The tie-in books add two more authors to the list — Walter Scott and Jules Verne each authored one story featured on the show and one featured in the tie-in books, while Bram Stoker authored two works adapted into tie-in books.
Sherlock Holmes is the only character Wishbone played in more than one episode.
Trivia tropes:
California Doubling: The fantasy portions of the show travel all around the world and back through history, from Victorian England to Ancient China to everything in between. And it was all shot in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Cash-Cow Franchise: Four book series, clothing, toys, videos, DVDs, lunchboxes, calendars, food sets (plates, bowls, etc.), coloring books...you name it! Funnily enough though, its production was halted by PBS due to not having enough "merchandising potential", possibly because it didn't have the sort of characters to make for toys.
Dawson Casting: Mostly averted. The actors playing the middle school-aged kids were about the same age as their characters. When the actors hit 14/15/16, the characters moved up to high school. Jordan Wall was 14 during the first season and his character was said to be in 6th grade, and later when he was 16 he was playing on an 8th grade basketball team (which looks more like a high school team). So, overall he stayed only 1 or 2 years ahead of his character.
Edited for Syndication: When some PBS stations started airing reruns of the series in the mid-to-late 2000s, some of the "Tail End" segments were either shortened or cut completely, and the credits music changed from an instrumental re-arrangement of the theme song in a higher key, to a regular instrumental of the theme song.
Enforced Method Acting: Not in a harmful way but on the mystery train featured in one of the mystery books, the core trio run into an issue where some of the other passengers insist on them following their roles to the letter, leading to Joe and David being unable to talk to Sam, whose character is a young heiress, since she was unlikely to know either of their characters; fortunately, David "remembers" a time his character and Sam's were introduced, allowing him to introduce Joe's character properly.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only a handful of episodes has been released to VHS, and four on DVD in 2004. Mainly averted if your PBS station still reruns the show. And at least one YouTube account has all episodes uploaded.
Wendy's sold a set of five toys in their Kids' Meals in 1996, including one of Wishbone dressed as Odysseus.
Dairy Queen sold a set of six toys in 1999. The toys featured were a pirate ship that could squirt water, a Trojan horse, an inflatable ball, a sand fortress, a magic carpet, and a sticker safe.
Never Work with Children or Animals: Subverted — the behind the scenes segments show that Wishbone's stunt dogs are highly trained for their tasks, like pretending to climb down ropes or to dodge arrows, to avoid this trope from happening.
Real-Life Relative: Contrary to popular rumor, Mary Chris Wall is not the actual mother of Jordan Wall, even though they have the same last name and play mother and son on the show. On the other hand, Joe Duffield (Damont) really is the son of series creator Rick Duffield. Jeanne Simpson, who played various fantasy roles throughout the first season, is the sister of head writer Stephanie Simpson.
A Victorian city street was built for the Oliver Twist scenes in "Twisted Tail." This street shows up again and again throughout the run of the show, basically getting used whenever they need to portray an old-timey European city.
The behind-the-scenes segment in "Sniffing the Gauntlet" is about how they built the Castle Templestowe for Ivanhoe. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that Templestowe gets reused in every subsequent episode with a medieval setting.
Stunt Double: Soccer the dog was doubled by four other dogs named Slugger, Shiner, Phoebe, and Bear.
The Other Darrin: Between the first and second season, Emily's actress changed from Jazmine McGill to Brittany Holmes.
While series creator Rick Duffield started off wanting to do a kids' show starring a dog, the concept for the show went through some major revisions. At one point, it was going to be about a bulldog living in New Orleans. At another point, the canine lead was going to be named Knuckles, but theme music composer Tim Cissell declared that, "You cannot call the dog Knuckles." The name "Wishbone" originated from a point when the premise was going to be that the dog brought phenomenal good luck to anyone who owned him. That concept was abandoned because it gave Wishbone a Story-Breaker Power, but they kept the name. It was when he noticed a copy of Frank Magill's Masterpieces of World Literature that Duffield finally came up with the premise of a dog who imagines himself as the hero in various works of classic literature.
Most of the funding for the first season came from Richard Leach, who was the owner and founder of Lyrick Studios, which produced the series. Fresh from the success of Barney & Friends, Leach thought Wishbone could be a similar marketing juggernaut. However, as successful as Wishbone might have been in other areas, it never achieved Barney levels of merchandising success, which is what Leach had been counting on. It therefore became very difficult for series creator Rick Duffield to secure the funding for a second season, especially considering that Wishbone was quite expensive by PBS standards. By the time he had done so, two years had passed, and he only managed to scrounge up enough money for an abbreviated ten-episode season. After that, the odds of a third season were pretty much nil.
You Look Familiar: Local stage actors played the roles in the "fantasy" portions of the show. Several were reused many times.
due to not having enough "merchandising potential", possibly because it didn't have the sort of characters to make for toys.