Several months back, I released a few articles about some of the lost storylines and little known behind the scenes details concerning our machinima show, The Leet World. In part 1, I went over things such as Player’s original identity and Chet’s father. With part 2, I shed some light on a few unexplored story threads like Darth Westy or Dead Leeroy.

Even though almost a year has gone by since the show’s end, we still receive plenty of inquiries about these features, so I thought I’d bring it back with even more tidbits that you guys never knew.

So let’s get started. Details are after the jump!

• The chip in Ahmad’s head.

In S2E10, Asher hints to Ahmad (and us) that our lovable noob had a chip in his head that the Producer used to communicate with him. This is probably the biggest dangling plot thread (along with the Comrades) that got left over from the storyline, and one of my bigger regrets. There was actually an explanation scene for this in the first Season 2, Ep 13 script, but we ultimately cut it because Ahmad’s return made this thread less important.

Here’s what the deal was: when Ahmad auditioned, he had a chip put into his head so that the Producer could communicate with him, since he was particularly impressionable. When he started taking hacks, the Producer spoke to him as Adam Sizzler, a figure he trusted, to get him to move the drama to new heights. Remember, it was Sizzler who told Ahmad where to go in S1E12. When Asher jammed the communications to the house in S2E9, the Producer had his “ace in the hole” that he could talk to — Ahmad. Basically, the Producer was responsible for his death.

Like I said, we ultimately cut this. Once we changed things around and decided to bring Ahmad back, the information was less pertinent. Oh, I’m sorry. That leads us into the next bullet point.

• Ahmad was supposed to stay dead.

Yup. All that stuff on the site that I posted about saying goodbye and putting characters into danger immediately following S2E10 wasn’t just me jerking you around the way Valve does to everyone about Half Life 2 Episode 3. It was the honest to goodness truth at the time, because Ahmad was supposed to be dead dead. We made the decision back in Season 1 to kill off a main character, and we designed Ahmad’s arc to see if we could make people loathe him and then love him.

So why did he come back? Simply put, fan service. Our Revision3 deal came up right in the middle of Episode 12/13 production. Once we committed to them, we knew that left a huge possibility for never being able to revisit the story in the movie, as we had wanted to do. Rather than risk leaving everyone on a humongous cliffhanger (seriously, the Season 2 ending was just mean), we went with what had always been our backup plan in case something crazy happened like Daniel moving or having Valve shut us down or any number of other things. That’s the ending you saw, and we figured, since everything was going to have a nice bow on it, let’s just tweak it and bring Ahmad back.

Does it cheapen what we wanted for the show overall? Yes and no. The original plan was going to be pretty cool, but I think we still delivered an ending we were proud of. Ending the season on that cliffhanger would have left people hating us forever. About that…

• The Season 2 ending.

  Along with Ahmad’s death, we had the Season 2 cliffhanger planned out since around S1E4, Dust 2 Dust. We even hinted at it a few times throughout the series. Remember the “Island of possibilities” line that the Producer dropped at the end of Season 1? Or Montrose saying he needed to find a nice beach to retire to after the show was over? All hints towards the end of Season 2.

  Let me set the stage: instead of blowing up in the Death Room, Player was going to detonate in the house, eradicating all of the bots and himself to save his friends. As his countdown is nearing zero, Leeroy rushes to his lair to copy his core, while the other characters run away in hopes of avoiding the explosion. Unfortunately for them, they don’t quite escape and get knocked out in the ensuing blast. The Producer’s soldiers would arrive to a destroyed TLW house. The cast is knocked out. Player is destroyed. Leeroy is missing. The Producer instructs his men to collect the cast.

  Cut to: a blue sky, the sound of waves crashing. Ellis wakes up, and looks around to see the other cast members, lying on a beach. Season 2 was going to end with our characters waking up on a stranded island.

You guys would have hated us for it. And we would have laughed silly, I think.

Anyway, there are a few more where those came from, such as what were the plans for Season 3, but I’ll save that for another time. As I said before, it would have been cool to make, but none of us regret that we couldn’t do it. We love Leet World (well, some of us), but we’re glad this is all behind us. Still, a part of me sometimes wonders how crazy everyone would have gone with that Season 2 cliffhanger.

So, got any more questions?

In other news, we just released another episode of our GamerSushi podcast, the E3 edition. Lots of fun, check it out!