30 Bits of TV Trivia We Accidentally Flushed Out of the Airlock

Grab as many of these as you can!
30 Bits of TV Trivia We Accidentally Flushed Out of the Airlock

Quick, look up! These TV tidbits are falling from about 30,000 feet up, so they’re not going to land in a polite little pile. This isn’t the way we intended for this list to come at you, but we have to work with the current situation now, don’t we? 

Letting them get away isn’t an option! And hey, we deliver neatly packaged TV-related lists all the time, so is it really that crazy to work for some once in a while? We think not!

Futurama

Stupid plots that became reality On Futurama Zapp Brannigan mistakenly names Leela as Miss Universe 3001. In reality Steve Harvey mistakenly named Miss Colombia as Miss Universe 2015. MALK INDESSE 2014 CRACKED.COM

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Will Smith is now older than James Avery (Uncle Phil) was at the beginning of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. CRACKED.COM

The Colbert Report

The International Space Station has a treadmill named C.O.L.B.E.R.T. after Stephen Colbert. CRACKED.COM Stephen Colbert used his show The Colbert Report to encourage his viewers to write in votes to use Colbert during a naming contest that NASA held.

Smashing Props

Edward James Olmos nearly ad-libbed the show into debt. After Adama learns that Starbuck died, Olmos smashed a model boat that happened to be on loan from a museum. It was ruined, but it was also insured. CRACKED.COM

Blue’s Clues

John Cena auditioned for Blue's Clues. After Steve's replacement on Blue's Clues, Donovan Patton, left, the show went off the air for 13 years until it was rebooted in 2019. One of the thousands of replacements considered for Patton was John Cena. CRACKED.COM

Whoopi Goldberg

WHOOPI called it quits BAGDAD CAFE CRACKED.COM Goldberg dumped her own sitcom after just nine episodes of Season 2, citing a dispute with producers. Months earlier, the show canned its Season 1 producers when Whoopi couldn't get along with them either. Low ratings had doomed the show either way.

Laura Fraser

Laura Fraser claimed to speak fluent German. BREAKING BAD CRACKED.COM Fraser said Ja! to the first German question she was asked, which happened to be: Do you speak German?

The Office

The Office saved someone's life. CRACKED.COM A 21-year-old man from Arizona saved a woman's life using CPR he learned watching an episode of The Office.

Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers was inducted into the TV'Hall of Fame by a man who appeared on his show as a boy. CRACKED.COM In 1981, Jeffrey Erlanger appeared on Mr. Rogers' TV series where he described to the audience what it was like to be handicapped and in a wheelchair. 18 years later, Jeff surprised Mr. Rogers with an appearance during his induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

SNL

CRACKED JIMMY FALLON apologized for doing blackface on SNL. In 2020, he said, In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this. I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable.

Scrubs

In Scrubs, J.D.'s childhood living room is a carbon copy of the 8 Simple Rules living room. It was shown in a flashback in which John Ritter played J.D.'s dad; Ritter also played the dad in 8 Simple Rules. CRACKED.COM

Breaking Bad

Some critics quickly dismissed Breaking Bad as being Malcolm in the Meth Lab. 35 Br eaking 56 Bad The New York Times even called the first few episodes a hard slog, that lacked the originality and sparkle of AMC's first hit show, Mad Men. CRACKED.COM

Game of Thrones

Some early reviews called HBO's Game of Thrones kids' fare, with things for grown-ups put in. GAME OF THRONES It was boy fiction with a heart of geek that never lets the rest of us in, full of favorites of the infantile. CRACKED.COM

Friends

CRACKED.COM Most reviews shredded Friends when it premiered. They complained the characters just aimlessly drank coffee and chatted, and that the show used pop culture references too much.

The Simpsons

CRACKED COM The Simpsons nearly got cancelled before it aired. PULK After the first viewing of the pilot episode, One Enchanted Evening, both the writers and the network executives were displeased. The writing wasn't great, but it was the animation that really turned them off. Luckily, the next episode, Bart the Genius, was better and saved the series from an early death.

