All Access
Posted: July 13, 2017
Summary: Paul Dini pitched the premise of Darkseid needing a ride from Space Cabbie and misprouncing his name as 'Darkseed' and there was a debate about Darkseid saying 'please' or not after telling Cabbie where he needs to go. The 'please' was ultimately dropped as it was deemed too off character.
"Mxy's Mix Up"
Link: /FILM
Posted: July 23, 2016
Who: Butch Lukic
Quote: We were initially trying for someone else but they had other obligations but it definitely paid off to get the same actor that played him 20 years ago.
"Best Day Ever"
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Posted: August 26, 2017
Quote: The bowling beat in "Quality Time" was originally this episode's end gag. We ran long so we saved it for a solo short. We waste nothing.
"Superman Red vs. Superman Blue"
Link: Heath Corson Tweet
Posted: September 18, 2017
Quote: Fact: The Red/Blue idea was from the Bizarro mini-series. Wanted to play with Bizarro Red/Blue. Someday!
Link: Shane Glines Tweet
Posted: September 18, 2017
Quote: First draft of Red Vs. Blue featured Booster Gold getting hit twice and split into four colors. Booster Gold. Booster Silver. Booster Copper. Booster Platinum... But all they did was high-five each other. I thought it was funny.
"Party Animal"
Link: Matthew Bordenave Tweet
Posted: December 26, 2021
Quote: I think I might have said this before but I drew Huntress in that JLA Christmas shot, didn't make the final cut.
"Barehanded"
Link: Matthew Bordenave Tweet
Posted: May 30, 2020
Quote: Before Green Lantern went into the bathroom he was looking at symbols to figure out which restroom to go in, I had boarded the Prince symbol on the door and that joke did not make it.
"Unleashed"
Link: The Podcast of Steel Episode 42
Posted: June 6, 2020
Summary: The original idea for "Unleashed" was to star Flash.
"She Wore Red Velvet"
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Posted: January 31, 2018
Quote: In the script, during Booster's flashback-to-the-future, he begins by saying his century is a bleak dystopia: "Who knew talking toilets would become sentient and try to enslave humanity?" And, in the background, we see police cars chasing a laser-shooting toilet down the street. Then he meets Margo, whose family made a fortune selling the more desirable "regular" toilets. AND COMEDY WAS BORN!
Huntress
Link: Rachel Kimsey Tweet
Posted: April 21, 2017
Quote: She will!! (Don't know when, but it's coming!).
Blue Devil
Link: Holy BatCast Tweet
Posted: July 20, 2017
Quote: Got to ask the JusticeLeagueAction crew if we'll see BlueDevil. They said he was brought up and shot down.
Mad Mod
Link: The Podcast of Steel Episode 42
Posted: June 6, 2020
Summary: Tim Sheridan wrote an episode featuring Mad Mod that was scrapped because it was too expensive to produce.
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Posted: June 3, 2022
Quote: This was actually a last-minute story we scrambled to get together, as the Mad Mod episode I'd scripted proved to be too expensive to produce. I sat in Alan Burnett's office and he asked me what other ideas I had...
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Posted: June 3, 2022
Quote: Having NONE (and panicking) I vamped by talking about my love of 'Mask of the Phantasm.' Remembering the writing of the film, he sat back in his chair and dreamed up the entire concept for this JLA episode about doomed superhero love as I feverishly took notes...
Link: Tim Sheridan Tweet
Posted: June 3, 2022
Quote: When he was finished, he looked at me with that Cheshire Cat grin and announced "And it's called 'She Wore Red Velvet.'" Alan is a treasure we never deserved.
Hourman
Link: Flickering Myth
Posted: April 10, 2021
Who: Jeremy Adams
Quote: I think I pitched a Justice League Action with Hourman where it was like you'd have a timer that was counting down where he had to go and beat up some Nazis.
Season 2 Pitch involving Stone Boy and Arm Fall Off Boy
Link: Eric Carrasco Tweet
Posted: May 25, 2018
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: Just in case there's a season 2 of Justice League I won't describe the whole episode pitch. But it started Stone Boy and arm fall off boy.
Link: Eric Carrasco Tweet
Posted: May 25, 2018
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: That's not far off what it was, actually! I had a whole punch of pitches for Substitute Heroes stories too.
Brainiac-5 Webisode
Link: Eric Carrasco Tweet
Posted: May 24, 2018
Who: Eric Carrasco
Quote: I wanted to do this page as a Justice League Action Short, but it didn't end up happening. The best.
"Quality Time"
Link: Paul Dini Tweet
Posted: July 29, 2017
Who: Paul Dini
Quote: Ember. She's a Zatanna villain. In the script there was a brief scene of them fighting, but had to be trimmed for time.
"Missing the Mark"
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: October 26, 2017
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: Mark Fujita came up with this. But the lost Big Red One joke was mine.
Link: Jim Krieg Tweet
Posted: October 26, 2017
Who: Jim Krieg
Quote: INTERCUT as needed. A GCPD black and white, lights and siren blaring, gives chase.
Quote: JOKER Ah, the fuzz! But never fear, we shall persevere. Just like your character did in that movie.
Quote: MARK HAMILL Which One?
Quote: JOKER You know, The Big Red One.
Quote: MARK HAMILL It's The Big Red 'One'! Not the Big 'Red' One! And you'll never get away with this!
"The Goddess Must Be Crazy"
Link: Kevin Rubio Tweet
Posted: February 5, 2022
Who: Kevin Rubio
Quote: FUN FACTS 1. Original concept was "game night" at the Watch Tower. Which Superhero would do what in a game of Monopoly/D&D? 2. The title is a riff on the movie THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY (1980) 3. MOS: The Prequel, comic hypothesizes Kara as the 1st Amazon.
DC Super Hero Girls
Catwoman
Link: Lauren Faust Tweet
Who: Lauren Faust
Posted: August 9, 2022
Quote: Though my original concept for Catwoman was that she was a foster kid who regularly ran away and stole from her foster parents. A cat determined to stay a stray. But that idea is too sensitive for cartoons, probably, so I never really presented it.
Harley Quinn
First Take on Riddler
Link: Shane Glines instagram
Who: Shane Glines
Posted: December 6, 2019
Red Hood
Link: DC Harley Quinn instagram, 23:23-23:52 mark
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 7, 2022
Quote: Red Hood is someone that feels like right to explore in this world and actually an easter eggy kind of thing, insider scoop, at one point, we had him in the background at the bar at Noonan's just kind of wordlessly drinking and then we ended up sweeping him from it because okay canonically we want to be able to have Jason Todd potentially like pre-Red Hood.
Polka Dot Man
Link: Insider
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: Halpern added that they've tried to use Polka-Dot Man in the past, but it didn't work out.
Court of Owls
Link: Collider YouTube, 8:17-8:37 mark
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: August 4, 2022
Quote: Yeah, but like with the aforementioned party we've been waiting to do that episode for like three seasons. We, I think it was Jamiesen Borak who's one of our writers had pitched it like season one and we were like we love it, we love it but we can't figure out an organic way to bring it in and then season three it was like that's the one, yeah, that's the way there.
Power Girl
Link: DC Harley Quinn instagram, 22:33-23:02 mark
Who: Justin Halpern
Posted: July 7, 2022
Quote: We were gonna do Power Girl in season one and we couldn't really figure out how to break the story for that episode. It was gonna be about like Harley was gonna design a new costume for herself and she was gonna talk to Power Girl and basically ask her why the f*** she has the boob window on her suit. And it was gonna be about how these suits aren't functional for female superheroes.
Booster Gold
Link: DC Universe Community Q&A (dead link)
Who: Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern
Posted: May 11, 2020
Summary: Couldn't get permission to use Booster Gold.
Killer Croc was originally a Series Regular
Link: Geek History Lesson #374, 1:02:47-1:03:13
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 12, 2021
Quote: Like Killer Croc was originally a series regular. Now he's a recurring voiced by Matt Oberg who more famously voices Kite Man. But he was kind of replaced with King Shark because we really wanted to get Ron Funches on the show and King Shark--
Harley used someone's spinal cord as a weapon
Link: Animation Magazine
Who: Jennifer Coyle
Posted: December 1, 2019
Quote: And even there the writers tempered some of the more extreme violence, including one idea which involved Harley tearing off someone’s head and hitting someone else with the spinal cord.
Till Death Do Us Part
Link: Word Balloon, 33:37-33:52
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: Whenever Joker got in that sub, there was a whole two minute long run of him just hemming and hawing about that. We were like we gotta cut this. There's no way Harley is fighting Batman for this long.
A High Bar
Link: Word Balloon, 11:16-12:09
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: The B story we ended up changing completely over time. Part of that was a function of as we progress-when I say B story I'm--it's more about moments in this episode where we try to bring Joker back into it a little bit because it's--the breakups very fresh. Joker obviously catches wind from Bane that Harley's moving on striking out on her own for real. It rankles Joker but they were like we love like Bane coming in with the hot goss and he's at the party and he calls up the Joker and the Joker's trying to rebuild his lair.
Link: Word Balloon, 13:50-14:54
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: The B story became a runner of how much shit can the Joker and the rest of his Legion of Doom cronies--how much shit can they shovel on to Bane so we had this moment of Joker complaining about his food and just taking Bane's but Bane thinks they're gonna swap but Joker's gonna hang onto his, too, and Bane's just like he's not gonna blow up at him so he's just that thing of he's stuck and just--then what are we even doing and it's just when I thought that was what James Adomian, one of the millions of things that James Adomian does really well, it's just that ability to improv fum furring so Bane quickly became kind of a favorite in the writer's room and part of the task of re-envisioning Episode two when we were doing it was putting more Bane, more Bane, more Bane.
Link: Word Balloon, 15:45-16:18
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: We had part of what the backstory that Tom (King) had given Kite Man his son and the tragic end and his son and we didn't link him to the Joker but we had that in Episode two that Kite Man had a dead son and at one point he used that for sympathy points with Ivy when he was just trying to have sex with Ivy and we were like this is so unforgivable, right? We cannot do this. It's cut.
Mark in So You Need A Crew
Link: SyFy Wire
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 6, 2020
Quote: In the first season, for instance, we had a moment with Mark, the Gingerbread Man who works for the Queen of Fables in the tax office, who's from her book. And we had so much more objectionable language coming from him about what he needed to do turning tricks for money under a bridge. And that was one of those things where they were just like, "Oh, that's a little too graphic." And we had to change a few words, but that was an example of where we thought for sure that would be an example of a note about something canonically accurate in the DC universe. But no, it was about a gingerbread man cursing. Or talking about fellatio in a very graphic way.
Link: Digital Spy
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 2, 2020
Quote: It was the gingerbread man who came out of the Queen of Fables storybook, who was her assistant working at the tax office, helping to do people's taxes. A version of that joke is in the show, but the original version of the joke, where he's talking about turning tricks under a bridge for money, which is an awful existence versus working at a tax office. That was a lot more... detailed, I suppose? And much more ribald. So they asked us if we could pull back on the gingerbread man wild sex jokes.
Link: Word Balloon, 21:33-21:40
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: And the original line was, "It's better than sucking dicks for money."
Finding Mr. Right
Link: Word Balloon, 16:00-16:57
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: Yeah, that sequence was so epic - I mean it is epic but it was even more epic when we had originally done the animation, we did the full color animation for it and ended up cutting like a minute out of it because it just was--we started to get desensitized to it because there was just the--the melee just kept one-upping itself and then at a certain point, you're just like there's no place to take this anymore. Like people are getting so numb to the action and well one of the things-the beauty of the way that sequence was written and then cut together was that we were able to cut to various characters from our show watching the live broadcast of the melee going on and so because of that we were able to elongate or abbreviate the fight as much as we wanted.
