Neighbours secretly scrapped a shock death storyline - after the networks demanded it

 "All the what-ifs are always often far more interesting."

Neighbours' former script producer Shane Isheev has revealed the original outcome for the infamous Hotel Death Trap storyline. The shocking episodes saw numerous characters caught up in an explosion at Lassiters Hotel back in 2016, with several fatalities.

Among the victims were Josh Willis (Harley Bonner) and his grandfather Doug (Terence Donovan), who both tragically died in the horrific incident. However, according to Isheev, fans might have said goodbye to some completely different characters had Bonner not already been leaving the soap

Appearing on the Just Tak podcast, hosted by Takaya Honda (David Tanaka), Isheev was asked how stories on the soap were developed from their initial conception to their actual airing.

Legitimately, not one story that from its initial conception was the same to when it made it to screen," he replied. "Do you remember the hotel explosion? I won't go into what all the alternatives were, but that week started off very differently with what was gonna happen, who was gonna die and to what ended up being on screen."

The script producer shared that "the changes were dictated" by the "network", after deciding that they "didn't want that person to be killed off".

And then we found out that Harley was leaving so we decided to kill him off," he added. "Yeah there's all the what-ifs are always often far more interesting than what makes it to screen."

Elsewhere in the interview, Isheev addressed the planned earthquake storyline which was later scrapped when the show was cancelled in 2022. He shared that they had actually written the plot to explain location changes, as there was a possibility that they would lose the Lassiters backlot.

"Because there had been a real life earthquake in Melbourne around that time, you know what happens, all of a sudden... even if it's implausible to happen again, it's going to happen in there as well," he said.

It was to give other context, there was a very small chance - this might get me into trouble but I'm going to say it anyway - that we were going to lose the backlot from the people who owned the land."

He added that the earthquake storyline would have allowed them to "flatten and destroy that backlot" and have "really good production value", before finding "somewhere else" to film.