An early pitch poster made by Butch Hartman and posted on his Twitter
in 2018.
in 2018.- Originally, Timmy was going to be a redhead because Butch Hartman hates brown hair. He was forced to change his mind because he didn't want Timmy and Vicky to be mistaken for siblings because of their similar hair color. He then considered giving Timmy black hair, but decided it looked too heavy on him (though Timmy would be seen with black hair during his cameo in the Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Terry and Chris"). Why Hartman could not have just made Timmy a blond is a mystery, though it was probably because he didn't want Timmy and Chester to look alike or it never occurred to him to do that.
- Timmy was almost named “Mikey” after one of Butch's brothers, Mike. But the two had had a fight that day, so the character was named after his other brother, Tim.
- Timmy's shirt and hat were meant to be blue, but Hartman ran out of blue marker and grabbed the next nearest marker—which just so happened to be pink. It stuck (on the show, it was explained that Timmy has a pink hat and a lot of pink stuff because his parents thought he was going to be a girl).
- Speaking of which, Wanda’s hair was also originally going to be blue, but according to Butch, was changed to pink because he didn’t want it to clash with Timmy’s bedroom walls.
- Originally, as can been seen in the pilot shorts, Cosmo was the smart one and Wanda was the idiot. They were also implied to have been Cinderella's original helpers. While the latter is not exactly contradicted by the show, it's never confirmed either.
- Wanda was originally going to be named "Venus", but they couldn't resist the pun of "wand-a." In fact, it was originally going to be a Running Gag that all of the fairies had space-related names; of course, Cosmo's name is a remnant of this. "Venus" was kept as Wanda's middle name, though.
- Before it was settled on Cosmo and Wanda's final designs, Cosmo was supposed to be a fat, bald guy and Wanda was meant to be tall and thin. Cosmo's original design was reused in "The Boy Who Would Be Queen" for a male Wanda.
- Denzel Crocker was originally conceived for a scrapped show pitch from 1996 called Barnaby's Bug about a boy with a talking bug that helps him through everyday life, but Hartman liked the character enough to put him in this show once that pitch failed. The show's setting of Dimmsdale was part of said pitch as well.
- The earlier script for Wishology Part III was very different from what was finally shown: In the final scenes, there was no Reset Button and Timmy in fact used his Turbo Pits to create a type of light show for the party celebrating the victory. It was also stated in the script that the Darkness' Eliminators were created from the weapons that Turbo Thunder's people fired into it.
- Around 2005 or 2006, Butch Hartman had considered making a theatrical movie of The Fairly OddParents. Unlike the later Live-Action films, this one would have been animated. The details aren't concrete, but the plot was this: Timmy, feeling sorry for the other kids whom Vicky has babysat, wishes that every child had a fairy godparent. This, of course, backfires on him because Vicky, being under eighteen, is still considered a kid so she gets a fairy — Jorgen Von Strangle. Meanwhile, since there is no one to guard them or stop them, the pixies and Anti-Fairies team up to take over the world. Butch has stated he would like to release it on DVD one day.
- Veronica's name was originally "Carly". Elmer's name was originally "Carl".
- According to this podcast, Poof was originally going to be named "Dusty" as in "Fairy Dust".