Link: Word Balloon, 17:53-21:10
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: We originally-in the original cut-we had--we cut to Kite Man and he's you know in love watching Ivy. She's still someone that he's pining after. They haven't developed their relationship yet but he's watching and he just says "Hell, yeah" and it was a thing that was put in by our art team and the board artist and the director of that episode and we ended up having to cut that because of budget and what I mean by that is literally Matt Oberg who voices Kite Man was not in that episode. They had just taken an old take from another episode, from probably episode two, of Kite Man saying "Hell, yeah" and put it in his mouth but that meant that you had to pay that actor for that moment even though they didn't do another recording session or that sort of thing so literally we were way over budget for this episode and then we have to take some of these characters out and we're sitting in the mix or some kind of some audio review, maybe it was a sound effects review or something, at Atlas Oceanic, which is our studio that handles all of our recordings pretty much and they're great. We're there with George Peters who I love, he's our sound engineer, we're watching it and I asked him to just remove the Matt Oberg because we're basically at this point we're just how can we take food out of the mouths of Matt Oberg's children. Now we're just we can't, we're over budget so we cut it out and we're watching it and the music that was playing during the melee was the Tawny theme song which had this kind of jazzy upbeat like daytime TV but then there's lyrics. The lyrics are just "Tawny". It's just "Tawny" over again and lo and behold is a complete serendipitous moment. Kite Man's saying "Hell, yeah" but it lines up with "Tawny" and I was like "Okay, there's our solution." It's literally now it's Kite Man sitting in the bar, he's watching this and he's a huge Tawny fan and he knows the theme song and he's singing along, he's mouthing the words to "Tawny" and then Jennifer Coyle, who's our producer in charge of all our animation on the show, goes we can easily add in Kite Man doing this. And so that's what's in the final cut and I love that joke and it was complete--just one of those moments where the stars align and it just accidentally falls in your lap because you take a piece of dialogue out and serendipitously it times up with the themes.
Being Harley Quinn
Link: Word Balloon, 12:20-14:50
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 10, 2020
Quote: One of the backgrounds originally came in and they actually looked in somewhat like--the sky in the carnival scene, right? It literally looked like gray matter, like brain tissue. We really liked it. I think that was a pitch from Peter Girardi who helps run Warner Bros. Animation and on paper we all really liked it and then it kind of came back and it was just kind of -- it ended up being a little confusing and the brain tissue didn't look quite right so it like an opportunity to run through Harley's memories and one of the things, this is--the other day I was thinking there was to be another example of us getting told "no" by the Powers That Be on what we wanted to do and there was one thing that happened in this episode where Harley, she's opening the--individual cells and seeing memories. There's the memory of her dad getting pummeled by some goons on the front yard because he owes bookie money. And that was for the last-minute addition because the earlier stuff is she literally opened it and it was the implication that it was a sex scene. It was going to be basically right before a sex scene but the implication was that Joker used to make Harley dress up like Batman for that stuff and then it was like this is too icky. I think we've got a little bit of pushback from DC and it wasn't even like 'absolutely not' - they were like 'maybe consider...' and hey you know, when you're right, you're right. This is the plan, no we're gonna keep Joker as kind of mostly asexual. That's the original weird memory she walked into but then we were like something from her childhood would be better so we ended up doing that which ended up showing the character design foreshadowing her parents that you meet in episode 10.
Link: Creative Block #144, 56:19-57:09
Who: Liza Singer
Posted: November 27, 2023
Quote: Even then we had some risque sex things in it, too, and I think they were taken out at some point by executives. I was not in those conversations because I was a board artist at the time so I was not at the higher levels of the production so I couldn't answer those sort of questions but they were more--I don't know because we had I think a scene that got taken out and it was in season one so it was a long time ago but we were in--when you go into Harley's mind palace and the characters are touring there was a scene of Harley dressed as Batman having sex with Joker and that was one of the vignettes and they took it out and we were all really bummed because it was very funny because it was revealing about the Joker's preferences.
Link: Shane Glines instagram
Who: Shane Glines
Posted: June 12, 2020
Summary: Age 6, Age 10, and Teen designs of Harleen.
You're A Damn Good Cop, Jim Gordon
Link: wordballoon, 13:41-14:10
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 10, 2020
Quote: Originally, he didn't walk in as a cop. He walked in literally as Bruce Springsteen. "It is I, Bruce Springsteen!" He didn't say "stein." He went "It is I, Bruce Springsteen! Someone absconded with my arm!" And the cops go nuts. Then that became a rights issue. A likeness issue so it ended up having to be a cop mispronouncing "Bruce Springsteen."
The Line
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 17, 2020
Quote: The original name "Luthor's Wayne's Ruth's Chris" (penned by @deanlorey) wasn't clearable by legal, which led to this!
Link: wordballoon, 11:33-11:44
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 10, 2020
Quote: At one point we had him like chirping then it was in French then we had the French crossed out then you see the English. We were like Eh, people will get it if it's just in French.
Link: wordballoon, 14:13-14:41
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 10, 2020
Quote: Who gave us an extremely graphic, more so than already in the show, sequence of the Praxis family being killed. It was so gory. It was even more over the top that what is in now. Everybody sort of unanimously came to the conclusion that "Okay, maybe we've taken it too far."
L.O.D.R.S.V.P.
Link: wordballoon, 2:55-4:34
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 17, 2020
Quote: When we originally conceived our version of Aquaman, he was kind of cut a little bit more from the Momoa cloth of just being the sort of macho surfer kind of thing. He's beachy--he's an outdoorsman. Then we ratcheted it up like he's out of a Corona commercial where he literally had a bottle opener on his sandal. That kind of vibe. We did that. He came off--we were told he was coming off asinine and we were 'maybe it was one of those times were were--eh, we're not smartly leaning into what makes this character comical.' We're diminishing the character a bit. We already recorded Chris as that version so when we got that note, we had to rewrite and re-record for this episode and moving forward. We ended up leaning into 'he's a king of Atlants. Let's lean into the reality of it. Can we maybe make him a pompous regal character out of Frasier?'
Link: wordballoon, 16:36-16:53
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 17, 2020
Quote: That was originally voiced by my writing partner, Justin Halpern, whose screeches could be heard later in the series as Man-Bat but was eventually replaced with Phil LaMarr.
Bensonhurst
Link: Charlie Adler Tweet
Who: Charlie Adler
Posted: May 2, 2021
Quote: I always act w Kaley as her director and they had a huge name they were going after to play Nick so I was just a place holder until Dean Lorey Director / producer writer just gave me the part ! Thrilled!
Harley Quinn Highway
Link: wordballoon, 12:42-15:24
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 24, 2020
Quote: This sequence, I think it's safe to say, got rewritten the most of any sequence in the entire history of the show and it was really, it just wasn't connecting with the studio. The way in its initial iteration it was just confusing. This sort of linear journey that the characters were taking inside of Ivy's mind and it was just jam-packed with all of these kind of strange metaphors and things like that and it really evolved over time. I mean, the basic shape was there that our characters do go on this journey and eventually kind of confront a Big Bad who then once unmasked is revealed to be Harley in our Empire Strikes Back homage that Clayface calls out but it really, we didn't have Frank as the Cheshire Cat all the time, as the kind of spirit guide or whatever you want to call it, leading them through Ivy's mind. Originally when Kite Man gets incinerated or the sort of cerebral version of Kite Man, the dream Kite Man is incinerated, it's revealed that it's just Scarecrow with the toxin but then Harley rips the bag off his head-I'm sorry-it's Ivy does to find it's Harley. We ended up going with the Grim Reaper or Death because it was just a univeral symbol that didn't have any confusion as to what we're trying to say. Using Scarecrow felt like a muddled message where wait a minute, this is another character we know that has baggage so let's create this cipher for the attachment to the end of things, right? So that's how we ended up with just this sort of Grim Reaper character and then when we got the initial animation back, it really felt like we needed to plus it with VFX so even after we had written a bunch of iterations and we still went back in and reiterated what this whole sequence looked like and just making it scary and that was Gus Djuro, our VFX artist, just killed this sequence.
Link: wordballoon, 24:24-24:33
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 24, 2020
Quote: You can't say it and show it so we had to do Transchangers which I actually ended up liking better.
Link: Shane Glines Tweet (dead link)
Link: Vines n Roses blog
Who: Shane Glines
Posted: June 12, 2020
Summary: Scrapped teen Ivy design.
Joshua Bucks Season One Runner
Link: Word Balloon, 25:17-25:38
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 3, 2020
Quote: We had a season runner where Joshua Bucks become like Bitcoin. And like takes on real value real world and there was this whole real heist of Joshua Bucks that was part of the later episodes and then at a certain point it dropped off. We're like that's ridiculous.
Edited Sloppy Kiss
Link: wordballoon, 18:02-18:33
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 24, 2020
Quote: There was one shot--of Ivy and Kite Man kissing and they're in the foreground of this two shot and then Harley's in the middle ground right here, literally in the middle of the frame, and they pull apart and it's this drool-like bridge between the two. It was so gross. I was like can we just take that out? Well, it's gonna take a while.
David Sims was original choice to voice Alfred
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: September 1, 2022
Quote: One important detail is that our original choice for Alfred Pennyworth was famous Brit @davidlsims but he was far too posh, so we went with BAFTA Award-winning genius Tom Hollander.
Batman's Back, Man
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 15, 2020
Quote: Pyg was originally the antagonist in "Batman's Back, Man" before we made some big changes, so his character was (partially) designed and ready to include in this one.
All the Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: September 28, 2020
Quote: Yes, her earrings are the same plant. I believe it was more of a pronounced connection in the script and an earlier cut (it's been a while!), but yes, your observation is correct. Ah yes, now it's coming back to me. So, in an earlier cut, Ivy is wearing the flower as earrings, but because of some inconsistencies in continuity, we ended up just having her pull the flower out of her jacket and not wear the earrings.
Lightray replaced with Forager in "Inner (Para) Demons"
Link: SyFy Wire
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 6, 2020
Quote: Oh, we had Darkseid show up, and he kills Forager. He was squeezing his head Mortal Kombat-style. And at a certain point, I think it was Lightray, and they were like, "No, you can't kill Lightray." And we were like, "All right, how about Forager?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I still don't really know the rationale behind it, but that was one of them.
Lovers' Quarrel
Link: DC Daily 436 (dead link)
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: June 15, 2020
Summary: They considered an episode about the Justice League in the fairy tale book, they didn't have their super powers because of the magic, things got dark like in Brothers Grimm's stories but they couldn't break the story and discarded the idea. Some things are wrapped up in episode 12, the larger emotional arc will conclude in episode 13.
Link: Lavender You, 18:28-19:52
Who: Justin Halpern
Posted: August 26, 2021
Quote: It's funny because that scene was rewritten a bazillion times but we'd stalled for about four episodes because Harley clearly had feelings for Ivy, they had gotten together and she had taken a baby step towards trying to say how she felt but we wanted to have Harley try to talk herself out it because Ivy was with somebody else and she was trying to respect her friendship with her as well and she was like 'Maybe this is what Ivy wants. She wants to be with this guy that I think is dopey but maybe this is what she wants. I don't want to ruin that.' But we wanted that very last moment for her to be basically like look every moment I'm with you is the best moment of my life kind of thing and we wanted her to speak from a place of every part of us together makes me feel complete and that's what we wanted to get to that feeling what Ivy was missing with Kite Man was he didn't bring any of that relationship with her and so we wanted to write this monologue where Harley is letting it all out there without worrying about what the reponse is going to be and that's what we wanted to get her to that scene.
