Accent Depundent: Dolores rhyming with a part of the female anatomy, or anything else, depends on regional pronunciation.
Accidentally-Correct Writing: The writer of "The Conversion" had no idea that Latvian Orthodox was a real religion and was trying to make up a fictional one. He was initially mortified upon finding out it was a real religion, since the practices depicted in the episode are pretty farcical, but he later got letters from adherents thanking him for giving the faith some publicity.
Actor-Inspired Element: Patrick Warburton would often be found behind the set silently running lines in his head with a look of intense focus. A director saw this and turned it into the Running Gag of Puddy sitting up on his couch with an inexplicable Thousand-Yard Stare whenever he was home alone.
Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Almost twenty years after its airing, the most controversial twist ever on the show (Susan's death) was revealed by Jason Alexander himself to be more than just a creative decision: Heidi Swedberg was reportedly very difficult to work with, not so much as a person but as an actress her instincts were not on board with the rest of the castnote Alexander said that she was originally a minor character who had a network executive look to her, so her acting was not considered as much when she was cast. When she became a bigger character, Alexander found it very difficult to get a good comedic rhythm with her, while the cast and crew thought it was a hysterical George and Gracie act (maybe an accidental Enforced Method Acting was involved). When the rest of the cast started having more scenes with her they understood why Alexander was so flummoxed. While the writers knew they needed to end her engagement to George somehow, by virtue of the "No Hugging, No Learning" rule, the idea of actually killing her stemmed from a remark Julia Louis-Dreyfus made during a cast lunch after a particularly excruciating bit of filming with Swedberg: "Don't you just wanna kill her?"
All of J. Peterman's appearances (except for the first) were approved by the Real Life J. Peterman and his legal team after Seinfeld's lawyers got in touch with him.
Series composer Jonathan Wolff is a fan of weird remixes of the show's theme by Youtube creators, such as this one that recreates the theme using Seinfeld's Barry B. Benson memetic "jazz" line in Bee Movie.
George Steinbrenner considered the show's caricature of him "hysterical" and told an interviewer that he enjoyed watching the show with his grandchildren. He didn't care for Larry David's vocal impression but said "if you can't laugh at yourself, you're not much a person." Steinbrenner even filmed scenes for an in-person cameo on the show, but Larry David ultimately decided not to use them.
Banned Episode: One of the last episodes of the series, "The Puerto Rican Day", was initially pulled after its original broadcast, mainly because NBC felt the episode was too offensive with its depictions of Puerto Ricans, as well as a scene involving Kramer (accidentally) burning a Puerto Rico flag, causing an angry mob of Puerto Ricans trashing the streets, and vandalizing Jerry's car (to which, Kramer remarks, "It's like this every day in Puerto Rico."). In 2002, the episode was quietly added to the syndication package with the infamous scene uncut (Kramer's aforementioned line is absent, though it could be a case of being Edited for Syndication); Sony Pictures Television stated that enough time had passed since the initial furor to merit its inclusion.
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: While observational jokes that start out "What's the deal with [X]?" are considered Jerry's signature shtick, he actually only said that line a handful of times on the show, and it was always done specifically as a Self-Parody. The one non-ironic "What's the deal with [X]?" was actually delivered by George, in the early episode "The Deal".
George: What's the deal with Aquaman? Could he go on land, or was he just restricted to water?
Blooper: In "The Shower Head", when Jerry shoos his parents and the Costanzas out of the room with a joke about being drunk, Estelle Harris can be seen laughing. Although the show generally averts Tough Room, this has to be considered a blooper because Estelle really doesn't seem the type of character to be amused by that, and George elsewhere has mentioned that she has never laughed.
At the conclusion of "The Big Salad", in the overhead shot of the cop cars chasing Kramer and his friend, the cars are black (it's footage of the infamous "O. J. Simpson white Bronco" chase), but when the shot is inside the car, the cars behind them are now blue.
