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Trivia / Supergirl (2015)

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  • Ability over Appearance: Tyler Hoechlin, while still qualifying for Tall, Dark, and Handsome, lacks the musculature that Superman is famous for; with this being the first version of the mythos, ever, where Jimmy Olsen is both slightly taller and burlier than Clark Kent. Hoechlin however, nails the role and manages to pull off an excellent modernization of a friendly and optimistic Superman as well as a dorky Clark Kent without being too derivative of Christopher Reeve's benchmark portrayal. The performance on the whole has been extremely well received.
  • Acting for Two:
    • Iddo Goldberg plays both Dr. Morrow and his creation Red Tornado (presumably Morrow took the Noonien Soong approach and modeled the robot after himself).
    • David Harewood plays both Hank Henshaw and J'onn J'onzz masquerading as the former.
    • Melissa Benoist played Kara and the Martian Manhunter disguised as Supergirl in "Blood Bonds" in the characters' ploy to trick Cat Grant. She also played Bizarro-Supergirl in "Bizarro." She also did double duty OverGirl and Supergirl in the 2017 Arrowverse crossover. In Season 4 she's doing Red Daughter & Kara at the same time.
    • Jeremy Jordan & Chyler Leigh played both their characters and the other White Martian disguised as said characters.
    • Erica Durance plays both Alura Zor-El (starting Season 3) and a disguise by Martian Manhunter using her likeness.
    • Katie McGrath plays Lena and briefly her own mother in a VR flashback in a fifth season episode.
    • Jordan plays Winn’s villainous doppelgänger from a destroyed Earth, necessitating Earth-Prime’s to come to 2020 to deal with him in the “Back from the Future” two-parter.
    • Jesse Rath plays Querl Dox/Brainiac 5 and two of his doppelgangers in the fifth season's "The Bottle Episode".
  • Actor-Shared Background:
    • Julie Gonzalo is Argentine like her character Andrea Rojas (both emigrated to the US and gained citizenship). This is the first time she played a Latina too (probably because she's fair-skinned, which doesn't fit US stereotypes).
    • Chyler Leigh said in a statement on an LGBT advocacy website she co-founded that Alex's coming out story was "a variation on my own"; she didn't go into detail, but this was widely assumed to be her coming out as LGBT.
  • Approval of God: Michael Rosenbaum, who portrayed Lex Luthor on Smallville, congratulated Jon Cryer for his performance of the character.
  • Billing Displacement:
  • The Cast Showoff: In the second season, Supergirl gets a crossover with The Flash, and huge portions of the casts of both shows get to show the hell off.
  • Channel Hop: The show moved to The CW from CBS after season 1 due to budget issues.
  • Content Leak:
    • The pilot was leaked in May of 2015, around the same time CBS took it up.
    • During the latter half of season 3, the entire plot for the last 7 episodes was leaked to various spoiler sites.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • David Harewood has criticized the character of the real Hank Henshaw (a.k.a. "Cyborg Superman") for being underdeveloped and one-dimensional and having a rather underwhelming costume, calling the character "boring" to play. He's also expressed frustration at J'onn's lack of utilization and his scaled-down abilities despite the character being referred to in-show as "more powerful than Superman".
    • Azie Tesfai has made no secret of how much she hated having to be a Satellite Love Interest. She channeled these frustrations into the script for the season 6 episode "Blind Spots", in which Kelly calls out the Super Friends for constantly ignoring her whenever she needs them.
  • The Danza: An interesting variation. Alura Zor-El's original actress was Laura Benanti. "Laura" is an anagram for "Alura".
  • Dawson Casting:
    • Melissa Benoist is three years older than Kara (biologically speaking).
    • Alex is supposed to be two years older than Kara (biologically speaking), but Chyler Leigh is six years older than Melissa Benoist. This makes her seven years older than her character is supposed to be, though she doesn't look it.
