One of the most iconic movie masks of all time almost never made it on screen.

The mask that Scream forever immortalized as Ghostface was originally a mass-produced mask that bore the name “Peanut-Eyed Ghost.” Inspired by Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” the mask was released by Fun World in the early ’90s, and the story goes that Craven and his production team stumbled upon it in an abandoned house while they were scouting locations for Scream. Craven loved it and wanted to use it in the film, but alas, Fun World owned the rights and they wanted more money than Dimension was willing to pay. So Craven devised Plan B.

What was Plan B, you ask? Unable to use the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” mask, Craven tasked KNB EFX with designing a mask that was inspired by the Fun World mask he wanted to use. Some of the designs stayed fairly true to the original mask, while others deviated so wildly that they would’ve completely changed everything about the movie. Eventually, of course, Fun World and Dimension reached an agreement, and the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” mask became Ghostface.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Want to see a handful of those original KNB concepts? Below you’ll find twelve drawings of vastly different masks that were pitched to Craven (many of which are VERY wacky), and underneath you’ll see four of those designs that Scream superfan Mikey Aspinwall had artist Crash Cunningham draw up for him. Aspinwall even had an artist turn one of the concepts into an actual mask, which gives you an idea of what it would’ve looked like had it been used on screen.

Huge thanks to Aspinwall for allowing us to use these images.