History Trivia / StarTrekTheOriginalSeries

* OutOfOrder: The original run had different production and broadcast orders. Fortunately [[StatusQuoIsGod the status quo was God]].

** The town of Vulcan, Alberta celebrates Spock Days in June. In April 2010 Creator/LeonardNimoy visited. The town has a space station style tourist centre and a Starship statue, along with many references through the town. Many stores sell Spock Ears. The town's nameth predates the show.

** "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage The Cage]]" ran into an unusual issue with one of its scenes; despite trying out several types of green body paint on Susan Oliver, the actress playing the Orion woman that appears in the episode, whenever the test film was processed, she inexplicably showed up pink. They eventually realized that this was being done manually by one of the technicians processing the film, who thought that the green skin was some kind of error and manually painted her with a pink flesh tone.

** The town of Vulcan, Alberta celebrates Spock Days in June. In April 2010 Creator/LeonardNimoy visited. The town has a space station style tourist centre and a Starship statue, along with many references through the town. Many stores sell Spock Ears. The town's name predates the show.

** ''Ledella spocki'' is a clam whose valves put its describes in mind of Vulcan ears.

** Kirk's the TropeNamer, by omission. No, he never said it. (No, not even in ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries''--there he says "Beam ''us'' up, Scotty".) The closest he comes is in ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'' where he says, "Scotty, beam me up."

** Overlaps with a sort of physical SeinfeldIsUnfunny with communicators resembling early-2000s flip phones whose form factor was directly inspired by ''Star Trek'' communicators...

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]]", the air pressure aboard the ''Constellation'' is measured in Pounds per Square Inch. kPa (kilopascal) is currently the preferred measure of pressure.

* TouristBump: Captain Kirk is born in Iowa[[note]]A fact first stated in the book ''The Making of Star Trek'' in 1968, though most people know it from the fourth movie[[/note]]. In 1985 the town of Riverside asked Gene Roddenberry for official authorization as the future birthplace of Kirk. Now there are many Trek related attractions in the area, including a big sculpture of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Cyrano Jones is such a similar character to Harry Mudd that a story got started that he was written as Mudd, but changed when Roger C. Carmel was unavailable. In fact, the original script for "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles}} The Trouble with Tribbles]]" does have the same character (though his last name is Smith).

* TouristBump: Captain Kirk is born in Iowa[[note]]A fact first stated in he book ''The Making of Star Trek'' in 1968, though most people know it from the fourth movie[[/note]]. In 1985 the town of Riverside asked Gene Roddenberry for official authorization as the future birthplace of Kirk. Now there are many Trek related attractions in the area, including a big sculpture of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

* UnfinishedEpisode: More details [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Undeveloped_Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_episodes here]].
* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Cyrano Jones is such a similar character to Harry Mudd that a story got started that he was written as Mudd, but changed when Roger C. Carmel was unavailable. In fact, the original script for "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles}} The Trouble with Tribbles]]" does have the same character (though his last name is Smith).

* TropeNamer;

** AirVentPassageway
** BeamMeUpScotty
** BeardOfEvil
** BoldlyComing
** CaptainsLog
** ComputerVoice
** FascinatingEyebrow
** All three components of the FreudianTrio:
*** TheKirk
*** TheSpock
*** TheMcCoy
** GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe
** HesDeadJim
** ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder
** KirksRock
** KirkSummation
*** ShutUpKirk
** [[invoked]]MarySue: From ''Fanfic/ATrekkiesTale''.
** MirrorUniverse
** RedShirt
*** MauveShirt
*** RedShirtArmy
** ScottyTime
** SpaceWhaleAesop: From ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome''.
** SpockSpeak
** StrawVulcan
** TheissTitillationTheory: Named for the show's costume designer, William Ware Theiss.
** WagonTrainToTheStars
** WeComeInPeaceShootToKill: From "[[FilkSong Star Trekkin']]".
** WhereNoParodyHasGoneBefore: Shares its name with the title of the fourth season episode of ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'', whose plot was an homage to and an AffectionateParody of everything ''Franchise/StarTrek'', particularly the original series and its movies.

** Gary Lockwood as Gary Mitchell in "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E3WhereNoManHasGoneBefore Where No Man Has Gone Before]]".

** Mark Lenard first appears as the Romulan commander in "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS1E14BalanceOfTerror}} Balance of Terror]]", then as Spock's father Sarek. He then shows up as a Klingon in the prologue of [[Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture the first movie]], thus appearing as a member of three of the major galactic powers of the era.]

** Morgan Woodward guest-starred twice, as Dr. Simon Van Gelder in [[{{Recap/StarTrekS1E9DaggerOfTheMind}} Dagger of the Mind]]" and as Captain Ronald Tracey in "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E23TheOmegaGlory}} The Omega Glory]]".

