What Could Have Been / Dream SMP

For various reasons, due in part to the nature of the roleplay, events on the SMP often do not go as planned, or would have been entirely different due to chance events and unexpected intervention, both in the roleplay and in real life.

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Main series

• In general, it is sometimes speculated that the events of the server's history would have been drastically different if Dream hadn't whitelisted Wilbur Soot onto the SMP.
• With the end of Season 1, a few Word of God entries become this.
  • Philza stating his character would be Killed Off for Real and the ghost counterpart of his character doesn't happen, as c!Philza manages to survive the events of the SMP and escape the nuking of the server by travelling to The End. While it isn't outright stated, Technoblade's passing may have something to do with this.
  • In late September 2021, Karl confirmed (in a now-deleted tweet) the c!Karlnapity wedding would still be a thing in spite of everything that happened between the three characters. With two of the characters' last interaction with each other ending on a very sour note and Quackity moving on to the QSMP, it's safe to say we won't see this happen anytime soon.

Season 1

• There were two scripts for each path the L'Manburg Election could have gone in. If POG2020 had won the Election, Wilbur would have become President, and his first action would have been to imprison Schlatt for voter fraud. Quackity would try and join L'Manburg formally, and Wilbur and Tommy would have forced him to build a second layer to the wall, which Schlatt would have convinced Quackity to leave a fault in to be exploited later. A festival would be held to celebrate Wilbur's inauguration, during which the Dream Team and/or other parties would attack L'Manburg, sparking a second war. Both the attackers and the citizens of L'Manburg would demand Wilbur step down for failing to keep the peace. Wilbur, in a heartfelt moment, would step down and make Tommy the new President of L'Manburg.
• The original plan for Jack Manifold's character was for him to be a Double Agent spying on L'Manburg for the Greater Dream SMP, with his true allegiance being ambiguous. Apart from his first day on the server, where Dream paid him off to destroy Tommy's items, this never had a chance to go anywhere, mainly due to Jack's two-month hiatus from streaming to focus on university and his mental health.
• The skin artist Frorgi (aka Cloey) made multiple alternate skins for the Pogtopia arc, with Wilbur and Niki most notably using her designs. In addition to them, she also made skins for Tommy and Techno, and had planned on doing so for anyone joining the faction. Unfortunately, the latter two skins went unused throughout the arc (though SAD-ist likely took notes from Cloey for her animatic "The Fall" for Tommy's design as well as Wilbur's), and Cloey decided to take a break in late September so that she could avoid burnout and prepare to make Halloween team skins for MCC. It would certainly have been interesting to see characters like Tommy and Techno, and to a larger extent, later Pogtopians like Quackity having a different character design.
• One of the most iconic moments of the SMP, Techno's execution of Tubbo using a fireworks launcher, wasn't supposed to end with Schlatt and Quackity also dying in the crossfire, let alone the rampage Techno went on right after it. This is because in the original plan, Techno wasn't supposed to use Fatal Fireworks to perform the execution, and only Tubbo was meant to die. It makes one wonder what would have happened if things had gone to plan.
• Schlatt's second canon death the day after the Festival wasn't in the original script either, since Schlatt and Quackity planned it out in private. This has led to several debates to whether the death counts as canonical, just because it wasn't part of Wilbur's plans, with the same going for the Festival death. Currently, common consensus goes that Schlatt's two deaths from these incidences are both canon, while Quackity is confirmed by Word of God to have survived the Manburg Festival with all his lives intact.

Season 2

• According to Philza, Techno originally intended for him and Phil were intended to grow closer only for Phil to betray him. However, Techno changed it after Phil said it would make him sad, and they instead decided to take their relationship in a Us Against the World direction.
• The choice to Exile Tommy from L'Manburg in Season 2 was ultimately decided via a poll on Twitter by the audience, and that option won by a fairly narrow margin of 11.6%. Had the fandom chosen differently, the Exile arc might have not happened at all, or at least be delayed for a while, as Dream builds up the obsidian walls and places L'Manburg under siege.
• Phil has said that he was going to make a basement under his house and roleplay himself slowly going more and more stir-crazy during his house arrest, but Techno broke him out before that could happen.
• Bad revealed on a stream in December 28th, 2020 that the Green Festival (which was planned to have Dream's execution) was originally meant to occur on December 29th, 2020, but was later delayed to another date, which is revealed to be January 5th, 2020.
• It is stated that during the Disc Confrontation, Punz was originally going to say, "Sorry, Dream, but money talks", before Sam recommended the quote used in the livestream, i.e. "I'm sorry, Dream. But you should have paid me more."

