Trivia / Late Night with Conan O'Brien

• Career Resurrection: Max Weinberg's performing career had fallen into a lull after Bruce Springsteen ended the E Street Band. Becoming Conan's band leader allowed him to start performing again and actually gave him much more mainstream exposure than he'd ever expected.
• Corpsing:
  • Anytime La Bamba has to read off the teleprompter or a cue card. A particularly bad one occurred in a 9/23/2008 episode:
    Conan: ...You just had a complete meltdown on national television.
  • Also happens to Robert Smigel on occasion during "Live via Satellite". It's almost like he's reading the lines for the first time and gets amused by them.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: One such instance was addressed in an actual episode: Before Conan left for Toronto, he read a news story from a Canadian newspaper that said, "Die-hard fans can only hope O'Brien includes some of his program's popular regulars, like the Masturbating Bear, the Dancing Gorillas, the Quake Guy or the Constipated Robot." Conan was thoroughly confused who the Dancing Gorillas and the Quake Guy were supposed to be, and asked current and former writers if they have any recollection of these characters (they didn't). Rather than fight this, he decided to make nice with Canada before his visit, so he debuted the Dancing Gorillas and the Quake Guy on the show.
• Creator Backlash: Conan has repeatedly stated that he's not a fan of the first couple years of the series, save for his 1994 interview with David Letterman.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Conan has said multiple times that his favorite remote he ever did was Conan Plays Old Timey Baseball, originally aired on June 25, 2004.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Women celebrities in "Live via Satellite" are almost always played by men instead; for example, Michael Jackson is played by Robert Smigel, while Martha Stewart is played by Brian Stack.
• Darkhorse Casting: Conan O'Brien was the absolute last person anyone expected to take over the show. Following Letterman's departure, NBC was desperate for some stability and recruited Lorne Michaels to hunt for the replacement and calm people down. Lorne contacted Conan initially to step up as a writer for the new show, but then started encouraging him to take over as host. Conan's only rationale for Lorne doing so is that he naturally had a personality where he was trying to make the entire writers room laugh. Conan did okay during some audience screen tests and one-by-one other candidates dropped out. During a press junket before the show aired a reporter asked about him being a "virtual unknown" and his response was "No, I am a complete unknown."
• He Also Did: Besides being the drummer for Conan's house band, Max Weinberg was the longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.
• Invisible Advertising: Conan frequently complained about the odd way NBC frequently advertised his show; Jay Leno (which preceded him) would get detailed announcements about his guests and a segment they were doing, while Conan got a brief mention after it, with such vague lines as, "And Conan's got ducks!" or "And Conan's back with a new-found intensity!"
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: After the 2010 Tonight Show debacle, NBC pulled every clip from the program off their website, and refused to acknowledge Conan's tenure as Late Night host for almost a decade afterward as part of their distancing from him. However, in 2018, with most people involved in the fiasco having moved on, Conan, NBC and TBS announced plans to launch a streaming service showcasing his entire late-night career, including all episodes of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Conan's ill-fated run on The Tonight Show, and all episodes of his current late-night program Conan.
• Milestone Celebration: Both the 5th and the 10th anniversary of the show were marked with primetime specials.
• Money, Dear Boy: Max Weinberg became Conan's band leader because he'd been drifting in the wake of Bruce Springsteen's dissolution of the E Street Band and was looking for steady gig with decent pay.
• Network to the Rescue: Conan's early ratings were abysmal, but NBC decided to let him keep working for a couple of very shaky seasons so he could hone his style until people started tuning in.
• Orphaned Reference: On the Triumph best-of DVD, at the start of the Hollywood Squares segment, Conan notes that America is stressed out and thought a Triumph segment would cheer everybody up. Context: Conan was referring to the contentious 2000 presidential election (said episode was from 11/9/00).
• Production Posse: Familiar faces during filmed pieces include staff writers A.D. Miles, Morgan Murphy, and Bashir Salahuddin, as well as Sidekick Steve Higgins, and his niece, Saturday Night Live actress Abby Elliott.
• Romance on the Set: Conan met his future wife Liza Powell while doing a bit taking a guy who had a Kitschy Local Commercial and got him with a large advertising firm to spice up his image, she was one of the associates and they can be briefly seen interacting in a few shots. He commented that somewhere in NBC's vault is the raw footage showing him falling in love with her. The sketch in question was put on the YouTube channel.
• Shoot the Money: They had used a giant whale costume with functioning blowhole for one sketch. After that, Conan announced that they would feature the costume in as many sketches as possible in order to justify the price of several thousand dollars, and broke the per-scene cost down after each sketch. This was done on at least 8 separate episodes.
• What Could Have Been: NBC's first choice for David Letterman's replacement was Dana Carvey. However, Carvey turned it down because of the large time commitment the job required.