The Brady Bunch/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Beam Me Up, Scotty: "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!!" is said more times on this page (twice) than it was on the actual show (once). As with many other so-called catchphrases, it entered the popular consciousness through parodies: first Saturday Night Live, and then The Brady Bunch Movie.
    • Confessions; Confessions: As with the even-more famous "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!", the lines "Mom's favorite vase!" and "Mom always said don't play ball in the house" are uttered once (they are repeated, yes, but through Peter's nightmare).
  • Cast Incest: Barry Williams (Greg) went out to dinner once with Florence Henderson (his TV-(step)mom) and the media made a bigger deal out of it than it actually was. A full-fledged relationship did not come of it. Barry Williams and Maureen McCormick also got hot and heavy, as did Chris Knight and Eve Plumb. Finally, Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen had a fake marriage as little kids, which ended when Mike developed a crush on Eve.
    • Mike and Susan dissolved their fake marriage with a fake divorce, which they figured was doing the marriage ceremony backwards.
  • The Danza: Linda Gibboney plays Sandy's cousin Linda in "Peter and the Wolf".
  • Directed by Cast Member: Robert Reed.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Mike Lookinland (Bobby) is a natural blond.
  • Fatal Method Acting: Averted in "The Cincinnati Kids". Had Robert Reed not suggested that a test run be done first before filming the scene where the family rides the Racer roller coaster, one of his fellow cast members would have had their head smashed (and likely killed) by a camera that wasn't properly mounted on the train car.
  • Money, Dear Boy: The only reason Robert Reed signed on.
    • This is not true. This may be the only reason he stayed with the show, but he said before he died that the show was pitched to him as being more adult and less like Gilligan's Island. That is why he agreed to do it.
    • Another reason he stayed with the show was that he had grown fond of the cast and treated the children like they were his own.
    • Also, as a Paramount contract player during the waning days of the studio system, he was obligated to do the pilot.
  • The Other Darrin: Seven words: "Fake Jan" in The Brady Bunch Hour.
    • As well as Cindy in A Very Brady Christmas and Marcia in The Bradys. The Brady Girls Get Married was the only project which reunited the entire original cast.
    • The Mexican Spanish dub of the TV series suffered one of the biggest casting shifts ever: Only the first three seasons were dubbed in Spanish in the 70s, since the series was canceled possibly due to low ratings in Mexico. The last two seasons weren't dubbed until the 2000s (about 26 years after the TV series ended both in the U.S. and when the series was canceled in Mexico) and when they dubbed the last seasons, they have to replace the entire cast, since almost all the original voice cast are retired from voice acting or dead.
    • Starting with midway through the first episode (due to the real Tiger's death before the essential scenes were taped), and continuing through to his final appearance in late 1970, a number of dogs played "Tiger". None of them worked out, and since the focus was more on the human members of the family, Tiger was ultimately retired.
  • Real Life Relative: Robert Reed's daughter in an episode centering on the girls having a sleepover.
    • Sherwood Schwartz's daughter, in the same episode.
  • What Could Have Been: Schwartz originally wanted Gene Hackman to play Mike but the network turned him down because he was too familiar.
  • Write Who You Know: In "And Now a Word From Our Sponsor"; this is how Skip Farnum envisioned the Bradys when he hired them, expecting natural performances.

Back to The Brady Bunch