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Trivia / What If?

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The Blog

  • Missing Episode: Entry #153 was originally answering the question of the longest English word that can be spelled using the letter abbreviations of amino acids, and what would the resulting combinations of acids look like. This was taken down due to allegedly being an unfinished early draft, although the article has never actually been reuploaded since; a query about burying Earth's atmosphere instead takes the old article's place as entry #153. You can see the activity on the Wayback Machine here and here.
  • Referenced by...: Blood Alcohol provides an illustration of "I don't want to draw someone throwing up a gallon of blood, so here's a squirrel instead." This video about Jewish languages gives us "I don't want to talk about the Holocaust, so here's a squirrel instead."
  • Schedule Slip: There have been at least three extended periods (one from April to July 2015, one from September 2015 to January 2016, and one from April to December 2016note ) where Randall has not updated the blog with little explanation, although evidence suggests that the first two periods were connected to book releases (one of which was the What If compilation). There were only four updates in 2017, in January, February and March. In 2018, only one update was released, and the blog has been on Series Hiatus ever since. The series would eventually get a new update almost four years later on May 4, 2022.

The Comic

  • Exiled from Continuity: "And doubt exist as to whether Spider-Man's bout with a certain colorfully clad alien took place in this time continuum or another" (in the comic, we only saw Spider-Man and a fist of someone with blue sleeves)
  • Recycled Script: Three separate comicsnote  have been devoted to the concept of Flash Thompson getting bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker, which always goes poorly for everyone involved. The main difference comes in minor details, such as how each story ends: Flash dies in the first, gets de-powered in the second, and turns himself over to the police after accidentally killing Peter in the third.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Chris Claremont and John Byrne had an idea for an issue where a young Professor X was killed during his battle with Lucifer (which merely crippled him in the mainline universe), leading to the original X-Men instead being formed by Magneto. The team would have consisted of Cyclops, Jean Grey (renamed Psyke rather than Marvel Girl), Iceman, Beast (who would've sported mechanical Wolverine Claws), Angel (renamed Archangel and wielding a flaming sword), Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and essentially served as a modified version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The story would've followed the mutants as they destroyed the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and even Doctor Doom (with Magneto killing Doom by crushing his metal chest plate), eventually conquering the planet. However, the issue would have ended with Galactus arriving and devouring the Earth, as the destruction of the Fantastic Four meant that there was nobody to stop him.
    • In the original ending of The Dark Phoenix Saga, the Shi'ar left Jean without powers. Editor Jim Shooter did not like it, because that would be too soft for someone who had just killed an entire solar system; and the ending was rewritten to be Jean's death. The original ending was eventually published in Phoenix: The Untold Story. One of the What If stories takes this original ending as a premise, and builds from there.
    • "All Possible Worlds'' incorrectly portrays Ghost Rider as being Johnny Blaze instead of Danny Ketch, even though the latter was Ghost Rider during the New Fantastic Four arc. Mike Wieringo was going to correct it when he redrew the pages, but he Died During Production before he could. The other artists decided not to change it, in honour of Mike.


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