A Fight Worth Fighting For
Link: wordballoon, 25:22-26:02
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: May 17, 2020
Quote: So yes. We ended up--we started with that idea because we needed a recap-this is a season 2 thing-it has not aired. There's an episode that happens that required a recap before going into it and we were going to do a William Dozier thing then we were like wait a minute, what's our version of that? And we were like we have Frank the Plant. So Frank ends up doing a bit-it's not a cliffhanger of what's to come-actually, we do a bit of that, but it's more about teeing up what the episode is about.
The Runaway Bridesmaid was only a working title for Season 2 Finale
Link: Patrick Schumacker
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: June 13, 2020
Quote: Yeah it's a boring one. We always have temp titles for episodes and then change our minds about them later. Sometimes the temp ones get logged as the real ones. "Something Borrowed, Something Green" is the episode title.
Thought about Movies
Link: Deadline
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: September 30, 2020
Quote: Yeah, we would love that. When we were waiting for a Season 3 pickup, we were kicking around ideas with the executives over at Warner Bros. Animation about that sort of thing, because we were like, "Well, we have stories to tell with these characters. We want to continue going with it, and if Season 3 can't happen, maybe we can do something in the feature space, which is sort of independent of a network picking up the show or not." So, that is something that has been on our minds. Right now, we're not planning on it, but it is absolutely something that we would be interested very much in doing down the road.
Ivy's Season 3 Arc
Link: Comic Book
Who: Justin Halpern
Posted: September 18, 2020
Quote: I think we're going to see... we're going to dive a little more into Ivy's life and then history. Origins.
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: February 22, 2021
Quote: That was the plan originally but as we started writing it shifted away from the origins part.
Harley joining Suicide Squad was discussed before Season 3 Writer's Room
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: September 24, 2020
Quote: Definitely something we've discussed but the writers room for season 3 has not yet begun!
Magpie was discussed for Season 3
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: August 8, 2021
Quote: It's been talked about but she never quite made it into Season 3
Harley and Ivy with a Baby in Season 3
Link: DC Harley Quinn instagram, 29:16-29:26 mark
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 7, 2022
Quote: "Harlivy with a baby, please." I pitched that in the room. It's not gonna happen yet.
Batman giving Catwoman Oral Sex
Link: TVLine
Who: Justin Halpern
Posted: June 14, 2021
Quote: We had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman. And DC was like, 'You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.' They're like, 'Heroes don't do that,' Halpern told Variety. So we said, 'Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?' They were like, 'No, it's that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It's hard to sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone.'
Cut some of Bank Teller scene in "There's No Ivy In Team"
Link: Andy Young Tweet
Who: Andy Young
Posted: August 6, 2022
Quote: There was a great bit cut for time of Bane answering security questions. My favorite was: Bankteller: "Favorite band?" Bane "One of the Daddies, either Big Bad Voodoo or Cherry Poppin. Went through a big swing revival phase!"
Mutal decision to change Tarantula mention to Vigilante in "There's No Ivy In Team"
Link: SenseiStarman Tweet
Posted: July 30, 2022
Quote: As someone who got the press screeners, I can confirm that, in the edit we got, Nightwing says Tarantula, and it is in the Captions.
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: August 1, 2022
Quote: It was a mutual decision.
Zack Snyder was Considered
Link: Cinema Blend, 1:18-2:23 mark
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 22, 2022
Quote: His name was bandied about in the room for sure, but we knew James was a fan of the show. We thought it would be funny, given James' body of work, to portray him in this show as someone trying to go a little more, I don't know, awards cinema-kind of thing.
Cut a Thanos line
Link: Den of Geek, 4:43-4:56 mark
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: July 28, 2022
Quote: James Gunn is like, "It's like Thanos snapped and I can feel my anus again" and Clayface is like "Who's Thanos?" And then we're out. We're like this breaks the world liked we don't want to acknowledge there's a MCU in the DCU.
Clayface talked more about Kirk in "The 83rd Annual Villy Awards"
Link: Andy Young Tweet
Who: Andy Young
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: I know it was my job to take it out but I'm so bummed we had to shorten this line. Clayface went DEEP on his knowledge of the character.
Memory of Batman cycling through Robins in "Batman Begins Forever"
Link: Jamiesen Borak Tweet
Who: Jamiesen Borak
Posted: September 1, 2022
Quote: One of the many cut cave memories was about Batman cycling through Robins.
Were more Batman movie nods in "Batman Begins Forever"
Link: Vulture
Posted: September 1, 2022
Quote: Borak packed his screenplay with references to Batman movies — so much so that Warner Bros. and DC eventually told him to cut down on the number of memory sequences because there was just too much going on.
Little Bruce Wetting Himself
Link: IGN 0:49-1:40 mark
Who: Justin Halpern
Posted: July 22, 2022
Quote: Well, there was like one thing we pulled out because we were like 'It goes too far.' Uh, in the season, there's a-they're making a biopic of Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne's dad, who is murdered. Who's seen murdered a thousand times in popular culture, anyway, Bruce goes to the premiere of the movie and y'know like how at the arc light, they have the costumes in the glass cases and there was a scene we had where Bruce is looking at the costume for little Bruce Wayne and it has piss stains on it because he pisses himself as his parents are murdered in front of him. Like 'That's not what happened!' And then on-screen, when in the movie when he's watching it, little Bruce's parents die and then he keeps pissing himself and we said 'Maybe that's too far.'
A Hard Wayne's Gonna Fall credits in "The Horse and The Sparrow"
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Posted: September 15, 2022
Quote: This was all the animation team who stepped up when all our other attempts to thank family members got shut down by legal (this worked out for the best).
Tefe
Link: Shane Glines instagram
Who: Shane Glines
Posted: November 2, 2023
Quote: Rejected design of Tefe Holland for the Harley Quinn show. Taken from the cover painting by Phil Hale
Metamorphosis
Link: Sarah Peters Tweet
Who: Sarah Peters
Posted: August 20, 2023
Quote: Deleted scenes, yes. Except some Jeffery's still in there (he's "the parrot tawny uses to prank celebrities")
They discarded Bat-Family and Natural Disasters ideas and plans for Season 4
Link: Sarah Peters AMA Reddit
Who: Sarah Peters
Posted: December 20, 2023
Quote: We had some other ideas for the Bat Fam arc then learned that we couldn't use Batman this season, so we pivoted to this and ended up really liking this idea of setting him up as a crazy villain for season 5 (and playing to the amazing Harvey Guillen's comedic strengths) working with Talia - I hope they followed through with it!
Quote: With Ivy leading the LOD we wanted her to have allies and thought that would be fun to giver her nature-adjacent mentees. There was a lot more planned with them that got cut from the season unfortch. We also talked about them being potential adversaries in season 5, like she trained them to work within this system then destroyed it and they're all thanks for nothing
Quote: I knew this season had more challenges than the others so it was really hard to get things we wanted to do through and less time to refine. I wish we'd had more time and money to realize certain aspects of our ideas. The writers were really excited about making these detailed tightly woven arcs over the season and unfortunately a lot of that hit the cutting room floor and some of that connective tissue and breathing room was lost in post.
Holiday Special
Link: Patrick Schumacker Tweet
Who: Patrick Schumacker
Posted: December 5, 2023
Quote: Nothing official but weve talked about wanting to do a winter holiday special many times. Need the right idea.
Aquaman: King of Atlantis
Link: Animation Scoop 10/12/2021
Who: Marly Halpern-Graser
Quote: The only thing we do have is every now and then we would pitch them something crazy that we wanted to do - very silly / outlandish. And the people at Atomic Monster would be like, "Oh yeah, that's really cool. That's a little bit of what we're thinking about doing in Aquaman 2." And we'd be like, "Really? That's nuts. Now I really wanna see that movie!" Watch all three of our episodes and then watch the movie and see if they really meant it.
Batman: Caped Crusader
Original Pitch
Link: Word Balloon 5/31/2022, 74:03-74:34
Who: Ed Brubaker
Quote: Bruce, James, and someone else--some other writer they were working with at the time came up with the whole pitch for the show like several years ago...like two or three years ago initially. And we sort of loosely followed the original pitch that they wanted to do and because we had a whole writer's room of people, we built off that and built a new thing.
Michael Rosenbaum auditioned for Batman
Link: Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, 5/8/23, 5:55-6:56
Who: Michael Rosenbaum
Quote: Another one, remember the Batman series, it was, they were doing a new -- they were doing it. J.J. Abrams and Bruce Timm who created Justice League. I just got axed. I remember going to callback with him and everybody and you know I think my Batman was really good. I think I nailed that. I think they were really happy with Batman, but the Bruce Wayne I don't think they were happy with. I could tell. I was like, "Okay, listen to me Taran. I want to tell you right now" and that was fine and I was like ok, look man, and they're like "no." I did some stuff.
Kevin Conroy had a role
Link: Anime Superhero Forum 1/31/2024
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I have no idea if the CRISIS part of IGN's supposed scoop is true or not, but Kevin Conroy did not record a voice for CAPED CRUSADER. We were hoping to have him do a voice for the new show (and he was eager to do it) but sadly he passed away before we could make it happen.
My Adventures With Superman
Kiss Kiss Fall in Portal
Link: Kelly Kao Tweet 8/14/2023
Who: Kelly Kao
Quote: "Mallah I want to watch them FIGHTTTT" I originally boarded Mallah pulling Brain away haha.
Unused Season One Idea will be in #1 of tie-in comic
Link: World's Finest 3/7/2024
Who: Josie Campbell
Quote: This story is one we actually talked about in the writers room, but we didn't have space for it in season one. So get ready for romance, comedy, super-powers, Jimmy Olsen talking a lot about how he's super-rich now, and all the goodness of the show bundled into this action-packed miniseries.
Movies
New Gods
Link: Boyd Kirkland Interview 4/1/1998
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: The "New Gods" development is a project over at Warner Feature Animation, not here. I would love to see something like that happen, and be involved with it, as I have been a long-time fan of Jack Kirby's work. I don't really know where it stands at the moment with Warner management.
Link: Newsarama 9/29/2016
What: Concept art of Mike Mignola of characters including Highfather, Metron, Scott Free, Orion, Big Barda, Female Furies, Granny Goodness, Kalibak.
Link: SyFy 11/13/2017
Quote: [Tom] Scioli claimed that Neil Gaiman himself was involved as the screenwriter for the movie, but that "unlike the Mignola drawings, the script has never surfaced".
Link: Batman: The Animated Newsletter #17
Posted: Weeks of February 22 to 27/28, 1999
Who: Mark Evanier
Quote: The WB feature animation division (which is a separate entity from the folks who do the TV cartoons) has a NEW GODS feature in development. I'm acting as Kirby Kreative Konsultant - or something of the sort on it - but I caution all that this feature may never get made or may be a long time in coming if it does get made. The TV animation department wants to do more with the characters but, so far, I don't think anything has been seriously planned.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 73
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I had no involvement in that particular Fourth World development. That was with the short-lived WB Feature Animation division (Quest for Camelot, Iron GIant), I think. The feature people were a completely separate division, in a different building, even a different part of town-us lowly TV folks had literally no connection to them whatsoever. Afraid I'm a dead end.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 74
Who: Mike Mignola
Quote: All I remember was that we were living in downtown Portland, [Oregon,] [when I did the designs], so that means sometimes between 1996 and 2001.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 74
Who: Paul Levitz
Quote: It was a wonderful script by Tim Hauser, I think, and I loved Mike's work. Definitely WB's short-lived Feature Animation division.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 74
Who: Tim Hauser
Quote: ...script by Dan O'Bannon...script by Kirk DiMicco.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 74
Who: Tim Hauser
Quote: ...(Orion and Scott Free)...other, and grew up not knowing...their true natures begin to emerage. Darkseid schemed to break the pact and planned to obliterate New Genesis, but when Orion and Scott meet (after initially battling) they team (along with Big Barda) to defeat his plan and discover their true identities. I don't recall the nature of the 'machine' aspect of the plot, but the device that was intended to eliminate New Genesis was altered (with the help of Metron, perhaps), and instead, the two 'half planets' were merged into one 'whole planet' with a balance of darkness and light--and our heroes emerge as new leaders for this new, hopeful world.
