@hjbau wrote:
I think one of the issues about the father being Peter Pan is that the producers didn’t know they were going to get permission to use Peter Pan. Though i guess they knew they could work something out if they really wanted to.
In order to use Peter Pan & Co, they needed to pay a licensing fee and establish a contract with the hospital that owns the rights. Kitsis and Horowitz likely figured that should the show be enough of a success to get a second season, that they’d then be in a position, both with their influence and finances, to do those things. So as long as they didn’t need to use those characters in their first season, it was a pretty safe bet that if the show survived to the point in the story where they would want to use those characters, they’d be able to sort out the legalities and make it happen. So there’s really no reason why they couldn’t have had a role for Peter Pan etc in mind from the beginning.