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Trivia / Daredevil (2015)

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  • Ability over Appearance:
    • Vincent D'Onofrio isn't small (6' 3½" \ 1,92 m), but the showrunners were clearly more interested in his acting ability than his size when it came to Wilson Fisk. The traditional depiction of Fisk in the comics is as a giant of a man, who has the weight and stature of a gorilla than a human being. D'Onofrio is big, but he's not 400 pounds of muscle and fat big.
    • Elektra. Even discounting the Race Lift, Elektra is always depicted as muscular (Frank Miller based her off of Bodybuilder Lisa Lyon), while Élodie Yung is more of a Fragile Speedster (not to mention shorter than the comics Elektra and the other actress who portrayed her). When you see her in action, you won't even notice.
  • Actor-Shared Background: Just like Matt, Charlie Cox is Catholic.
  • Awesome, Dear Boy:
    • Charlie Cox signed on after reading the first two scripts, calling them the best he'd ever read.
    • In April 2015, Elden Henson spoke of his excitement for Foggy's role in the series, saying:
      "I was really excited as I was getting the scripts and reading that Foggy wasn't just a useless sidekick. He's not just comic relief. I mean, he is some of those things. He does have comic relief, but it was exciting to know that these other characters would have their own path and their own things that they're dealing with."
    • Toby Leonard Moore described James Wesley as an "interesting character to play, because in one moment he can be incredibly charming, and in the next, dastardly as all hell, manipulative and Machiavellian, but always loyal to Wilson Fisk.
    • Amy Rutberg described Marci Stahl as a woman who "is trying to hustle in a man's world and I can appreciate that. She is the hardest working person in the room and doesn't apologize for who she is and what she likes."
    • Deborah Ann Woll and Vincent D'Onofrio consider the season 3 scene where Karen visits Fisk in his penthouse to be among their favorite moments to film.
  • California Doubling:
    • Sorta. The show was filmed in New York City, where it's set. However, the real Hell's Kitchen has regentrified significantly, whereas the events of The Avengers are said to have driven down property values in MCU Hell's Kitchen. Thus, the show was filmed in portions of Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint that somewhat resemble 1990s Hell's Kitchen.
    • Frank Castle’s trial takes place, both on the exterior and the interior, at the Bronx County Courthouse.
    • In "Condemned", Matt hides out with Vladimir from the corrupt cops in an abandoned building. The series is telling us that this warehouse outside which Blake gets shot is somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, however this is actually 270 Meserole Street in Bushwick. Tarp is placed all over the building to cover up the street art that is all over the outside of Exit Room NY, a former brewery turned cultural space.
    • Wilson Fisk's "coming out" press conference is on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall.
    • Wilson Fisk's attempted escape from custody begins with the ambush, which unfolds on the Honeywell Bridge in Long Island City.
    • The scene where Reyes attempts to sacrifice Grotto as bait for the Punisher takes place at the Getty Fuel Terminal in Greenpoint. This is a super popular film location that comes up in nearly every crime show in New York City, and there’s even a film studio on the property called Broadway Stages. However, the rooftop where Frank chains Matt up is not in Greenpoint. It's actually at 43rd Avenue and 22nd Street in Queens. It's also where the final battle scene between Matt, Elektra and the Hand take place. In the final episode, when the hostages are taken out of the building, an alley that runs east west between 21st and 22nd Street is used for the filming. That rooftop also was used in Jessica Jones (2015).
    • The town of Windham, New York, located in the Catskill Mountains about 140 miles north of Manhattan, was used in season 3 to represent Karen's hometown of Fagan Corners, Vermont.
  • Channel Hop: In a way. The series was produced by Marvel Television, with Netflix paying to act as the distributor. After the series was cancelled, Netflix still held the distribution rights until early 2022, at which point the entire Defenders saga was pulled from Netflix and placed onto Disney Plus.
