Trivia / Lost

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Charlie was originally inspired by Bill Nighy's performance in Love Actually and was supposed to be an over the hill rock star. When Dominic Monaghan auditioned they reworked the role as a younger man.
  • Sawyer was originally conceived of as a slick big city con man, but the producers liked Josh Holloway's audition so much that they reworked the character as a sexy Southerner.
  • Kate was originally supposed to be a 30-something business woman who had lost her husband in the crash. They eventually cast a younger Evangeline Lilly as Kate and decided to portray her as a criminal.
• Acting in the Dark: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were very sparing with details of the characters' backstories, only divulging them when absolutely necessary. For instance, Terry O'Quinn initially had no idea why his character was in a wheelchair, and Michael Emerson didn't know that he was playing the leader of the Others until the last possible minute.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Naveen Andrews came up with the idea of Sayid and Shannon's love story.
  • Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje came up with his own character's name, "Mr. Eko", while he and the writers were developing the character. The religious scriptures carved on his stick were also his idea.
  • Many of the scenes involving Kate climbing trees were inspired by Evangeline Lilly, who is an avid tree-climber in real life.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies:
  • Mr. Eko was supposed to have a multi-season arc after season 2, but his actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje decided to leave the show during season 3, so his character was killed off early in the season.
  • Matthew Abaddon would be much more important to the plot, but Lance Reddick was busy with the production of Fringe and the showrunners decided to kill his character earlier than anticipated.
  • Caesar was meant to have a regular, and fairly major, role in the final season, but Saïd Taghmaoui decided to do G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra instead. His abrupt death stuck and his character became an unintentional red herring.
• Billing Displacement: The cast are billed in alphabetical order, meaning that Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is billed first for most of the show's run, Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is billed first during his run, and Bernard (Sam Anderson) takes the lead in the finale. Meanwhile, Jack (Matthew Fox), the main character, is typically billed anywhere from fifth to eighth.
• Breakthrough Hit: You can thank this show for making J. J. Abrams a big name.
• Budget-Busting Element:
  • In the episode, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead", a random metorite destroys Mr Cluck's Chicken Shack, killing the Episode's Titular character and her cameraman. Despite the scene having not much importance to the episode or the series, it was alleged to be one of the most expensive shots in Lost, according to Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank.
  • During Season 4, Alan Dale was slated to appear in 2 seperate episodes. However, Dale could not leave London, due to his stage commitments to the West End's production of Theatre/Spamalot. Instead of writing him out, production decided to film Dale's scenes on location in London. This meant flying Michael Emerson, Kim Yunjin and a crew out to London. In addition, Charles Widmore's apartment had to be built at Shepperton Studios, to be featured in "The Shape of Things to Come".
• California Doubling:
  • Nearly the entire series was filmed on Oahu, with urban areas (mixed with CGI) doubling for anywhere from London to Baghdad to Seoul to Sydney.
  • Averted for two scenes shot in London (granted, only one was on location) featuring Charles Widmore, as actor Alan Dale was doing Spamalot on the West End and unavailable to fly to Honolulu. Also averted in the season 3 finale, which had scenes shot on location in Los Angeles (notably Jack's aborted suicide attempt on the Sixth Street Viaduct bridge) and on sets from Grey's Anatomy.
• Cast Incest: Michael Emerson played Ben. His wife, Carrie Preston, guest starred as his mother. This is made slightly less icky by the fact that the two actors never actually shared a scene.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Dominic Monaghan originally auditioned for Sawyer, who was originally supposed to be a suit-wearing city con man. The producers were so enthused by Monaghan that the part of Charlie was altered to accommodate him - Charlie was originally going to be a 45-year-old washed-up rock star.
  • Yunjin Kim originally read for Kate. The producers felt she was not what they were looking for in Kate, but decided to create a new character for her, along with a spouse.
  • Matthew Fox and Jorge Garcia also auditioned for Sawyer.
  • Lance Reddick was offered the role of Mr. Eko, but had to drop out due to his role on The Wire. He would eventually appear as Matthew Abbadon.
