History Trivia / BlackAdder

* IronyAsSheIsCast: In "The Queen of Spain's Beard", Edmund pretends to be gay in order to get out of a marriage to the Infanta. The Infanta was played by Creator/MiriamMargoyles, who is a lesbian in real life.

** Had the second series not happened, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis would have worked on a sitcom starring Music/{{Madness}}.

** Creator/JimBroadbent was supposed to play Lord Whiteadder, again opposite Creator/MiriamMargoyles, but was unavailable.

* StarMakingRole: For Creator/RowanAtkinson, Creator/TonyRobinson, Creator/StephenFry, and Creator/HughLaurie. All four were primarily known as stand-up comedians and sketch comedy actors, but the various ''Blackadder'' series made them all household names in the UK.

* TheWikiRule: [[http://blackadder.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page The Blackadder Wiki]].

* CreatorBacklash: Creator/RowanAtkinson and producer John Lloyd spend a significant amount of time badmouthing this series in the documentary included on the DVD boxset, calling it "pretty, but dreary to watch".

-->'''Rowan Atkinson''': The first series was odd, it was very extravagant. It cost a million pounds for the six programmes...[which] was a lot of money to spend...It looked great, but it wasn't as consistently funny as we would have liked.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The original pilot episode was much more similar to what the later ''Blackadder'' installments would be like (for example, Edmund was much more savvy and snarky in the pilot than he was in the series, except in "[[Recap/BlackadderS1E2BornToBeKing Born to Be King]]", of which the pilot was an early version), but ExecutiveMeddling resulted in the version we have now. Most fans believe that had the finished series combined the pilot episode's characterisations with the cast that we ended up with, it would have been vastly superior.

* TropeNamer: TheCavalierYears.

* OldShame: Creator/RowanAtkinson and producer John Lloyd spend a significant amount of time badmouthing this series in the documentary included on the DVD boxset, calling it "pretty, but dreary to watch".
** Lloyd recalls that a colleague commented at the time that the series "looks a million dollars, but cost a million pounds"[[note]]at the time, the Great British Pound was worth twice the US Dollar[[/note]], although admits that they were proud of the result at the time.
-->'''Rowan Atkinson''': The first series was odd, it was very extravagant. It cost a million pounds for the six programmes...[which] was a lot of money to spend...It looked great, but it wasn't as consistently funny as we would have liked.
** It's very telling that ''Blackadder's Christmas Carol'' features segments in the previous seasons, except this one.

* OldShame: Creator/TomBaker was so embarrassed by his guest role in "[[Recap/BlackadderS2E3Potato Potato]]" that he felt that his Equity card should have been revoked.

* UncreditedRole: Creator/Perry Benson as an Italian priest in "[[Recap/BlackadderS1E3TheArchbishop The Archbishop]]".

* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/TimMcInnerny decided not to continue playing the character of Lord Percy for fear of being typecast, although he appeared in a guest role in "[[Recap/BlackadderS3E3NobAndNobility Nob and Nobility]]".

* WordOfSaintPaul: According to Stephen Fry, Melchett loudly grunts every time he sits down because has hemorrhoids.

* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Stephen Fry is often rumoured to have had a non-speaking role as a guard in the background of one or more episodes from this season. In reality, Fry is nowhere to be found, the only season of the show where this is the case. This rumour is likely the result of people confusing Fry with Stephen ''Frost'', who plays a guard in "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" and "The Black Seal".

** Creator/StephenFry's homosexuality is amusingly alluded to (and PlayedForLaughs) with some of his characters' actions: Lord Melchett (''Blackadder II'') had a very... close relationship with Flossie the sheep. In ''Goes Forth'', General Melchett's "one true love" was Speckled Jim, his pet pigeon. In another episode of said series he falls for George's drag act, and considers a woman's "drag act" a disaster. There's also the sheer amount of time he spends calling his 2iC [[UnfortunateNames Darling.]]

** Creator/StephenFry's homosexuality is amusingly alluded (and PlayedForLaughs) to by some of his characters' actions: Lord Melchett (''Blackadder II'') had a very... close relationship with Flossie the sheep. In ''Goes Forth'', General Melchett's "one true love" was Speckled Jim, his pet pigeon. In another episode of said series he falls for George's drag act, and considers a woman's "drag act" a disaster. There's also the sheer amount of time he spends calling his 2iC [[UnfortunateNames Darling.]]

* YouLookFamiliar: Creator/TimMcInnerny, Creator/MirandaRichardson, and Creator/StephenFry all made guest appearances in various episodes.

** A series set in the future called ''Star Adder''. The concept was reused for the future segments of "[[Recap/BlackadderSS2BlackaddersChristmasCarol Blackadder's Christmas Carol]]''.

