History Main / PermanentPlaceholder

* In 1993, a small DIY company were planning an advertising campaign for their products and, until they came up with a slogan, chose the phrase "It does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin" as a phrase of about the same size so that posters and packaging could be designed and easily edited before production as soon as they came up with a proper slogan. They never did come up with a slogan they liked and since the campaign turned Advertising/{{Ronseal}} into a market leader (and a TropeNamer) they probably never will.

* In 1993, a small DIY company were planning an advertising campaign for their products and, until they came up with a slogan, chose the phrase "It does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin" as a phrase of about the same size so that posters and packaging could be designed and easily edited before production as soon as they came up with a proper slogan. They never did come up with a slogan they liked and since the campaign turned Ronseal into a market leader (and a TropeNamer) they probably never will.

** Originally, some of the lyrics to the song "Gaston" were just dummy lyrics -- that is, placeholder lyrics designed to match the melody while the writers came up with something better (handily explaining why [[ListSong most of the song]] is just "No one (verbs) like Gaston!"). However, the dummy lyrics were very popular with the production staff due to [[AwesomeEgo perfectly characterizing Gaston]], and thus, were kept in the final version.
** The melody to "Be Our Guest" was originally intended as a rough ditty that Alan Menken played to give lyricist Howard Ashman a general idea to the style of the song. When the time came to actually put music to the lyrics, Alan Menken soon realized that the ditty he played worked with what Howard had written.

** Per WordOfGod, The Music/SmashMouth song "All Star" at the beginning was only used as a test track to get the timing of the opening scene down and was intended to be replaced with an original piece composed for the finished picture, however, the temporary song ended up working so well that it was left in the final piece. (It helps that the lyrics completely match the tone of the scene.) They later got Smash Mouth to record a cover of "I'm a Believer" specifically for the movie's ending, as a nice form of {{bookends}}.

* In the first Franchise/DisneyFairies film, ''Tinker Bell'', Creator/RobPaulsen and Creator/JeffBennett were hired to do scratch work for Bobble and Clank with the understanding that they'd be replaced with Hollywood celebrities. At one point during production, Paulsen overheard crew members talking about the difficulties they were having with Bobble's "official" actor (who lived in the UK and had a thick Scottish accent the crew couldn't understand). Paulsen innocently reminded them that it would be cheaper, easier, and probably produce a better vocal performance if they just kept him. He and Bennett were officially cast in the roles shortly thereafter.

* President Whitmore's RousingSpeech in ''Film/IndependenceDay'' was written as a placeholder speech, with writers Dean Devlin and Creator/RolandEmmerich planning to write the "proper" speech later on. They never did, and Devlin later heard actor Creator/BillPullman rehearsing the "draft" speech. Horrified, he remembered he had not written a "proper" speech - until he saw the reactions to Pullman's performance. Cast and crew were cheering and applauding. The "draft" speech was left in the movie, almost word for word, and became one of the movie's trademark scenes.

* During prep work for ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' co-producer Rick Porras offered his wedding band as a stand-in for the One Ring during an improv acting session. After some discussion the wedding band's shape was used as the template for the final prop ring.

* In ''Film/RomancingTheStone'', director Creator/RobertZemeckis hired Music/AlanSilvestri to write a temporary score so they could begin filming to ''something''. Zemeckis liked the resulting product, and decided to let Silvestri complete the film's score.

* ''Film/SnakesOnAPlane'' was going to be renamed ''Pacific Air Flight 121'' for its release, but then its B-movie working title attracted a flurry of attention on the internet, and Samuel L. Jackson insisted that he'd only signed on to the film ''because'' of its ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin title. With all that in mind, the producers decided that the best option was to just keep the working title.

* ''Film/ProjectX'' was originally a working title, but the positive response online led them to keep the title.

* The WorkingTitle for the original Platform/{{Xbox}} was the "UsefulNotes/DirectX Box". After struggling to come up with a more marketable name, Microsoft figured out that simply dropping the "Direct" part worked just fine.

* Much of Music/FaithNoMore's ''We Care a Lot'' was written music-first, with vocalist Chuck Mosley writing lyrics and vocal melodies later. One such song was given the WorkingTitle "Mark Bowen" as a sort of LineOfSightName: Mark Bowen was a friend of the band who had played guitar with them at some early shows, and they named the song after him just because he happened to be around when they were working on it. "Mark Bowen" became the permanent title because Mosley opted to mention him by name in the lyrics.

* {{Music/Melvins}}' Buzz Osborne used {{scatting}} vocals while writing "Hooch", intending to replace them with real words later - when he played the song to Music/KurtCobain, Kurt suggested that he not only keep the nonsense words, but that they should be transcribed and printed in the CD booklet. The scatting stayed, and "Hooch" was the ''only'' song to have its lyrics printed in the packaging of the album 'Houdini''.

* ''Series/WKRPInCincinnati'': The scat closing credits song was going to have lyrics, they just hadn't been written yet, but the producers heard the demo version and liked it just like that. (In part because they knew that it would never be intelligible, as the continuity announcer would speak over it every time it aired, so they figured it would be funnier if people discovered that the lyrics they never heard were actually nonsense.)

* A common thing in the ''Franchise/DragonAge'' series, especially in regards to naming things. For instance, the name of the setting, "Thedas", was an acronym ("'''The''' '''D'''ragon '''A'''ge '''S'''etting") used by the devs to refer to the world while they thought of a proper name for it. Fast forward to a few years later, and nobody even considered naming it anything else.

* Music/ToniBraxton owes her career to this trope. She was hired to record "Love Shoulda Brought You Home" as a demo for Music/AnitaBaker for the ''Film/Boomerang1992'' soundtrack, but Baker was pregnant at the time and on hiatus from performing. Instead, she suggested they just use Braxton's version. The song became Braxton's debut single and was a modest hit, and her career took off from there.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'':

* Creator/{{Valve}}'s UsefulNotes/GameEngine[=s=] derive their name from the uninspiring fact that the source code for the Source Engine was stored in a directory named "Src". The engine was still under active development when ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' was approaching its release date, and the release-ready fork of the code was assigned a directory named "[=GoldSrc=]"; it therefore became necessary at Valve to draw a distinction between "Source" and "Gold Source". Thus, the original engine became [=GoldSrc=], and the new one for ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' became simply Source.

* Famously, Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" features a verse consisting of 26 repetitions of "I know" before "I oughtta leave the young thing alone"; this was originally a placeholder for lyrics to be written later, but the other musicians he was recording with insisted it be kept in. (Given that these musicians included such 60s luminaries as Stephen Stills and Graham Nash of Music/CrosbyStillsAndNash, and Booker T and two of the three [=MGs=], Withers wisely decided to follow their advice.)