    • Flashbacks and dialogues suggest that Lena Luthor was born in 1992 or 1993 (she was 4 in '97), but Katie McGrath was born in 1983. However, a fifth season flashback episode partially set in 2004 shows Lena at boarding school and sneaking into nightclubs. By the timeline set in “Luthors”, she should only be 11 but appears to be 16. Katie McGrath herself was shocked when fans told her that her character was 24. She said she could not pass for that age and would speak to the writers (the original casting call for Lena said she was between 25 and 35).
    • Going by the show's timeline, Lex Luthor should be in his late thirties to early forties (he looks to be at least in his mid teens during the same 1997 flashback with Lena), but is played in the present day by Jon Cryer, who is eighteen years older than McGrath and only five years younger than Brenda Strong who plays his mother.
    • Peter Sudarso as post-Crisis Kenny Li is thirty years old playing a high school senior.
  • Development Gag:
    • According to Brandon Routh on Twitter, the "bulletproof coffee" Cat mentions in the third episode was used by writer Andrew Kreisberg after Routh's "obsessive" use of the term. Routh, of course, was a former Superman and The Atom in Legends of Tomorrow.
    • Kevin Sorbo as Mon-El's father, alongside Teri Hatcher as Mon-El's mother. While Hatcher formerly played Lois Lane in Lois & Clark alongside Dean Cain as Clark/Superman (who plays Kara's adoptive father), Sorbo's casting is a nod to him being one of the top candidates for Clark for that show alongside Cain. Mon-El and his parents are Daxamites, thus having similar powers to Kryptonians, making this reference on the nose.
  • Disowned Adaptation: In the summer between seasons 3 and 4, it was announced that a major villain in the upcoming season would an adaptation of the DC character Agent Liberty, albeit a very different take on him. The character's original creator, Dan Jurgens, was not happy when he read the synopsis of how the character would be used.
  • Distanced from Current Events: The fourth episode, "How Does She Do It?" was originally going to be aired on November 16, 2015, but it was switched with the fifth episode, "Livewire," due to the bombings and terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, as the fourth episode involved Kara saving National City from a series of bombings. Subsequent re-airings play the episodes in the intended order.
  • Dyeing for Your Art:
    • Melissa Benoist dyed her hair blonde after she got the role of Kara. She also buffed up for the role.
    • Iddo Goldberg painted most of his skin red to play Red Tornado.
    • Laura Vandervoort painted most of her skin indigo to play, well, Indigo.
    • Jesse Rath painted most of his skin blue (and later green) to play Brainiac 5.
  • Exiled from Continuity: Since Superman was already in movies at various times, he became mostly inaccessible as a character in this series due to Warner Bros disliking to have films and series share characters. Season 1 hides his face at all costs, while Season 3 has him have excuses to not help in the Reign situation.
  • Fake American:
    • David Harewood is British in real life.
    • Canadian-born Italia Ricci counts as both this and Fake Irish (see following trope).
    • Katie McGrath may fall under this trope as McGrath is Irish while her character (Lena Luthor) is Lex Luthor's sister. However, Lena is adopted and a season 4 episode implies that her birth mother is Irish. Her 4 year old self seen in flashback does have an American accent however.
  • Fake Brit: The Hat speaks with a Cockney accent, but is played by American actor Louis Ozawa Changchien.
  • Fake Irish: Italian-Canadian actress Italia Ricci plays Irish-American Siobhan Smythe. Smythe's Irish heritage actually becomes a major plot point, as it does in the comics.
  • Hypothetical Casting: Melissa Benoist said in an interview that she wanted Chyler Leigh to play their version of Batgirl. Interestingly, Leigh's character has most of Batwoman's defining characterizations such as being a redhead with a bob cut, the show's resident Badass Normal, and eventually even hooking up with the character's canonical Love Interest, Maggie Sawyer.
  • In-Joke: During karaoke, Alex comments that she thought Winn would be a better singer. Winn's actor, Jeremy Jordan, is a Tony-nominated Broadway actor.
  • Irony as She Is Cast:
    • Supergirl's disguise in the comics is a brown wig, and Melissa Benoist is naturally a brunette.