• Completely Different Title: In France, it is known as Lost: Les Disparus. The additional French tag is due to a governmental ruling that imposes the use of French in all titles. "Les disparus" literally translates to "the missing" but 'disparus' means; gone, missing, vanished, lost, extinct, dead or departed. Depending on context.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Harold Perrineau made it clear in interviews that he didn't like the circumstances surrounding his character's death. In particular, the actor complained that there was no closure to the plot between Michael and his son Walt, that few characters reacted to his death, and that his death was not heroic enough and that there was no real redemption. He also did not appreciate that Walt ended up being another black child without a father, but he later walked this comment back and admitted that he never voiced these feelings to the producers.
  • Evangeline Lilly revealed that she was often unhappy with the Jack/Kate/Sawyer Love Triangle and that she felt so uncomfortable filming a semi-nude scene in season three that she refused to ever do such a scene again.
  • Paul Dini, who worked on the series during its early days, wrote this gem for The Joker in Batman: Arkham City as a sort of Take That!.
    The Joker: I can hear you all now. "How did this happen? Can I get me some of that crazy cure? I want answers, dammit! Now!" Well, here's the thing. Answers don't give you everlasting satisfaction. Sometimes, you need to brace yourself for disappointment. Now, think about it. Imagine your favorite show. You've been through it all. The ups, the downs, the crazy coincidences. And then, BANG! They tell you what it's all about. Would you be happy? Does it make sense? How come it all ended in a church?
  • Damon Lindelof was critical of the series in a 2020 interview with Collider. While he praised the writers and the actors, he also felt that the show didn't have a good balance from stacking up too many mysteries. As well, he explained how the quality began to suffer as a result of ABC initially refusing to let them end the show, and even after an end date had been set, he didn't feel that everything in the later seasons worked.
  • In 2023, Javier Grillo-Marxauch, who wrote for the show's first two seasons, blasted Lindelof and Cuse for running a toxic, abusive work environment that often treated women and minorities like crap and severely punished anyone who complained. He also accuses Cuse of abusing his status in the Writer's Guild of America to cheat Grillo-Marxauch out of credit and financial compensation for his work on "The Lost Experience", the show's acclaimed ARG.
  "It's very easy, especially twenty years after the fact, to think 'well, it can't have been that bad or someone would have done something.' Let me say it loud and clear: it was that bad, and no one did anything because retribution was a constant and looming presence."
• Creator's Pest: Libby was killed off because the writers were running out of things to do with her.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Averted with Tania Raymonde, who started the show at 16, the same age as her character Alex. She experienced a touch of this though four years later playing the character at the same age. Later played straight with Alex's boyfriend Karl, played by 25-year-old Blake Bashoff.
  • Daniel Faraday's age is an odd subject: Assuming he was born in late 1977, that still means he was no older than 19 when Desmond visited him at Oxford where he was a professor. The fact that he's a super-genius could maybe justify that, but it still means that Daniel was probably 18 when he graduated, and in his graduation scene he is played by 39-year-old Jeremy Davies.
  • Ben and Danielle are also supposed to be the same age (as are Michael Emerson and Mira Furlan, who are both in their 50's). Yet when they're seen together in a flashback, Danielle at 29 is played by Melissa Farman, while Ben at 29 is played by Michael Emerson (wearing a wig).
• Defictionalized: In "The Long Con" and "Two For The Road", Hurley and Sawyer read a manuscript called Bad Twin. This manuscript is written by Gary Troup, otherwise known as "Turbine Man" - the man who was sucked into the plane turbine in the Pilot. The book was later published in real life; while Troup gets the writing credit, it was actually ghostwritten by Laurence Shames.
• Descended Creator: Frank Torres, the show's stunt coordinator, also played Gary Troup (aka Turbine Man), the man who gets sucked into the plane engine in "Pilot, Part 1".
• Edited for Syndication: In syndication, the series finale suffers by being cut into two parts and removing some beautiful scenes to make room for more ads. This is really glaring on subscription services like Hulu, which, for reasons unknown, stream the edited two part finale, followed immediately by the uncut version. But you wouldn't know this if you're just watching all the episodes in order, so by the time you get to the uncut finale you've already seen it once.
• Enforced Method Acting: L. Scott Caldwell and Sam Anderson were kept separated on set until their reunion scene in order to emphasize the separation the characters suffered until then.
• Executive Veto: Jack was supposed to die in the first episode; ABC nixed that idea and the rest is history.
• Fake American: Evangeline Lilly (Canadian) plays Kate Austen.
• Fake Brit:
  • The Irish Fionnula Flanagan as Eloise Hawking.
  • In the flash-sideways verse, possibly Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore (though he still has an American accent).