For the most part unnoticeable note For example, there are people who still think the second season premiere was filmed in New York, and not NBC's LA studio, but in some parts it's apparent.note If you can't tell, that's a California license plate on a New York taxi.
Jerry's apartment is actually an LA building, with very noticeable earthquake retrofitting (the diamonds on the side).
The highway Kramer chases Jerry's mechanic on in "The Bottle Deposit" - said to be the Ohio SR 135 - is the Pasadena Freeway.
That is not the New Jersey Turnpike Kramer is driving his friend Gendason on at the conclusion of "The Big Salad", as anyone living in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania/Delaware area could tell you. It's the Los Angeles portion of the 91 or 405 Freeway, as anyone living there could tell you (to be fair, the producers were deliberately using footage of the infamous O. J. Simpson chase to parody the media hype over the story).
Cash-Cow Franchise: Seinfeld was the first sitcom that could charge advertisers a million dollars for a minute of commercial time and has currently accumulated over four billion dollars in syndication revenue. Hulu paid $160 million dollars for the show's streaming rights in 2015, with every episode being valued at $875,000, and Netflix is believed to have paid triple that amount when it acquired the rights in 2019.
Cast the Runner-Up: Larry Miller was originally cast as George, but it was decided that, just to make George a little bit more pathetic, he needed to be short. Miller eventually appeared as a doorman that could give The Janitor a run for his money.
Several of the actresses who played Jerry's many girlfriends initially auditioned for Elaine (Teri Hatcher and Debra Messing being two examples). Heide Swedberg, who played Susan, is an interesting case: In a TV Guide special, she revealed that she auditioned for Claire, the waitress in the pilot.
The Cast Showoff: In "The Junior Mint", Jerry gets bored with Elaine catching up with Roy the artist in the hospital and breaks out a yo-yo to pass the time, showing real Jerry's prowess with one.
All but Michael Richards were prone to this... so much so, in fact, that Richards would try to not lose his cool whenever his costars would start to break up. Hilarious Outtakes aside, it's not uncommon to see either Seinfeld or Alexander stifle a smile; in fact, Alexander has acknowledged his breaking up at the end of "The Parking Garage," when Kramer's car actually stalled for real when he tries to get it started.
Jerry is unable to hold in his laughter during Library Detective Bookman's monologues. The fact that he's played by Phillip Baker Hall, and delivers them completely straight probably has something to do with it.
Jerry can rather infamously be heard howling with laughter in "The Beard" when Elaine throws George's toupee out the window (although arguably it's perfectly fair for Jerry the character to be laughing).
Regis Philbin loved the series, so he was disappointed that when he guest starred, he was given a line that he didn't think was funny (three variants of "This guy's bonkos!"). The producers insisted it would be hilarious, but his lines didn't get very many laughs with the studio audience. Regis dreaded watching that episode for that reason.
While "backlash" might not be the best word for it, on Access Hollywood, Jerry Seinfeld admitted that he isn't interested in watching Seinfeld himself, comparing it to looking back through a high school yearbook. He would much rather focus on his current work, such as his stand-up and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Jerry Seinfeld's character is named... "Jerry Seinfeld." (Justified in that the character is a fictionalized version of the real one.)
George's mother Estelle is named after her actress. But they couldn't name his father the same way because they already had a Jerry (though George's dad was originally played by John Randolph before being recast with Jerry Stiller).
However, it didn't happen in the case of John O'Hurley, who played Jacopo Peterman, even though it might as well have, because the character's Real Life counterpart was named John Peterman.
For a while during the Turn of the Millennium, Eggo had toaster muffin tops. In fact, their advertising gimmick to get people to "Leggo" your Eggo muffin tops was to pretend you were having muffin stumps.
John O'Hurley invested in the real-life J. Peterman Company, helping its real-life namesake buying it back from a bankrupt company who bought him out.