    • Before Tyler Hoechlin was officially cast as Superman, he was a fan-favorite to play Dick Grayson aka Nightwing (see above). In the comics, Dick got the idea of using the name "Nightwing" from Superman.
  • Network to the Rescue: After CBS was reluctant to renew the show for a second season due to the high budget, The CW took it up.
  • No Stunt Double: According to the end of this interview, Chyler Leigh did all of her (one) stunts.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • From Season 3 onwards, Erica Durance took over from Laura Benanti for the role of Alura Zor-El,note  due to irreconcilable scheduling conflicts from Benanti.
    • General Sam Lane was played by Glenn Morshower in his Supergirl appearances in season 1. On Superman and Lois, he will be played by Dylan Walsh.
    • From season 2 onwards, the Brazilian dub had this trope applied to the whole cast. It happened because the first season was dubbed in a studio from São Paulo city, while the following seasons were/ are dubbed in a studio from Rio de Janeiro city.
    • Also from the Brazilian dub, after voicing Lena until a few episodes of season 5, Sabrina Miragaia had a maternity leave and Rebeca Joia became Lena's voice actress.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • Glenn Morshower is no stranger to military roles, but the Jerkass anti-Kryptonian General Lane is a far cry from his typical forthright, honorable characters.
    • Ian Gomez plays a crusty, misanthropic reporter, in quite a shock to anyone who remembers certain previous roles of his.
    • Jerkass Colonel James Harper is a lot different than the lovable characters Eddie McClintock plays on Warehouse 13 and Bones.
    • Also for those who are familiar with Jeremy Jordan's work on Broadway, it can be quite a shock seeing him play dorky Winn, compared to the roles of The Casanova Jack Kelly, and Jerkass Woobie Jamie Wellerstein he has played before.
    • Tyler Hoechlin's earnest, light-hearted, likeable Clark Kent/Superman is completely different from broody, angsty, violent Derek Hale.
    • Jon Cryer, who is best known for comedy like Hot Shots! and Two and a Half Men, is an amazingly effective and villainous Lex Luthor. He only makes jokes for himself, and they're usually about gloating over whatever scheme he's just pulled off, usually to the heroes' faces.
  • Playing Their Own Twin: Alura and her twin sister General Astra are played by Laura Benanti. Since Erica Durance is the The Other Darrin to Benanti starting Season 3, it's likely that she'll also play Astra in potential flashbacks.
  • Playing with Character Type: Katie McGrath initially inverts her Star-Making Role on Merlin (2008). There, she was the evil scheming sister of a benevolent prince, trying to seize power from him. Here, she's the sister of a notorious villain and inherits his empire naturally, trying to prove to everyone that she is not the villain. However, she later has a Face–Heel Turn (though unlike Morgana, Lena eventually had a Heel–Face Turn too), and then turned out to have innate magical abilities, causing her to resemble Morgana much more.
  • Production Posse:
  • Promoted Fanboy: Jesse Rath was a longtime fan of comic books and the Arrowverse before being cast as Brainiac 5, and has described being on the show as "nothing short of a dream come true".
  • Queer Character, Queer Actor:
    • Nia Nal is a transgender woman like her actress Nicole Maines.
    • Chyler Leigh came out as queer in June 2020 and plays the lesbian Alex Danvers.
  • Real-Life Relative:
    • Melissa Benoist's real-life ex-husband played Adam Foster, Kara's Third-Option Love Interest (they were married at the time).
    • If being part of The Multiverse counts, then Italia Ricci's real-life husband (fiancee at the time of her debut) Robbie Amell played Ronnie Raymond on The Flash (2014). Amell is also part of Greg Berlanti's Production Posse.
    • In the Brazilian dub from the second season on, Kara and Alex are voiced, respectively, by Mariana Torres and Adriana Torres, who are sisters in real life.
    • In the Filipino dub, James and Alex's voice actors are married in real life.
    • Jesse Rath's older sister Meaghan Rath plays a gender flipped version of his character from another dimension in two Season 5 episodes. As they have a strong family resemblance, it really works.
