History YMMV / TheWestWing

** After [[spoiler: prosecuting Toby about the space shuttle fiasco,]] Mr. Blake - U.S. Attorney (Matt Letscer) went back to the year 2000 and [[Series/TheFlash2014 murdered Barry Allen's mother.]]

** Creator/MartinSheen's pronunciation of the "hu" sound as "yu," after it became a popular way to mock Donald Drumpf.
** One of the big reasons that Vinick's brain trust try to talk him out of running again in 2010 is the fact that he would be 70 years old at the time, too old for a first-term President. Cut to 2016, and Donald Drumpf would be exactly 70 when he was elected. Four years later, Joe Biden then turned ''78'' a few weeks after being elected in 2020, making Team Vinick's concern seem quaint. Vinick even tries protesting that "70 is the new 60," and while his own attempts are in vain, the American people in real life seem to agree with him.

** In "Ellie", Sam gets into an argument with a film producer who claimed that Bartlet had denounced a controversial movie of his and was "siding with censors" (in truth, Bartlet had never heard of it and Charlie had simply rejected the producer's offer of a screening at the White House because he simply thought Bartlet wouldn't enjoy it). During the argument, the effects of violence in film comes up, and Sam points out that, since medical experts have claimed that children are negatively impacted by violent films the White House intends to listen to them. The film producer retorts by pointing out that the White House, in the same episode, is clearly gearing up to fire the Surgeon General for offering a politically inconvenient opinion about legalizing marijuana despite it ''also'' being advice from a medical expert. The show treats the producer (not entirely wrongly) as a sleazy jerk and we're supposed to leave the scene thinking that Sam has completely trounced this guy, but many viewers might actually come away thinking that the producer had a perfectly valid point about the White House's hypocrisy. Especially since, although the President ultimately doesn't go through with it, Sam never actually responds to the producer's accusation and just kind of brushes it off.

** Creator/ClarkGregg played an FBI agent in a few episodes. It's easy to imagine him getting promoted to [[Film/TheAvengers2012 S.H.I.E.L.D.]] down the road.

** The race between Santos and Vinick has some quite eerie similarities to the 2008 presidential election, with an young and idealistic minority Democrat beating an elderly, moderate-leaning Republican. The parallels just get weirder from there: the Democratic candidate chooses a much older Washington insider as his running mate (Joe Biden vs. Leo [=McGarry=]) while the Republican candidate's running mate is the much younger Governor of a sparsely populated US state known for its rich mineral resources (Ray Sullivan of West Virginia vs. UsefulNotes/SarahPalin of Alaska), and the Democratic candidate decides to appoint one of his foremost political rivals Secretary of State (Arnold Vinick vs. UsefulNotes/HillaryClinton).

** Lionel Tribbey, a righteous White House Counsel whose existence allows John Larroquette the opportunity to [[LargeHam bathe in a river of ham.]]

* DesignatedVillain: Both of Bartlet's Vice Presidents, in a somewhat nuanced way. Neither Hoynes nor Russell ever seem to do that much wrong to justify the level of contempt and scorn they receive from the main cast, but they have certain flaws that the White House staff tend to focus on. Hoynes is a smart, serious guy and a legitimate politician, but he's a narcissist who feels like he deserved the presidency and so lacks any kind of loyalty or respect for Bartlet. Russell is generally considered a lightweight and a moron, though at various points the show hints that he's a MagnificentBastard engaged in ObfuscatingStupidity. Generally speaking, the two are just outsiders to the close-as-family dynamic of the main cast.

* WTHCastingAgency: Creator/EdONeill has made a couple of guest appearances as the Governor of Pennsylvania, who is the frontrunner among the candidates for President. Not exactly the character expected from the actor who played Al Bundy in ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''. Though it is mentioned that [[ActorAllusion he's popular with the urban blue-collar working class]] among the Rust Belt...

** Creator/MartinSheen's pronunciation of the "hu" sound as "yu," after it became a popular way to mock Donald Trump.
** One of the big reasons that Vinick's brain trust try to talk him out of running again in 2010 is the fact that he would be 70 years old at the time, too old for a first-term President. Cut to 2016, and Donald Trump would be exactly 70 when he was elected. Four years later, Joe Biden then turned ''78'' a few weeks after being elected in 2020, making Team Vinick's concern seem quaint. Vinick even tries protesting that "70 is the new 60," and while his own attempts are in vain, the American people in real life seem to agree with him.