Ali Yeganeh's Real Lifesoup business - which has since expanded into a franchise - now mentions its Seinfeld connection on its packages, uses the slogan "Soup for You!" and, since 2015, has used Larry Thomas (who played his fictional counterpart) as its spokesperson, although the term "Soup Nazi" is still banned from being used in association with the business.
Denied Parody: It was believed that Jerry Seinfeld based Elaine on writer and comedian Carol Leifer. She said that only some elements of the character — that she and Seinfeld had dated and have remained good friends since the relationship ended — relate to her.
Descended Creator: As the show went on, Larry David had more and more Creator Cameos usually seen only from behind or voicing unseen characters like George Steinbrenner, a part David continued to voice for some time after he had already left the series as a writer.
Edited for Syndication: Most episodes feature little dialog cuts here and there to save time for more commercials. Also, a 2015 Cracked article pointed out that TBS speeds up reruns by about 7%; you can see a comparison here.
The episode which suffers the worst in this regard is "The Yada Yada", as it originally ran 26 minutes in its NBC premiere.note Before commercialism increased to epic proportions with The '90s, most half-hour shows were 26 minutes.
Since 2010, most markets air the episodes in a cropped format (similar to a x1.2 zoom on most DVD players), and as such, all on-screen titles (opening credits, closing credits, subtitles, etc) have been changed accordingly. Some episodes also have either repositioned the show logo in the opening, or left alone, resulting in half of the 'S' in Seinfeld being cut off.
The series finale was originally aired as a 75-minute "extra-length" episode. Being chopped into two parts for syndication ended up eliminating several testimonies by other "witnesses" at the trial (many of whom are shown departing for Massachusetts for the trial, and seen in background shots in the courtroom).
Newman first appears in a voice-only cameo in "The Revenge", in which he was voiced by Larry David. In syndication, the voice was redubbed by Wayne Knight, who by that point had been cast as the character and appeared on the show.
Writers Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin have admitted to changing Jerry Stiller's lines during production of "The Fatigues" to get Frank Costanza to speak with noticeable pauses.
Jerry's rapt attention to George's "The sea was angry that day, my friends" monologue in "The Marine Biologist" was the result of the real Jerry's astonishment at how Jason Alexander was flawlessly reciting a monologue he'd been instructed to memorize mere minutes before the cameras rolled.
Jerry and George's fear and discomfort of Elaine's father in "The Jacket" wasn't entirely acting. The actor who played him, Lawrence Tierney, was an incredibly intimidating presence on set, and his erratic and discomforting behavior (including stealing a kitchen knife at one point) unsettled practically everyone.
In "The Pick", when George complains that he never got a Christmas card from Elaine, she responds by shoving his face into her breasts while yelling, "Here's your Christmas card," then storming off. Julia Louis-Dreyfus improvised that part and George being left to stare blankly into the camera, visibly stunned was Jason Alexander's genuine reaction.
Kathy Griffin has said that Seinfeld's annoyance towards her character Sally Weaver was genuine, as Jerry Seinfeld really did find her an irritating person. So much so, that Seinfeld actually snapped at her during production of one of her episodes. Kathy addressed her first guest appearance on Seinfeldin one of her stand-up performances.
Larry David stated on numerous occasions that the fact that real-life Jerry couldn't act played perfectly into in-universe Jerry's character, given that his deadpan delivery of his lines reflected the sarcastic detachment you'd expect from a stand-up comic.
Frank Costanza's strange, stilted manner of speaking was often a result of Jerry Stiller struggling to remember his lines. Jason Alexander would later posit that it was actually Stiller's frustration that made the character so hilarious and memorable.
Executive Meddling: George getting caught for having sex in his parents' bed was initially written as their finding the condom in it, which the network saw as a level of Squick too far even for the show's typical level of boundary-pushing, so it was toned down to just the wrapper.
Fake Nationality: Pakistani Babu Bhatt is played by Brian George, a British actor of Iraqi/Jewish and Indian descent.
