Lost/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


note: if you can't guess, quite a bit of this is lifted directly from IMDB and there's still cleanup to make this less of a copy of the stuff there.

  • Series composer Michael Giacchino (who also composed the music for The Incredibles) used parts of the plane as percussion instruments and can be heard in the score of the pilot episode.
  • The airplane pieces on the beach, depicting the doomed flight from Sydney, are the remnants of a Lockheed Tristar L-1011. She began service for Eastern Airlines (N308EA) in 1972 and was retired by Delta Airlines (N783DL) in 1998 having racked up a total of 28,822 landings and 58,841 flight-hours.
  • 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 all added together equal 108, the total of minutes left to enter those very numbers into the computer each time, and the number of days that the castaways spent on the island before the Oceanic Six were rescued.
  • During the scenes where Charlie is handling and using heroin, the heroin is actually cane sugar.
  • Charlie's shoulder tattoo reads "Living is easy with eyes closed." This is a lyric from the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles. This is Dominic Monaghan's actual tattoo and the producers decided to write it into the show instead of covering it.
  • Charlie's role was originally written for someone much older, but, when Dominic Monaghan auditioned, the writers and producers loved him so much that they set about rewriting the part to Dominic's strengths.
  • The rocks used in the waterfall cave set are made of rubber so that the sound of the actors, and crew members walking about are not picked up on camera.
  • The scenes of the Losties' beach camp in the pilot was filmed on Mokuleia Beach in Oahu. Production was moved to nearby Papailoa Beach thereafter because of the winter surf was getting too strong and for continuity's sake remained on Papailoa Beach after the winter and for subsequent seasons.
  • The majority of post-pilot beach scenes are filmed along a more remote, secluded stretch of Oahu's famous North Shore. The sandy shoreline is not private but the access is off the beaten path.
  • Jungle scenes depicting open, grassy pasture areas at the foot of jagged cliffs were filmed in Kaaawa Valley, which is over 30 miles away from Mokuleia Beach.
  • The sound stage where the cave scenes are filmed is at a disused Xerox building that was the site of the murders of seven employees in 1999 by a disgruntled former employee.
  • The shirt that Sawyer wears that has a fish on it is from an actual restaurant. One of the show's creators went to Humpy's in Alaska and liked the logo so much he wanted to use it on the show. They didn't get permission to use it until much later so they took the logo from the site and made their own. No one at Humpy's knew how it got onto the show until much later.
  • ABC picked up the show before there even was a script. J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof had only turned in an outline and based on this ABC picked up the show.
  • When Jin is at the house of the person he is meant to kill, Hurley is on the television behind him. If you look (extremely) carefully you can see that he is wearing the grey shirt that he is wearing when the television cameras show up at the petrol station later on in the series.
  • Originally, Michael Emerson was only cast for a few episodes in season two. The producers were so impressed with his performance that they cast him as a regular and rewrote the part of Henry Gale/Ben Linus to feature him more prominently.
  • The very first scene filmed on the show was the one in the pilot episode when Charlie was confronted by Cindy Chandler, the flight attendant, seconds before the plane crashed. Kimberley Joseph, who played Cindy, spoke the very first lines of the show's production.
  • In the original description for Kate, she was a slightly older woman separated from her husband, who went to the bathroom in the tail-section of the plane. However, that idea ended up being used for the character Rose.
  • Executive Producer Carlton Cuse does the narration for the advertisements for The Hanso Foundation.
  • John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher who described the human being as "tabula rasa"—translated as "unwritten sheet" or "empty canvas"—at birth. It's obvious that the creators of the show were inspired by this when creating Locke.
  • The two-part pilot episode was the most expensive in ABC's history, reportedly costing between ten and fourteen million dollars. The average pilot is usually in the region of four million.
  • In France, it is known as "Lost: Les Disparus" (The Disappeared Ones). The additional French tag is due to a governmental ruling that imposes the use of French in all titles.
  • The only member of the principal cast who didn't have to audition for a role was Terry O'Quinn, with whom J.J. Abrams had previously worked on the second season of Alias. Abrams wrote John Locke's character specifically for O'Quinn
  • The ornate tattoos on Jack's shoulder are Matthew Fox's own.
