Most of the first series' regular and guest cast never appeared in any of the subsequent incarnations — only Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson went onto be regulars in all three subsequent Blackadder shows (albeit with Tim McInnerny being a regular in II and Goes Forth, and having a guest role in The Third). BRIAN BLESSED is still fondly remembered for his role in that series, but most of the other actors, far less so.
In a case of it applying to a character rather than an actor, Darling is far more well-remembered than either version of Percy, to the point where Tim McInnerny played one of the former's descendants in Back and Forth, and Percy isn't even mentioned.
Stephen Fry's homosexuality is amusingly alluded to (and Played for Laughs) with some of his characters' actions: In Blackadder II, Lord Melchett 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 "Darling".
Recast as a Regular: Hugh Laurie made two guest appearances in the second season and joined the main cast in the last two.
For Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie. 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.
What Could Have Been: 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. But a number of ideas were thrown around, including:
A British Invasion-themed story set in The '60s around a rock band called "The Blackadder Five". Blackadder would have been the frontman and revealed to have been Queen Elizabeth's bastard son. "Bald Rick" would have been on drums (but of course). It was thrown around as either a fifth series or a possible movie, like what was eventually done with Back and Forth.
A Tuxedo and Martini spoof, also set in The '60s, called either Blackadder MI5 or Blackadder 005. While Rowan Atkinson did eventually play a hapless secret agent character in Johnny English, that one draws more from his performance in Mr. Bean than Blackadder.
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 married for forty years".
Blackadder would be a Batman Parody superhero with Baldrick as his sidekick. Some of the jokes were repurposed for the "Spider-Plant Man" sketch for 2005 Comic Relief.
A series set in the future called Star Adder. The concept was reused for the future segments of Blackadder's Christmas Carol.
According to Tony Robinson, at some point there was a suggestion that The Blackadder Five would feature Edmund's family; the rest of the season 1 royals finally reprising their roles.
Word of God: Turnips are mentioned a lot, from the second series on. In series three, they become Baldrick's only ambition in life. The creators say this is because someone confused them with parsnips, which explains the joke about their shape in series two.
Rowan Atkinson 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, 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.
Dawson Casting: Robert East, who played Edmund's older brother Harry, Prince of Wales, was just seven years younger than BRIAN BLESSED, who played his father, King Richard IV.note Some websites confuse him with a different Robert East who was actually nearly five years older than Blessed.
Dyeing for Your Art: For the duration of the production, Rowan Atkinson endured having his hair trimmed in an unflattering medieval style.
Irony as She Is Cast: 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 Miriam Margolyes, who is a lesbian in real life.
BRIAN BLESSED (Richard), Elspet Gray (Gertrude), Robert East (Henry) all qualify, as none of them would return for the later, more popular incarnations of the series (Blessed was asked back for one-off appearances in the third and fourth series, but was unavailable on both occasions).
Going back a step further, John Savident (the King), Robert Bathurst (Henry), and Philip Fox (Baldrick) were replaced between the pilot and the series; only Rowan Atkinson, Tim McInnerny, and Elspet Gray remained of the primary cast from the pilot.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: 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".
Shoot the Money: The BBC gave this series an unusually large budget, which is why there was extensive location shooting at a real castle: they didn't necessarily need it but they certainly could afford it. For subsequent series, the budget was cut down to the bone and the show compensated with the clever scripts and storylines it is best known for.
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 "Born to Be King", of which the pilot was an early version), but Executive Meddling 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.
In the originally shot version of the final episode, Harry was actually stabbed outside by the Hawk, whilst in the aired version he is poisoned along with the rest of the cast.
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.
Another positive example was when the BBC switched around the order of the first two episodes, as they felt that Rik Mayall's cameo as Lord Flashheart was so uproariously funny that it'd generate a lot more buzz for the rest of the season if it was in the first episode. While the switch created a few Continuity Snarls, everyone involved with the show later agreed that the BBC's decision was 100% the correct one.
No Budget: After spending fairly lavishly on the first series, the BBC cut the budget for this series down to the bone, so the writers and producers had to rely on a limited number of sets and costumes. They compensated by creating dialogue-heavy scripts filled to the brim with clever humour, creating the Blackadder that people remember today.
Out of Order: "Head" was originally intended to be the first episode, and was first to be filmed. This resulted in the small continuity error of Lord Percy still having a beard in "Head" which he shaves off in "Bells". In addition, during the early scenes of "Head", the principal characters are introduced to the audience with Baldrick's stupidity highlighted.
