Line #51 Trivia/Dexter


1	* ActingInTheDark: In season six, only Creator/EdwardJamesOlmos knew that [[spoiler:his character Professor Gellar was DeadAllAlong and a delusion of his "student" Travis]]. Even the directors were kept in the dark, leading to a few instances where Olmos had to gently nudge them away from filming a scene in a way that the reveal wouldn't make sense.
2	* BabyNameTrendStarter: "Dexter" enjoyed a large bump as a boy's name in the late '00s and early '10s thanks to the show. While its main character Dexter Morgan was a SerialKiller and a VillainProtagonist, he was also a handsome and charismatic one with a lot of redeeming qualities who only killed people who deserved it, and so, for many young parents, the name came to be seen as dark but cool.
3	* CaliforniaDoubling: The grand majority of scenes are filmed in southern California. The boat scenes are a mix of soundstage, greenscreening, and CGI, while the locations visited by main characters are almost exclusively in California. Miami has only seen teams taking aerial and exterior shots, as well as rare shots involving extras.
4	* CastIncest: Creator/MichaelCHall (Dexter Morgan) and Creator/JenniferCarpenter (Debra Morgan) were married for a couple of years while playing adopted siblings. They were divorced on December 2, 2011.
5	* ContentLeak: The first two and last two episodes of Season 2, and the first two episodes of Season 4 were leaked online before their original airings.
6	* CreatorBacklash: A year after the show ended, Creator/MichaelCHall admitted he'd never actually watched the finale and "I think the show had lost a certain amount of torque. Just inherently because of how long we'd done it, because of the storytelling capital we'd spent, because our writers may have been gassed." In 2020, after the announcement of the revival, Hall admitted in an interview that the conclusion of the series in Season 8 was unsatisfactory and that this was the chance to give the protagonist a more appropriate outcome.
7	* DuelingWorks: Played with in the case of the final season of ''Series/BreakingBad''. ''Dexter'''s final (at the time) season aired alongside ''Breaking Bad'', and ''Dexter'' was much criticized while ''Breaking Bad'' was loved. Because both shows had a VillainProtagonist, were popular before ending, and airing near each other in time slot, they were compared as if they were DuelingWorks. This, even though they're not alike outside of focusing on a bad guy.
8	* ExecutiveMeddling: Showtime execs refused to let the show end with [[spoiler:Dexter's death]]. So there's who to blame.
9	* FakeAmerican:
10	** Englishman Creator/JonnyLeeMiller as Jordan Chase.
11	** Australian Creator/YvonneStrahovski as Hannah [=McKay=].
12	** Englishman Sam Underwood as Zach Hamilton.
13	* FakeNationality: Or "Fake Ethnicity".
14	** Puerto Rican Lauren Vélez as Afro-Cuban-American Maria [=LaGuerta=].
15	** Puerto Rican David Zayas as Cuban Angel Batista.
16	** Korean-American C.S. Lee as Japanese-American Vince Masuka.
17	** Mexican-American Christian Camargo as (presumed) [[ButNotTooForeign white American]] Rudy Cooper [[spoiler:/ Brian Moser]].
18	* FakeRussian: Irishman Creator/RayStevenson as Ukrainian Isaak Sirko.
19	* TheOtherDarrin:
20	** Cody was played by Daniel Goldman in Season 1, and by Preston Bailey from Season 2 onward.
21	** Taken up to eleven with Harrison: he was portrayed by Brandon Michael Bass in Season 3 (during an ImagineSpot), by several uncredited babies in Season 4, by twins Luke and Evan Kruntchev from Seasons 5 to 7, and by Jadon Wells in Season 8.
22	* ReferencedBy: In ''Series/TheWire'' episode "Last Editions" (aired in 2008), Dukie excitedly tells his friend Michael about a show about a serial killer who only kills other serial killers.
23	* StuntCasting: From Season 3 onward, moderately big names are brought in to play major recurring characters.
24	** Creator/JimmySmits in Season 3.
25	** Creator/JohnLithgow in Season 4.
26	** Creator/JuliaStiles, Creator/JonnyLeeMiller, and Creator/PeterWeller in Season 5.
27	** Creator/ColinHanks, Mos Def, and Creator/EdwardJamesOlmos in Season 6.
28	** Creator/RayStevenson and Creator/YvonneStrahovski in Season 7.
29	** Creator/CharlotteRampling and [[spoiler:Yvonne Strahovski (again)]] in Season 8.
30	* TrollingCreator: The show seems to go out of its way to make things as uncomfortable as possible for Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter by ramping up the levels of CastIncest ''after'' their real-life divorce. Probably the only case of the creator trolling the cast instead of the audience.
31	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: After the series finale aired, an interview with former showrunner Clyde Phillips (who stepped down after Season 4) revealed how ''he'' would have ended it:
32	-->"In the very last scene of the series, Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, 'Oh, it was a dream.' And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, 'No, it's not a dream.' Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They're just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery. And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), [=LaGuerta=] who he was responsible [for] killing, Doakes who he's arguably responsible for, Rita who he's arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there. That's what I envisioned for the ending of Dexter. That everything we've seen over the past eight seasons has happened in the several seconds from the time they start Dexter's execution to the time they finish the execution and he dies. Literally, his life flashed before his eyes as he was about to die. I think it would have been a great, epic, very satisfying conclusion."
33	** In season four, the writers originally intended for Trinity to get away after killing Rita.
34	** Louis Greene was supposed to be a copycat killer, but Hall vetoed this as he found the idea of two serial killers working at the same police station too unbelievable.
35	** Sirko was supposed to last the entire season like every other Dexter villain, but because of Ray Stevenson's schedule conflicts he had to be written out earlier than anticipated, resulting in a filler episode about Hannah's dad and the last two episodes being about Dexter hunting down Estrada, the man who ordered his mother's death. Had Stevenson stuck around, Sirko would have filled Estrada's role for the final two episodes.

Context Trivia / Dexter