  • Alan Dale of New Zealand plays Charles Widmore.
  • Neil Hopkins, who's American, as Liam Pace.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Naveen Andrews (British of Indian parentage) plays Sayid Jarrah (Iraqi Arab).
  • Daniel Dae Kim (American of Korean parentage) plays Jin-Soo Kwon (Korean national).
  • Mira Furlan (Yugoslavian/Croatian) plays Danielle Rousseau (French).
  • Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (British of Nigerian parentage) plays Mr. Eko (Nigerian).
• Fake Russian:
  • Zuleikha Robinson (British) plays Ilana Verdansky (who is presumed to be of Russian descent).
  • The Venezuelan Andrew Divoff (of partial Russian heritage) plays Mikhail Bakunin (Russian).
• Fan Community Nicknames: Lostaways. Or Losties. Both names refer to the Flight 815 islanders as well.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Being on network television and with good critical and audience reception, the show soon gathered a huge fanbase and was recognizable for even those who didn't watch it. Then it ended in an unarguably divisive manner, and the fandom went into the "Oblivion" stage, regressing and with the show not remaining a subject of conversation following its finale like Star Trek or Friends. New viewers still emerge with the show being on Netflix and the like, but it's unlikely Lost will return to its popularity peak.
• Filming Location Cameo: When the Oceanic Six are rescued, they land in Hawai'i.
• Flip-Flop of God: No one seems to actually know what caused Eko to be written off the show. Official statements from different sources have stated that Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje asked for too much money, that he felt the character had nowhere else to go and asked to be written out, that he got tired of living in Hawai'i and quit the show completely, and that he needed to leave the show due to a death in the family. Aside from the Real Life Writes the Plot aspect, there's no consistency to anybody's stories. Even on this wiki, all the options are used interchangeably.
• Foiler Footage: Three versions of the final shot from "There's No Place Like Home, Part 3" were filmed to disguise the identity of the person in the coffin. The fake shots showed Desmond and Sawyer in the coffin instead of Locke. According to the writers, they were nervous during the first airing that the editor might have spliced the wrong footage into the final cut and left them with a bear of a problem to write their way out of.
• Fountain of Expies: The number of shows from various networks (including ABC itself) that have tried to capture Lost's magic in a bottle again. Lost is nearly becoming the Doom of television shows.
• George Lucas Altered Version: Quite a few episodes were altered for their first reairing, which is the version on DVD. Most of these corrected small goofs, such as a gloved hand directing the horse in "What Kate Did" and a white car clearly visible on the island in "The Other 48 Days." "Adrift" added a shot of the World Trade Center towers, to help better establish the timeframe of Michael's flashbacks.
• God Never Said That:
  • The producers never said that the show would never have time travel. They once said that the then ongoing season two had no time travel — and it didn't — but never that there would never be time travel. Additionally, they never stated that there was one huge clue left in the pilot — in fact, they explicitly said there wasn't, and the last one to be made significant was the single white tennis shoe Jack found. Yet this is repeated until today.
  • In an example of "Word of Mistaken God," an excellent way to see if someone is making something up about a producer comment is to see if they attribute it to J.J. Abrams, who has had little involvement in the series since season 1, helping to set it up, write and direct the pilot, and contributing to only a very few episodes after (the last being a webisode between seasons 3 and 4).
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Claire Littleton loves peanut butter, but Emilie de Ravin is allergic to it.
  • Jin is, initially, only able to speak Korean and doesn't know any English. Daniel Dae Kim actually knew very little Korean when he was cast and had to be coached by Yunjim Kim (who was fluent).
• On-Set Injury: While filming the final episode, Terry O'Quinn mistakenly stabbed Matthew Fox with a real knife instead of a collapsible one. Fox's life was saved by the kevlar vest underneath his shirt.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Claire's mother Carole was originally played by Arlene Newman-Van Asperen in "Par Avion" where the character is in a coma and her face is never seen clearly. When Carole returned, having awoken from the coma, she was played by Susan Duerden who kept the role for all subsequent appearances.
  • The show went through a lot of babies to play Aaron as the storyline moved a lot slower than real-world time. Once the character aged up to a toddler William Blanchette was cast and stayed in the role until the end of the series.
  • Vincent the dog was originally played by a labrador named Madison. Towards the end of the second season Madison was replaced by another dog named Pono for unknown reasons. Amusingly, both dogs were female while Vincent was male.