  • Colbert Bump: In late 2021, over three years after the show's cancellation, it experienced an unexpected surge of popularity after Charlie Cox reprised his role of Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his role as the Kingpin on Disney+'s Hawkeye (2021) series. It garnered enough viewership to crack Nielsen’s SVOD Top 10 list near the end of December. A similar resurgence of interest occurred the following year after Cox guest-starred as Daredevil on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
  • Creator Backlash: A few years after the show ended, Nobu's actor Peter Shinkoda accused Jeph Loeb of preventing the Hand as being portrayed as anything more than generic Yellow Peril villains, even saying in an early writers' meeting "No one cares about Asian characters." Shinkoda also claims that he was forced to pay cross-country travel costs out of his own pocket for last-minute reshoots (several of which would end up being canceled later), had all his requests for reimbursement denied, and was threatened to be replaced with "another Asian" if he refused to travel. As a result, despite the show's massive success, Shinkoda actually lost money for being in Daredevil. This fits quite nicely with other accusations that have popped up that Netflix so abruptly cut ties with the whole franchise because Loeb was so hard to work with.
  • Dawson Casting: A minor case in that Foggy, Matt, and Marci were all college classmates and should be the same age. In reality, Elden Henson is a full five years older than Charlie Cox and four years older than Amy Rutberg.
  • Dueling Shows:
    • With Arrow. Aside from this simply being the case because both shows are based on characters published by long standing rivals Marvel & DC Comics, both shows are grittier takes on comic book vigilantes rather than superheroes.
    • With Constantine, another DC property. Both shows are second (and more successful) attempts at adapting an anti-hero to series after a mediocre movie in the 2000s. Though this one had a respectable run with Constantine crashing and burning after one season.
  • Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Enforced Method Acting:
  • Executive Meddling: During a livestream, Peter Shinkoda claimed that Jeph Loeb forbid the writers from making stories about Nobu and Gao, under the belief that "nobody cares about Chinese people". This led to much of Nobu's planned backstory being dropped from the show.
  • Fake American:
    • Brits-playing-Americans is something that runs in the Murdock genes, given London-native Charlie Cox plays Matt while Lancashire-born Joanne Whalley plays his mother in season 3.
    • British Pakistani Jay Ali as Indian-American (of Bihari origin) Rahul "Ray" Nadeem.
    • Australian Toby Leonard Moore as James Wesley.
  • Fake Irish:
    • Scottish Tony Curran as Irish Finn Cooley.
    • A variant with Foggy's brother Theo in season 3. The Nelsons are an Irish-American family, and Peter Halpin is native Irish.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Elektra Natchios is a very complicated case. In the comics, she's just a Greek. Finding a native Greek actress who's also skilled at martial arts is pretty difficult, so instead the producers picked Élodie Yung, whose father is Chinese-Cambodian, while her mother is French with a mixed Italian heritage. Elektra is implied to be Asian by her character (and actress's) background, and was adopted by Greek parents.
    • The Jewish-American Jon Bernthal portrays the Italian-American Frank Castle/Punisher.
    • Downplayed with Nobu. His actor Peter Shinkoda is a Canadian of Japanese ancestry.
  • Fake Russian:
    • Peter Claymore (Prohashka) is not Russian or eastern European.
    • Gideon Emery (Anatoly) is English.
    • Nikolai Nikolaeff (Vladimir) is Australian, though as his name suggests, he may have Slavic ancestry.
  • Homage Shot: Someone who was key to this series must have really loved the Trial of the Incredible Hulk growing up, because the scene where Matt reveals himself to Agent Nadeem as a sign of trust/to gain his help has some very heavy similiarities to the same scene with Bill Bixby's David Banner in Nadeem's place.
  • Killer App: Daredevil worked as this to sell Marvel and comic book fans on Netflix, if the platform's other 2015 shows for mainstream audiences (such as House of Cards (US) and Orange Is the New Black) hadn't already pulled them in.
  • No Stunt Double: Charlie Cox did many of his own stunts (though not all; see below).
  • Out of Order: In season 1, the second episode was shot before the first episode. This was to accommodate Deborah Ann Woll as she wrapped her filming on the last season of True Blood.note  This somewhat explains why Foggy and Karen's subplot in the episode is completely disconnected from what Matt is doing.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • Karen begins dating Matt in season 2. Deborah Ann Woll's husband EJ Scott is blind, having lost his sight to Choroideremia, and she raises awareness for the disease. Scott actually dressed as Matt Murdock for the premiere.
