7 Iconic Characters They Saved from The Cutting Room Floor

Thanks to Lakshmi Prabhu for the heads up on this interesting article from Cracked.com where they listed out "7 Iconic Characters They Saved from The Cutting Room Floor" and Jack Shepard is one

#6. Jack Shephard from Lost
Jack was the unquestionable leader of the plane crash survivors for the first couple dozen episodes of Lost and without question is the character we would most like to punch in the face.

How we almost lost him
Like the Joker, he was supposed to die in the first episode. Oh, and he was to be played by Michael Keaton.In typical "everything must have a twist" J.J. Abrams style, the idea was to cast a well-known actor and build him up as the main character... then whiplash the audience by killing him off in the pilot. Not a bad idea, it lets the audience know that pretty much anything can happen, which seems to be 90 percent of the Lost concept.

Who Saved Him?
The producers.

Because this was still network television and challenging the audience usually means giving them a very quick glimpse of side boob, they figured the whole "killing Michael Keaton" thing (which we hope involved suddenly sucking him into the jet engine) might cross the line into pissing people off.

That's another similarity to the Joker situation. If the audience likes him, they'll hate you for killing him. If the audience hates him (again, we're talking Michael Keaton here) then the whole impact of the stunt is gone.

Then again, this is Lost we're talking about here. Does anybody stay dead?

Source: Full List @ Cracked.Com