Romance on the Set: Rowan Atkinson met his wife, makeup expert Sunetra Sastry, while working on this series. (They divorced in 2015.)
Serendipity Writes the Plot: Blackadder's amusing and much-imitated pronunciation of "Bob" is a result of Rowan Atkinson's stutter, which gives him great difficulty pronouncing the letter "b". This led to a memorable Throw It In! in season 4: see below.
Unfinished Episode: There was a murder mystery episode that was abandoned when nobody could get it to work.
Had the second series not happened, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis would have worked on a sitcom starring Madness.
Wag the Director: Rik Mayall only agreed to play Lord Flashheart under the proviso that every single line he had was funnier than Rowan Atkinson's. note At least, he has said as much in an interview for a show about Blackadder's best moments. Given the context, and the very tongue-in-cheek delivery it may well be that Rik Mayall was only joking when he said this.
You Look Familiar: Hugh Laurie shows up in the final two episodes of the season, but in two unrelated roles: in "Beer", he's Simon Partridge, one of Blackadder's jolly drinking buddies; and in "Chains", he plays the villain, the wicked Prince Ludwig. Laurie evidently must have had a good time on set, since he went on to return in the following two seasons as a major cast member.
Throw It In!: Hugh Laurie (as George) referred to Blackadder as "Bladder" at the end of "Sense and Senility". Atkinson replied that the Prince would reward him by not naming him that way.
Underage Casting: The Regency lasted from 1811-1820, during which the future George IV would be 49-58 years of age. Hugh Laurie was 28 and Rowan Atkinson was 32.
Present in Blackadder Goes Forth
Actor-Inspired Element: It was Stephen Fry who came up with the name Darling, as he went to school with a boy of that name and was tormented by it. The character was originally named Cartwright.
Hostility on the Set: It should be noted that everyone has since made up and are friends again, but the stress of making this series led to tensions on set. Stephen Fry and Richard Curtis were at loggerheads because Curtis didn't appreciate Fry making suggestions about the writing. Tim McInnerny, meanwhile, became infuriated during pre-production because he'd been promised that he'd play a fully formed character only to arrive and see that they hadn't come up with anything for him and felt he was being strung along.
In "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.
The Tear Jerker ending to "Goodbyeee", in which the main characters charge into no-man's land but are then obscured by a huge explosion before the image fades to a field of poppies, had to be thrown together in post-production. There was limited filming time, and the director had no experience with action scenes, and there was no money for a stunt co-ordinator in the budget. The resulting footage of Blackadder, George, Baldrick and Darling charging through No Man's Land while shells blew up around them looked distinctly underwhelming (they just fell over and lay on the ground looking not very dead), but the explosion effects were also so terrifying for the actors that Rowan Atkinson refused point-blank to do any retakes. Another take done without explosions was even worse (the actors simply walked a few steps forward and froze in front of the camera with grimaces on their faces). All the footage was deemed unusable, but while the film editor was cycling through it and trying to figure out what to do, he realised that slowing it down made it far more effective. As a result, they re-edited the footage, slowed it down, dropped the audio out and replaced it with the theme music played as a Lonely Piano Piece, and then at the moment a large explosion obscured the actors from view, crossfaded to a still photograph of some poppies. The result was the most hard-earned Downer Ending to any situation comedy.
Throw It In!: While interrogating Nurse Mary Fletcher-Brown in "General Hospital", Captain Blackadder asks her what are the two great British universities—Cambridge, Oxford, or Hull. It is not known what the Cambridge-educated Stephen Fry was supposed to say, but he managed to catch Oxford graduate Atkinson off-guard by proclaiming that the place was a "complete dump".
Troubled Production/Wag the Director: According to Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson, there was a lot of friction between the cast and writers during the making of this series, with the actors frequently rewriting the script on the set, which the two have admitted doing themselves. The resulting atmosphere on-set — together with producer John Lloyd leaving the BBC and the knowledge that any hypothetical Blackadder 5 would be eviscerated by the critics if it was even slightly worse than the previous series — made it certain that this would be the final Blackadder production until Back & Forth ten years later.
What Could Have Been: Originally, everyone was supposed to be dramatically gunned down, with Captain Blackadder being the only survivor and sneaking away, before being seen as an old man in an epilogue scene that never got filmed. This didn't happen due to Serendipity Writing The Plot: see above.
Word of Saint Paul: According to Stephen Fry, Melchett loudly grunts every time he sits down because he has hemorrhoids.
