Did you know that Yoda’s original name was going to be “Buffy?” Or that Darth Vader originally had a castle? No kidding!

These and other some-amazing-others-horrifying tidbits were published in the new book, The Making Of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler, which was just released this week. The book contains a number of interesting story tidbits that any Star Wars fan should know – the story actually changed in some pretty impressive directions away from its original state, and some things that we come to cherish now were much much different in the original story for the movie.

For example:

Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps.

One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of planning ESB was the notion that Luke’s light saber had a crystal hidden in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it — including the coordinates of Minch Yoda’s planet. And Luke would have been “humiliated” when he couldn’t use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch of ice monsters on the rebel’s Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke, “You’re not a Jedi knight, and you never will be.”) Meanwhile, Darth Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and there’s a new wannabe Jedi in town — so Vader uses telepathy to choke Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him — except that R2D2 jumps the ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda’s planet.

That’s just one. I don’t want to spoil much more without sending you over to io9 to read the article in its entirety, and to take a look at some of the concept art from the movie that’s up at the article as well. Seriously – check out what Chewbacca originally looked like. That’s just freaky.

[ io9 :: 10 Things You Didn’t Know about The Empire Strikes Back ]