10 Ways Friends Was Almost Completely Different

Behind-the-scenes Friends trivia involving including Courteney Cox as Rachel Green!

by Andrew Pollard
Courteney Cox Friends Monica Rachel
FOX

It feels a little nuts to think that it's approaching 17 years since Friends aired its final ever episode.

After a mammoth 236 episodes across ten seasons, May 2004 saw Friends finally call time on what was (and is!) one of the greatest runs in the history of sitcom television. Even away from just pigeonholing the show as sitcom, Friends is revered as one of the all-time best TV shows, period.

The premise of six pals and their day-to-day life in Manhattan is such a simple premise, yet it's a premise that provided absolute TV gold. So much so, that Friends is one of those rare series that has become even more popular in the years since its conclusion - helped greatly by countless repeats and re-runs airing on numerous channels across the globe on a scarily regular basis.

While Friends is an almost perfect TV series, though, what we all saw play out across the show's ten years could well have been so, so much different in some extremely vital ways.

On that front, then, here are just ten such ways in which Friends could have been entirely different to the show that we ultimately got.

10. It Wasn't Meant To Be Called Friends

Courteney Cox Friends Monica Rachel
NBC

The title 'Friends' is one of the most recognised in the history of television. If you say Friends to somebody, their mind instantly conjures up images of the series' core six characters sitting around in Central Perk, drinking coffee and cracking wise.

Originally though, this beloved show wasn't actually intended to be titled Friends.

Friends as we know it premiered in September 1994, but the show had been in tentative development since the middle of 1993. Back then, creators David Crane and Marta Kauffmann mapped out the series and presented the idea to producer Kevin S. Bright. At that point, though, this potential new sitcom series was known as Insomnia Cafe.

Of course, Central Perk was so often a key tool in helping to frame the narrative of many a Friends episode, and thus originally the show itself was to reference this by having that Insomnia Cafe title.

Following rewrites to the initial treatment, Insomnia Cafe became retitled as Six of One, which in turn was reworked as Friends Like Us - which was then simplified as just Friends.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.