    • Matt's cowl is damaged and replaced with a slightly new design in Season 2. This was because the first version was too tight and blocked Charlie Cox's hearing.
  • Revival by Commercialization: While "Kangding Qingge" is by no means obscure in China, this show probably helped popularize it among Western audiences.note 
  • Schedule Slip: Due to the way the Netflix shows' production schedules were arranged, and all the shows basically having to be halted to allow for production of The Defenders (2017), there was a 2 year 7 month gap between season 2 (March 18, 2016) and season 3 (October 19, 2018). This worked out quite well as it allowed the franchise to check in with how all the other Defenders were dealing with Matt's supposed death before getting back to him.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers:
    • An exclusivity clause in the production contract meant that the characters couldn't be used by Marvel Studios for three years after this series' cancellation. The MCU found ways to bring back fan favorites as soon as the clause ran out.
    • Clark Gregg would have liked to have appeared in this and the other Netflix-Marvel series, but says that legal issues prevented crossovers.
  • Separated-at-Birth Casting: Peter Halpin, who plays Foggy's brother Theo in season 3, was cast because he has a very strong resemblance to Elden Henson. Moreso when you compare photos of season 1 or season 2 Foggy to photos of Theo.
  • Star-Making Role: For Elden Henson, Ayelet Zurer, Toby Leonard Moore, and Élodie Yung. The show also made Charlie Cox (already known for Stardust, Boardwalk Empire, and The Theory of Everything) and Deborah Ann Woll (already known for Jessica Hamby in True Blood) more well-known. For Jay Ali, his season 3 turn as Ray Nadeem put him on the map.
  • Stunt Double: Chris Brewster doubled for Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil. Aidan Kennedy and Devin Sanchez doubled for Skylar Gaertner as a young Matt.
  • Throw It In!: A rather amusing case: During the graveyard scene between Matt and Frank in "Penny and Dime", one of the most notable aspects is that you can see Matt crying at Frank's story. The popular story is that Charlie Cox indeed starting crying on set despite it not being in the script, and it worked so well that it was left in the script. The truth is...less glamorous. Charlie was actually sweating his ass off in the suitnote  and the sweat beads on his face looked like tears, which indeed were decided to work with the scene, and were left in.
  • Wag the Director: During production of season 3, Charlie Cox and Deborah Ann Woll worked closely with showrunner Erik Oleson to formulate the general direction of Matt and Karen's story arcs.
    • Cox has talked in interviews about working with Oleson to ensure that Matt comes off as humbled by the first two seasons and The Defenders and thus is slightly different from the Matt we've had in the past.
    • Woll has talked about how she worked with Oleson to make Karen's past something difficult for her to endure and one that avoids the misogynistic and sexualized violence that Karen suffers from in the comics, especially the "Born Again" arc, which is reportedly an arc that Woll is not a fan of despite being one of the more iconic comics stories.note  In one interview on the marketing circuit for The Punisher shortly before she began filming for Daredevil season 3, she said, "if we ever do delve into Karen’s past, please don’t make it that she shot someone while saving a busload of children. You know? I wanted to encourage him to make this difficult, make it something hard for her to get over, and so we can hopefully pull off something pretty interesting. I like the idea of compromising the character in some way, but I just don't know that it has to be sexual, or that it has to be in a way that causes her to lose her strength."
    • Word of Deborah Ann Woll is that the flashback to Karen's past in season 3 takes place when Karen was 19, and that eleven years passed between when she left Vermont and when we meet her at the start of season 1.
    • It was Charlie Cox's idea for the first episode of season 3 to have a flashback showing the rest of Matt and Karen's identity reveal conversation. He and Deborah Ann Woll also fought for the scene to be kept in the story.
    • According to Jon Bernthal, Vincent D'Onofrio occasionally intimidated Marvel executives when he felt they were getting in the way of the show's production.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Michael C. Hall, Damian Lewis and Scott Adkins were considered for the role of Matt Murdock before the casting of Charlie Cox.
    • Jason Statham was approached for the part of Bullseye in the second season. Bullseye would later appear in the third season of the series portrayed by Wilson Bethel.
