What Could Have Been / Bully

• The game's graphic style was drastically different during development. Originally, the style was very cartoon-like and was heavily exaggerated. This is shown in the early designs for the Nerds (all of whom were stereotypical Gonks), the Greasers (with Peanut having an exaggerated pompadour and the beta Johnny obviously being inspired by Elvis Presley), Zoe (who originally had a skinbyrd hairstyle and a much skimpier outfit), and other minor characters (the school's nurse barely looked human).
• The Townies went through various changes. They were introduced as a punk-inspired clique early on, before being named the Dropouts, and ended up as the Townies. Three known members were Russell (who is still listed as the Dropouts leader in the game files), Zoe, and Sid. While Russell and Zoe were later developed into their own characters, Sid was scrapped entirely.
• The Non-Clique Students as whole originally wore blue vests. Furthermore the Bullies were originally designed as just non-cliques who picked on other non-cliques, with the Punks occupying the bottom ranking hostile clique that the Bullies later became. The outfit color was most likely changed to make the game less confusing for a new player. Having students in the same group pick on each other was difficult to program, so the Bullies were split off into their own clique and most of the Punks became the Dropouts.
• Bullworth Academy's uniform color was originally maroon rather than blue. In addition, almost all of the students in the beta wore the blue featured on Jimmy and Pete's uniforms that was eventually changed into green, save for the greasers who retain blue vests from their old model designs.
• There was going to be an actual Grottoes and Gremlins minigame based on Gauntlet that was cut due to time constraints.
• Dr. Crabblesnitch was originally going to have been the Big Bad of the game.
• Gloria was originally one of the girls Jimmy could kiss. While her dialogue still remains in the game, it is Dummied Out, because Gloria is one of the younger kids in the game.
• The ability to bully female characters was removed from the game at some point. Dialogue for humiliating or giving female students swirlies exists, and the 'humiliating' lines can be heard through a glitch in which Jimmy can bully the girls by rapidly switching targets.
• There are unused dialogue for students tattling to prefects. The vast majority of them go unused as only six students in the game (the five little kids and Constantinos) tattle.
• The Boys Dorm had a second floor that would have been where the bathroom and Gary and Pete's room was, alongside a staircase. In addition, many clique members could be seen at once instead of just Bullies, Nerds and non-cliques. Furthermore, both the Prefects and Mr. Burton would act as hall monitors. The mini-map thankfully still exists, alongside a few screenshots of what it would have looked like.
• There is an unused sound effect for the Boys' Dorm (found here from 0:07-0:38) that appears to be a beta recording of the introduction cutscene for Pete, where Jimmy sounds very different and Pete makes a line about Jimmy's room being "in the room downstairs". According to Gerry Rosenthal, Jimmy's voice actor, he was the replacement of the voice actor who did the lines in the unused sound effect.
• Prototype screenshots posted on character artist Jared Fry's blog show, among other things, character models for five of the female characters^note Zoe, Lola, Mandy, Beatrice, and Pinky in nothing but underwear. While most of them aren't noteworthy beyond that, Beatrice's unused model is particularly jarring, with her wearing a small, lacy corset and a red thong. Interestingly enough, character models labeled "UW", presumably for "underwear", still exist in the game; however, these are simply their "pajamas" models in the final version, indicating that the original "underwear" models were overwritten fairly late in development.
• Dummied Out voice clips suggest that Jealous Johnny was supposed to be a very different and much more risqué mission than what we ended up getting. While the mission that made it into the game is a fairly dull, uneventful affair in which Jimmy simply snaps a few photos of Gord and Lola together, the mission as it was originally designed involved tailing the pair all around town, including to a shack on the beach and Gord's house. It also involved a scene at the end where Lola would have stripped down to her underwear, with Gord trying to undo her bra, only for Lola to leave at that moment in the ultimate tease move. Considering that the game was already pushing its "T" rating, most of the mission content was likely scrapped so as not to risk tipping it over to an "M" rating.
• It is possible that the "Bullies Vendetta" track, used for fighting the bullies clique in freeroam, was originally going to be the only fighting theme throughout the game against any other clique. Old test footage showed that it played in a fight against any opponent and the track file's name was simply "Bully Fight," further pointing to this.