  • The original name of Charlie's band Drive Shaft was The Petting Zoo. This had to be changed, however, when it transpired that there really is a band called The Petting Zoo. The band's one hit, "You All Everybody" is largely inspired by the Oasis song "Cigarettes and Alcohol".
  • The fateful journey, Oceanic Flight 815 (Sydney to Los Angeles), flew on September 22nd 2004. This was the pilot episode's air-date on US television's ABC network.
  • The song Juliet listens to in Season 3 is "Downtown" by Petula Clark. However, the CD case Juliet pulls the disc from is from Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues album and the CD that she puts in the stereo has the serial number "JN 94743", which belongs to the album Okemah and the Melody of Riot by Son Volt.
  • Jorge Garcia was the first person cast for the series.
  • Josh Holloway was trying to cover up his Southern accent while shooting several of his first scenes in the first season. It wasn't until producer J.J. Abrams told him that the reason they cast him was because of the accent that Holloway changed. There are still some scenes left in the pilot where he doesn't use his Southern accent.
  • Yunjin Kim originally thought that Sun was too stereotypical and submissive, but agreed to take the role after being convinced by series co-creator J.J. Abrams.
  • The airline in this show that flew the ill-fated flight is called "Oceanic", a name that has been used before in films, such as 1996's Executive Decision and in many other made-for-TV movies.
  • Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje came up with his own character's name, "Mr. Eko", while he and the writers were developing the character.
  • Although in the cast list Sun is listed as having her husband's last name of Kwon, in real life it's highly unusual for Korean women to take their husband's last name.
  • The series began development in January 2004 when Lloyd Braun, then head of ABC, ordered a script that fused the concepts of the film Cast Away and the popular reality TV show Survivor. Jeffrey Lieber was tasked with writing the pilot, but Braun was unimpressed with the initial effort and subsequent rewrites and he contacted J.J. Abrams, whose series Alias was a hit for the network. Although initially hesitant, Abrams gave it a go in collaboration with Damon Lindelof. Their script was greenlit, but because it had been commissioned so late in the 2004 development cycle it was under very tight deadlines. Ironically, before the pilot aired Lloyd Braun was sacked by ABC's parent company, Disney - for greenlighting such an expensive and risky project. Abrams only worked on the show for a handful of episodes in the first season before leaving Lindelof as show-runner; due to his lack of experience in running a network show, Lindelof asked former colleague and Nash Bridges show-runner Carlton Cuse to come aboard as co-show-runner of Lost. The two served as show-runners for the remainder of it's run, and are primarily responsible for mapping out the Lost mythology.
  • Evangeline Lilly was one of the last actors to be cast for the show, but the fact that she is a Canadian citizen gave the producers concern that she might not be able to obtain the appropriate U.S. employment visa that would grant her permission to stay in the country long enough to shoot the entire series. They pushed back all of Kate's scenes when they were shooting the pilot, just to be sure that they could get the proper employment visa, a category "O-1" for "aliens of extraordinary ability in arts, science, education, business or athletics" for Lilly. As her body of work as an actor was not extensive at the time she was cast, they had a difficult time proving to the USCIS (formerly known as the INS) that Lilly was deserving of this classification as an "artist of extraordinary ability". It wasn't until they had shot almost every scene without the Kate character that she was finally granted the O-1 visa and signed on. That same day she was put on a plane in Canada and flown directly to Hawaii for the shooting.
  • Originally, Michael Keaton was cast as Jack. In the first draft of the script, Jack was to be killed by the monster after they arrived at the cockpit, with Kate then becoming the main protagonist. ABC told the producers that they shouldn't kill off the hero so soon in the series and the script was changed. After the change, Michael Keaton backed out of the role since he did not want to commit to a regular series.
  • Jorge Garcia was cast as Hurley after J.J. Abrams saw him in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  • Both John Locke and his father, Anthony Cooper, are named after 17th- and 18th-century English philosophers; the real Anthony Cooper was educated as a boy by the real John Locke.
