The actors that Quentin Tarantino originally cast for the lead roles in pulp Fiction were revealed.

Tarantino’s crime film is one of the most acclaimed films of the 1990s, but if the director had chosen his first option, the whole thing would have looked very different.

John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson play Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield in the film, but according to the rough cast list (originally shared on Twitter by author Don Winslow and others), both actors were second choice for their respective roles.

When it came to writing down the characters, Tarantino chose Michael Madsen, with whom he had already worked on Reservoir Dogs in 1992 and Laurence Fishburne.

He also wrote Jackson up for the role of Marcellus Wallace, a character ultimately played by his first choice – Ving Rhames.

Other actors in the running for Vincent included Alec Baldwin, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton, while he also had Eddie Murphy in mind for Jules.

Interestingly, Bruce Willis’ name does not appear anywhere for Butch – in fact, the role was written for Matt Dillion. Other actors in the running included Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Aidan Quinn and Johnny Depp, who was also considered for the role of restaurant robber Pumpkin (Tim Roth).

Tarantino’s first choices for the roles, alongside Marcellus, were “The Wolf” (Harvey Keitel) and “Koons” (Christopher Walken).

Other interesting points are that Uma Thurman, who played Mia Wallace, was not among the 16 actors Tarantino put on the list, and that the role of Jody was ultimately played by Rosanna Arquette, the sister of Tarantino’s first choice, Patricia.

For Mia, Tarantino initially had actors in mind, including Virginia Madsen, Alfre Woodard, Bridget Fonda, Angela Bassett and Lightning Dance with Jennifer Beals as the star.