Cheers

In the '90s, there were airport bars with animatronic Cheers! characters. Somehow, people thought that travellers would want to sit down next to a creepy version of Norm before boarding their flight. Even more weirdly, the bars survived for a full ten years --from 1991 to 2001. CRACKED.COM

Monty Python

Spam got its name from a Monty Python sketch. Sure, it ultimately comes from canned pork. But mass unsolicited email got named spam after the Monty Python joke where the items on a cafeteria menu just keep getting replaced by spam, and eventually the full dialogue becomes just spam spam spam spam spam. CRACKED.COM

Geico Commercials

You only know the GEICO gecko because of an actors' strike. In 1999, GEICO made a commercial with a gecko as a joke that'd help people with the pronunciation of their name. But the next year, there was a Screen Actors Guild strike, which made it hard to find actors for commercials. So GEICO turned around and started reusing that animated gecko, and eventually made it their mascot. CRACKED.COM

Yogi Bear

Yogi Bear wears a collar and tie to make him easy to animate. In the 1950s, TV animation was taking off and producers were figuring out how to stay in the black. For Yogi Bear, they decided they needed to be able to reuse the same image of Yogi's torso, while animating his head. The solution? Separate his head and body with a collar and tie. CRACKED.COM

Star Trek

Star Trek came up with transporters to make the TV show filmable. Initially, the Enterprise crew was supposed to use shuttles to land on planets. But that would have a) been too expensive, and b) ruined the show's pacing (imagine having to watch Kirk, Spock, and Bones sitting around and waiting for backup). The solution? Fancy, hi-tech, instantaneous teleportation. CRACKED.COM

Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z's Super Saiyans are blond to make the manga NB easier to draw. In Dragon Ball Z, Saiyans transform into badass Super Saiyans when they power up, and their clothing explodes while their hair turns blond. Why blond? Well, in the original black-and-white - the TPO THRU manga, grey and black areas had to be filled in by an assistant. Blond hair is white on the page, so using lots of blond hair saved a ton of money and effort. CRACKED.COM

Doctor Who

The Fourth Doctor's huge and scarf was the result of a misunder- standing. Doctor Who head costume designer Jim Acheson wanted the Fourth Doctor to have a scarf, so he gave a knitter lots of wool in many colors and asked her to make one. Apparently, she thought she was supposed to use it all, and knitted a multicolored, freakishly huge scarf. People thought the scarf fit Tom Baker's off-the-wall interpretation of the Doctor perfectly, so it stayed. CRACKED.COM

Wendy’s Commercials

Dave Thomas appeared in more than 800 commercials Wendy's founder became a household name through the longest-running campaign. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull played himself in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show for a while. The job was easy (he just had to ride around the arena once a week) and the pay was good, but he got tired of it pretty soon anyway. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

The Super Bowl

Michael Jackson's Super Bowl halftime show in 1993 had higher ratings than the game itself. It is estimated to have been one of the most watched events in TV history, with 133.4 million viewers. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Monty Python’s Flying Circus

The Python programming x language wasn't named after a snake. Monty Python's ENT M XY PIA ING CIRCUS It was named after Monty Python's Flying Circus, and referencing the show in Python documentation is not just allowed but encouraged. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Watchmen

EXPRESS a NY NO are CRACKED.COM WATCHMEN Moore and Gibson always returned to the image of the newsstand in their comic, and the show pays tribute to it (image used is from episode 2). Mister NEWS TULSA EM BESTREET mg/2 DO

She-Hulk

SHE-HULK'S TEASER FEATURES A REFERENCE TO THE INCREDIBLE HULK TV SHOW The teaser features the same line said by Bill Bixby's Banner in the show (Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry), and Mark Ruffalo's Banner even wears the same style of clothes. CRACKED.COM

The Queen’s Gambit

The pretty big homage to a French artist in THe Queen's GAMBIT When Harmon is adopted and walks into her new home for the first time, Alma (her adopted mother) shows her some Rosa Bonheur prints on the walls. A lot of the French artist's life and struggles show up in the series. Bonheur's mother, for instance, had to raise her alone thanks to an absent dad. Her mother gave piano lessons to make money, and died when Bonheur was still young. CRACKED.COM

Money Heist

MONEY HEIST In the hotel bar scene where Berlin confronts his son, a musician is singing Can't Take My Eyes Off You. The singer is Cecilia Krull. She also sings the show's theme song, My Life Is Going On and the guy accompanying her on piano in the scene is Manel Santisteban, the guy who composed the show's theme song. CRACKED.COM

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