Link: Back Issue #104 (2018), page 74
Who: Tim Hauser
Quote: We were also trying to find ways to do a project that was stylish and theatrical quality on a relatively limited budget...A DC reader much of my life, in my job, I was exploring the library of properties available to us at the time (not the Big Three) that I thought would make good standalone films that had the requisite visual storytelling aspects and a mythic feel and dramatic character arcs. I had worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation prior and was interested in sci-fi/superheroes as sort of modern fairy tales. Familiar with the Kirby comics from the '70s, the story pitch was sort of a one-shot interpretation of his many ideas and characters (no wide DCU tie-ins). Of all the DC stories we pitched as an in-house team, The New Gods consistently got the best reaction from management, so we were given a go-ahead to proceed with further development. The execs seemed to respond well to the epic Star Wars-ish nature of the concept. But the visual development gradually veered away from Kirby (sadly) as a more illustrative look got a better reaction.
The Catwoman
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Who: Boyd Kirkland
Quote: I can only assume it's dead, although I've heard nothing official. About a year before the Catwoman movie came out, Warner Animation asked me if I would be interested in developing a direct-to-video Catwoman movie to be released in the wake of the live action feature. I came up with a story about Selina Kyle, based loosely on an idea I had while developing another Batman video after SubZero. They liked it, and asked me to write an outline, which I did. Then, Warner Home Video decided it had to also include the new Catwoman portrayed by Halle Berry. They sent me the script for the movie so I could see who this new Catwoman was. I had to completely rethink my story, but still managed to retain the central premise. I wrote a complete script, which portrayed how these two women meet, and discover more about themselves. It delved much deeper into the Egyptian mythology set up in the Catwoman movie. I think it would have made a pretty entertaining video. Too bad the live action film did so poorly, as that pretty much killed any chance of my script ever getting made.
The Batman: Hush
Posted: March 13, 2007
Link: Legions of Gotham forum
Quote: Legions of Gotham has the exclusive look at the pitch art for a Direct to Video/DVD feature that Jeff Matsuda had wanted to make when he was working on The Batman! I don't know if you all know this, but Jeff is good friends with a certain Mr. Jeph Loeb. From day one I've been talking with Jeff about getting Hush into the series, and from day one he was hoping to do that. It never panned out, but he did dig out some great art he used to try and sway the powers that be at WB. We may have some more details on what was to be coming soon.
Summary: The Batman animated movie based on Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's Hush comic run, but then it was dropped in favor of The Batman vs. Dracula.
Teen Titans: Judas Contract
Link: Newsarama Post
When: Spring 2007
Summary: Marv Wolfman will write the movie.
Link: Titans Tower Blog Summary
Posted: August 1, 2007
Summary: Characters that will appear are Robin/Nightwing, Cyborg, Raven, Changeling, Starfire, Wonder Girl, Brother Blood, Terra, Deathstroke and Wintergreen. The Ravager will be referred to.
Link: WF Article
Summary: As of February 28, 2008, movie is placed on hold.
Aquaman: Hero of Atlantis
Link: Fear Net Splash Chat
When: 2009
Posted: July 19, 2009
Summary: Adam Green is writing Aquaman: Hero of Atlantis this summer. It features Aquaman and Ocean Master versus the Kordax. It should be come out in 2011/2012.
Green Arrow
Link: Newsarama Article
When: 2000s
Posted: February 23, 2010
Summary: A Green Arrow origin story script by Tab Murphy was put on the back burner a couple years ago.
Link: Yahoo! News Article
Posted: October 14, 2014
Summary: Solo Green Arrow movie has been discussed.
Batgirl: Year One
Link: Lauren Montgomery Blogspot Entry
When: 2008
Posted: March 22, 2010
Summary: In 2008, Lauren Montgomery pitched a movie adaptation for Batgirl: Year One but it was turned down.
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: Batgirl: Year One Below is a promotional piece by director Lauren Montgomery for a pitched animated feature based on the Batgirl: Year One comic title. Montgomery pitched the idea as part of the popular DC Universe Animated Original Movie line in 2008, but the idea was ultimate nixed. "Needless to say, they were not interested in anything that did not have Superman or Batman in the leading role," said Montgomery. "It went nowhere."
Green Lantern: First Flight Sequel
Wonder Woman sequel
Hush
The Long Halloween
Vampire Batman
Link: TMT Interview
Posted: April 25, 2010
Summary: are pitches or stories that have been rejected or shelved the past few years.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Link: DC and Marvel TV Writer Stan Berkowitz! | INTERGANG Episode 01, 1:21:15-1:21:33
Who: Stan Berkowitz
Posted: February 28, 2024 (recorded January 15, 2023)
Quote: There was a whole sequence that I had to edit out when a Superman from teh future shows up briefly to talk to Superman and Batman of the present and that was because something else was going on in one of the other DC book at the time.
Batman: Under the Red Hood
Link: Anime Superhero post
Who: Bruce Timm
Posted: January 17, 2021
Quote: John DiMaggio wasn't our first Joker in UNDER THE RED HOOD. Again, we had originally cast an actor that most of us had been fans of for decades. He's played a lot of eccentric characters over the years but his performance as the Joker was just TOO weird. Almost randomly so - many of his line readings were almost non-sequiturs. Because of the nature of that particular story, we really needed Joker to sound absolutely evil and terrifying, which our first actor just couldn't quite deliver. Brandon Vietti and I tried REALLY hard to make it work. While assembling the animatic, we were able to piece together a halfway decent performance in places but there were a bunch of lines that sounded just SO freaking odd, they were un-usable. We'd call up the Dialogue Editor and have him find all of the original unedited takes, to see if maybe there was something we could salvage. But after a couple of hours, we finally threw in the towel. Fortunately, John was available to replace the first gentleman and he knocked it out of the park.
R-Rated Vertigo movies
Link: Comic Hero News Q&A Video
Posted:July 30, 2010
Who: Bruce Timm
Summary: An R-rated movie is a hot and cold trend. There might be an announcement in the coming months. They have 2 scripts that must be rated R. Would love to adapt The Authority. When asked about a Vertigo movie, Bruce Timm replied "Maybe."
Link: NYCC 2010 Toon Zone Roundtable
Posted: October 13, 2010
Who: Bruce Timm
Summary: An R-Rated Vertigo script is currently shelved due to an ongoing rights issue.
Link: CBR Article
Posted: April 1, 2013
Summary: There are plans for animated direct-to-DVDs of the Vertigo properties.
Untitled Green Lantern
Link: Comic Vine Article
When: 2011
Posted: July 23, 2011
Summary: Alan Burnett and Geoff Johns are working on a project related to Green Lantern.
Link: DC GL Panel Podcast (17:04 mark)
Posted: July 23, 2011
Summary: The project related to Green Lantern is a "very requested storyline."
Paul Dini worked on a Green Lantern script
Link: Starburst Magazine
Who: Paul Dini
Posted: 2018
Quote: Whereas, at one point, I laboured over a Green Lantern script that I was given to write. I just sort of threw my hands up in frustration, "I can't make this work, I’m sorry." It was developing a direct-to-video with the Green Lantern character in it, but after I while I just said, "I've got nothing, I'm sorry. It's too big for me to wrap my mind around. The whole cosmos thing, it's beyond me." He's a character that I don't have it for. If it's John Stewart in a bar with Hawk Girl, having a barfight, yeah, I can do that because it brings it down to a very personal level. But this was another character as Green Lantern, it was this cosmos-spanning adventure, and – it was my fault – I didn't have anything for it. I couldn't find the person I wanted in Green Lantern. He's just not a character I'm suited for.
Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War
Link: World's Finest Article
Posted: October 11, 2013
Summary: Has been discussed.
Green Lantern: Blackest Night
Link: World's Finest Article
Posted: October 11, 2013
Summary: Has been discussed.
Batman Beyond
Link: World's Finest Article
Posted: October 11, 2013
Summary: Interest remains.
Source: Hall of Justice Podcast 379, 22:56-23:05
Who: Jim Krieg
Posted: April 25, 2024
Quote: Well, we discussed things. Kicked it around forever. So there were for as many days in the week we talked about it. There were that many versions of the story.
Untitled Superman
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: Below is rough design work for an untitled Superman project. Format is unknown, but the designs above are by producer James Tucker.
Untitled Justice League Project
Link: World's Finest Backstage
Summary: The Wonder Woman design, sketched up by director/producer James Tucker in 2008/2009, was for a direct-to-video feature.
Untitled Justice League Project
Link: Shannon Tindle Blog
Posted: April 12, 2013
Summary: Storyboard Artist Shannon Tindle reveals she was briefly hired to do work with Bruce Timm on a Justice League movie last year. Timm wanted a graphic interpretation of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's DC Comics work from the 1970s. Unfortunately, they decided not to do the project less than 24 hours after Tindle agreed to do it. However, Timm wanted to see what she would do with the characters so they let her work for a week anyway doing exploratory artwork.
Link: instagram
Summary: Bizarro
Link: instagram
Summary: Batzarro
Link: instagarm
Summary: Batman
Swamp Thing
Link: Batman TAS Podcast, 18:29-19:06 and 19:51-19:55
When: Around 2003
Posted: July 26, 2023
Quote: I mean this is news, he actually wrote a Swamp Thing DVD for us that I so wanted to do. Yeah, for animation and this goes back 20 years ago. It's a movie and--but the people who run the video department decided they wanted bigger stars than Swamp Thing so it got shuffled off the side but it was a great script and he wrote it.
Quote: Oh sure, except it was based on a comic. An existing comic.
Summary: Around 2003, Joe R. Lansdale wrote a Swamp Thing direct-to-video movie but it was shelved because WHV decided to focus on A-list DC characters.
Link: WGTC Article
When:
Posted: October 12, 2016
Summary: Those who attended theatrical screenings of Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders were given surveys. One question asked which movie would like to be seen made: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wonder Woman '77, or Swamp Thing.
Link: EMPIRE Article
Who: Jay Oliva
Posted: November 20, 2016
Quote: We were actually kicking around the idea of doing a Swamp Thing direct to video movie years ago, but that never saw fruition.
Link: Teleaire YouTube, 1:30-1:35
Who: James Tucker
Posted: February 7, 2017
Summary: James Tucker teases Swamp Thing is in development in other projects he can't talk about yet.
The Dark Knight Returns
Link: Anime Supehero Forum
Posted: July 29, 2022
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: I think we may have tried to get Ed Harris for the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS movies, not TKJ (but I wouldn't swear to it).
Batman vs. Two-Face
Poison Ivy
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: November 10, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Ivy was in the first draft of Batman vs TwoFace but she really over complicated the plot. Ultimately her part morphed into the Lucille Diamond character and we got the wonderful Lee Meriwether to voice her.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: November 11, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: In the first draft she was teaming up with TwoFace, using her powers to control the villains. It was pulling focus from the Bruce and Harvey story and we realized there wasn't enough screen time since the movie had lots of villains already.