• Multiple classes would have been available at once, allowing the player to choose between any of them. In the final game, only one class happens at a time.
• Missions were changed as development went on.
  • The introductory mission would have involved you following Ms. Danvers around and getting used to the place, and she would teach the player about the previously mentioned multiple classes. Trent and Davis had dialogue discussing the Bullies' encounter and ambush on Jimmy in front of the Boys' Dorm later on. You would wait outside the library after she'd enter it for a specific amount of time. Dialogue options, both the insult and greeting actions, would be introduced by asking Christy Martin for directions and choosing either one. Rather than Mr. Hattrick interrupting, Seth Kolbe would enter and introduce the concept of Prefects.
  • "Complete Mayhem" had more voice clips and dialogue between Jimmy and the clique leaders. Their defeated voice clips imply that they were probably going to follow Jimmy around like Russell did and assist in fighting. An alternate way of taking Johnny down was apparently catching him with someone else in the Girls' Dorm and blackmailing him into following you, which also explains why the Greasers specifically target the dorm in the final game. The Prefects would have been fought before entering the school, with Ted Thompson supporting Jimmy.
  • Unused dialogue suggests that "Halloween" was originally very different, wherein the pranks Jimmy had to complete were promoted by Gary instead of random students. These involved getting a rat and throwing it in the girl's dorm, setting off a firework by some jocks, who would chase down Gary, Jimmy, and Pete and ultimately kick Pete in the balls, and then hit Mr. Burton and Dr. Slawter with itching powder while Pete distracted them, with the two teachers mocking Pete for his costume, and then saying they will report him to Crabblesnitch for the prank. After this it would continue to "The Big Prank" mission as in the finished game.
  • Pete would direct Jimmy to go to Clint and collect a supply of paint from him in "Making a Mark", Clint would then (after returning a bicycle stolen by a Greaser, Lefty) point to Jimmy that it is in a secured territory (which would explain his +5 reputation gain from the Townies). This part got cut and, as a result, Jimmy will immediately (or first purchase spraypaint if he doesn't have it) head to the Bullworth City Hall to vandalize it with paint.
  • In the early version of "The Gym is On Fire", after putting out the fire and getting hit by a Townie, Jimmy was supposed to get a bike and chase the said Townie, who turned out to be Gurney, to discover his hideout's whereabout in the idustrial district.
• As seen here Dennis Opel brainstormed ways of improving the fighting and making it "scrappier" befitting the environment in the game. Opel stated that these were never part of a build of the game and were designed on his own work machine which three other developers saw. Opel stated here that his intention was to have this designed into the game, but he gave up after a conversation with another developer without elaborating why he gave up.
• Some very early concept art revealed some ideas that may never have made it further than the drawing board, such as the game taking place over multiple school years with the protagonist changing appearance between years, an alternate female protagonist, a clique of religious kids, and the Mayor of Bullworth as a character.
• As detailed in this article by Blake Hester for Game Informer, work started on a sequel at Rockstar New England in 2008, but the Troubled Productions of Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption, combined with a shift at Rockstar towards making a smaller number of big-budget "blockbuster" games, saw them pulled off the project, and they never got a chance to restart.
  • The game world was to be substantially bigger than that of the first game, with various sources saying it would've been anywhere from three times the size to as big as that of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. What's more, it would have been possible to enter every single building in the game, by hook or by crook, and there also would have been a system allowing the player character to climb most objects in the game. The game world would also have been filled with all manner of little details, with one developer specifically mentioning realistic grass-growing and glass-fragmentation systems (the latter of which showed up in Max Payne 3).
  • It would have had a complex Karma Meter-like system where every character would remember their interactions with the protagonist, good or bad, thus allowing the player character to build relationships with them over time. Elements of this system would later show up in Red Dead Redemption II.
  • A playable build featured a mostly finished map and about 6-8 hours of playable content, including a mission involving go-karts, another involving a beekeeper, and one mission inspired by the "Kamp Krusty" episode of The Simpsons. In terms of tone, the team was heavily inspired by the "kids on bikes" family adventure films of The '80s like The Goonies, as well as edgier teen comedies from that era like Porky's.

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