  • Danielle Rousseau's name is a reference to Jean Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosopher and creator of the "good savage" theory, a view that defends that Man is born free and pure and is subsequently corrupted by society and "civilization".
  • Desmond's full name is "Desmond David Hume". David Hume was a Scottish philosopher who rote extensively on the subject of free will vs. predetermination.
  • Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told Entertainment Weekly magazine that the names of the characters Daniel Faraday and George Minkowski are references to the scientists Michael Faraday and Hermann Minkowski, respectively. Michael Faraday was a physicist and chemist who contributed to our understanding of electromagnetism, while his fictional namesake is a physicist whose experimental work had involved magnetism. Hermann Minkowski was a mathematician and experimental physicist whose work helped explain Einstein's special theory of relativity in the context of four dimensional space-time (which often figures in postulations and theories about how time travel might work), while his fictional namesake actually is a time traveler.
  • One of the key questions with the character Walt's casting were problems that arose concerning the proposed timeline on the show. While the series moves slowly through time and only weeks have passed on the show, the actual filming has stretched over two years. When originally cast, Walt was portrayed as a 10-year-old boy but, after two seasons, he no longer looked 10. The show's writers dealt with this at the end of season two, by sending Michael and Walt away from the island toward supposed rescue. Walt reappeared in Season 4, but in scenes that play three years further into the show's time line, so that he had aged appropriately by then.
  • As the early drafts did not feature several of the characters who eventually appeared in the pilot, or had them appear very differently, many of the actors wound up auditioning for the parts of Kate and Sawyer. Yunjin Kim impressed the casting director but was deemed not right for the role of Kate, so Abrams and Lindelof created the character of Sun specifically for her, as well as the character of Jin to give her a foil. Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox both auditioned for the role of Sawyer, who was written as a slick city conman at the time: as mentioned above, the part of Charlie was rewritten to suit Monaghan, while Fox later re-auditioned for the part of Jack once it had been decided that Jack would be a series regular rather than a Sacrificial Lamb. The part of Sawyer was rewritten to its current incarnation based on the strength of Josh Holloway's audition.


  • Actor Allusion:
    • When he first meets Jacob, Richard Alpert asks if he is The Devil. Mark Pellegrino not only plays Lucifer on Supernatural but also previously starred as a servant of the Devil in Brimstone.
    • Sawyer referring to Charlie as "the Munchkin" in "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" could be construed as a reference to his resemblance to a Hobbit, especially given the slight smile that starts to appear before the shot cuts.
    • Charlie definitely gets one in an earlier episode "Further Instructions" during which a mute John Locke is trying to convey a message and Charlie remarks, "Trees? Yeah, I've heard they're wonderful conversationalists." This is a direct allusion to the fact that Dominac Monaghan played Merry in the The Lord of the Rings films and did in fact talk to the trees.
    • Back in the Season 1 episode "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues", where Charlie and Claire get kidnapped and Charlie subtly leaves behind some of the bandages he wore as a trail for the pursuers to follow. It seems he learned that trick from Pippin. He was talking to Rose when she was carrying a ring on a chain around her neck.
    • A rare soundtrack example: Michael Giacchino, the series composer, also composed for Medal of Honor. Because of this, nearly every appearance of a submarine is accompanied by the submarine theme from the game.
    • One of the funniest is in "Across the Sea" when Mother asks the other woman what her name is. She responds with "Claudia". Mother smiles and says it's a lovely name. The actress who plays Mother is Allison Janney, who is probably best known for playing C.J. (Claudia Jean) on The West Wing.
    • In "Expose", Rodrigo Santoro's character is referred to as "The Wolfgang Puck of Brazil." This is probably a reference to Santoro's title of "The Tom Cruise of Brazil".
    • Terry O'Quinn, the actor who plays Locke, played an Admiral on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Pegasus". Here's a conversation from "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues":

Boone: Red shirt.
Locke: Huh?
Boone: Ever watch Star Trek?
Locke: Nah, not really.
Boone: The crew guys that would go down to the planet with the main guys, the captain and the guy with the pointy ears, they always wore red shirts. And they always got killed.
Locke: Yeah?
Boone: Yeah.
