Don’t forget the weird-ass totally forgotten marketing tie-ins, as the Star Wars marketing blitz was huge. There was an Empire Strikes Back pop-up book I had that featured the “missing” Wampa attack on the stormtroopers scene. Yeah, that’s another common false memory – people remember this from long before there was ever a deleted scene viewable on home video, but it doesn’t mean they had to have either seen it in theatres or else they were clairvoyant – it just means they saw it elsewhere, like me.

There were so many alternate versions of the stories out there in non-film form, based on so many script variations, it’s much more likely in my opinion that what’s “missing” is the memory of the novelization/viewmaster/bubble gum wrapper/collectable card/limited edition Burger Chef drinking glasses versions of the story, with different scenes that simply weren’t in the movies at all, rather than totally different versions of the films that have had all tangible traces of them completely erased from an otherwise fairly well-preserved historical record of the films.