The 8th Castaway

One of the little known facts is that there was actually an 8th castaway on the hit show "Gilligan's Island".

The only known cast photo with all the castaways

One of the little known facts is that there was actually an 8th castaway on the hit show "Gilligan's Island". Due to a dispute between Mr. Balloney and Sherwood Shwartz, the creator of "Gilligan's Island", Shwartz ordered that all episodes containing the now famous puppet be re-edited and Mr. Balloney be completely edited out of the final versions.

This was somewhat difficult, and the original one hour episodes had to be cut down to just half hour shows. In fact one episode entitled "Umbulla" about a group of cannibals who come to the island in search of meat was cut entirely.

In "Umballa", the cannibals corral the castaways and tie them up to trees. The first castaway to be cooked is Mr. Balloney or "Bob" as his character is known on the show. As he starts to cook, "Bob" emits toxic fumes from the plastic and the cannibals are overcome.

Numerous other shows had some very odd endings as a result. Here are a few examples:

• In "Smile, Your on Mars Camera" a Mars probe lands on the island and when the controllers see "Bob", they think there is horrible life on Mars and launch an all out invasion.
  
  
• In "Wrongway Feldman" where a lost flyer is discovered on the island, the plane is repaired and he flies away. In the version with "Bob", he stows away on the plane, the extra weight causes the plane to crash into the palm trees at the end of the runway killing Wrongway.
  
  
• In "Operation: Steam Heat" where the castaways save the island from a volcano by throwing a bomb into the mouth of the volcano - that episode has "Bob" dropping the bomb into the wrong hole and blowing half the island apart - the volcano erupts and rebuilds the missing half.

As you can see from the examples above, the present Gilligan's Island is a fraud. Unfortunately all film of the original series was put in a barrel, acid poured onto it, then kerosine and set alight, finally Shwartz jumped into the still steaming barrel and crushed any remaining bits underfoot. Such was his hatred of Mr. Balloney.

So remember, the next time you hear the Skipper talking about "his little buddy", you know now he's NOT talking about Gilligan!