Funny Character, Boring Actor: The extremely wacky and off the wall Kramer is the polar opposite of his actor, Michael Richards. Who was often noted to be a very serious person and meticulous actor to a diva like extent.
Follow the Leader: You can't deny how influential the show was. To this day the majority of sitcoms, whether they're about single people or families, focus on immature, petty characters who rarely ever learn from their mistakes by the end of the episode. Also, in the '90s there were many, many sitcoms (especially those about single people) that loved to borrow two very specific concepts made famous by "Seinfeld". One was the Bottle Episode structure of episodes such as "The Chinese Restaurant" and the other was having main characters obsess over the odd quirks of their Boy or Girl of the Week.
Hide Your Pregnancy: Julia Louis-Dreyfus had both her sons over the course of the series. For the first, production wrapped on the season before she began showing (which is why Elaine is absent for "The Trip"). For the second, the crew gave her the more traditional technique of carrying props in front of her belly or hugging the throw pillows while sitting on Jerry's couch. During her appearance on Jerry Seinfeld's show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee two decades later, Louis-Dreyfus recounted how Jerry had proposed writing her second pregnancy into the show with an episode where Elaine gets fat... then retracted the idea when it immediately caused a hormonal Dreyfus to burst into tears.
Julia: So there are two things I have to say about that: one is that you have no interpersonal communication skills. The second thing is, it was a great idea and we should have done it. It would have been a great storyline. I actually regret it.
In a 2015 interview on The Howard Stern Show,Jason Alexander revealed that the main cast had difficulty working with Heidi Swedberg, who played Susan Ross (George Costanza's girlfriend/fiancee). Alexander, along with Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus complained to Larry David that Swedberg didn't mesh with the main cast and argued that she should be written off the show. When Alexander's comments made the newswaves, he (and the rest of the main cast) apologized to Swedberg on Twitter, saying that she was a fun person to work with but that their acting styles simply weren't on the right wavelength.
Seinfeld and Kathy Griffin (who played Susan's former roommate Sally) did not get along, and she only appeared in two episodes.
Sarah Silverman does not have good memories of her appearance on the show as Kramer's girlfriend in "The Money". Silverman recalled that, while filming a scene with Michael Richards, she flubbed one of her lines,note The script read, "It's probably the wind," but Silverman said, "It's probably the rain." after which Richards broke character and "just starts ripping me a new asshole." Silverman said that after returning to the set the next day to film another scene with Richards, he tried to make small talk with her as if nothing had happened between them the day prior, so she stood up against him, cutting him off and saying "I don't give a fuck!" Silverman summarizes that Richards understood she was upset at his behavior, as they would become "casually friendly" afterwards.
Wayne Knight infamously snapped at a fan who greeted him with "Hello, Newman..." on a bad day. He'd eventually make peace with the role again by playing Newman in a 2020 PSA encouraging people to vote due to the Trump administration's interference with the postal service, playing off Newman's passion for the mail.
Jason Alexander had had more of a sense of humor about it, remarking "Hey, I'm still getting the royalty checks." after a fellow panelist on Real Time with Bill Maher agreed with him by saying "You know, George is right..."note Cue a big "OOOOOOOH" from the audience. Later, during the 2010 World Series of Poker, he mentioned he was grateful for George Constanza, because he'd otherwise be known as the guy who tried to rape Julia Roberts.
During the series run, Michael Richards took a vacation to a rural part of Bali, assuming it would be the last place on earth anyone would recognize him as Kramer. While hiking in the jungle, he was recognized immediately by some locals who pointed him out and exclaimed "KRAMER!!" As it turned out, they had set up a hut with a DIYTV hookup running into a nearby city just to watch his show (dubbed rather crudely in Balinese).
Following the Laugh Factory incident, various media outlets kept referring to Michael Richards as Kramer, to the point that the real Kramer, Kenny Kramer, issued a statement saying that he personally was not a racist.
