The writers of Lost originally planned to kill off their main character, Jack Shephard, in the pilot episode (and the show wouldve been much worse off if they had). When Lost was first in development, Michael Keaton was cast as Jack. In the original script, Jack was the pilot of the plane, not one of the passengers, and he wouldnt survive the first episode. The idea was to shock audiences by killing off the biggest star in the cast the one they were led to believe would be the lead character of the series in the very first episode.