Season 3

• Eret initially had different plans for the Eggpire arc, that being their character's attempt to revive Wilbur was what caused a mass spread of the Blood Vines all over the server, and the arc was supposed to bring back the Dreamon Hunters subplot. Unfortunately, no one took up this idea other than Captain Puffy, and the attempts to execute this storyline were ultimately dropped.
• Phil had originally planned to appear at the Red Banquet as "Redza" without any context, but had decided against it after some real life events relating to his wife's visa stressed him out so much he didn't feel up to interacting with anyone.
• It has been revealed that BadBoyHalo eventually went back on his plan to invite Sapnap to the Red Banquet to protect him. The main reason this had to be explained by Word of God and wasn't showcased onscreen because cc!Sapnap wasn't available for lore.
• Due to severe Schedule Slip in Season 3, many lore plans have been delayed indefinitely, from the Eggpire arc finale after the Red Banquet (which arguably does get carried out... over a year later), to Tales From the SMP Season 2 (which does eventually begin in February 2022), to Ranboo's plans of moving into the Snowchester mansion properly and even losing a canon life. The last part was finally fulfilled in the Season 3 finale, but even then, there's still yet to be a canon explanation to how his character lost two of his canon lives offscreen... though the fans have generated some theories, and The Wilbur Van provides at least a partial supplement to how Ranboo lost one of his lives.
• An impromptu one happens about six hours before Techno's stream of breaking Dream out of Pandora's Vault, where he asks Hannah while she's streaming if he can use her Elytra wings to conduct the jailbreak, but Hannah turns down this request.
  hannahxxrose: need any help with anything
  Technoblade: yeah can i borrow the wings tomorrow im trying to break a strange green man out of prison like the mandelorian
  hannahxxrose: Gonna have to say no to that one
  Technoblade: understandable".
• In one of Quackity's alt-streams, he shows several road sign concepts which were ultimately not implemented onto the server, including "Interstate 69" to Las Nevadas, the Prime Path being road 70, a blurred- and crossed-out sign of road 420 that leads to L'Manburg (or now, its ruins), and another to the Badlands with the note "Exit Only".
  • According to one of Karl's livestream VODs dating back to mid-September 2020, Karl was the one who suggested the name "Highway 69", while Quackity's initial concept was to name it "Interstate 5" after its real life incarnation. From the stream, although Quackity originally rejected the name, it's heavily implied, in-universe through this revelation, that he named the highway based on Karl's suggestion in the end.
• Wilbur's original plan for his character's lore involved twelve livestreams, but only about three of them managed to air before the Schedule Slip hit. He then tried to summarize everything up into three more streams, but even that was put on hold and never saw the light of day, partially due to the Development Hell induced by his fellow content creators. Ultimately, his character lore had to be retooled into a last-resort short story posted on Archive of Our Own, to finally put the arc to rest.

Season 4

• Had Technoblade not died, he would have had his character Put on a Bus and played a new character called "Cyberknife" who would have lived in the new world and loved government, which the other members of the Syndicate would have to investigate.

Tales From the SMP

• Quackity was supposed to participate in "The Beach Episode", which is why he can be seen on the promotional poster for the episode, but couldn't make it due to schedule conflicts.
• Dream was supposed to take part in the fifth installment of Tales from the SMP, "The Masquerade", but was sick and couldn't make it. (It's speculated, but hasn't been confirmed, that he would have played the part of Sir Billiam's second butler.)
• "The Pit" has several of its own:
  • Originally, there were plans for GeorgeNotFound to be in the episode. However, he backed out last minute after being too tired after his own stream. This led to an odd number of contestants and Ran getting a first round bye.
  • Philza revealed that Porkius and Karl were supposed to meet Ranboo's character, Ran, outside the coliseum before they first entered. This interaction was supposed to introduce Ran's backstory as well. However, Techno got distracted and skipped the interaction.
  • Philza originally wanted to play as his character from the SMP, but Karl wouldn't let him.
• Season 2 of Tales has experienced many hiccups throughout production.
  • "Space Race" was initially going to be the first episode of the season.
  • Karl continuously delayed the time when the season would be released — first in October 2021, then November 2021, etc. — because he has plans to make the episodes less sporadic and has been meticulously planning out each episode rather than doing one at a time. On 2 February 2022, the Season 2 trailer was finally released, with the first episode of the season, "The Maze", being released nine days later.

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