Trivia / In Living Color!

• Acting for Two: Obviously, the actors played multiple characters in a single episode, but occasionally they would play more than one character in a single sketch. The America's Funniest Security Camera Videos skit had Jim Carrey play both host Bob Saget and the convenience store robber while the "2 Sold Out 2 Quit" video had Tommy Davidson portraying both MC Hammer and Michael Jackson.
• Adored by the Network: Zig-zagged as far as Fox was concerned. While the show got a lot of advertising and airtime, the fact that it constantly had to battle the network due to censorship undermines this quite a bit. Played straight in syndication however, as the channels that have aired it over the years such as BET, Fusion, FX^note the first channel to air the series in syndication and one of the first "modern" shows on the then-fledging network, FXX and Aspire Network have given it plenty of airtime and an all-day marathon or two.
• Approval of God: Sam Kinison loved the show and Kelly Coffield's portrayal of a female version on himself named Samantha Kinison, so he guest-starred on the show twice; his first appearance had the two of them (in character) as a unhappily married and highly vulgar couple.
  • Maury Povich loved Jim Carrey’s spoofing of him in the “Me Want Maury” music video, citing it as his favorite parody of himself.
• Creator Backlash: Kim Wayans later admitted in an interview her dismay and regret at the Oprah Winfrey skits (particularly the first one centered on Oprah's weight issues, where she kept eating throughout her interviews and got so big that she exploded) and felt bad about Oprah's own negative reaction to the parodies, even apologizing to her for them.
• Edited for Syndication: Despite the Wayans' siblings objection to have the show censored in reruns, there have been some cuts done to In Living Color in reruns and on DVD:
  • On BET and Aspire, such epithets as "bitch" and "ho" are edited.
  • The DVD version has the language intact, but some sketches have been pulled or edited to remove all references to pop songs (including the music video parodies) due to copyright and licensing issues.
  • The fourth episode in season one originally had a parody of the Colt .45 commercials with Billy Dee Williams (played by Keenan Ivory Wayans) making his date (played by Kim Coles) drink until she passes out with Williams moving in on her unconscious body. FOX didn't like the Black Comedy Rape punchline to the sketch, so it was replaced in all reruns (including cable reruns and on the DVD) with a sitcom sketch called "The Exxxon Family," about a clumsy Exxon ship captain and his wife (played by token white cast members Jim Carrey and Kelly Coffield). Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can now see this lost sketch and judge for yourself if FOX was right or wrong to remove it.
  • In 2014, the show aired on FXX (FX's sister channel), with most of what was cut on TV intact (the words "bitch" and "ho" are reinstated, as are all the pop song and music video references. The Colt 45 commercial parody, along with a part in the "Men on Football" sketch where Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier ad-libbed a suggestion that Richard Gere and track and field star Carl Lewis were homosexuals), have been edited from all reruns. Also edited in reruns is a line from a season five Fire Marshall Bill sketch that made reference to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which thanks to the more well-known September 11th attacks, makes the line less dated.
  • The skit of Anton at the Army recruiting office had the last line ("Be all that you can be: get an ugly wife and a messed-up life in the Army!") cut on the DVD release, most likely due to it coinciding with then-recent Iraq War. However, the line is retained in syndicated airings.
• Enforced Method Acting: In the first Ugly Wanda skit, where she was on "The Dating Game", no one informed Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier or Shawn Wayans of Jamie Foxx's appearance, so their reactions to seeing Foxx in drag for the first time—ranging from from horror to bursting out laughing—were genuine.
• Follow the Leader: The season after the show premiered, Saturday Night Live hired Chris Rock, its first black cast member in four years (its previous black cast members were Danitra Vance and, ironically, Damon Wayans, during the 1985-1986 season). By the following season, Ellen Cleghorne (herself an extra on In Living Color) and Tim Meadows had been hired by SNL, giving the show the most black cast members they had ever had at that point. It's hard not to think the success of In Living Color had something to do with that.
• Friendship on the Set:
  • In spite of their friendly "rivalry" on the show over who could one-up the other in making people laugh, Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans became very good friends while working together. Carrey also became a close friend of Tupac Shakur after he guest-starred in the series, even writing the latter in jail to cheer him up.
  • David Alan Grier and Tommy Davidson also became friends while on the show (and often appeared in sketches together).
• Hey, It's That Sound!: The game show parodies sample sound effects from The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime.
• In Memoriam:
  • The second episode was dedicated to comedian Robin Harris (who died a month before the show first aired) and actor Jesse Aragon (who was featured in the 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle.)
  • A season three episode was dedicated to Sam Kinison (who had appeared on the show twice, having been a fan of Kelly Coffield's Gender Flipped parody of him) and the show's hairstylist Troy White.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Since reruns and DVD versions have been edited, many rely to older recordings to watch the shows exactly as they were aired.
• Leslie Nielsen Syndrome: Before the show existed, David Alan Grier was primarily known as a dramatic actor in roles such as Dreamgirls and A Soldier's Play (as well as its film adaptation). But after joining the series, Grier had been reinvented as a comedic actor, which he's mostly done ever since.
• Missing Episode: For some reason, some of the episodes (particularly the Clip Shows) are not aired in syndication and several episodes have been removed from rotation on Aspire Network.
• Parody Assistance:
  • Classic Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall hosts East Hollywood Squares.
  • Ray Combs hosted the series' Family Feud sketches.
• Romance on the Set: Original cast member Kelly Coffield later married Steve Park, a cast member for the third season.
• Screwed by the Network: The series became popular due to its edgy humor — the Season Four premiere has all of its skits involve the Rodney King riots and their aftermath, for instance — so naturally FOX decided to clamp down on content, driving away the show's creative team in the process and leading to Seasonal Rot in its fifth and final season.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: The show lasted for only four years from 1990 to 1994 (and the last season might as well not exist, as far as fans and modern-day relevance are concerned), but still served as a Spiritual Predecessor to MADtv (1995), inspired rival show Saturday Night Live to bring in more minorities and not underuse them and launched the careers of several of their cast members and writers, such as Keenen Ivory Wayans, Damon Wayans, Tommy Davidson, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez, David Alan Grier, Kim Coles, and Larry Wilmore. As noted on the main page, the show was also directly responsible for the modern Super Bowl halftime shows that are headlined by A-List popular music acts.
• Special Guest: The final season had a lot of celebrity cameos (some of which appeared in sketches), like Chris Rock, Tupac Shakur, Biz Markie, Peter Marshall (as the host of East Hollywood Squares), and Nick Bakay (a show writer who was the host of The Dirty Dozens). Ed O'Neill (from Married... with Children) even appeared in an installment of The Dirty Dozens.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Keenan Ivory Wayans claims that he passed up on having Martin Lawrence, John Leguizamo, and Chris Rock as cast members (Rock would later guest star on the show during its final season).
  • Jennifer Lopez tried out as a Fly Girl for Season Two, only to be rejected. She eventually got her wish in Season Three and remained for the next two seasons.
• Write Who You Know: Jim Carrey did this at least twice: Vera DeMilo, the voice in particular, was inspired by a female bodybuilder he encountered during a visit to Gold's Gym. Grandpa Jack McGee originated in Carrey's youth as a parody of his paternal grandfather — created to amuse/comfort his father after the grandfather chewed him out as a loser during a family gathering.