Trivia / Doom Patrol (2019)

• Ability over Appearance: Crazy Jane in the comics is very tall, has pale white skin and was designed as not being the typical conventionally attractive comic heroine. Diane Guerrero is the polar opposite, being 5'2, Latina and undeniably beautiful, even when dressed down. Her performance has been widely acclaimed all the same.
• All-Star Cast: Timothy Dalton, Brendan Fraser, Matt Bomer and Alan Tudyk are all fairly well-known as is Diane Guerrero due to Orange Is the New Black.
• And Starring: With Matt Bomer and Brendan Frasier. Special Appearance by Timothy Dalton.
  • In season 3, Michelle Gomez receives the "Special Appearance" credit. The one episode that has her and Dalton gives Dalton a second "And" credit.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Diane Guerrero had been vocal about wanting to be in a superhero adaptation for some time prior to being cast as Crazy Jane.
• Billing Displacement:
  • Alan Tudyk (Mr. Nobody) is billed above Matt Bomer (Larry Trainor) and Brendan Fraser (Cliff Steele) in the first season, but Bomer and Fraser actually play members of the eponymous Doom Patrol who appear in every episode, while Tudyk portrays the antagonist and is absent from a fair number of episodes. Fraser's character is also arguably the main protagonist of the series, despite being billed sixth. This primarily stems from Bomer and Fraser receiving And Starring credits, with their lower billing intended to draw additional prominence to their names.
  • Abi Monterey is credited as a guest star in the second season, despite appearing in all but one episode and being a focal point of the season's story.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Matt Bomer kills it during Negative Man's karaoke Imagine Spot.
  • Likewise Alan Mingo Jr. who plays Maura Lee Karupt has a background in musical theater, and has played a drag queen on stage previously.
  • Abi Monterey gets a chance to demonstrate her musical chops in season 2 with Dorothy's performance of "Pure Imagination" at Danny's party. "Immortimas Patrol" sees her not only sing the opening song, but also perform a bit of ballet; Monterey is a trained ballet dancer.
• Celebrity Paradox: Jane calls Laura, played by Michelle Gomez, Doctor Who at one point. Michelle played Missy on Doctor Who.
  • Funnily enough, Missy also briefly pretends to be the titular Doctor at one point.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Diane Guerrero was 32 at the time the series started. Crazy Jane is stated to have been born in 1950 and got her powers and presumably stopped aging in 1976, meaning Guerrero is playing someone who is physically supposed to be a 26 year-old. May also be Fridge Brilliance as she's also meant to be able to play the adult Doctor Harrison.
  • Dorothy Spinner, who is physically 11 years old when she is chronologically older than a century (at least prior to puberty catching up with her after she gets her first period in "Dad Patrol"), and the Chief as a child are played by the 19-year-old Abi Monterey.
  • Charles Rowland, Edwin Paine and Crystal Palace are teenagers as they were in the comics, but are respectively played by 19-year-old Sebastian Croft, 18-year-old Ty Tennant and 26-year-old Madalyn Horcher.
• Dueling Works: Somewhat. Both this and Netflix's The Umbrella Academy (2019) premiered on the same day, were based on comics and were about a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and Big, Screwed-Up Family becoming a superhero team.
  • It doesn't help that both have, at least at one point, been written by Gerard Way.
• Fake American: Cyborg is played by the British Joivan Wade.
• Fake Guest Star: Credited as Special Appearance by... in the opening credits, Timothy Dalton appears in almost every episode. While mostly limited to Flashbacks and Meanwhile Scenes in the first season, this continues into Season 2, where he's part of the main cast.
• Flip-Flop of God: The series was originally conceived and announced as a Titans spin-off. However, some comments from actress April Bowlby and showrunner Jeremy Carver suggest that in fact the series is not set in the same continuity as Titans. This would explain why some of the information and actions of the characters do not fit with what we saw from them in Titans.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths officially designates Doom Patrol as taking place on Earth-21, separate from Titans' Earth-9.
• The Other Darrin: For some reason, several members were recast from Titans to this.
  • Bruno Bichir doesn't reprise the Chief and, instead, Timothy Dalton takes over.
  • Matthew Zuk replaces Dwain Murphy as Negative Man.
  • Jake Michaels portrays Robotman in Titans but, in this show, the role is split between Brendan Fraser (who provides his voice and portrays him in his previous human form) and Riley Shanahan (who portrays him in the present).
• Playing Against Type: A mild example, with the casting of Brendan Fraser as Cliff Steele. Whilst Fraser is well-known for playing goofy, shouty, socially-awkward characters (which puts Cliff in his general wheelhouse), it can be a little jarring for his fans to find out that he's also easily the most foul-mouthed character in the show (apart from Jane, that is). Likewise, the flashbacks revealing Cliff's spiral of sex, drugs and alcohol can be a little surprising for those used to Fraser's usual "nice guy" image.
• Production Posse: Creator and showrunner Jeremy Carver has brought on several former Supernatural cast members - Julie McNiven, Mark Sheppard, and Ruth Connell among them.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: In a minor case of First-Episode Twist, Matt Bomer's character Larry is revealed to be cheating on his wife with a man.
  • Jane's actress Diane Guerrero has been open about how she is not straight, and in season 4, Jane is also shown to be queer.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: In the comics, Kay Challis’ original personality remains as a child within the Underground, but her actress has aged since her first appearance. Rather than recasting her the production team chose to make Kay’s growing up a major point, exploring both her learning to move on from her abuse and the implications and impact of the change on her many personas.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: The show concludes with Rita Farr and Cliff Steele dying as the rest of the Doom Patrol move on with their lives, preventing any chance of a continuation happening.
• Troubled Production: Like all TV shows being produced in 2020, Season 2 was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down various DC productions. According to Abi Monterey, who plays Dorothy Spinner, there were only a few scenes left to film for Episode 10. It would have served as the finale for Season 2, but production was halted and the show was released anyway, leaving "Wax Patrol" as the season finale.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kelsey Grammer had discussions for the role of Niles Caulder before the casting of Timothy Dalton.
  • Alexandra Daddario screen-tested for the part of Crazy Jane before Diane Guerrero was cast. Ironically, she later starred in Mayfair Witches alongside Hannah Aline, who plays one of Jane's alternate personalities.
  • Warner Bros. had wanted a Doom Patrol movie back in 2006, and yet nothing ever came of it. After many years, Doom Patrol will now be refit for web television.
  • There were plans for the cast to appear in the first season finale for Titans (2018). It would have been established that the team here is not the one that first appeared on Titans, arriving from a different universe and helping in the battle against Trigon. The writers also wanted the finale to be Cyborg's debut but no actor had been cast in time so a mere mention was planned instead.
  • Originally, Abi Monterey was only contracted for a few episodes of Season 2, before her role was expanded.
  • Season 2 was supposed to have 10 episodes, but the Covid pandemic forced them to stop production while they still had a few scenes left. The producers were forced to, as a result, re-edit episode 9 to act as a season finale in case the actual finale was never completed. Thankfully, the original Season 2 finale was repurposed as the Season 3 opener without compromising the intended resolution of the storyline.
  • "Dead Patrol" was intended as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff series starring The Dead Boy Detectives. While the series would eventually be greenlit, it was later announced that it would no longer have any ties with the live-action Doom Patrol show and that it would instead be connected to the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman (1989) (which is still a fitting decision, as the Sandman comic was where the Dead Boy Detectives made their debut in the first place).
• Word of Saint Paul: Jane is a lesbian, according to Diane Guerrero. The show begins depicting this in “Dada Patrol” through her relationship with Shelley Byron.

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