Friends/Trivia


 * Acting for Two: Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe and recurring Evil Twin Ursula, and David Schwimmer's one-off as "Russ", a Ross-esque guy Rachel briefly dated (without noticing the similarities, such as profession and the unique manner of speaking).
 * Actor Allusion: On "The One with the Football", Phoebe wears a That Girl T-shirt. Marlo Thomas, the star of that show, played Rachel's mother.
 * There's even one for animal actors. In "The One After the Superbowl", Ross learns Marcel the monkey is now filming the fictional sequel to Outbreak. The monkey actually was the monkey in the film.
 * For one episode in the opening credits, Courtney Cox gets first billing and is now billed as Courtney Cox-Arquette (due to her marriage to David Arquette). The rest of the cast also have Arquette hyphened onto the end of their names in the credits for that episode. The end of the episode has a little dedication saying "For Courtney and David, who did get married".
 * In "The One with the Ultimate Fighting Championship", we meet formerly-bald Bonnie, played by Christine Taylor. Laura, her Alpha Bitch character in The Craft, lost her hair as part of a bullying-revenge subplot.
 * In "The One with Mac and CHEESE", when Joey doesn't quite get the "CHEESE" reference, Phoebe and Rachel comment on variations on the name. Rachel says "Bic Macs" and Phoebe says "Oh, you love those!" referring to Aniston's role in Mac and Me.
 * Creator Backlash: The writers openly acknowledge in one of the Season Eight commentaries that they don't like the Chandler/Monica plot in "The One with the Truth About London."
 * They also have some disdain for Season Six, feeling they were simply going through the motions during that time period. Not surprising, given that this was when a lot of the backstage drama with issues like Matthew Perry's drug addictions really began to hinder the series.
 * Matthew Perry said once he hates it when he's checking out a rerun, and a Season 3 episode comes on, and he sees himself, very skinny. He was having weight problems during that time.
 * Creator Breakdown: "The One with the Cat", an episode where Phoebe thinks her dead mother has been reincarnated as a cat, was written by co-creator Marta Kauffman, who lost her own mother at the time (the episode is dedicated to her). The episode got a mostly negative reception from the fanbase at the time of its airing, mainly due to Phoebe successfully making Ross out to be the bad guy for his insistence that she'd return the cat to her child owner (adding to the ridiculousness, Phoebe had just met her biological mother). One of the other writers mentioned in an interview years later that the episode being written to take Phoebe's inane side would've been shot down at the table read had it not been for the circumstances surrounding it; they would've felt bad going against Kauffman on this issue.
 * Dawson Casting: High school-aged Ross, Rachel, Chandler and Monica are played by the regular cast. Additionally, the characters were all meant to be in their mid-twenties at the beginning of the show, but Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox were already in their thirties.
 * Deleted Scene: The uncut episodes on DVD tend to have scenes that were cut not just for syndication, but also scenes that also didn't originally air due to content. One example is when Joey is angry at Chandler for making fun of the bracelet he gave him; when Chandler says he should focus on the fact Chandler wore it even though he hated it, Joey tells him to "focus on this" and grabs his junk while the camera cuts to behind Joey. Another extra sequence, in "The One with the Cheap Wedding Dress", seems to be an ad-lib from Matt LeBlanc: After a love interest ditches both Ross and Joey at a restaurant, Ross asks if Joey is hungry, to which Joey replies, "Does a bear shit in the woods?"
 * Directed by Cast Member: David Schwimmer directed ten episodes in the later seasons.
 * Dueling Shows: With Living Single.
 * Edited for Syndication: The show's run on Nick at Nite (which, as of this writing, is still ongoing) is full of this, as one would unfortunately expect. Various episodes that were a bit longer than the half-hour time slot are cut rather drastically, with various scenes shifting regardless of whatever was happening at the moment, making certain joke buildups seemingly pointless. To their credit, nothing plot relevant is cut, but it's really jarring and even those who haven't seen the full episodes can tell that some hasty editing was done.
 * Executive Meddling: The Season Six episode "The One with the Proposal" was subjected to this. Originally, the episode was supposed to depict a big showdown between Chandler and Richard, ultimately ending in a cliffhanger with Monica deciding who to marry. However, there was last-minute speculation that Season Six would be the final season of Friends. Thus, the writers were forced to retool the episode to end with Monica and Chandler proposing, so that if the series was cancelled, there would be no cliffhanger left dangling.
 * To be fair, the writers also changed the 'showdown' ending because they realized it would be obvious that Monica was going to pick Chandler. They didn't like playing the proposal for cheap laughs and drama, so changed it to the more private, romantic proposal we see. They explain it all on the episodes commentary.
 * NBC execs forced Marcel on the show, because apparently Friends needed a monkey for comic relief. Both cast and crew found it to be a pain in the ass and give it a Take That in Season 6. They also attempted numerous spin-offs and crossovers with the show to try to piggyback off the show's success.


 * Jessica Hecht (Susan) originally auditioned for the part of Monica.