THE MONKEY THAT WAS MEANT TO PLAY YODA IN STAR WARS

The iconic 'Star Wars' character was originally meant to be played by a monkey wearing a mask. Credit: @mccrabb_will/Twitter

This fact, baffling as it is, has been known among 'Star Wars' fandom for some time now, but the first pictures of this fresh madness have now been revealed, thanks to Twitter user and film buff Will McCrabb.

In the period before Jim Henson was on board with his cutting edge puppetry skills for the 'Star Wars' movies, there were other plans afoot.

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As documented in author J.W. Rinzler in his 2010 book, 'The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back', it was thought that animatronic technology would not be up to snuff in creating a believable Jedi master.

The monkey was 'fired' after it kept pulling off its Yoda mask. Credit: @mccrabb_will/Twitter

Instead, producers worked on training a monkey in a mask for the role.

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It was soon discovered that the monkey would simply pull the mask off all the time, and the admittedly flawed idea was scrapped.

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Thankfully, in came Jim Henson to save the day, and in doing so created one of the most iconic sci-fi characters of all time.

How different things might have been...

Ben Arnold writes for Yahoo UK Movies