History Trivia / ALF

* OldShame:
** None of the main human cast members had any major success after ALF. Max Wright continued to act until shortly before his death in 2019, and received a Tony nomination in 1993. The other three regulars have since retired from acting. Wright wanted nothing to do with the show for a long time afterwards, but later changed his mind, acknowledging in interviews how much joy ALF (the show and character) has brought to the world over the years.
** Averted for most people who ''guest starred'' on ALF, such as Jack Riley and Teresa Ganzel, who have all stated that being on the show was a lot of fun for them. Ganzel had heard of the technical nightmares beforehand, but appeared on the show anyway [[AwesomeDearBoy just because she thought it'd be cool.]]
** Paul Fusco himself has disowned the original broadcast version of the episode “Try To Remember”, which explains why the episode is the only one to be presented in an edited format on Shout Factory’s complete DVD boxset.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Thanks to Shout Factory, a complete DVD set was released that ''finally'' contained the original broadcast versions of the show’s episodes, after ''decades'' of having to deal with the severely butchered episode prints from syndication, found on streaming/the Lionsgate DVD sets. Yep, all of the original broadcast versions of the episodes are accounted for…except for one. That being “Try To Remember”, the infamous episode that initially aired with ALF foolishly bringing a blender into a bathtub. After the commercial break, it cuts back to ALF, now with his fur electrically shocked from the incident, telling the audience, “Water and electricity don’t mix”. The DVD set uses the syndicated print of this episode. According to Shout Factory themselves, they mentioned that this syndicated print represents the “best existing version of the episode”, implying that the film masters to the original broadcast version were ''destroyed'' after the initial TV airing due to parental complaints (and that if Shout Factory could have found the original broadcast footage, they would have included it on their DVD set).

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Thanks to Shout Factory, a complete DVD set was released that ''finally'' contained the original broadcast versions of the show’s episodes, after ''decades'' of having to deal with the old, cut/syndicated episode prints found on streaming/the Lionsgate DVD sets. Yep, all of the original broadcast versions of the episodes are accounted for…except for one. That being “Try To Remember”, the infamous episode that initially aired with ALF foolishly bringing a blender into a bathtub. After the commercial break, it cuts back to ALF, now with his fur electrically shocked from the incident, telling the audience, “Water and electricity don’t mix”. The DVD set uses the syndicated print of this episode. According to Shout Factory themselves, they mentioned that this syndicated print represents the “best existing version of the episode”, implying that the film masters to the original broadcast version were ''destroyed'' after the initial TV airing due to parental complaints (and that if Shout Factory could have found the original broadcast footage, they would have included it on their DVD set).

* DawsonCasting: The character of Lynn Tanner, who was supposed to be 14 when the series started, was portrayed by then 17-year old Andrea Elson.

* HostilityOnTheSet: The difficulties in working both on a set with multiple open trap doors to accommodate a puppet and puppeteer, and with a puppeteer whose perfectionism led to most episodes taking longer than usual to film for a sitcom of that era, led most of the human cast to deeply resent having to play second fiddle to a puppet and sometimes lash out over it at whoever was convenient. "We're all puppets here!" Max Wright said at one point. In fact, one of the show's most infamous stories is that Wright was apparently so miserable, the ''moment'' the final shooting session was done, he made a bee-line to his car and drove off, not speaking a ''word'' to anyone.

** Due to the constant arduously technical demands of making the ALF puppet come to life, to film a 22 minute episode it took 20-25 full hours. Not helping was the fact that Paul Fusco was a perfectionist and a taskmaster, yet he despised rehearsals. This meant he forced everyone to shoot take after take as he tried to get his performance as ALF just right.

* TheWikiRule: [[http://alf.wikia.com/wiki/ALF_Wiki The ALF Wiki]].

* DirectedByCastMember:
** Paul Fusco directed six episodes.
** Anne Meara, who played Kate's mother, wrote a single episode.

** Due to the constant arduously technical demands of making the ALF puppet come to life, to film a 22 minute episode it took 20-25 full hours. Not helping was the fact that Paul Fusco was a perfectionist and a taskmaster, forcing everyone to shoot take after take as he tried to get his performance as ALF just right.

* NamesTheSame: The "Tanner" family on this show predated [[Series/FullHouse the other Tanners]] by a year.

** Unfortunately, this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series)#DVD_releases carried over]] to the [=DVD=] releases (except the ones released in Germany, where were uncut) and Hulu, as well as the Creator/ShoutFactory streaming release.

** Unfortunately, this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series)#DVD_releases carried over]] to the [=DVD=] releases (except the ones released in Germany, where were uncut) and Hulu. Averted when Creator/ShoutFactory announced their release of the series, confirming that the syndication cuts will not be used.

** Unfortunately, this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series)#DVD_releases carried over]] to the [=DVD=] releases (except the ones released in Germany, where were uncut) and Hulu.