It's been 30 years since screenwriter Rob Thomas came up with the idea for Veronica Mars and, after all this time, that original pitch has finally been unearthed.

Except, it wasn't about Veronica Mars at all. Instead, the 1996 "Untitled Teen Detective" treatment—intended to be a YA novel at first—was centered around a 17-year-old boy named Keith in Austin, Texas. That's right, marshmallows—California's Veronica Mars didn't even exist.

Thanks to a new dramatic reading of the original pitch by Kristen Bell for Entertainment Weekly, we now know that much like Veronica, Keith worked with his dad at his private investigation agency. However, unlike Veronica's dad, who was voted out as sheriff after accusing Jake Kane of killing his daughter Lilly, Keith's dad was no longer a homicide detective because he allegedly sent the wrong men to death row in a chocolate shop murder case.