All four cast members reunited for an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Before that, in season 2, a plotline revolved around Larry trying to get a show off the ground about an actor who can not escape their previous popular sitcom role, first with Jason Alexander and then with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Inspiration for the Work: Due to "The Pilot" episode where George pitches a show about nothing, people started commenting as though that WAS the High Concept pitch for the real-life show. Both Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David have said that wasn't the case, the original idea was answering a question of how stand-up comics get their material. You can see him in early episodes throw ideas to the group and the stand-up cutaways reflecting the events of the episode before largely falling to the side. Seinfeld has said the true true inspiration was his early friendship with Larry David and their conversations about the minutia of life, and the show was just trying to capture that kind of madcap energy between them.
Jason Alexander rather impressively sings badly on purpose for George's answering machine message, despite being an accomplished Broadway singer.note Composer Jonathan Wolff has said that Alexander still didn't do a "bad" enough job and so he "cheated" by pitching the melody he sings against so that it sounds like he's singing sharp.
Barney Martin, who played Jerry's father, Morty Seinfeld, often commented that many Jewish viewers of the show would tell him how much his character reminded them of their own fathers, despite him actually being of Irish Catholic extraction. On the other hand, Jerry Stiller, who plays George's father Frank Costanza, is a Jewish man playing an Italian Catholic.
The above irony also goes for the respective mothers of Jerry and George; Liz Sheridan (who played Jerry's mother Helen) was not Jewish whereas Estelle Harris (who played George's mother Estelle) was Jewish note although it has been speculated, including by Jason Alexander himself, that her character was intended to be Jewish (making George half-Italian Catholic and half-Jewish) and there are subtle aspects of this dropped throughout the show, making the character firmly Ambiguously Jewish. Though obviously averted entirely with Len Lesser playing Helen's brother Uncle Leo, as both the actor and the character are firmly Jewish.
In one episode, Elaine's boyfriend claims he thought she was Hispanic because of her last name and dark hair, which Elaine quickly denies. note Elaine's subplot in that episode is she thought he was a very light skinned black man, due to being from Africa, but he reveals he's not, and is a white South African. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is actually part Mexican. Similarly, another episode had a plot revolving around Elaine's "shiksappeal," despite Louis-Dreyfus being Jewish.
Leslie Nielsen Syndrome: John O'Hurley as J. Peterman. Before this, he was mostly known for dramatic roles, including on soap operas. But his Cloud Cuckoolander portrayal of J. Peterman opened the door for more comedic roles in other movies/shows, including as the first King Neptune in SpongeBob SquarePants.
Mid-Development Genre Shift: The project began as just a 90 minute special about a day in Jerry's life, and how it inspires his stand-up material that night. Jerry and Larry David couldn't quite stretch the script to fill the 90 minutes, so they reduced it down to a half hour as a series pilot. As Jerry would later say, "We couldn't make 90 minutes, so we made 90 hours."
"The Puerto Rican Day" has a scene where Kramer (accidentally) burns a Puerto Rican flag. Many viewers were highly offended, and NBC decided to leave the episode out of syndication for several years. It started to appear in the syndication package with the flag-burning scene untouched in the summer of 2002; Sony Pictures Television stated that enough time had passed since the initial furor to merit its inclusion.
For a time, "The Invitations" was removed from syndication because Susan dropping dead from licking toxic envelopes reminded people of the anthrax mail scares. It returned to rotation in summer 2002.
Larry David voiced Newman in "The Revenge" before Wayne Knight was cast. In syndication, the offscreen lines were dubbed over by Knight to provide some continuity.
Frank Costanza was played by John Randolph in "The Handicap Spot", but in syndication his scenes were re-shot with Jerry Stiller, who had replaced him as of "The Puffy Shirt", to provide continuity. The crew wanted to do this with Jerry's father in the pilot after Barney Martin was cast, but everyone had aged too visibly for it to work.
