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Trivia / Knight Rider

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  • Acting for Two:
    • Look, it's David Hasselhoff, with a deeper voice and very cheesy looking goatee as Garthe Knight! Justified in-universe as Garthe Knight was the estranged biological son of Wilton Knight. Wilton deliberately reconstructed Michael Long's face via Magic Plastic Surgery to resemble Garthe's (because at the time Garthe was in prison somewhere in another country).
    • In "Merchants Of Death", Deborah Allison plays that week's person-in-need-of-help Camela Clermont and her mother Amelia. (And gets "And" billing in the process.)
  • Completely Different Title:
    • In Spanish, the series is known in Spain as El coche fantástico (The Fantastic Car), and in Latin America as El auto fantástico (The Fantastic Car)note  except in Mexico, where it is known as El auto increíble (The Incredible Car). The 2008 revival used the El auto increíble title for all of Latin America.
    • In Portuguese, it is known in Portugal as O Justiceiro (The Justice Maker) and in Brazil as A Supermáquina (The Super Machine). The 2008 revival was known in Brazil as A Nova Super Máquina (The New Super Machine).
    • In Greece it is known as O ippotis tis asfaltou (The Knight of the Asphalt).
    • In Italy it is known as Supercar.
    • In France, people know it as "K-2000", from the car's codename.
    • In Poland, the show was called Nieustraszony (Fearless).
  • The Cast Showoff: In "Let It Be Me", Michael has to go undercover as the newest singer in a band his ex-fiancee Stevie is part of. The Hoff was attempting to launch a singing career at the time the episode aired. His first record album featured quite a few of the songs that appear in this episode.
  • Creator Couple: Catherine Hickland, who played Stevie Mason, was David Hasselhoff's then-fiancée.
  • Fake Brit: Devon Miles was played by Edward Mulhare, who often played British characters but was actually Irish.
  • Follow the Leader:
    • Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Street Hawk, The Highwayman, and arguably Automan were all cool vehicle shows spawned in the wake of KR's success. The first two were also obviously Dueling Shows that were also following Blue Thunder's cinematic lead, and Automan was following two leaders, KR and TRON. Notably, all but Airwolf died early deaths.
    • The success of Transformers (2007) was a major influence on KR08's pilot movie, and the subsequent show borrowed a lot of design elements, including the transformation style. (This was also a double-edged sword, as reportedly the original choice for KR08's car was the newest Chevrolet Camaro, before Transformers using it for Bumblebee ruined those plans.) This culminated in bringing Peter Cullen back as the voice of KARR, and (in what's most likely an Actor Allusion to him voicing Optimus Prime) making KARR itself capable of becoming a Transforming Mecha.
    • Viper was a distant Follow the Leader of the original Knight Rider in The '90s. Ironically, it attempted a transformation style similar to the one that would be used in the 2008 revival.
    • Knight Rider, however, wasn't the first series about a sentient talking car. That honor would go to none other than notorious one-season sitcom My Mother the Car (also aired on NBC).note 
  • Inspiration for the Work: According to Brandon Tartikoff, the head of programming at NBC during the 1980s, the inspiration for the series came about when NBC executives started complaining about the problems of casting handsome leading men in television series, because many of them couldn't act. Tartikoff and his assistant came up with a concept for a television show called, The Man of Six Words. Each show would begin with the leading man getting out of a woman's bed and saying, "Thank you". Occasionally, throughout the show, the leading man would say, "Okay", when receiving orders from his boss. Then he would chase down some villains and say "Freeze!" Finally, when the people he had saved from death would thank him, he would say, "You're welcome". For the rest of the show, the car would do all the talking. Although Tartikoff had meant the pitch to be a joke, the NBC executives liked the idea of a television show about a man with a talking car, and approved it for development.
  • Prop Recycling: In "Halloween Knight", someone can be seen wearing a Silver Shamrock pumpkin mask, complete with the logo still being visible.
  • The Other Darrin: Peter Cullen voiced K.A.R.R. the first time. Paul Frees did the voice of K.A.R.R. the second time (albeit uncredited, leading some to speculate that it was actually Cullen).
  • The Other Marty:
    • Larry Anderson plays the part of Michael Long at the start of the pilot. He's seen briefly for a few scenes, though Michael's face is hidden by shadow when he's shot- this was due to the casino scenes being filmed much later as a way to explain the plot (Hasselhoff initially filmed the shooting scene with his face obscured by shadow). The initial airing had Anderson's own voice, later copies had Hasselhoff dub over the lines.
