10 Shocking Movie Twists That Nearly Happened

Cooked up on a paper-thin budget by Kevin Smith, Clerks is the quintessential '90s slacker comedy, depicting a life in the day of two store clerks - Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) - and turning all the mundanities of minimum wage working life into fun, snappy little vignettes.

Far from a flash in the pan, Clerks created a pair of cultural icons. No, not Dante and Randal, but Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself), and the film acted as the cornerstone of Smith's View Askewniverse - a series of films with interwoven and recurring characters primarily taking place in New Jersey. But it all started here, on a normal day, which begins and ends like any other, with the opening and closing of the Quick Stop corner store.

Nonetheless, when making Clerks, Smith didn't have such grand plans for a whole universe, and just wanted to make a film that stuck. And, like any creative in their early days, he struggled with the ending, and so opted for death.

Smith's original closer had a petty thief rob the store and murder Dante in cold blood. It would have put paid to the View Askewniverse before it got started, and wouldn't have fit the tone of the film at all. (But at least we wouldn't have had to endure Clerks III.)