Batgirl
Link: The Batcave Podcast Episode 41, 23:00-24:22
Posted: November 27, 2017
Who: James Tucker
Quote: All I know is I was one of the people who kept bringing it up and it seemed like it was getting deflected. As far as...and I also knew we were going to do a second movie so I thought 'I could justify it by saying Oh well we'll try to ger her into the second movie.' Now this was before I knew anything about her being I assume ill because she passed away either right before we announced we were gonna do it and usually when we announce we're gonna do something, we've been doing it for 2 or 3 months. We've already started the process. So anyway we went into it, I'm thinking 'Well, we should try to get her into it.' Yeah, I mean no one would say...and I don't know if the people involved who represented her or were connected to making all the deals knew she was in poor health or whatever, I don't know any of that, but I did know once she passed, that took it off...there was no way for me to justify trying to do it because it felt wrong to recast or try to work her into it having her so recently passing away.
Wonder Woman tag became Mad Love tag then it was removed
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: October 18, 2017
Who: Michael Jelenic
Quote: We were talking about doing a tag on this movie where he's teaming up with Lynda Carter at the very end and we see Adam West in '77 and he's aged up a little, and the mansion's all decorated in the '77 style...that could be a possibility, but I don't think it would be a Batman thing.
Link: The Batcave Podcast Episode 41, 36:31-36:47
Posted: November 27, 2017
Who: James Tucker
Quote: At one point there was a pass of the script that had Batman meeting Wonder Woman. And they just couldn't work things out with Lynda Carter so it didn't happen.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: September 30, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Oh I forgot we made it a bonus scene. Originally it was an actual tag but then Mr West passed and I didn't want to end the movie like that so it became a bonus scene.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: September 30, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Originally, the teaser was longer and set in the 70's for potential third movie that of course didn't happen. Then the movie went long anyway so I dusted off my Mad Love board as a fun nod to BTAS to annoy the grim dark purists that hated '66 lol
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: October 2, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: It was to have Wonder Woman in it to set up a possible Wonder Woman 77 dtv that didn't happen. Nightwing wasn't in it though.
Summary: There was an end tag set in the 1970s to set up a third movie that involved Wonder Woman '77. That was abandoned and James Tucker made the tag into a Mad Love homage. After Adam West passed away, Tucker decided he didn't want the movie to end on the tag and removed it. It was completed and left as a bonus scene in the special features in the Blu-ray release.
Wonder Woman '77
Link: WGTC Article
When:
Posted: October 12, 2016
Summary: Those who attended theatrical screenings of Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders were given surveys. One question asked which movie would like to be seen made: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wonder Woman '77, or Swamp Thing.
Watchmen
Link: CBR Article
Who: WBA A-List Community Survey
Posted: April 13, 2017
Quote: Below is a brief description of an upcoming made-for-video movie, Watchmen. A faithful adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel executed in an animation style that mirrors the source material (Anticipated MPAA R rating). In an alternate world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history, the US won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the cold war is in full effect. WATCHMEN begins as a murder-mystery, but soon unfolds into a planet-altering conspiracy. As the resuolution comes to a head, the unlikely group of retired heroes-Roarshach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Ozymandias-have to test the limits of their convictions and ask themselves where the true line is between good and evil.
Plastic Man
Link: Cosmic Book Article
When: Early 2017
Posted: April 30, 2017
Summary: Kevin Smith pitched an animated Plastic Man movie to Geoff Johns.
Link: Fatman Beyond Podcast, 11:34-12:47
Posted: February 9, 2022
Quote: I was deep diving into one of my laptops looking for an old photo and I found a script to Plastic Man that I wrote for a Plastic Man cartoon like two years ago or something like that. I completely f-ckin forgot about it and they paid me to write it and then they didn't do it and it was with um what's his name from The Big Bang Theory. Lovely guy. Young guy. Old Sheldon. With him. He was such a good dude, what's his why'd I smoke his name away. C'mon, champ. He's like one of the most famous people in the world. Jim Parsons! Thank you, the app eyes. Good looking out. Jim Parsons. What a lovely dude but he was gonna be the voice of Plastic Man. So I looked at the script and I was like 'Wow man they f-cking paid me to write this and it's never going to happen.'
Superman Lives
Link: CBR Article
Who: Michael Jelenic
Posted: October 18, 2017
Summary: I had a big pitch, and they took it seriously for a second, to do Tim Burton's Superman...to do that animated.
Freedom Fighters: The Ray Follow-Up
Link: TV Line
Who: Marc Guggenheim
Posted: October 18, 2017
Quote: It's a little messy, I'm not going to lie to you. Andrew Kreisberg and I were of differing minds about how tightly the animated series, which was written before the crossover, should tie in. It definitely is a prequel, of sorts; it explains The Ray's presence on Earth-X. I would say it's a prequel that requires an additional story hopefully be told down the road, to clean up the continuity. I've been kicking around the idea of a comic book story that would fix the continuity inconsistencies. Who knows! Maybe that will happen.
Source: Crisis on Infinite Earths: Paragons Rising graphic novel Introduction
Who: Marc Guggenheim
Released: July 7, 2020
Quote: If you've watched hour one (Supergirl), you know the Ray--and all of Earth-X for that matter-met with a rather untimely end in the opening moments of that episode. So what are he and the rest of the Freedom Fighters--to say nothing of his whole friggin' universe--doing alive and well in scenes that take place during the first act of hour two? Questions like this one are why Stan Lee invented the "No-Prize" over at Marvel. Unfortunately, Stan is no longer with us and you might have noticed this isn't a Marvel comic, so we're left to fend for ourselves. One explanation is that the destruction of Earth-X, while shown in hour one, didn't actually take place until hour two or hour three. But there's another explanation that intrigues me. Uber-fans will note that the Ray didn't recognize Oliver Queen and company during the Crisis on Earth-X event despite them working together before in The Ray animated series. In truth, this continuity misalignment was the result of a disagreement I had with one of the other producers (I lost), and I'd always hoped to one day explain the inconsistency with--you guessed it--another comic book tie-in. This "lost story" would explain the inconsistency in both Crisis events. Two birds, one stone.
Static Shock
Link: Chris Copeland Tweet
When: Unknown
Posted: May 15, 2020
Summary: Chris Copeland pitched Static Shock.
Link: Chris Copeland Tweet
Posted: May 16, 2020
Summary: Chris and Justin Copeland worked on it and pitched it as a movie.
Link: Chris Copeland Tweet
Posted: May 18, 2020
Summary: Due to internal legal issues between DC, Milestone, and the creator's estate, the pitch didn't move forward.
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
Link: Jerome Moore deviantArt
Posted: July 10, 2017
Who: Jerome Moore
Quote: Warner Bros Animation Character Design, JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS, Irreverent TV Talk Show Host. This was part of a little freelance gig, done for Phil Bourassa. After reading the script, I may have had too much fun designing the model, depicting the character striking the famous Clark Kent-changing-into-Superman pose, and I'm not sure if they used it at all. In any case, it may be obvious that the inspiration for this irreverent television talk show host was none other than Stephen Colbert.
Link: Heath Corson Tweet
Posted: January 17, 2015
Who: Heath Corson
Quote: Yeah, there was some background history on Manta that didn't make it to the final film.
Quote: It was just why he was loyal to Atlantis.
Batman vs. Robin
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 8, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Planned a BvR end credit teaser :Cut to Doll maker's abandoned factory & into a back room where there's a writhing figure strapped to a gurney, pan over to see the Joker's face pinned to a wall, setting up Death of the Family 2 follow but DC nixed it.
Justice League: Gods and Monsters
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel
Posted: June 8, 2015
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: At one point, we were going to keep her identity close to the whole Greek mythology thing, and it wasn't really working for us. It wasn't a big enough change. Then, after talking it over with Alan Burnett, I had already drawn an image of her where she was wearing a sort of Kirby-esque basic battle armor, and Alan looked at that and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. Why don't we just make her one of the New Gods?" And there you go.
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 11, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Then I shouldn't mention that we had a story boarded end credit teaser on Judas that we had to cut because the main movie ran long where we showed Blackfire scheming to get Kori that would've set up a third movie...
Link: Ernie Altbacker Tweet
Posted: April 11, 2020
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Quote: I remember that. And my first attempt at a tag dealt with Nightwing doing a "marriage test" obstacle course on Tamaran fighting her Dad's guards as the Titans cheered him on.
Justice League International pitch
Link: Comic Book Resources article
Posted: October 10, 2014
Who: Heath Corson
Quote: Chance of an animated "Justice League International"? "That's all I want to do in the world," Corson said, adding that it was the first thing he pitched to Warner Bros. "Someday maybe they'll listen to me. I'm dying for it." Corson suggested Alec Baldwin for the voice of Maxwell Lord.
Link: Out of the Blue, Episode 52
Posted: January 15, 2015
Who: Heath Corson
"Superman and The Legion of Superheroes" in Action Comics #858 to 863
Link: Word Balloon Episode 1097, 1:12:09-22
Posted: June 29, 2020
Summary: A storyline James Tucker wanted to adapt into a movie was the 2007-08 Legion of Superheroes story "Superman and The Legion of Superheroes" in Action Comics #858 to 863 where Superman loses powers and they face an evil Justice League by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank.
Batman: Game of Death
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: October 22, 2015
Who: Jay Oliva
Quote: Not yet. I keep pushing it but they never give it to me. Someday, it's going to be Batman Game of Death, and I'll adapt Arkham Asylum: A Serious Place on Serious Earth. But Game of Death. Some day. I don't really know what I'm going to be doing until they assign it to me.
Arkham Asylum: A Serious Place on Serious Earth
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: October 22, 2015
Who: Jay Oliva
Quote: Not yet. I keep pushing it but they never give it to me. Someday, it's going to be Batman Game of Death, and I'll adapt Arkham Asylum: A Serious Place on Serious Earth. But Game of Death. Some day. I don't really know what I'm going to be doing until they assign it to me.
The Trinity
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: September 22, 2013
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Almost happened but the script wasn't right then we went in a different direction. It'll happen eventually I'm sure.
Super Sons
Link: Sam Liu Tweet
Posted: July 21, 2018
Who: Sam Liu
Quote: @JTuckerAnimator during our #DeathofSuperman panel publicly announce he wanted to get that going.
More "Arkham Side" of Batman's Rogues Gallery
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Sure. That goes with it. The first three movies have been more Ra's Al Ghul and Damian-centric, and we really haven't been able to explore the other side of Batman's Rogues Gallery, but I really want to get to that. I guess Arkham is the most logical thing to do next. We did Arkham in Son of Batman. It's there, we know it's there.
Alice
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Who: James Tucker
Quote: There's a storyline that follows what happened to her twin sister who becomes this other, really interesting character, so that's definitely something we've thought about.
More Killer Croc
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Who: Phil Bourassa
Quote: We have talked about bringing Croc back.
More Court of Owls
Link: Geek Tyrant YouTube
Posted: April 4, 2015
Who: Jay Oliva
Summary: At Wonder Con 2015, Jay Oliva muses they might not be done with the Court of Owls yet.
Link: Jay Oliva Tweet
Posted: July 12, 2018
Who: Jay Oliva
Quote: It was only supposed to introduce the Court into the animated Batman universe. There were plans for future films to utilize the court more.