George Steinbrenner was originally going to play himself during seasons 6 and 7, even going so far as to shoot some scenes, but Larry David wasn't impressed with his performance so he had to tell him that he was going to imitate him instead.
With the exception of the final season, each season had a few episodes that were aired out of chronological order (for instance, "Male Unbonding" is the second episode of the series, but the fourth to originally air).
A particularly notable example is "The Stranded", which aired during season 3 but was produced during season 2. It's notable because George was unemployed during season 3, but had a job during season 2. This is why Jerry gave a brief introduction in the original airing that the episode was meant to air earlier in the run.
In reruns, no channel seems to have any particular order in which they air episodes... one common practice is that whenever a channel airs the show back-to-back as part of their regular schedule, one will be an episode from an earlier season, and the other from a later season, and vice-versa (in the case of TBS, whenever reaching a two-parter, both airings would be reserved for both parts). Near the end of their rights to the series, TBS began airing three episodes a night, and started play three episodes in chronological order up till certain points when they will bounce ahead or behind a few seasons (for example, Season Four will air for a week or so, then they will bounce to Season Nine).
Daniel von Bargen, who almost always played stern, humorless authority figures, here is the shiftless and irresponsible Mr. Kruger.
John O'Hurley mostly played soap opera villains before this show, but has done quite a few more comedy roles since.
Len Lesser had a long career playing mostly cops and tough guys before he was cast as the eccentric, annoying Uncle Leo.
Post-Script Season: Most of the production staff considers season eight to be a "bonus" season and season nine an "extra bonus" season, as they wanted to end the series after season seven.
Produced by Cast Member: Given that the show was based entirely on Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up career, and an underlying theme of how comedians get their material, NBC appointed Seinfeld himself as a producer, and later still, when Larry David walked away from the series after its seventh season, Seinfeld was promoted to executive producer.
The Production Curse: The Seinfeld curse, in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richardsnote Jerry Seinfeld chose to return to stand-up comedy following the end of the series and has consistently been one of the industry's top selling acts. failed to find success after the end of the series, as all tried to launch new sitcoms as title-role characters and almost every show was canceled quickly, usually within the first season. Eventually, the Emmy award-winning success of Louis-Dreyfus' The New Adventures of Old Christine (despite an abrupt cancellation) and later Veep broke her from the curse; of her eight Emmys for performances, seven of them have come post-Seinfeld, with three more as Veep producer.
Reality Subtext: Phil Morris has noted that his delivery of the line "I've been wanting a piece of them for years" regarding tobacco companies very much reflects his real life antipathy toward the industry because...well, just look at his name.
The Red Stapler: Sales in Pez skyrocketed the week after "The Pez Despenser" aired. The company later acknowledged this by making dispensers made to look like the four main characters.
Star-Making Role: While Jason Alexander was more than a respectable actor beforehand, Seinfeld offered him his greatest exposure. He's grateful for it too, because he's remarked that, otherwise, "he'd be remembered as that guy who tried to rapeJulia Roberts".
Cell phones could have cleared up a lot of the show's stories. And then the finale features Elaine being chastised for making an important personal call on one as if it's not important enough to make at home, which comes off very strange now.
"The Alternate Side" sees Jerry's car get stolen, but Jerry is able to talk to the thief by calling his car phone. Car phones were a luxury item that fell out of fashion a few years later due to improvements to cell phones increasing their convenience, and the networks were later deactivated entirely.
The ending of the episode "The Parking Garage". Originally, the four of them were supposed to get in the car and drive off. But the car they had had an undercharged battery and wouldn't start. After all the frustration of shooting the episode, they realized that the car being dead was just so much more perfect than anything they could have come up with. If you look carefully, you can see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander cracking up in the backseat.
Jerry's line in "The Junior Mint," "Let's go watch them slice this fat bastard up." His quickly taking a sip of coffee afterwards was to keep from laughing.