*** [[https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/sep/05/this-much-i-know-george-takei-getting-cast-as-lt-sulu-in-star-trek-was-life-changing Takei]] mentioned that he tried to get Roddenberry to do an allegory for homophobia, but Roddenberry said all the characters have to be straight if he wants to stay on TV.

** Inverted. Since Creator/GeorgeTakei has come out of the closet, many have speculated that Sulu is gay too, but Takei asserted that he had played Sulu as being straight.[[note]]Sulu is the only one of the six male regulars who never has a love interest in the show, so technically we have no canon evidence of this either way. In the movies, canon is clear that he has a daughter, but makes no mention of any spouse or partner. Interestingly, only Mirror!Sulu shows any interest in women - you know, the one from the universe where everything is the opposite of how it normally is?[[/note]] However:

** As the third season wound down, Roddenberry started inserting things into the show that would make for nice trinkets to sell from his own mail-order merch store that he was running with his then-mistress Majel Barrett. The most blatant incidence of that was a jarringly clunky dialogue scene over Spock's never-seen-before-or-since "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination" (IDIC, the Vulcan's "civilizational" motto) pendant into the episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" Which was done purely so that they can sell replicas later.

** Also, [[StockFootage space and bridge scenes are recycled over and over]], and a few props and sets are recycled into later episodes. In the third season, the recycling of footage became much more apparent as super-fan Bjo Trimble stole all of the un-used special effect footage on Roddenberry's orders so they can be sold on the convention circuit.

** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gASm1AMYGHk transporter sound effect]] was based on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0hs4KrkFp8#t=0m30s part of the "TARDIS taking off" sound effect]] in ''Series/DoctorWho''.

** Many parodies from Amok Time, show Spock and Kirk conversing with each other (this [[Film/TheCableGuy springs to mind]]). This never happened in the episode as Spock was deep in the blood fever and never conversed with Kirk during the battle; Spock only spoke to T'Pau at the time.

** Creator/WilliamShatner didn't make friends easily and there was a decided FriendlyRivalry between he and Creator/LeonardNimoy during the show's run (because Nimoy played the only character more popular than Shatner's Captain Kirk, and because Nimoy got critical praise and Emmy nominations for Spock where Shatner did not), but nevertheless the two formed a legendary friendship which would last for decades and define both of their careers. Sadly they had a falling out a few years before Nimoy's death, and Shatner did not attend his funeral.

** Don't expect to ever hear Sulu say "''Oh, my''." That's Creator/GeorgeTakei's personal {{catchphrase}}. Sulu himself was the only regular who lacked a memorable CatchPhrase or VerbalTic, one of the reasons he didn't show up in too many parodies (and when he did, he was usually the StraightMan).[[note]]For their famous "Last Voyage of the Starship ''Enterprise''" sketch, ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' decided to cast the show's ''production designer'' in the role of Sulu, which he has reprised in every ''Star Trek'' parody the show has done ever since, including a TNG sketch with Creator/PatrickStewart.[[/note]] More recently, given Takei's predilection for AdamWesting, parodies of Sulu are basically parodies of Takei (including the CampGay antics--see below).

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** While nobody caring about the {{red shirt}}s when they die is more of a CommonKnowledge thing, no death in the series ever really gets mentioned again. Until the novelisation of the movies (that have more time to dive into everyone), where Kirk’s brother and sister in law, along with Edith and Gary Mitchell, get mentioned frequently, and their losses contribute to Kirk’s PTSD and depression, giving the impression less of ForgottenFallenFriend and more Kirk doing what he usually does, ignoring everything wrong so he can look perfect. Christine Chapel also has more time, and Carol Marcus has her own arc in grieving for her son instead of just disappearing. One of Kirk's Nexus fantasies is saving ''every'' RedShirt.
** While still keeping the events the same, ''Literature/TheAutobiographyOfJamesTKirk'' has Kirk deeply ashamed of what happened in “The Enemy Within”, and Janice requests a transfer because of it, instead of it being glossed over and her disappearing.

* CharacterOutlivesActor: He was slated to make an appearance in ''Next Generation'', but Roger C. Carmel died before that could happen.

* NamesTheSame: Writer Gene L. Coon got in a bit of trouble due to similarity of the episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS1E18Arena}} Arena]]" to a short story of the same name [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia he had read and forgotten]]. The research agency spotted it immediately and contacted Creator/FredricBrown's agent, inviting him to "write something for Star Trek". After numerous improvements, Coon's work was sent to Brown, Brown okayed it and was given both money and screen credit.