Batman: The Killing Joke
Link: Anime Supehero Forum
Posted: July 29, 2022
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: The big difference is that the earlier version was going to just be a straight adaptation of the comic, without the 'Prologue' that everyone loves so much. We knew there wasn't enough material for a full-length feature, even with the few short 'extra' bits that Brian Azzerello added (the trial, Batman questioning the sex workers under the bridge etc) but at the time the plan was to release it as a 45 minute film at a reduced price point. Later, the Home Video folks crunched the numbers and decided a full regular length feature would be preferable, so the prequel material was added to bring the running time up to 70-plus minutes.
Teen Titans Third Movie
Link: Comic Book Resources Article
Posted: March 26, 2016
Who James Tucker
Quote: Can we agree that it's really cool that Starfire is the leader? I thought that was awesome. We've thought about what happened for her to get that role, so stay tuned
Link: Home Media Magazine Article
Posted: April 14, 2017
Quote: As for future movies, Tucker expressed interest in moving the setting to Starfire's homeworld and exploring her backstory.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 11, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Then I shouldn't mention that we had a story boarded end credit teaser on Judas that we had to cut because the main movie ran long where we showed Blackfire scheming to get Kori that would've set up a third movie...
Link: Ernie Altbacker Tweet
Posted: April 11, 2020
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Quote: I remember that. And my first attempt at a tag dealt with Nightwing doing a "marriage test" obstacle course on Tamaran fighting her Dad's guards as the Titans cheered him on.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 11, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Summary: The original Teen Titans team would have appeared in a third movie.
Quote: Because they didn't green light a third Titans movie in the continuity
Sequels to Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: June 1, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Structurally there was no way to make in depth long term plans but as I've said before, we hoped to do more Teen Titans, Suicide Squad movies and I would've wanted to try and adapt "Death of the Family".
Death of the Family
Link: Anime Superhero (Then Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Who: James Tucker
Quote: That almost happened, and it may happen, it came close.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: April 8, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Planned a BvR end credit teaser :Cut to Doll maker's abandoned factory & into a back room where there's a writhing figure strapped to a gurney, pan over to see the Joker's face pinned to a wall, setting up Death of the Family 2 follow but DC nixed it.
Link: James Tucker Tweet
Posted: June 1, 2020
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Structurally there was no way to make in depth long term plans but as I've said before, we hoped to do more Teen Titans, Suicide Squad movies and I would've wanted to try and adapt "Death of the Family".
Jason Todd in James Tucker's DTV Continuity
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: October 9, 2015
Quote: Asked about Tim Drake and Jason Todd, Oliva began by saying that they hadn't been introduced yet and right now there have only been two Robins; when this elicited boos, Tucker added, "they exist in this universe, but they haven't been Robin yet."
Link: Anime Superhero (formerly Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Who: James Tucker
Quote: Also, I'd have Hush be Jason Todd. I'm not pro-Hush literally. Meaning I don't want to do an exact copy because I dom't even know who the guy ended up being.
Tim Drake in James Tucker's DTV Continuity
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: October 9, 2015
Summary: Asked about Tim Drake and Jason Todd, Oliva began by saying that they hadn't been introduced yet and right now there have only been two Robins; when this elicited boos, Tucker added, "they exist in this universe, but they haven't been Robin yet."
Link: Anime Superhero (formerly Toon Zone)
Posted: October 22, 2015
Quote: Tim Drake hasn't been introduced in this universe. In this universe, forget about everything you've seen before. There is no Tim Drake yet. Right now, it's just been Dick Grayson and Damian. So Damian has been the second Robin. Eventually, we'd love to introduce Tim into the equation, and Jason Todd, but you have to remember that we're starting from ground zero and moving on our course, which leaves it open. We can re-introduce Tim in a new, interesting way that's different from the comics. But we'll stay true to it, stick to the way he was in the comics. His first introduction, but in this universe.
Link: Anime Superhero (formerly Toon Zone)
Posted: February 11, 2016
Quote: Give me Tim after Damian. How does that work when Batman is used to his son being Robin and then Tim shows up for whatever reason? So I want to make it more interesting than what you guys have seen and read, so they're the same character, but they just show up in different times and different places. Same version of them, just different points in Batman's life than did that you're used to.
Link: The Rambling Geek: A Conversation with James Tucker Part 2, 57:05-57:56
Posted: June 30, 2021
Quote: If we had been able to do more movies, I was going to introduce Tim Drake. For awhile, we wanted to kill Damian off. If we kept doing the movies, my plan was to kill Damian off somehow (we would have brought him back), and then introduce Tim Drake after Damian. So Batman would have lost his son and then this kid shows up dressed like Robin. The first scene, I'm pitching my first scene to you, that meme where he smacks Robin? That's how I wanted to introduce Tim Drake into the movies because he shows up saying, "I'm your new Robin!" SMACK! I think that would've been great. Oh my God, that's what I wanted to do. And then, then, they would've had a reason for--there'd be a journey for them.
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines
Source: James Tucker Tweet
Who: James Tucker
Posted: October 15, 2021
Quote: Paradoxically, the original outline for Bloodlines had to be altered (at the last minute)because of similarities to the WW84 movie swapping out Cheetah for Silver Swan. A change for the better imo,since the mother/daughter dynamic was more compelling.
Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
Source: Hall of Justice Episode 261, 16:50-17:15
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Posted: December 2, 2021
Quote: Justice League Dark 2 or Justice League Dark The Sequel. I pitched the story. And it was completely different. It was just all really a demonic Constantine story. Then all of a sudden Warner said we want to try different things with storylines, you got to wrap it up in one.
Source: Hall of Justice Episode 261, 21:33-21:38
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Posted: December 2, 2021
Quote: In Maighread's draft, Superman was the lead.
LEGO Batman Movie 2
Source: Uproxx
Who: Chris McKay
Posted: April 7, 2023
Quote: We had a really fun script with Dan Harmon and Michael Waldron, wrote a really fun kind of Superfriends. The sequel would've been a quasi Superfriends movie and the structure was going to be a sort of Godfather II kind of thing with Batman and the Justice League facing a modern-day problem, Lex Luthor and OMAC, while at the same time flashing back to the reasons why Batman and the Justice League – and in particular, Superman – have bad blood. It was going to explore Superman and Batman’s relationship in a very different way than you've ever seen it portrayed, including Superman's alienation from humanity and how hard it is to truly be friends, real friends, for years. It was ultimately going to answer the question: How do you become Super-friends. And there was going to be a crossover with a major franchise that can only happen in a LEGO movie.
Justice Society: World War II
Source: Justice Society: World War II "Adventures in Storytelling: Justice Society: World War II", 9:27-9:54
Who: Jim Krieg
Posted: April 27, 2021
Quote: But apropos to what you were saying, at one point, I think I had pitched you know, becauses Steve has to die... That in order to save Wonder Woman he was going to take all of Hourman's Miraclo, and just like, down it, you know, like a junkie, but nicer. And then have all the powers for a minute but that it would burn him out and make him old. And then he was going to die.
Batman: The Long Halloween
Source: Comic Book Movie
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 22, 2021
Quote: We have so much time to tell this story and tell these events, but there's a certain part of The Long Halloween I think people know that we didn't add in and a certain villain because it deviated away from where we had to get the story to. Originally, we were planning to do a set of shorts that would have then ended up on the Blu-rays as the missing pieces, but we weren't able to do them because of time constraints. We didn't have the money available to do those shorts to add to the Blu-rays. They never were done and never will be, but without them in there, it doesn't mess with the story at all. Both parts definitely deliver the full flavour of what The Long Halloween is.
Source: Comics Beat
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 26, 2021
Quote: We originally weren't trying to fit him in. All the other characters we had to make sure were in because I couldn't get rid of Poison Ivy. Scarecrow was a definite. Initially the script was too long and we weren't able to do that [Riddler] bit. But we did have plans to do it as a side 10-15 short. And also a Catwoman [short]. We ran out of funds for that. Also when we got held back for a release for a year, that money wasn't there and we were already doing a couple of other movies. So no one had time or the ability to be able to go back and do that Riddler section and place it later as a Blu-ray extra.
Quote: We were kind of going to adapt 2-3 shorts that we were going to add to the Blu-ray. One of them was going to be a little bit of that Catwomen: When in Rome. The others were going to be the missing elements we couldn't get to in the whole movie of Long Halloween Parts 1 and 2. It was the bits that we weren't able to put in relevant to one of the rogues gallery and also her [Catwoman]. Again, because we ended up delaying the release of these and we were already onto two other movies we didn't have the time to then go back and produce those [shorts].
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Tim Sheridan
Posted: July 27, 2021
Quote: That led to the decision to produce a short for April Fools' and for that short to accompany the movie for us to see that Riddler story play out in a different way as a piece that we took out of the story that was produced so you could enjoy it. I wrote a script for it and it ultimately wasn't produced so it's sitting out there.
Batman: Year Three
Source: Batman on Film, 52:11-52:31
Who: Tim Sheridan
Posted: August 16, 2021
Quote: At one point I pitched doing a movie adaptaion of that storyline and for a little while we were--for a little while that was on the books, I think. I don't think they'll ever do it but at one point it was entertained.
Injustice
Source: Comic Book Movie
Who: Rick Morales
Posted: October 12, 2021
Quote: We have the whole thing with the magic heroes and that side of the universe that I thought would have been fun to play with, but we packed so much in. Bless Ernie for the work he did on this. I can't speak highly enough about the work he did here, but to be able to distill five years worth of stories into a feature-length film I think works really well is a big task and he did a fantastic job with it.
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Matt Peters
Posted: October 25, 2021
Quote: We actually had a sequence with Wonder Woman and Ares, the God of War, which is in the comic. Ernie did a great job of taking that little moment and adapting it. We even had some of that [storyboarded] out and it looked fantastic but, once we got into [it], we were focusing on the other parts of the story that we really wanted to embellish. That part felt like it was weighed down and didn't really pay off the way that we were hoping for in the larger narrative. That scene is gone but you can still read it in the comic like a deleted scene, almost!
Catwoman: Hunted
Source: Geek To Me Radio, 8:53-9:06
Who: Greg Weisman
Posted: February 7, 2022
Quote: I went in and pitched them an idea for a Catwoman movie that they liked and then didn't like and then I pitched them a second idea for a Catwoman movie and they liked that one so we made it.
Source: Starburst Magazine
Who: Greg Weisman
Posted: February 3, 2022
Quote: I have very specific ideas. I don't know that this trilogy is going to happen, it's all very blue-sky thinking. We'll see how this movie does, and if it does well then that's a discussion we can have. I have a plan for two more films and I'd love to make them, but we're not there yet.
Source: DC Universe Infinite Community, Young Justice: Targets Q&A
Who: Greg Weisman
Posted: June 15, 2022
Quote: I have no idea, but I hope so. It was designed to be the first story in a trilogy of tales. We'll just have to wait and see...
Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse
Source: Brianne Drouhard Tweet
Source: Brianne Drouhard Tweet
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Posted: May 28, 2022
Quote: an ending that wasn't used.
Summary: An unused ending entailed the Teen Titans watching Battleship Bake Off when the Kryptonian crystal crashes through the glass into their living room. Beast Boy eats Cythonna's crystal then falls into a daze. Cyborg grabs it out of him then eats it and falls into a daze. Beast Boy takes it back and goes into a daze. It repeats. The camera POV pans to an amused Raven.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Traveling Heroes
Source: Comics Beat
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: According to producer Butch Lukic, he and producer Jim Krieg pitched the project approximately 4-5 years ago. While things inevitability changed from the initial pitch, John Stewart was always intended to be the focus as opposed to Hal Jordan. An early concept of the project took cues from the "Hard-Traveling Heroes" storyline as part of the acclaimed Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic run from writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams which saw Hal Jordan traveling the country with Green Arrow to face various social and political issues. The filmmakers ended up scrapping this idea with John Stewart as a "more of a street level vigilante rallying against the wrongs of landlords in the ghetto," believing that Green Lantern thrives better in an outer space setting. However, they tried to retain some of the spirit of "Hard Traveling Heroes" in the film and the inclusion of Green Arrow as a supporting character.