** The "Don't Tread On Me" flag Sam has on the wall of his office. Back when the show started, it was a bit of an HistoricalInJoke, but the symbol is now inextricably linked to the extreme right wing--the polar opposite of the characters (and alignment) of the show.

** Creator/MartinSheen's pronunciation of the "hu" sound as "yu," after it became a popular way to mock Donald Drumpf.
** One of the big reasons that Vinick's brain trust try to talk him out of running again in 2010 is the fact that he would be 70 years old at the time, too old for a first-term President. Cut to 2016, and Donald Drumpf would be exactly 70 when he was elected. Four years later, Joe Biden then turned ''78'' a few weeks after being elected in 2020, making Team Vinick's concern seem quaint. Vinick even tries protesting that "70 is the new 60," and while his own attempts are in vain, the American people in real life seem to agree with him.

** Creator/MartinSheen's pronunciation of the "hu" sound as "yu," after it became a popular way to mock Donald Trump.
** One of the big reasons that Vinick's brain trust try to talk him out of running again in 2010 is the fact that he would be 70 years old at the time, too old for a first-term President. Cut to 2016, and Donald Trump would be exactly 70 when he was elected. Four years later, Joe Biden then turned ''78'' a few weeks after being elected in 2020, making Team Vinick's concern seem quaint. Vinick even tries protesting that "70 is the new 60," and while his own attempts are in vain, the American people in real life seem to agree with him.

** Santos is talking with Leo about his viability as VP candidate: "I'm not gonna fire you. You want out, you're gonna have to drum up another heart attack or something."

** Creator/LawrenceODonnell of Creator/{{MSNBC}} fame worked on ''The West Wing'' as a writer and producer and appeared as Jed Bartlet's father in "Two Cathedrals".

** The show has an extremely pro-globalisation, pro-unrestricted trade, pro-Grand Bargain viewpoint. Said viewpoint, while not necessarily hated, is far more controversial and under much more scrutiny in the years following the show's end. Particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent "Great Recession"; an event which some parts of the US (if not the world) have not ever recovered from.

** The show has an extremely pro-globalisation, pro-unrestricted trade, pro-Grand Bargain viewpoint. Said viewpoint, while not necessarily hated, is far more controversial and under much more scrutiny in the years following the show's end. Particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis, which sent the planet into the "Great Recession"; an event which some parts of the US have never recovered from.

** The show has a liberal, extremely pro-globalisation, pro-unrestricted trade, pro-Grand Bargain view point. Two years after the show ended the 2008 global financial crisis hit, sending the planet into the 'Great Recession', the most severe recession since the 1930's Great Depression.
** The characters mercilessly attack those on their ideological left. For many viewers with the hindsight of the 2010's and beyond, they would see this failure to embrace their left flank to help the working class, to be the same thing that resulted in the rise of populist right and far-right parties across Europe, the United Kingdom (including Brexit, the idea of which would have been unfathomable to the characters on the show), Australia and the United States.

** Creator/ClarkGregg played a Secret Service agent in a few episodes. It's easy to imagine him getting promoted to [[Film/TheAvengers2012 S.H.I.E.L.D.]] down the road.

** Appearing with Amy Adams is [[Theatre/SpringAwakening John Gallagher, Jr.]], who would later become a main cast member in Sorkin's ''Series/TheNewsroom''.

* WTHCastingAgency: Creator/EdONeill has made a couple of guest appearances as the Governor of Pennsylvania, who is the frontrunner among the candidates for President. Not exactly the character expected from the actor who played Al Bundy in ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The show was created in the 1990s, in the lame-duck years of the Clinton administration (and carried those ideals even into the Bush years), and it rather shows, as Bartlett more or less represents an idealized version of Bill Clinton. Additionally, the show espouses a vision of politics--specifically, the Third Way neoliberal viewpoint that Clinton basically codified, disdaining the party's left wing in favor of common ground with Republicans--which became increasingly more controversial as the years went on, culminating in the CrackDefeat of his wife in the 2016 election. As noted in [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/9/16/20857281/the-west-wing-20-anniversary-primetime-podcast-episode-bartlet-biden one Vox article]], the show features a lot of scenes where Bartlett makes a single grand speech and the Republicans are moved enough to support him, which is almost incomprehensible to those who lived through the Obama years, which saw Obama be stonewalled at every opportunity by the Republicans and struggling to peel off even a handful despite his charisma and attempts at appeasement.