What Could Have Been / Rugrats

Rugrats

What Could Have Been in this franchise.

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Cartoons

Rugrats (1991)

One of the first drawings of Rugrats drawn by Jeff Harris.

• Apparently, up until the "Mother's Day" episode, the creators didn't know what to do with Chuckie's mother. In fact, the only time the classic-era episodes explicitly point to Chas being a single dad was in "My Friend Barney" where Chuckie finds a stuffed fish plaque, and Chas tells him, "Your mother never liked this fish much, but hey, I guess now we can hang it back up in the dining room!". In "BBQ Story," a woman often interpreted to be a prototype of Chuckie's mother can be seen alongside Chuckie's father^note Though she may well be just a friend of Chas', since two other unrelated guests are also shown., in "Real or Robots" Stu says Chuckie's "mom and dad" will pick him up in the morning and in "Special Delivery", Chuckie says "My mom says I came from the hospital." According to Paul Germain, it was at one point considered for Chuckie's mom to still be alive, but divorced from Chas, but Nickelodeon felt both divorce and death were too sensitive subjects for a children's show - but they came around for the early death of a mother during the revival.
• Originally 20th Century Fox had a deal with Nickelodeon to release movies of the Nicktoons in 1993 but this fell through. The Rugrats Movie did come out in 1998 through Paramount after Viacom's acquisition of the studio, but whether the plot details were the same remains unknown.
• The show was originally pitched to CBS for their saturday morning lineup, but they rejected it.
• In the original pilot Lou's name was Stu Pickles Sr.
• Before Angelica was made, early on it was considered having Chuckie of all people be the bully to the other babies.
• As noted under Early-Installment Weirdness, Angelica was first conceived as a Karma Houdini who would never be punished - to teach kids the Hard Truth Aesop that sometimes life isn't fair. But the show runners quickly came to hate how nasty Angelica was, and had her punished frequently. Season 2 onwards started showing her Hidden Depths.
• There was a rumor that if Rugrats Go Wild! was successful, then a fourth movie would've been made with the characters in their grown forms.
• After Christine Cavanaugh retired from voice acting, Candi Milo was considered for Chuckie's new voice actress, even playing him in two video games. However, Klasky-Csupo brought Nancy Cartwright in instead, thinking that having a more "famous" voice actress off of The Simpsons would bring in more prestige and viewers as the popularity of Rugrats was slowly starting to wane. Milo still replaced Cavanaugh as Dexter in Dexter's Laboratory.
• Additionally, Klasky-Csupo was planning to make an eleven-minute version of the pilot, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing," to air with the rest of the series. It would've either been a complete remake of the pilot, or would've extended the existing pilot with newly-animated sequences (the way Klasky-Csupo also did with the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters pilot, along with the pilots for two other Nickoons Doug and Rocko's Modern Life.) It never got made, and the pilot continued to only be shown at animation festivals until it was finally released on the "Decade in Diapers" DVD in 2001.
• Gabor Csupó originally considered selections from Mark Mothersbaugh's 1988 2-volume album, Muzik for Insomniaks, to be the soundtrack to the series. Mothersbaugh, though, insisted that he should create new tracks for the show, and after a single meeting, Csupó agreed.
• A live-action/CGI revival film was planned and scheduled for a 2020 release, but it was pulled in favor of Paramount's new film, Rumble. A CGI television reboot was made instead.
• In 2013 Arlene Klasky, Kate Boutilier and Alex Mesrobian pitched a fourth potential movie to Nickelodeon titled "Rugrats in Space". It was shot down in exchange for reviving the series (which began negotiation in 2018).

All Grown Up!

• The All Growed Up special was planned as simply another episode of Rugrats. However, when the special aired and got such high ratings, the network were convinced they had to do a full show.
• Another spin-off was planned involving the Carmichaels moving to Atlanta. In fact, the Kwanzaa special of Rugrats was a Poorly Disguised Pilot (which is why Aunt T never appears past it). They ultimately decided to keep Susie in the main series, and she was incorporated into this.

Films

The Rugrats Movie

• In 1993, 20th Century Fox was going to release feature films based on the first three Nicktoons: Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. These plans fell through and only the Rugrats film got made under Nickelodeon's guidance^note though Doug's 1st Movie got made when the rights were sold to Disney, and a Ren & Stimpy TV movie "Life Sucks" was attempted (yet scrapped) during the infamous Spike TV run. What the original plot consisted of is unknown.
• Rex Pester's original name was Scoop Hunter. The reason for the change is unknown. Dil's full name was also going to be Dilbert, before getting changed to Dylan.
• Dil was originally going to be voiced by Madonna. However, when Tara Strong recorded her scratch voice for the character, her impression of a baby crying was so accurate that it caused a woman in the room, who had just had a baby, to start lactating!

Rugrats in Paris

• The film was written as a straight-up musical like the first film. The "Ooey-Gooey-World" and "I Want A Mom" would have been musical numbers, the latter sung by Chuckie himself. As it is, only "Packin' to Go" and "Bad Girls" are sung by the cast.
  • The alternate endings showing what happened to Coco and Jean-Claude were apparently supposed to be included as The Stinger, but for whatever reason, that never happened, and they wound up as DVD extras instead.

Rugrats Go Wild!

• The film was originally made as an hour-long TV special, but test audience reactions were so positive it was rewritten and reanimated for theatrical release.

Video Games

Rugrats: Search for Reptar

• As the game was made to tie in with The Rugrats Movie, the developers at one point considered using the movie as the basis for the game, but ended up basing the game on the TV series instead. The final product does have a few references to the movie, such as a sketch of the Reptar Wagon as well as the Dactar Glider in Stu's workshop, Tommy's Dummi Bears bed in Tommy's bedroom, and posters for The Rugrats Movie can be seen in the "Reptar 2010" level.
• The game had several levels that were considered but ended up getting cut from the final product:
  • "Baseball", based on the eponymous episode, would have taken place in the baseball stadium, where Tommy would chase his lost balloon.
  • "Give That Spike a Bone", based on "No Bones About it", would have taken place in the Natural History Museum, where the babies would search for a dinosaur bone to give to Spike as a souvenir.
  • "The Inside Story", based on the eponymous episode, would have taken place inside Chuckie's body, where the babies would have to find a watermelon seed that Chuckie swallowed and extract it before Angelica could make it grow.
  • "Naked Tommy", based on the eponymous episode, would have taken place at the Wombat Lodge and involved Tommy having to run "nakie" at Lou's award ceremony while avoiding the adults.
  • "Vacation", based on the eponymous episode, would have taken place in Las Vegas and involved the babies having to search for the kitties (tigers) so they could set them free. This level would have been unique in that it would have been the only level to have been based on a Season 4 episode, whereas every other level was based on an episode from the first three seasons.

Rugrats in Paris

• A Sega Dreamcast version of the game was planned, but cancelled.