    • Will Arnett was originally cast as the voice of the Knight 3000 for the 2008 TV movie, but was replaced by Val Kilmer during production due to his reputation as the voice of GMC car commercials and KITT being portrayed as a Ford Mustang.
  • Referenced by...:
    • In X-Men: Apocalypse, Quicksilver switches the TV's channels from the news to Knight Rider.
    • In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter Quill has described at length Knight Rider to Gamora (who didn't get all the details straight) and how it inspired him to pretend to his childhood pals that David Hasselhoff was his father.
    • In the St. Elsewhere episode "After Dark", Nurse Shirley Daniels goes to the morgue to get "the report on that Hasselhoff car wreck." William Daniels, who supplied the voice of KITT, played Dr. Mark Craig on that series.
    • In the ZX Spectrum game Mailstrom, the mail van computer is called SKIT (Special Knowledge & Information Terminal), and its driver's first name is Michael. There are also powerups that equip the van with missiles and "Super-persuit(sic) mode" complete with Transformation Sequence.
    • Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Chip has a Knight Rider lunchbox in his school years.
  • Star-Making Role: David Hasselhoff. He was primarily known for his role on The Young and the Restless at the time.
  • Technology Marches On:
    • Sort of. Back in 1982 a car hitting 200 MPH was the realm of Formula 1, although production car companies like Ferrari and Porsche did break the 200 MPH barrier a few years later. Even now, while KITT's acceleration is still pretty startling - if the speed of the ticking digital speedometer is anything to go by - its assumed top speed (300 MPH/480kmh) is still above hypercar standards, with even the likes of the Bugatti Veyron (252MPH/407kmh) unable to surpass it.
    • K.I.T.T. AI is stated in one episode to have a memory capacity of 1000 megabits. That's under 128 megabytes, which by the start of the 2020s can be stored on a memory card the size of your thumbnail and bought for pocket money.
  • Uncredited Role: William Daniels, who did the voice of K.I.T.T., never appeared in the credits during the show's four year run.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Don Johnson was considered for Michael Knight.
    • According to Car & Driver magazine, K.I.T.T. was originally intended to be a modified Datsun 280ZX, but General Motors' recently introduced F-Body Firebird Trans Am was substituted in pre-production.
    • An original concept was for K.A.R.R. to be white, based on the opposing Knights' colors of chess. The idea was rejected and left black with an alternate color scanner, due to K.A.R.R. being the same type of car used for K.I.T.T., and would require time and cost-consuming paint jobs. It also did not feel right to the producers, that black was good and white was bad, in the colors of the two opposing vehicles. It also saved money by allowing more stock footage use, and opened up the possibility of "mistaken identity" plotlines.
    • Network executives reportedly suggested for Season Two that K.I.T.T. should fly. The cast and crew rejected the idea for finding it flat-out ridiculous.
    • After two successful appearances, producers wanted to do more episodes featuring Michael's evil lookalike Garthe Knight and his truck Goliath. However, David Hasselhoff complained that playing the dual role of Michael and Garthe was too demanding for him.
    • David Hasselhoff wanted "The Scent of Roses" to be the series finale. Instead, NBC chose to air it in January, to coincide with Sweeps.
    • There were plans to give Las Vegas a Fully Absorbed Finale in the 2008 revival (both shows were produced by Gary Scott Thompson, and the first KR08 episode had featured the Montecito), but the show's cancellation ended that plan.
  • You Look Familiar:
    • Robert O'Reilly (better known as Chancellor Gowron) appears twice as two different characters, as Jake Simpson in "A Good Knight's Work" and Snyder in "KITTnap".
    • Ann Turkel is an interesting case in that she played villain Adrianne Margeaux in two separate episodes of Season 2, "Soul Survivor" and "Goliath Returns", but then went on to appear as a different character, Bianca Morgan, in Season 3's "Knight in Retreat".

Knight Rider 2010

  • What Could Have Been: Earlier drafts had the movie connected to the series' continuity, with KITT now as a female; additionally, FLAG would've evolved into a government-backed agency that deployed Knight Riders and KITT cars in every state. One detail that was carried over into the TV movie while everything else was changed involved the driver of a Knight Industries' vehicle replacing the car's standard AI with a virtual copy of his recently deceased girlfriend's personality.

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