Locke: Sounds like a piss-poor captain.

The Joker: I can hear you all now. "How did this happen? Can I get me some of that crazy cure? I want answers, dammit! Now!" Well, here's the thing. Answers don't give you everlasting satisfaction. Sometimes, you need to brace yourself for disappointment. Now, think about it. Imagine your favorite show. You've been through it all. The ups, the downs, the crazy coincidences. And then, BANG! They tell you what it's all about. Would you be happy? Does it make sense? How come it all ended in a church?

  • Dawson Casting: Averted with Tania Raymonde, who started the show at 16, the same age as her character Alex. She experienced a touch of this though four years later playing the character at the same age. Later played straight with Alex's boyfriend Karl, played by 25-year-old Blake Bashoff.
    • Daniel Faraday's age is an odd subject: Assuming he was born in late 1977, that still means he was no older than 19 when Desmond visited him at Oxford where he was a professor. The fact that he's a super-genius could maybe justify that, but it still means that Daniel was probably 18 when he graduated, and in his graduation scene he is played by 39-year-old Jeremy Davies.
    • Ben and Danielle are also supposed to be the same age (as are Michael Emmerson and Mira Furlan, who are both in their 50's). Yet when they're seen together in a flashback, Danielle at 29 is played by Melissa Farman, while Ben at 29 is played by Michel Emmerson (wearing a wig).
  • Executive Veto: Jack was supposed to die in the first episode; ABC nixed that idea and the rest is history.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Naveen Andrews (British of Indian parentage) plays Sayid Jarrah (Iraqi Arab).
    • Evangeline Lilly (Canadian) plays Kate Austen (American).
    • Daniel Dae Kim (Korean-American) plays Jin-Soo Kwan (Korean national).
    • Mira Furlan (Yugoslavian/Croatian) plays Danielle Rousseau (French).
    • Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (British of Nigerian parentage) plays Mr. Eko (Nigerian).
    • Alan Dale (New Zealand) plays Charles Widmore (British).
    • Fionnula Flanagan (Irish) plays Eloise Hawking (English).
    • Andrew Divoff (Venezuelan) plays Mikhail Bakunin (Russian).
    • Zuleikha Robinson (British) plays Ilana Verdansky (who is presumed to be of Russian descent).
    • In the flash-sideways verse, possibly Jeremy Davies (American) as Daniel Widmore (British) (though he still has an American accent).
  • Fan Community Nicknames: "Lostaways". Or "Losties". Confusingly, both refers to the Flight 815 islanders as well.
    • It's not so surprising that one nickname would refer to both the original castaways and the fans, given that for most of the first two seasons the fans also felt like they'd been wrecked on a mysterious island with absolutely no clue what was happening...
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Head writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are generally referred to as "Darlton" or "Team Darlton".
    • Fenry for Ben when he was "Fake Henry", becoming "Benry".
    • Losties or Lostaways for the original group.
    • Tailies and Boaties for those who arrived in the plane's tail and the freighter, respectively.
    • Guyliner for Richard Alpert -- though he's not actually wearing any at all; Nestor Carbonell's eyes are naturally like that.
    • Smokey for The Monster.
    • The Man in Black has a whole bunch thanks to having no name revealed: Esau, Un-Locke, the Smoke Monster, or Smokey for short. "The Locke-ness Monster" probably wins for creativity.
    • And of course the Muppet Dr. Chang in Lost Untangled has his own series of nicknames for everyone, several of them possibly borrowed from the fan community.
  • God Never Said That: The producers never said that the show would never have time travel. They once said that the then ongoing season two had no time travel -- and it didn't -- but never that there would never be time travel. Additionally, they never stated that there was one huge clue left in the pilot -- in fact, they explicitly said there wasn't, and the last one to be made significant was the single white tennis shoe Jack found. Yet this is repeated until today.
    • In an example of "Word of Mistaken God", an excellent way to see if someone is making something up about a producer comment is to see if they attribute it to J.J. Abrams, who has had little involvement in the series since Season 1, helping to set it up, write and direct the pilot, and contributing to only a very few episodes since (the last being in Season 3).