In "The Bottle Deposit", the farmer's daughter yells "Goodbye, Norman!" as Newman leaves. The actress forgot the line and called out the wrong name, which the crew found hilarious. On the DVD you can see a crew member tell her "It's Newman, actually" once the shot ends, to which she does a massive Face Palm.
Kramer mispronouncing "theatre" and "cafe latte" in "The Maestro" was unscripted.
In "The Contest," Julia Louis-Dreyfus started laughing during the description of George's mother's injury. Jason Alexander improvised an In-UniverseDude, Not Funny! remark ("It's not funny, Elaine, she's in traction!"), which only made her laugh harder. The crew thought it was funny and kept it in.
Unfinished Episode: "The Bet," was written as something completely different, in that it was more of a seriocomic episode that dealt with Elaine buying a handgun for self-protection (actually a BB gun replica) and Jerry betting her that she'll never even use it; meanwhile, Kramer returns from a trip and claims to have had sex with the flight attendant in mid-flight and Jerry and George try to track her down betting that Kramer's story is bogus. The script made it to table reading, but the cast felt it was too dark and not very funny, so it was shelved and ultimately never made.
"The Bet" lives on as an Internet urban legend in the form of a "creepypasta" story alleging the episode was filmed and all but one copy destroyed. Naturally, the episode supposedly contains disturbing and supernatural phenomena happening to the actors and crew.
Steve Buscemi, Danny DeVito and Nathan Lane were considered for George. Jerry Seinfeld's real life best friend, Larry Miller, was cast as George, but replaced because they decided George should be short.
Jerry's "friend" character was also going to be a comic, but he and Larry David decided that one standup act at the end was enough, so they changed him to a "guy who hangs out with showbiz people but isn't in showbiz" character.
Elaine's father was intended to be a recurring character, but then they hired the notoriously ill-tempered and intimidating Lawrence Tierney to play him, and after filming the episode, no one wanted to work with him again. Among other things, Jason Alexander and Jerry were genuinely intimidated, and Tierney was seen stealing knives from the apartment set.
The waitress Claire in the pilot was meant to be a recurring character, but the producers thought she was too abrasive and the show needed a female lead, so Elaine was written in. Lee Garlington, the actress who played Claire stated once that she thinks another reason why she wasn't asked back is because her and Larry David had disagreements over how Claire should be portrayed. David wanted her to be kinda ditzy, but Garlington played her as more deadpan. Jason Alexander has corroborated Garlington's take on the situation in interviews.
The writers considered making the Soup Nazi an actual Nazi - according to David Mandel, his colleagues talked about ending the Soup Nazi's episode with the character fleeing to the jungles of Brazil, where he "would return to the other Nazis — the actual former Nazi war criminals — with his soup recipes."
"The Sniffing Accountant" has the scene where Kramer chugs a glass of beer while smoking a cigarette. In one unaired take, he lets out an unscripted belch. The staff considered putting the take in the episode but production was laughing too hard from them to use it.
There were apparently plans for a Spin-Off about Jackie Chiles, but they fell through.
Writer Peter Mehlman has revealed that NBC suggested a crossover between Friends and Seinfeld. The event would have take place in two episodes aired on the same night, with the characters from Seinfeld appearing on Friends, and vice versa. Larry David immediately rejected the idea. Seinfeld was also supposed to have an episode about a city-wide power outage to tie-in to an NBC theme night where Friends, Mad About You and the short-lived series Madman of the People had an episode about a power failure air on the same night,note "Pandora's Box" from season three of Mad About You has Jamie cause the outage, which is felt across Friends and Madman of the People but season six was already in production and there wasn't time to add such an episode.
The Ghost characters Bob Sacamano, Lomez, and Jerry's cousin Jeffrey were going to be seen onscreen later on, as had been done with Newman, but ultimately it was decided there was no way any actual onscreen actor could live up to the legends that had built up around them.