** Blackadder as a corrupt Oxford don and Baldrick as his "scout" or housekeeper. It was the idea of Richard Curtis, who liked the implication that "essentially they would have been [[LikeAnOldMarriedCouple married for forty years]]."

* OldShame: Creator/RowanAtkinson and producer John Lloyd spend a significant amount of time badmouthing this series in the documentary included on the DVD boxset, calling it "pretty, but dreary to watch."

** In "[[Recap/BlackadderS4E4PrivatePlane Private Plane]]", when Flashheart is carrying off Bob the driver and they keep saying "Woof!" to each other, Blackadder sourly remarks "God, it's like Crufts in here." This was an ad lib by producer John Lloyd: the line as originally written was "God, it's like Battersea Dog's Home in here" but Rowan Atkinson's stutter kicked in and he couldn't get around the "b" in "Battersea". After several failed takes, Lloyd instructed the floor manager to tell Atkinson to change the reference to Crufts, Britain's most famous dog show. The result got a huge laugh from the studio audience (partly out of relief). Stephen Fry remarked that it was an inspired bit of on-the-fly producing from Lloyd.

* WagTheDirector: Creator/RikMayall only agreed to play Lord Flashheart under the proviso that every single line he had was funnier than Rowan Atkinson's.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Various ideas for a fifth series were suggested, but never went anywhere. Partly this was due to the writers and actors moving onto different projects, and also partly because the creators knew that ''Goes Forth'' and especially its final moments had set the bar so incredibly high that any fifth series would be slaughtered by critics if it failed to live up to expectations:
** One idea for a fifth series would have had Blackadder as a member of UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher's cabinet in the 1980s.
** Another idea was to do a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII prisoner escape story.
** Yet another was ''The Red Adder'', with Blackadder being a secret policeman in Russia during the Revolution. It would turn out that by the end of the series, he'd be doing the same job only in a different uniform.
** A fifth series or a movie set in the TheSixties about a rock band was on the cards at one point but nothing came of it. Blackadder would have been the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth and was in a band called The Blackadder Five, with "Bald Rick" on drums.
** There was also talk of a sixties TuxedoAndMartini spoof called either ''Blackadder [=MI5=]'' or ''Blackadder 005''.[[note]]Rowan Atkinson did end up playing hapless secret agent Johnny English in three movies, though that had more in common with Mr Bean[[/note]]
** Creator/StephenFry suggested a BoardingSchool series called ''Blackadder in the Fifth''.
** Richard Curtis had the idea of Blackadder as a corrupt Oxford don and Baldrick as his "scout" (housekeeper) "so essentially [[LikeAnOldMarriedCouple they would have been married for forty years]]".

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The original pilot episode was much more similar to what the later ''Blackadder'' installments would be like (for example, Edmund was much more savvy and snarky in the pilot than he was in the series, except in "[[Recap/BlackadderS1E2BornToBeAKing Born to Be King]]", of which the pilot was an early version), but ExecutiveMeddling resulted in the version we have now. Most fans believe that had the finished series combined the pilot episode's characterisations with the cast that we ended up with, it would have been vastly superior.

* ExecutiveMeddling: A positive example. Due to the high cost of the first season, Michael Grade (the then controller of programming of BBC 1) was reluctant to sign off a second season without major improvements and cost-cutting, leaving a gap of three years between the two series.

* StarMakingRole: For Creator/RowanAtkinson, Creator/TonyRobinson, Creator/StephenFry, and Creator/HughLaurie. All four were primarily known as stand-up comedians and sketch comedy actors, but the various ''Blackadder'' series made them all household names on the UK.

* StarMakingRole: For pretty much the entire cast in the UK, but especially Tony Robinson.

* QuoteSource:
** TheDitz

** A fifth series or a movie set in the TheSixties about a rock band was on the cards at one point but nothing came of it. Blackadder would have been the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth and was in a band called The Blackadder Five, with Bald Rick on drums.
** There was also talk of a sixties TuxedoAndMartini spoof called either ''Blackadder MI5'' or ''Blackadder 005''.[[note]]Rowan Atkinson did end up playing hapless secret agent Johnny English in three movies, though that had more in common with Mr Bean[[/note]]

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The original pilot episode was much more similar to what the later ''Blackadder'' installments would be like (for example, Edmund was much more savvy and snarky in the pilot than he was in the series, except in "[[Recap/BlackadderS1E1BornToBeAKing Born to Be King]]", of which the pilot was an early version), but ExecutiveMeddling resulted in the version we have now. Most fans believe that had the finished series combined the pilot episode's characterisations with the cast that we ended up with, it would have been vastly superior.

* FanNickname: The nameless King played by John Savident in the original, unaired pilot has been nicknamed King Frederick I by fans, in reference to Savident's [[Series/CoronationStreet most well-known role]].