    • Sonny Chiba was considered for the role of Stick before Scott Glenn was cast.
    • An interview from Steven S. DeKnight reveals some material that was left on the cutting room floor, such as:
      • It was originally planned for Elena Cardenas to meet a far more gruesome death - in a bombing that left only her limbs and whatnot behind - rather than get murdered by a junkie on Wilson Fisk's orders. The writers thought it was too violent and decided a stabbing was more straightforward. Incidentally, such a plot element was used in Jessica Jones, where Kilgrave tries to kill Simpson by using Jessica's elderly neighbor Mrs. De Luca as a suicide bomber.
      • The original first draft of the scene where Claire is kidnapped and taken to the Veles Taxi garage to be tortured by Sergei was originally more graphic, in the sense that Sergei would have threatened her with sexual assault.
      • Matt was originally going to have sex with Claire after he rescued her from the Russians.
    • According to DeKnight, the scene where Stick reports the outcome of his mission to Stone was intended to be a Post-credits Scene, but it was simply added at the end of Stick's episode due to the way Netflix airs its episodes.
    • According to Amy Rutberg, Marci Stahl was only planned to be in one episode but things changed and they chose to give her more screen time.
    • The entire series is arguably this - supposedly, Marvel offered Fox an extension to reboot Daredevil in return for Marvel being able to use some of the more cosmic-related charactersnote  associated with the Fantastic Four (which Fox owned the rights to at the time), presumably for the intent of using them for films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers Infinity War. Fox refused the offer, intent on making their own Fantastic Four movie...which not only did not involve any of the characters that would've been involved in the deal, but ended up being a Box Office Bomb; the Daredevil rights would later revert to Marvel, and this series was likely greenlit as a result. Even more ironic was that Fox wound up selling itself to Disney some time later, meaning Marvel ended up getting them back anyway.
    • The Punisher was originally set to be introduced in a post-credits scene at the end of the first season, where he kills Leland Owlsley, with the character's face unseen but his skull insignia appearing. The idea was dropped because of the way Netflix airs its episodes, so Fisk kills Owlsley himself.
    • Leland Owlsley was originally going to be played by Peter Gerety, and in fact, the flashback scene where Silke (Gerety) and Roscoe Sweeney appear at Fogwell's to coerce Jack into throwing the match with Creel was filmed with Silke being called Owlsley. Shortly after the scene was filmed, though, Gerety had to drop out due to a knee injury, so the role of Owlsley was recast with Bob Gunton, and some dialogue was re-dubbed to allow Gerety's character to be renamed Silke.
    • The plan from the start of production on season 3 was for Ray Nadeem to die as ultimately happened in the final product. However, for a period of time, the writers and showrunner actually toyed with the idea of sparing him, but Jay Ali insisted on keeping to the original plans of killing him.
    • Like Marci Stahl, Ray Nadeem's wife Seema originally had a reduced role, and it was expanded because the writers liked Sunita Deshpande's performance.
    • Had the show not been cancelled, the fourth season would've featured Leland Owlsley's son Lee showing up as the Owl, taking over organized crime in Hell's Kitchen. It also would've featured Melvin Potter becoming the Gladiator, and also would've brought back Alice Eve to reprise her Iron Fist season 2 role as Typhoid Mary.
    • Years after the show's cancellation, Nobu's actor Peter Shinkoda accused Jeph Loeb of forcing the writers to throw out complex backstories for Nobunote  and Gao because Loeb claimed "no one cares about Asian characters".
    • Pedro Pascal auditioned to play a lawyer, but passed up the chance to screen test after Netflix sent him a more lucrative offer to co-star in Narcos as Javier Peña.
  • Whole Costume Reference: Someone on this series loved the old Trial of the Incredible Hulk movie, a lot (See Homage Shot above). For further proof, three seasons before said Homage Shot was Matt's first costume, a nigh one to one reproduction of the minimalistic costuming choice exclusive to said film. It wasn't from the comics, and when the backdoor pilot wasn't picked up, it faded into history... or it would have, if not for this series.
  • Word of God: Jeph Loeb confirmed that Crusher Creel, the boxer that Jack Murdock beat, is in fact Carl Creel who appears in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • You Look Familiar:

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