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Jacob may be immortal, wise and extremely powerful but he is obviously not a golfer.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) is an affable, intelligent and mild-mannered fellow who couldn't be nicer to Lost fans and generally provides good hints and insights that help answer the show's mysteries. His character, on the other hand...
    • He once described how if people see him in public, conversation will sometimes drop off suddenly. He'll then do something non-threatening, like a small wave, which people will possibly read as even more threatening. Because he's Ben Linus.
  • Name's the Same: The show's Theme Naming:
    • John Locke.
    • (Desmond) David Hume.
    • (Danielle) Rousseau.
    • (Daniel) Faraday.
    • Edmund Burke.
    • Mikhail Bakunin.
    • Jeremy Bentham.
    • Anthony Cooper.
    • (Boone) Carlyle.
    • Richard Alpert.
    • (Eloise) Hawking.
    • C(harlotte) Staples Lewis.
    • Dogen.
  • Playing Against Type: Yunjin Kim (Sun), who gained fame in Korea playing Action Girls. Of course, Sun's character later began to show some of those traits in later seasons.
  • Star-Making Role: Unusually, for composer Michael Giacchino more than for any of the people in front of the camera.
  • Teasing Creator: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
  • Viral Marketing: The Lost Experience is the biggest example, but also the other between-seasons games.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • In the event that the show be Cut Short partway through the first season, then plan was to reveal the island to be in The Bermuda Triangle.
    • There was a planned subplot, revealed at Comic Con, that had the DHARMA researchers know that a Stable Time Loop was going on, and that they would perish. It was dropped, due to time constraints and new writers.
    • The original mythology was going to be much more sci-fi oriented.
    • Jennifer Jason Leigh was approached to play the part of Libby, but she declined.
    • In the original description for Kate, she was a slightly older woman separated from her husband, who went to the bathroom in the tail-section of the plane. However, that idea ended up being used for the character Rose.
    • Eko was originally to be named "Emeka".
    • The character of Sawyer was originally meant to be an older, slick, suit-wearing city con artist from Buffalo, NY. However, when Josh Holloway forgot a line at his audition and subsequently kicked a chair in frustration and loudly swore, the writers liked the edge he brought to the Sawyer character and decided to write Sawyer as more of a Southern, darker grifter instead.
    • The original name of Charlie's band was "The Petting Zoo". This had to be changed, however, when it transpired that there really is a band called "The Petting Zoo".
    • Yunjin Kim originally read for the character of Kate. The producers felt she was not what they were looking for in Kate, but decided to create a new character for her, along with a spouse.
    • Jorge Garcia, Matthew Fox and Dominic Monaghan all auditioned originally for the part of Sawyer as the other characters had not been developed yet.
    • Originally, Michael Keaton was cast as Jack. In the first draft of the script, Jack was to be killed by the monster after they arrived at the cockpit. ABC told the producers that they shouldn't kill off the hero so soon in the series and the script was changed. After the change, Michael Keaton backed out of the role since he did not want to commit to a regular series.
    • Forest Whitaker was originally cast in the role of Sawyer, but opted out of the role to direct First Daughter.
    • Dominic Monaghan originally auditioned for the role of Sawyer, who was originally supposed to be a suit-wearing city con man. The producers were so enthused by Monaghan that the part of Charlie was altered to accommodate him - Charlie was originally going to be a 45-year-old washed-up rock star.
    • Originally, Kate was supposed to have been a thirty something businesswoman whose husband had died in the crash. When Jack died in the original script Kate would have become the leader of the group.
    • Originally, Ilana was set to be Jacob's daughter, but the writers ran out of time to explain this plot, so they decided to kill her and focus on the big season plot.
    • In original drafts for the show, Rousseau's team of scientists were studying time. The network told the writers not to include it in the show, in case the viewers would think it too science fiction and stop watching.
  • The Wiki Rule: The Lostpedia
  • Word of God: Now that the series is over, most of the burning questions fans have had will have to be/have been addressed in this way, if at all. Namely:
    • The original plan for Ilana's character (which may or may not count as canon) was that she would turn out to be Jacob's daughter.
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