The Nazi Soup Nazi And 3 Other Crazy ‘Seinfeld’ Storylines That Never Made It
Image by NBC
By Thea Glassman April 10, 2017
For all you “Seinfeld” fans out there, boy, do we have a treat for you.
Former “Seinfeld” writers David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer talked to Entertainment Weekly last week and revealed a whole bunch of amazing storylines that never made it on air.
Here’s just a few of them.
1. The Soup Nazi was going to be an actual Nazi.
“We joked a whole bunch about an end scene that would take place in the jungles of Brazil, à la The Boys From Brazil, where the Soup Nazi [Larry Thomas] would return to the other Nazis — the actual former Nazi war criminals — with his soup recipes,” Mandel said. “It was sort of half-serious, half ‘Should we do this?,’ half ‘We’re never going to do it.’”
Probaaaably for the best.
Frank Costanza starts smoking pot.
There was going to be a storyline involving George’s father smoking medical marijuana for his cataracts, but that was ultimately nixed. Thankfully for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fans everywhere, that subplot made it into the episode where Larry picks up a prostitute to get in the carpool lane — which is really worth another watch while we’re at it.
There was an idea for someone called “The Promoter” — who had an even worse habit than The Close Talker.
Schaffer pitched this bit several times, which involved a character who waited forever to get to the best part of the story.
“In ‘The Secret Code,’ Jerry was going to do an ad for an appliance store called Leapin’ Larry’s,” Schaffer recalled. “[The character] was saying, ‘If you’re going to meet with Leapin’ Larry, there’s one thing you should really know about him.’ It was the fact that he had a prosthetic leg. And Jerry just ignored it. Then when Jerry wound up insulting him, he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me???’ ‘Well, you didn’t take the prompt. I tried.’”
They wanted one episode that takes place in Mexico, but everything else stays the same.
“The idea was that Jerry and the gang go on a vacation somewhere and they would check into their hotel rooms, and Jerry would end up with a hotel room right across from Kramer’s hotel room, so the hotel-room dynamic would have been the same as the apartments,” Mandel said. ” When Jerry decided to end the show, and I realized there weren’t going to be enough episodes, I was like, ‘Oh God, I wish there was one more season.’”
Us, too.
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