The Andy Griffith Show/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Actor Allusion: As Warren, Jack Burns would occasionally use his stand up trademark of making a statement to another character then saying "huh?" "huh?" "huh?" until then when the other character shouts an agreement with him to get him to shut up.
  • The Danza: Andy Griffith as Andy Taylor and Elinor Donahue as Ellie Walker.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Lot of guest stars, though this troper remembers Lee Van Cleef in a very small role as--surprise--a bad guy in the carnival episode.
    • A then-unknown Jack Nicholson is also in some brief scenes in one of the later episodes.
  • Name's the Same: In the episode "The Bookie Barber", there is a resident of Mayberry named Emma Watson.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Ben Weaver, the department store owner, was played by three different actors over the course of the show.
    • Four different actors played Wally, the owner of the filling station.
  • The Pete Best: McNear took over the role of Floyd after Baldwin's one-time appearance as the character.
  • Star-Making Role: An example was Frank Sutton, who portrayed Sgt. Vince Carter, in an episode that's called "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." about Gomer joining the U.S. Marines. This episode led to an actual spin-off series.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • Griffith is a native Tarheel. Mayberry is a pastiche of Mt. Airy, where he grew up. Nearby to Mount Airy is Pilot Mountain, renamed to Mount Pilot for the show.
    • Being on the show so endeared the state to Frances Bavier that she moved there (specifically to Siler City) later in life.
    • Howard McNear (Floyd The Barber) had a severe stroke during the run, and upon returning could not walk or stand on his own. He thereafter was always shown sitting or leaning against an object, and would "walk" across the room off camera. When worsening health required him to leave permanently, Floyd retired and the barbershop became Emmett's Fix-It Shop.
  • Recycled Script:
    • At least two different episodes has Barney desperately wanting the big solo in choir - in one such episode, he loses to Gomer, whose singing voice is much more suitable for the solo; in the other, he's over confident that he's got the solo while the rest of the choir try to find a way to get rid of him without hurting his feelings.
    • In a more literal sense, as mentioned about, scripts were already written with Barney in them for the beginning of Season Six, but with Don Knotts not returning, Barney was simply replaced with Warren in the scripts.
  • What Could Have Been: Originally, Andy was supposed to be the comedic lead with Knotts as his straight man (similar to their roles in No Time For Sergeants, but they quickly discovered it was funnier the other way around: "By the second episode, I knew that Don should be funny, and I should play straight."
  • Write What You Know/No Communities Were Harmed: Mayberry is based very heavily on Griffith's home town of Mt. Airy, NC.
  • The Wiki Rule: The Andy Griffith Show Wiki.
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