Daria early character designs from 1995.
Daria
What Could Have Been in this series.- Glenn Eichler was offered, after season five, either a TV movie to wrap up the series or a half-season extension to keep Daria going. He chose the former (MTV at the time had started producing TV movies and Daria's first TV movie was a huge hit for the network), which is a good thing as shortly after Daria ended, MTV killed its animation division and the remaining animation shows on the network all got royally screwed over with them airing at random times and having episodes never air at all, which is why Clone High, 3 Southnote , and the later episodes of Celebrity Deathmatch (not the revival that was on MTV 2, the episodes after Stacy Cornbread died) all ended suddenly or were phased out in favor of other shows.
- When the show began production, there were contingency plans conceived to have cameos by Beavis And Butthead as a Ratings Stunt in case the show did not take off right away. Luckily, the show was a hit from day one and kept this from ever happening.
- Speaking of which, plans to have Daria cameo on the revived Beavis and Butthead were conceived but shelved due to MTV declaring her off-limits to Mike Judge (who gave up all claim to her when the character got her own show). MTV wanted to keep the option open to one day reviving Daria, and Judge wanted to ignore the series. MTV won, and Daria and her series were left untouched. They did reference it in-show at one point; in one music video segment, Beavis thought Daria had killed herself, until Butt-Head tells him she just moved away. Daria later made a cameo (chronologically set before her series) in Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.
- Jane went through a huge number of revisions to her character before the pilot was filmed. She was originally going to be a much angrier Riot Grrrl type (and thus even easier to mistake for a lesbian than the one they wound up with!) rather than the lugubrious, artsy stoner chick we all know and love. Her final character design is actually a younger version of the first draft of Principal Li of all people (which is probably why a lot of people think Jane sort of looks Asian), who incidentally was originally going to be an overly cheerful Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher.
- At one point in time there were plans for a Mystik Spiral spin-off. The script was included as a bonus feature in the DVD.
- There are also the earlier designs: a Fat Ms. Barch, a plainer and pudgy looking Daria wearing a Greenpeace shirt, Brittany
◊ wearing a flip (and not looking as slender as she is in the series), a perkier Principal Li, an ugly Jake and Helen◊, Arnie with glasses, and several designs for Quinn◊. - Jodie Landon's character appears to have been based, in terms of her look, on one of Jane Lane's early designs (note the coincidence of the initials of both names/surnames).
- The unaired pilot depicted Daria, Jane and Kevin as much bigger jerks than they are in the series.
- In the unaired pilot "Sealed With a Kick", Daria was more animated, active, mischievous and saucy than in the series, and Kevin was more swarmy than stupid. Physically, Daria looked a little taller (about the same height as her sister Quinn) with longer legs and had a more pronounced figure. And Kevin was more muscular.
- In the unaired pilot,Quinn admits (to Kevin) rapidly that Daria is her sister, though later adding "Doesn't it suck?". And still, judging by the final scene of the pilot,Quinn doesn't seem to be afraid of physical intimacies with her dates, differently of the canon.
- In the early stages of production, Kevin was considered as a possible love interest to Daria.
- Initially, the production thought about giving Daria a brother.
- Several rumors exist for expanded stories with Mack, including him being the third corner of the Daria-Jane-Tom love triangle following a breakup with Jodie, but none of these came to fruition in part due to the VA issues.
- In 2012, there were talks of a possible revival of the series, but this appears to have been scrapped.