• Playing Against Type: Yunjin Kim (Sun), who gained fame in Korea playing Action Girls. Of course, Sun's character began to show some of those traits in later seasons.
• Production Posse: Longtime Oz fans will recognize Hill, Adebisi, Basil, and Governor Devlin while watching the show.
• Real-Life Relative: The younger versions of Liam and Charlie Pace seen in flashbacks were played by real-life brothers Zack and Jeremy Shada.
• Referenced by...:
  • 30 Rock had many mentions to the show, and once even had an ice cream package with the DHARMA logo.
  • An issue of The Thing had Trapster using the Numbers as the combination to disarm a bomb. Spider-Man recognizes them and notes "you're such a geek".
  • A subplot of This Is 40 has a character trying to watch Lost.
  • MKTO, the pop group of which Malcolm David Kelley is one half of, sprinkled in several references to Lost into the music video for their first single, "Thank You". Among other things, there are polar bear figurines in their house, a blackboard references Room 23, Tom Sawyer, Faraday physics, and "Desmond Hume will be my constant", and Harold Perrineau has a cameo where he walks down the street and he and Kelley double take as they pass each other.
  • In December 2016, the Professional Wrestling promotion CHIKARA recorded several matches and released them in installments as the "lost" Season 17, with all nine events titled after episodes of Lost.
  • In the October 2023 Big City Greens episode “Bad Dad”, a character can be seen entering the iconic number sequence into a computer terminal to reset a mysterious counter, just like the characters had to in Season 2.
• Renamed to Avoid Association: Charlie's band was originally named "The Petting Zoo". This had to be changed, however, when it transpired that there really is a band called The Petting Zoo.
• Romance on the Set: Evangeline Lilly and Dominic Monaghan dated from 2004-2009. Inconsistent stories say that their breakup was part of the reason why Charlie was killed off at the end of Season 3.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting:
  • Mira Furlan (Danielle) and Tania Raymonde (Alex) are very believable as mother and daughter.
  • Emily Rae Argenti, who plays a ten year old Kate in "The Incident", bears an uncanny resemblance to Evangeline Lilly.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: As filming was concluding on season 1, the crew realized that the rising tides of Oahu were eventually going to submerge the fuselage set completely, meaning that they needed a reason to get the survivors away from the fuselage permanently. They eventually settled for putting the real-world reason into the story, and thus the survivors had to move further up the beach and create a second camp to avoid a suddenly rising tide.
• Spared by the Cut: Jack was supposed to be killed off by the smoke monster halfway through the pilot. The original plan was that he would be played by Michael Keaton. The ending of the first episode had Jack being revealed dead atop a tree, until the character was reworked and the victim was instead the plane's pilot.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Unusually, for composer Michael Giacchino more than for any of the people in front of the camera.
  • Playing Kate Austen was a big boost to Evangeline Lilly's career.
  • Josh Holloway had pretty much quit acting and was in the process of obtaining a realtor's license when he was cast as Sawyer and saw the show as One Last Job. And the rest is history.
• Teasing Creator: While the show was on the air, "Darlton" made infuriatingly hilarious podcasts regarding answering what happened and teasing whatever would appear.
• Throw It In!: Jack's ex-wife Sarah was not originally written as being pregnant in "Through The Looking Glass". The writers decided to incorporate Julie Bowen's real life pregnancy into the show rather than covering it up, feeling it would be more painful for Jack to see how she had moved on with her life without him.
• Troubled Production: And how, considering the frequent entries in the above Creator Backlash section. There were also Michelle Rodriguez's and Cynthia Watros's DUI incidents and other incidents that would influence the writing. Maureen Ryan's book Burn It Down even exposes how even the writers were terrorized by "Darlton" throughout the show's run.
• Uncredited Role: Despite making frequent guest appearances beginning with the second season, François Chau went uncredited until he was promoted to main character status in the Grand Finale.
• Viral Marketing: The Lost Experience is the biggest example, but also the other between-seasons games.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Word of God: Now that the series is over, most of the burning questions fans have had will have to be/have been addressed in this way, if at all. In particular, the original plan for Ilana's character (which may or may not count as canon) was that she would turn out to be Jacob's daughter.
• Written-In Infirmity: Julie Bowen was actually pregnant when shooting her scene in the Season 3 finale.

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