Trivia / 009 Re:Cyborg

• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Mamoru Oshii was assigned to the project in 2009. In Oshii's first vision of RE: (prior to the Cyborg 009: The Reopening demo short he directed), all the 00 cyborgs except 009, 003, and 001 had passed away in the ensuing years, and 009 was holed up in an apartment in retirement while 003 and 001 had taken to traveling the world. 001 was said to be in the form of a dog, rather than a baby, and 003 had aged to her fifties while 009 remained physically in his teens. Oshii's plot was to also take cues from an unproduced 1985 Lupin III film he had planned out, where a giant "Tower of Babel" would be present in Tokyo, which would house the fossil of an angel. After Kenji Kamiyama had joined the project as screenwriter, the above setting was thrown out and tweaked to 009 living as a high school student with amnesia, while 003 would have to re-awaken his memories. 002 was also depicted as alive in the finalized concept film, although the fates of the others were not mentioned. Oshii stepped down from the full film project, leaving Kamiyama to take over as the director, and to also throw out Oshii's initial setting of 003 being 58 years old in the year 2013.
  • The aforementioned Cyborg 009: The Reopening short is essentially an early take of Re:Cyborg. Presenting scenes like the Roppongi Hills Tower bombing & the bomber pursuit in Dubai but with the designs of 009, 002 and 003 being radically different to the final film. 002 & 003 were also briefly voiced in the short by Karen Strassman and Reuben Langdon, with Strassman performing all her lines in French.
  • Character design wise. 003's hair was originally blonde in early concept art as well as her very first scene in the film where she's using the dive gear but was switched to a light orange color instead. Whilst Jet was gonna have a design closer to his manga appearance with spikier hair as previewed in silhouette form at the end of this Pepsi Nex commercial.