49 Trivia Facts From Most Popular TV Shows

"House of Cards" is extremely popular in China, especially among Communist Party leaders, with one fan on social media writing about the show, “I’m just amazed that their propaganda ministry isn’t mad about this.”

27. When the creators of the TV show Sledge Hammer! learned it would be canceled, they had the main character fail to disarm a nuclear warhead, destroying San Francisco. The episode got such good ratings that ABC renewed it, so the second season had to be a prequel since the entire cast was dead.

28. The X-Files episode 'Home' which was about a murderous inbred family was loosely based on a story from Charlie Chaplin's autobiography where a family introduced him to their quadruple amputee son by pulling him out from under a bed after which he "flopp[ed] around" while they sang and danced.

29. "Ed, Edd, n Eddy" was the last major animated series ever made using traditional animation techniques; the first 4 seasons were made using cel animation, and everything else since has used at least some CGI.

30. In the 571 Episodes of Lassie, the only character that actually fell down a well was Lassie. Timmy never fell down a well.

The pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen was about a conspiracy of the US government to hijack an airline and fly it into the World Trade Center to start a profit-making war. It aired on March 4, 2001.

32. The pilot episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" was made with only $200. And that was just for the 2 cameras and some tape.

33. In The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the name of Uncle Phil's law firm is "Firth, Wynn and Meyer" as a reference to the band Earth, Wind, and Fire.

34. Laverne from Scrubs was only killed off because Bill Lawrence was under the impression that it would be the last season of the show. He promised her actor a role, and cast her as a near identical nurse named "Shirley."

35. The original idea for the Futurama episode, Jurassic Bark, was to have Fry's mother fossilized instead of Seymour, but this idea was scrapped after it was thought to be too upsetting to the audience.

There was a planned, but unmade episode of Doctor Who in which an alien would attach itself to J.K. Rowling and project her imagination on the real world. The Doctor would have battled wizards and witches to save the planet.

37. 9 out of the 10 most watched TV broadcasts in the US are the last 9 Superbowls; the only non-football entry is the final broadcast of M*A*S*H in 1983.

38. Bridget Loves Bernie was the highest rated TV show to ever be canceled after only one season. CBS and show creators were forced to cancel the show after receiving death threats from Jews, who were angered that the show featured a Catholic marrying a Jew.

39. The debut episode for Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner was called: Fast and Furry-ous.

40. Babylon 5 switched commanders after season one because the actor playing Commander Sinclair had paranoid delusions. Creator J. Michael Straczynski kept it a secret until 2013 after the actor had passed away.

Honda sponsored an episode of Community tv show critical of product placement and guerrilla marketing. After the episode aired, 50% of viewers were more likely to buy a Honda.

42. There was a crossover episode of Cops and the X-files called X-cops. It started off as a normal episode of Cops and then things got weird.

43. Cartoon Network banned an episode of Cow and Chicken called "Buffalo Gals" which allegedly implied lesbian stereotypes including the Gals being mistaken for men and the line "Oh! the Buffalo Gals, a motorcycle riding gang that randomly breaks into people's homes and chews on their carpets."

44. Season Two of "24" featured a terrorist plot that originated from a London mosque. A few months after the season ended, authorities raided the mosque and found that it was indeed a terrorist hub.

45. Blue's Clues was one of the first shows to use software like Media 100, Photoshop and After Effects to do their animation, and were able to produce episodes four times faster than traditional methods, as a result, surprising even Adobe themselves.

The third season DVDs of "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" were made but mysteriously never distributed. The creators think they are in a warehouse: "It's recorded, we did commentary tracks with a bunch of the cast, there's all these special extras on it. They pressed them, we saw it. Nothing."

47. In 1990, there was a revival series of The Brady Bunch called The Bradys, which featured most of the original cast and had more dramatic storylines (e.g., Bobby becomes a paraplegic and Marcia is an alcoholic). It lasted for 6 episodes.

48. During the first season of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,' Will Smith memorized the lines of everyone in the cast. If you go back and watch closely, you can see him lip-synching the lines of whoever was speaking in a scene.

49. The worst Star Trek Next Generation episode is widely regarded to be "Shades of Gray". It was a previous clip show created due to a lack of funds left over from other episodes during the second season and the writer, Maurice Hurley, refers to it as a "piece of sh*t."