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Blade
- Laurence Fishburne, Denzel Washington and LL Cool J were considered for the part of Eric Brooks before Wesley Snipes was cast. Fishburne would later go on to play Silver Surfer and Bill Foster in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Ant-Man and the Wasp respectively.
- Jet Li was offered the role of Deacon Frost before the casting of Stephen Dorff, but turned it down in order to star in Lethal Weapon 4.
- Bruce Payne, Skeet Ulrich and Mark Wahlberg were considered for Deacon Frost as well before the casting of Dorff.
- Jon Voight and Patrick McGoohan were considered for the part of Abraham Whistler before Kris Kristofferson was cast.
- David Fincher was originally chosen to direct the movie before Stephen Norrington was hired. However, Fincher departed the project due to undisclosed reasons.
- The Prodigy were approached to do the score and soundtrack for the film, but they turned down the offer due to other work commitments
- Michael Morbius was planned to be used as the main antagonist in a eventual sequel, but the idea was dropped out due to the fact the character's rights belong to Spider-Man universe, and their movie license were property of Sony at the time. The vampire at the rooftop in the alternate ending of the movie is Morbius.
- Quinn originally had a much smaller role, but Donal Logue was so funny onset that his character was expanded and he was allowed to ad-lib a good portion of his dialogue.
- The script for the first film revealed that Blade's sword was originally Whistler's, and was handed down from vampire hunter to vampire hunter. It is also implied the original wielder used the sword to kill La Magra.
- The original plan would have had Blade failing to save the world and battling a vampire apocalypse in the sequel. The third film would then be based on I Am Legend.
- When Karen Jensen wakes up at Blade's hideout after her attack and rescue by Blade, the script had her discover a jar with a vampire baby in it. The baby would be alive and used by Blade and Whistler as a guinea pig for testing out weapons to fight vampires. The studio however found the concept to be disturbing and refused to allow it.
- The scene where Karen and Deacon are talking about the cure for vampirism initially ran a bit longer and answered the question of how the vampires would feed if everybody was turned into a vampire. They would keep some humans alive in giant blood bags to harvest them. The bags can still be seen in a doorway during the scene, and later played an integral part of the plot in Blade: Trinity.
- Pearl was originally designed as an androgynous Japanese man.
Blade II
- The film was originally set in Moscow, thus picking up directly from the coda of the first film.
- Michael Jackson was originally going to have a cameo in the "House of Pain" sequence as a "Vampire Pimp" that Nyssa encounters as she searches the upstairs hall. Jackson had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts and the part was played by a Czech actor. The sequence was ultimately cut out entirely for pacing reasons.
- The Bloodpack character Verlaine was originally scripted to be the twin sister of Racquel, the vampire in the first film that was played by Traci Lords, likely as a way to double-dip on the Stunt Casting.
- Reinhardt was originally scripted to be a literal Nazi who speaks entirely in German.
- David S. Goyer's original idea was to use Morbius as a primary villain, but Marvel decided they wanted to retain the rights to make an entirely separate franchise out of Morbius - i.e. a Morbius film, so the story was changed slightly and Jared Nomak was created to be used as the primary villain instead.
- The original script contained a sex scene between Blade and Nyssa.
- Professional wrestler Gangrel, whose vampiric gimmick was inspired by the first Blade film, was considered for a minor role.
- Elena Anaya, Asia Argento, Kristanna Loken and Rhona Mitra were all considered for the role of Nyssa.
- The beginning fight scene was originally going to be a car chase, but was scaled down to a street fight. The original idea was reused in Blade: Trinity.
Blade Trinity
- German director Oliver Hirschbiegel wanted to direct the film instead of David Goyer, but dropped out due to contractual obligations directing Downfall, which he tried to get out of doing in order to work on Trinity. He would later regret trying to do so once Downfall was released to international praise.
- An earlier idea of David S. Goyer was to not only include Hannibal King, but also Rachel Van Helsing from The Tomb of Dracula comics, but then Goyer heard about the Van Helsing movie and decided against it, and created Abigail Whistler in Rachel's place.
- The original plot was going to be set in a post-apocalyptic future, with Blade trying to protect the last remnants of humanity from the vampires who had taken over the planet. Patton Oswalt said the studio passed because they though the plot was too bleak and depressing, while other sources have claimed they thought the idea was too expensive as well.
- Triple H's role was originally intended for fellow WWE superstar Edge, whose gimmick was actually inspired by the first Blade movie.
- The original script contained a sex scene between Blade and Abigail.
- Colin Farrell turned down the role of Hannibal King.
- The novelization features a slightly alternate ending to Blade's fight with Drake; rather than Abigail simply shooting Drake while he's occupied with Blade, she misses her shot with the only plague arrow they had, but then Zoe sneaks up on Drake to stab him in the leg with a silver stake, distracting Drake just long enough for Blade to grab the fallen arrow and stab Drake in the heart with it.