The whole arc about Jerry and George pitching "a show about nothing" to NBC was based on how Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David actually pitched Seinfeld.
Festivus was originally a family holiday invented by the father of Dan O'Keefe, who co-wrote The Strike. The O'Keefe Festivus was a very lighthearted Calvinball sort of holiday that was never celebrated exactly the same way twice. For the episode the younger O'Keefe altered it to be more ritualized and to reflect the cantankerous nature of Frank Costanza.
Larry David based the George character off of himself, and many of the plotlines allegedly were based on real life experiences he had, and how he reacted to them. Jason Alexander was not informed of this and instead believed George to be a take on the neurotic "Woody Allen" type, and played him accordingly, until one episode where George's actions so flummoxed him that he approached David about them, and finally learned the truth. Paraphrasing:
Jason Alexander: This is ridiculous. This could never happen to someone, and even if it did, no one would react that way.
Larry David: What are you talking about? It happened to me, and that's exactly how I reacted!
According to Jerry Seinfeld's biography, Elaine was based in part on Susan McNabb (who was dating Seinfeld when the character was created) and on Monica Yates (daughter of novelist Richard Yates), whom David once dated; they remained good friends after they broke up.
Kramer was based on David's neighbor Kenny Kramer.
This was even parodied in the series: In "The Muffin Tops", Kramer starts his own bus tour, proclaiming himself to be the real J. Peterman (to differentiate himself from the anecdotes he supplied to J. Peterman's autobiography). This mirrors real life, as:
Kenny Kramer has run Kramer's Reality Tour and Kramer's Reality Road Show, the gimmick being that he's the real life Kramer;
There is a Real Life J. Peterman, who however has nothing to do with either of the Kramers.
In addition, Bob Balaban's recurring role of Russell Dalrymple, the fictitious president of NBC who works with Jerry and George on a television pilot and later becomes Elaine's love interest, was modeled on then NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield, who had allowed David and Seinfeld to produce the Seinfeld pilot. Amusingly, Balaban later went on to play Littlefield outright in the 1996 made-for-TV film The Late Shift, a dramatization of the struggles that occurred at NBC when Littlefield selected Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, instead of David Letterman, as well as narrate the audiobook version of Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV, a book Littlefield co-wrote with T.R. Pierson which documented Littlefield's career at NBC.
The famous Soup Nazi was based on a real soup kitchen owner in New York. He did not take it well, and banned the entire cast and crew from ever coming to his kitchen, in person no less. Wayne Knight was actually proud of this — he'd eaten there when he lived in New York and would usually have an unpleasant time — and be shortchanged a strawberry. Ironically, Jason Alexander had eaten there a lot too, but never had a bad experience.
Wayne Knight: The fact that he was so upset by the publicity was great!
He got better, though. The Original Soup Man is selling his soup to this day, and today he puts sly references and even the image of his TV counterpart on some of his promotions, though his official 'ordering instructions' now include 'Never say the N word'.
The episode where Kramer was hitting golf balls into the ocean and George pretends to be a marine biologist did not have the famous final monologue. It was literally while shooting the episode that Jerry and Larry realized they needed to merge those plotlines, originally George's story ended when there was a beached whale and someone calls out for a marine biologist. They wrote an extra three pages of dialogue and gave it to Jason Alexander a half hour before filming. He not only proceeded to do the monologue word perfect in the first take, but the golf ball in the blow hole reveal was one of the biggest laughs in the history of the show. For that Jerry calls it his favorite episode.
At the start of Season 7, Larry David had no idea how he would resolve the storyline of George getting engaged to Susan, beyond there being no way they would actually get married.
Written by Cast Member: Jerry Seinfeld co-wrote at least one (and usually more than one, especially in the early years) episode in all but the last two seasons.
that recreates the theme using Seinfeld's Barry B. Benson memetic "jazz" line in Bee Movie.