Green Lantern: Beware My Power
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Posted: June 30, 2022
Quote: If I had to say something, the script was probably a little long, and there were some conversations between John and Shayera that had to be trimmed because it had to be made producible. It's still 85 minutes and went over; usually (these animated movies) are 72. The relationship is still there and strong, and it's good.
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 22, 2022
Quote: Originally we were going to do a movie where Green Lantern and Green Arrow travel the country, like Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' story but doing a space story was more fun, and fun to design.
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 22, 2022
Quote: We were over budget and had to condense some scenes. We also had a scene where Hal Jordan, who had been killed, had now disappeared. We left that out and decided to let the audiences decide what happened.
Source: Comics Beat
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: Originally the film began with a sequence of Hal Jordan in space and the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance.
Source: Comics Beat
Who: Jeff Wamester
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: We realized it was not working and it was turning it into a Hal Jordan movie. It was a big change to make at the last minute because you have all these other things that have to change in order to bring it back. This has to be about John so we made it into a flashback.
Source: Hall of Justice Episode 296, 25:57-26:19
Who: Ernie Altbacker
Posted: August 4, 2022
Quote: The last draft John Semper and I handed in had him possibly dead but then a Zeta Beam swooped him up so didn't know and then when I saw the movie I'm like, "Oh, my God, they kept him dead." I wonder how this is gonna go down.
DC League of Super-Pets
Source: Comic Book
Who: Jared Stern
Posted: July 29, 2022
Quote: It's very tricky to animate an octopus. And ultimately you're always having to make choices throughout production and so that was one that we couldn't quite make work with everything else. We love the original Legion of Super Pets like Comet and Beppo but they're Superman-centric. And we wanted to get into potential pets for the whole Justice League. And our origin story delves into rescue pets who need a home so we leaned into DC animals who'd make sense at a Metropolis shelter (sorry, Jumpa!) and just maybe match up with our Justice League.
Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons
Source: Twitter Spaces Watch Party, 12:06-12:24
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: I think originally when we first scripted this, I think I was going into the Shane Black mindset and I kept thinking 'Oh, this should take place during Christmas. This should take place during Christmas.' But Rick and I were already doing a movie that was taking place during Christmas so we opted for the birthday.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 18:23-19:27
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: But what had happened was I originally wrote or what my design for the movie was it was going to be, that it was this really Iron Giant rated G not particularly scary film. I wanted it to be something that was all across the board that anybody could watch and have a good time during it. And then what happened was I got a call-we got a call from home video and it basically what happened, they told us it had to be PG-13. And I'll be really honest. I was not happy about it. And I kinda kicked and 'Augh! I don't want it to be PG-13! I want it to be this thing. I want it to be this thing.' And Jim Krieg, who is not just a friend but a mentor, he basically looked at me and said, "Jeremy, we just have to do a 80s PG movie" and it all clicked.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 22:20-22:32
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: Actually right here we were originally going to do the scene from the Tomasi book where he kills the cat and no one seemed to be up for it except me because I don't like cats.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 35:20-35:27
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: I think the original first draft, we had a little too much talking about it but it was 'Oh, there was a passcode you're supposed to say. Batman has a passcode you're supposed to say when you call up to the Watchtower.'
Source: Twitter Spaces, 47:44-48:01
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: We had to cut some of it for time. Which is that you know "bend with your knees." He's lifting this giant key from the classic Superman, how he opens the door. I think I originally had him try it a couple times and he didn't make it.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 1:05:43-1:05:49
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: This was actually a bit more prolonged. We had to have a fight between the parents and the kids.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 1:07:50-1:07:59
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: I think I had more after this battle. I think in the original script, I had more cat-and-mouse with the hive mind and the boys.
Source: Twitter Spaces, 1:16:37-1:16:50
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: January 17, 2023
Quote: And it's funny, this is exactly where I wanted to end the movie and they were like 'no, no, man.' Rick and Jim were like 'we to have a scene where they're all beating up the monster together.'
Batman Beyond Movie Commissioned by Walter Hamada
Source: The Hot Mic
Who: Jeff Sneider
Posted: March 2, 2023
Quote: The following project was commissioned by Walter Hamada. It was, as far as I know, never reported. As of this minute, the project is in development at DC now. These guys could get called in next week or whatever. This is the project that I've heard has never been reported, and there are multiple drafts of it. Daniel Casey, the writer of Fast 9, wrote a Batman Beyond movie, but the catch wasn't that it was live action, because that was what Christina Hodson was -- animated Batman Beyond, to be DC's answer to Into the Spider-Verse.
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
Source: The Aspiring Kryptonian 8:41-9:09
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: March 24, 2023
Quote: I wish it could be much longer even though I'm sure it would make it even more dragged out because I feel like tension and sound design, right? But because this would be think like 88 minutes. Is that what they said? It was almost 15 minutes removed -- it was almost 100 minutes when were were at our sort of first cut and even our first cut, we had already cut a lot.
Source: Comic Book Resources
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: March 24, 2023
Quote: We had to basically truncate it and nix some of the open spaces where tension and sound design can take over. I think it's the longest movie that we've put out, but it was 100 minutes before it got cut down to 90. They told me I had to basically cut 10 minutes out of it. Even up to that point, we had already cut a lot and things that were drawn out aren't there anymore. I think those things are integral to horror, so I really lament not being able to do that.
Source: Audio Commentary, 18:59-19:12
Who: Sam Liu
Quote: There's a song later unfortunately--so dense--no, we used part of it but it went on so much longer. He sang the whole song.
Summary: Christopher Gorham sang the entirety of "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" but only part of the performance was used.
Source: Audio Commentary, 53:50-53:54
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: March 24, 2023
Quote: We had to cut this because it was stepping on pace.
Summary: Oliver Queen's recap was cut for pacing.
Source: Sam Liu Tweet
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: March 28, 2023
Quote: There was a whole dialog from Barbara about what bats represent in different cultures. In some they are guardians. We had to cut that down because too many concepts and rabbit holes.
Source: Sam Liu Tweet
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: March 28, 2023
Quote: There was another scene when Bruce started hearing the voice more and more from the grotto. It was stylistic and took up too much screen time.
Source: The Annihilator Twitter Spaces with Sam Liu, 48:46-49:00
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: August 5, 2023
Quote: There was a whole flashback seqence with Oliver. But I think for pacing when he talks to his dad. His dad is this homeless person, he's a drunk and that kind of suff then he stabs his dad, that looked horrible so we just ended up cutting it.
Source: The Annihilator Twitter Spaces with Sam Liu, 49:19-49:57
Who: Sam Liu
Posted: August 5, 2023
Quote: There was also a sequence also of when Bruce is in the Batcave reading the books with Alfred and he tells Alfred to get the Phosphorus--the concotion that melts Croc. There's a moment where he's by himself and he starts hearing whispers in the cave so we had these shots. These kind of horror truck-ins on him as he's hallucinating, hearing stuff then Alfred comes in and he snaps out of it kind of thing.
Almost Got Al Pacino in a Lukic DTV
Source: Rama's Screen, 13:35-13:39
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 21, 2023
Quote: Well, I could get Al Pachino now. We almost did, but, in a past one.
Justice League: Warworld
Source: Bionic Buzz, 3:49-4:06
Who: Jim Krieg
Posted: July 23, 2023
Quote: I had--I wanted to do a Green Lantern John Stewart section as well but this movie was so packed that it came down to well we have to do the Trinity and we haven't done a movie with just the three of them so unfortunately...
Source: Down and Nerdy, 1:10-1:33
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: Well, originally we pitched it that we were going to have them, Superman and Batman, and it was going to be called World's Finest and it was going to be based more on their adventures in those comics they did together. But as we went along with our earlier storyline, we realized 'Ok we need this, this, and this. And we do need Warworld in our story.'
Source: Down and Nerdy, 2:19-2:32
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: Uh, no, that was just our working title. Because we pitched this five years earlier so once we got to here, we realized it's going to be Warworld so Warner changed the title to Warworld.
Source: Screen Rant, 7:49
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: Jim wanted the Silver (Shining) Knight.
Source: Screen Rant, 7:53-54
Who: Jim Krieg
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: I didn't get the Viking Prince.
Source: Screen Rant, 8:54-9:11
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: There were a lot of Western characters we talked about. Tomahawk. Pow-Wow Smith. El Dialblo. They were go-to's in DC in the 70s but we couldn't pack them all in.
Kingdom Come
Source: Screen Rant, 12:32-13:01
Who: Butch Lukic
Posted: July 25, 2023
Quote: We originally were. We talked about Kingdom Come as an afterwards after this but the change in regimes, we couldn't go forward with it. They might incorporate it in the future with the new world but that was one we talked about as a obvious possibility to continue not this continuity but something more Justice League and larger.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC
Source: Comic Book
Who: Jeremy Adams
Posted: October 11, 2023
Quote: I would lower your expectations. I don't know if they have any plans to do more. I do know that we pitched that a while ago, but it was kind of rebuffed.
Merry Little Batman
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Who: Mike Roth
Posted: November 10, 2023
Quote: Typically, Damian is a teenager who struggles with good and evil. While this was an interesting idea that was initially explored, we landed on a younger Damian. We decided to turn the clock back on Damian's petulant nature to a time when he was more innocent and wide-eyed.
Source: Animation Scoop
Who: Morgan Evans
Posted: December 7, 2023
Quote: Originally we were going back and forth. For a while it was maybe a little Bruce. We were thinking, "What would be the most interesting thing to see? What would the fans love? And what kind of movie would I have loved to see at that age?" I was a kid who wore a Batman cape and cowboy boots for like eight years. Way too long, honestly. And we eventually landed on Damian who's such a rich character with deep lore. I'm such a fan of the Neal Adams books. As soon as it clicked that it was gonna be Damian, a lot of things fell into place. He's such a great character, and it was so fun to tell a new origin story of Damian, in a way.
Source: The Breakroom, 21:16-21:22
Who: Morgan Evans
Posted: December 8, 2023
Quote: It was going to be a Sgt. Rock action figure for a while. There was a teddy bear thrown out there for a while.
Summary: Before it was a utility belt, Bruce's gift was a Sgt. Rock action figure then a teddy bear was suggested.
Source: The Breakroom, 31:00-31:12
Who: Morgan Evans
Posted: December 8, 2023
Quote: Originally, there was a joke that made Damian too mean. Where he goes--he's helping Alfred out the door and goes, "I think your--Let me turn up the hearing aid for you" and he turns it all the way down.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Two
Source: Hall of Justice Podcast 379, 19:37-19:54
Who: Jim Krieg
Posted: April 25, 2024
Quote: I'll tell ya I wanted to put in more Robins that hat. The adult Robin who didn't become Nightwing has two atrocious costumes. And Butch hates them so much he didn't want either in there.
DC Nation
Dr. Fate
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: October 8, 2015
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: Dr. Fate shorts planned early on but the studio they wanted to make them wasn't interested.
