Boy Meets World was almost a completely different show!
When fans of the '90s sitcom think of the series—starring Danielle Fishel, Ben Savage, Rider Strong and Will Friedle—their minds most likely go to the girl in the world of the show, Fishel's character, Topanga. But during a panel discussion at the first-ever 90s Con, it was revealed that Topanga almost wasn't a series regular, according to People.
"She wasn't supposed to be on forever," former co-star Friedle—who played Eric Matthews—said. "And then you came in and killed it, and then it changed the whole show."
"Yeah," Fishel responded, "it was only supposed to be, I think, one episode—possibly a recurring—and then she basically became the rest of the show."
With seven seasons and a character reprise 14 years later on the series reboot, Girl Meets World—it's hard to imagine a world in which Topanga wasn't roaming the halls of John Adams High.
Fishel also revealed how her character came to be in the first place—and apparently, there are two different stories.
"I think the truth is," Fishel said, "there was a woman who created the character of Topanga—she was in the writers' room—and I think she wanted the character to be a flower child."
She continued, "And she picked the name Topanga because in the San Fernando Valley, where the show was filmed, there is an area called Topanga Canyon, and that canyon was kind of a known hippie hangout in the '60s and even still is a kind of flower child-y area."
But that's not how Boy Meets World co-creator Michael Jacobs remembers it.
"The story that Michael Jacobs tells," Fishel shared, "is that he was in the car on the freeway when the writers called and that he needed a name for this character, and he was at the Topanga Canyon offramp on the freeway."
"So the joke he made is that had they called him two minutes later, she could have been named De Soto," she added. "It's really funny, but I don't know that that's the true story, so there's both!"
Either way, we just don't want to imagine a world without Cory and Topanga's love story!
Boy Meets World is available to stream on Disney Plus.