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: October 8, 2015
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: The studio that passed on the Dr. Fate shorts was a Scandinavian video game company that had released a distinctive side scroller at the time
Starro the Conqueror
Link: Newsarama
Posted: March 17, 2012
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: was pitched for 'Season 2' of DC Nation
Funky Flashman
Link: Lynell Forestall Twitter
Posted: March 5, 2014
Who: Lynell Forestall
Summary: had an idea for
Dolphin
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: July 21, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: tried to pitch a Dolphin short. She would only speak in dolphin noises and was a lead pop singer in Atlantis
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 16, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Zatanna
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: rejected pitches
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: Zatanna short involved Zatanna was going to put on a magic circus benefiting orphans. Almost everyone in the DC universe shows up because of the orphans
Bumblebee
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: rejected pitches
Link: Cancelled Too Soon Episode 74
Posted: November 23, 2017
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: Revolved around how bees went missing. She shrinks and investigates. She finds a bee hive operated like a spa where Poison Ivy enslaved bees to cater to plants. It would have been 1 or 2 shorts.
Power Girl and Stinky
Link: Creative Block #98, 1:17:00
Link: Brianne Drouhard Tweet
Posted: December 12, 2022
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Quote: I could not really get the one with (Power Girl) to work. I really wanted to do one about her and her cat.
Big Barda
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: August 19, 2015
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: rejected pitches
Superman
Link: Comic Book Resources
Posted: August 22, 2016
Who: Genndy Tartakovsky, Justin Thomas, Scott Wills
Summary: Genndy Tartakovsky, production designer Justin Thomas, and background designer Scott Wills were working on a Superman short for DC Nation but it was pulled while they were starting work on it. Wills releases two pieces of concept art from the cancelled short
Link: Gendy Tartakovsky instagram
Posted: November 25, 2020
Who: Genndy Tartakovsky
Summary: Genndy Tartakovsky releases two pieces of Superman concept art.
Thunder and Lightning
Link: Big Pull Podcast ep 60
Who: Lynell Forestall
Summary: If there was a third short, their mother would have appeared. She would have no powers and still married to Black Lightning as opposed to being divorced in the comics. Forestall would have went with the idea she went back to work while he would be stay at home dad to watch over their daughters and their powers
Super Best Friends Forever
Link: Lauren Faust Twitter
Posted: August 13, 2015
Who: Lauren Faust
Summary: 2012 series development art of Batgirl, Robin, Batman, Supergirl, Superman, Wonder Girl, and Wonder Woman.
Link: Lauren Faust Twitter
Posted: August 13, 2015
Who: Lauren Faust
Summary: Summary: Harley design
Link: Lauren Faust Twitter
Posted: August 13, 2015
Who: Lauren Faust
Summary: was going to frame Harley like Screwy Squirrel or early Daffy Duck. She was to face Wonder Girl in a battle of strategy vs. chaos
Doom Patrol
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: July 21, 2014
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: remaining 4 Doom Patrols got shelved as a result of the year 2 mandate to make room for new shorts series.
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: July 20, 2014
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: Seven were written and recorded but only three were finished
New Teen Titans
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: August 2, 2013
Who: Ben Jones, Brianne Drouhard, Kirk Van Wormer
Summary: Drouhard designed a lot of the costumes based on Jones' idea. The short was boarded by Kirk Van Wormer, who also boarded another unaired short "Titans in 3D"
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: March 13, 2014
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: Brianne Drouhard posts her first pass rough designs for Halloween costumes in an unaired New Teen Titans short.
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: March 13, 2014
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: Robin, Cyborg, and Silkie's costumes in the unaired New Teen Titans Halloween short were Ben Jones' idea while the rest were David Slack's.
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: June 24, 2014
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: unused Pantha design
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: June 24, 2014
Who: Brianne Drouhard
Summary: Brianne Drouhard wanted to pitch a DC short with Supergirl, Batgirl, Pantha, Starfire, and Raven chasing villains thru town, ending in a karaoke battle
Link: Brianne Drouhard Twitter
Posted: June 24, 2014
Summary: Brianne Drouhard's pitch was going to start with the villains teasing Wildebeast, and Pantha called in whoever was near by for help.
Link: Ben Jones Twitter
Posted: August 7, 2014
Who: Ben Jones
Summary: Ben Jones reveals the two unaired New Teen Titans shorts titles. Episode 8 was "Titans 3-D" and Episode 18 was "It's the Great Pumpkin, Garfield Logan"
Batman 75
Link: AnimeSuperhero Forum post
Posted: August 26, 2020
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Is it public knowledge that Peter Girardi and I were planning to do a third 'Batman 75th' short, and that it was actually going to be set in the 'BATMANIME' world? It was originally supposed to be a trilogy — my retro b/w short (the past), then Darwyn's BATMAN BEYOND short (near future) and then BATMANIME (far, FAR future). But we ran out of time and bandwidth. Alas..."
Summary: Orignally, Bruce Timm and Peter Girardi planned to do a trilogy of shorts for Batman 75 with Hugo Strange as the recurring villain in all of them. Batman: Strange Days was "past," Batman Beyond was "future," and Batanime would have been the far, far future. Batanime was cut because it would have been difficult to do without a full-time crew so Timm convinced Girardi they should just focus on Strange Days and Batman Beyond.
Link: AnimeSuperhero Forum post
Posted: August 26, 2020
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "Did I ever publicly mention that Hugo Strange was going to be the recurring villain in all 3 shorts? Unfortunately, I don't remember what Strange's deal in the BATMAN BEYOND short was originally going to be. It was all pretty vague — it's possible we didn't have ANY firm idea what the main storyline was going to be before we brought Darwyn on board to write, storyboard and direct it."
Quote: "For the BATMANIME short, the idea was that Strange had become some kind of Cyber-god, kinda like Thanos after he'd absorbed the Cosmic Cube in Jim Starlin's early Captain Marvel run, and visualized as an enormous "solarized" face in the heavens like Rama Kushna in the JLU episode "Dead Reckoning". Don't think we ever got much further than that thumbnail idea."
Quote: "But then I got swamped boarding and art-directing the b/w short, realized the BATMANIME was going to a bear to do without a full-time dedicated crew, and as Darwyn and I started hashing out the BBEYOND storyline, we felt that it would work just fine without forcing Hugo Strange into it, and at that point I talked Peter Girardi into just focusing our energies on the first two shirts and abandoning the third (it wasn't hard). We've talked about doing the BATMANIME thing a few times since then, possibly as a Showcase short, but the stars never seem to align."
Link: AnimeSuperhero Forum post
Posted: August 27, 2020
Who: Bruce Timm
Quote: "'Strange Days' was meant to be an umbrella title for the entire trilogy (makes sense now, right?). I NEVER would have picked a 1969 Doors reference for such a retro-looking short, would have called it something that leaned more more 'Pulp / Serial Chapter' like 'Night of the Monster' or somesuch. You'll notice that it doesn't actually HAVE an on-screen title. But somehow 'Strange Days' got attached to it as a working title and stuck. Shrug."
Quote: "Y'know, now that you mention it, I think the original idea WAS that Strange's voice was going to start coming out of the TNBA Robot's mouth during the fight — 'We meet again, old foe, bwahahahaha', etc. He was still alive, just old and kinda decrepit like Bruce, controlling the robot from a remote location like J.J.J. and one of the Spider Slayers. But as I said, once we realized that there wasn't going to be a third chapter where the character ascended to Digital Godhood, it felt weird and almost anti-climactic to have him in the second short."
Quote: "So that stream-lined the story a lot, but left us without a punchy ending. Darwyn had been excited about the idea of Classic Batman fighting Terry Batman the minute we pitched it to him, so he and I started riffing off of that. I came up with the twist of all the Alternate Batmans showing up at the end (honestly, I nicked it from Warren Ellis and John Cassaday) and Darwyn instantly said 'Hell yeah, baby, we are TOTALLY doing that'. I accidentally plagiarized my own work by suggesting Terry and Bruce's last exchange, but I said it out loud only as a placeholder, as words to that effect. Darwyn said 'Why don’t we just use that?' and I said because it's a direct quote from one of our JUSTICE LEAGUE episodes and he said 'i don’t give a s***, it's f****** badass coming from Old Bruce, we should just use it' and so we did. He added that great touch of Bruce buckling on the robot's utility belt like an aged gunslinger strapping on his six-guns."
Summary: "Strange Days" was originally the umbrella title for the trilogy of shorts. Somehow it was attached to the one set in the past. The original idea for the Batman Beyond short was Hugo Strange's voice was going to come out of the mouth Batman robot based on the The New Batman Adventures design during the fight. Strange was old and kinda decrepit like Bruce and was controlling the robot from a remote location similar to the Spider Slayers in Marvel Comics. The alternate Batmen was swiped from Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary/Batman one shot. Timm accidentally plagiarized a line from Justice League with Terry and Bruce's final exchange in the short. Cooke added in the bit of Bruce strapping on the robot's utility belt like an aged gunslinger.
Bat-Hombre
Link: Jorge Gutierrez Tweet
Posted: July 2, 2015
Who: Jorge Gutierrez
Summary: Designs for Bat-Hombre, his Robin called Ruben, and Catchica.
Link: Creative Block #84, 1:33:45-1:35:35
Posted: August 8, 2022
Who: Marly Halpern-Graser
Quote: Oh, funny you should ask, yes, me and Jorge Gutierrez came up with a pitch togehter that was not greenlit. It was going to be called Bat-Hombre. It was based on a real DC character that already existed named Bat-Hombre, who even before Jorge got a hold of him, what Bat-Hombre was was a man in Mexico who takes on the role of Batman and he is Batman with a sombrero and a mustache. This was already the character. He's just from one issue and he turns out to actually be a villain. It's not a good story but he exists on a cover. And Jorge did a version of Bat-Hombre which was a Batman with a sombrero and mustache but in Jorge's style and it was gonna be, it was during this era when in the comic books they were doing this thing called Batman Incorporated where Bruce Wayne was going around the world and basically using his money to fund Batman in other countries and we sort of took that idea and were like Oh, so he-it was the idea was that he was like a guy in Mexico City who sees Bruce Wayne getting mugged and doesn't know he's Batman so he like rushes over to save him and then Bruce Wayne's like "Hey, you're alright. You wanna be Batman and he's the Bat-Hombre of Mexico City and at the time Warner Brothers and probably now honestly, was taking Batman very seriously and they didn't want to do a Super-even though DC-I did some really goofy stuff in DC Nation, they didn't want us to do a really goofy Batman cartoon and really then what happened is Jorge left to go make his movies.
Etrigan
Link: Creative Block #84, 1:35:48-1:36:41
Posted: August 8, 2022
Who: Marly Halpern-Graser
Quote: The other one is me and Will Patrick who did Animal Man shorts together and the Tales from Metropolis shorts together. When we pitched the Superman Tales from Metropolis ones, we also pitched a series of Etrigan the Demon shorts because Etrigan the Demon's deal is that he has to rhyme to use his powers. He's a human man who turns into a demon by saying I think the rhyme is "Gone the form of man and rise the Demon Etrigan." And so we had the idea that he couldn't cast any spells or do any powers unless he could make it rhyme and the whole joke was him having trouble coming up with poems. Etrigan losing the fight because he can't figure out what to rhyme with "fireball." So they didn't go with that one, we did the Superman ones instead.
Present Tense
Link: Ben Jones Tweet
Posted: September 4, 2023
Who: Ben Jones
Quote: Here's my favourite New Gods story in its entirety, written/drawn/lettered by @tytempleton. I tried to get this adapted as a short for DC Nation but some Grinch at Cartoon Network or DC (can't remember which) said no.