    • Jesse Rath's wife (girlfriend at the time of filming), Holly Deveaux, guest-starred as Dr. Beatrice Lahr in the season 6 episode "The Gauntlet".
  • Real Life Writes the Plot:
    • Astra was killed off in Episode 13 as Laura Benanti had a Broadway commitment.
    • From Season 2 onwards, Cat Grant would only recur; Calista Flockhart lives in Los Angeles and is reluctant to move to Vancouver, which the shift from CBS to CW would require. Of course, given her previous reluctance to work outside Los Angeles at all, it's fortuitous she's not leaving the show completely. It has been speculated the same happened with Peter Facinelli (Maxwell Lord).
    • Kara and James abruptly deciding they're Better as Friends in Season 2 is because Mehcad Brooks had waffled for a while on whether he'd stay on the show, and they didn't want him to walk off with the romance unresolved.
    • Alex and Maggie breaking up is due to Floriana Lima's decision to leave the show.
    • Hank Henshaw / Cyborg Superman hasn't been seen since Season 2's "Nevertheless, She Persisted" due to David Harewood's disdain over the character.
    • Broadway bit the show again in Season 4 with Melissa Benoist herself having a commitment to Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Thus, early in the season, Earth's atmosphere is infused with Kryptonite and Kara is forced to constantly wear a full-body suit, allowing someone else to physically play the role while she dubs in the dialogue.
    • This hit Season 5 twice: first, Melissa Benoist became pregnant, cutting the episode count by two; second, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down production before the finale finished filming.
    • Jeremiah doesn't appear after Season 2 due to Dean Cain's outspoken support of then-President Donald Trump. His character is eventually reported killed off offscreen in Season 5. The show would walk a fine line with contemporary politics with allegorical storylines such as the Children of Liberty and Alien Registration Act. A popular Supergirl cosplayer, Alicia Kiss, would actually take part in the extreme right Charlottesville Riots in 2017 just a few months before the character of Overgirl, the Nazi version of Supergirl was introduced on the show. Whilst Overgirl would wear the infamous double lightning emblem (the Sun rune) instead of the traditional S on her chest she was deliberately without Swastikas on her costume for fear the blue eyed, blonde villainess would become a far-right pin-up girl.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • Kara's insecurity about being in Superman's shadow and wanting to make her own name as a hero nicely mirrors what the show itself is trying to do.
    • David Harewood playing a Fake American. Because his character is one too.
    • During their first encounter, Indigo makes a Badass Boast to Kara that she's the reason the latter is "here [on Earth, alive] right now". Laura Vandervoort's stint as Supergirl is generally believed to be what kick-started the character's resurgence in relevance and popularity which ultimately led to the creation of this show.
    • In "Myriad" Cat complains about how Harrison Ford keeps asking her out, despite her not being into older men. Calista Flockhart is married to Ford, who's 23 years her senior. Even better, at this point Flockhart is around the same age as Ford was when they first started dating.
    • Kara and Adam parting ways becomes this in hindsight after Melissa Benoist and Blake Jenner's divorce in Real Life a year later.
    • However, Kara and Mon-El's relationship also becomes this in hindsight now that Melissa and Chris Wood are married.
    • In "Blind Spots", in which Kelly puts the Superfriends on blast for not helping her deal with the crisis in The Heights, Nia is presented more sympathetically than the other Superfriends because Azie Tesfai wanted to acknowledge that Nicole Maines has been supportive to her throughout her time on the show.
  • Recycled Set: The Kent Farm is the same one that was used for Smallville.
  • Referenced by...: In the MMORPG RuneScape, during the limited-time Dune Fractures event, there were characters named Assistant Kara and Cat Craft.
  • Refitted for Sequel: Winn's revisit's plot couldn't be implemented in Season 4 due to Jeremy Jordan's scheduling conflicts, so it was postponed for Season 5.
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Andrew Kreisberg was fired from his role as producer and show-runner on November 10, 2017 after numerous allegations of sexual harassment over his career came to light.
  • Romance on the Set: Melissa Benoist (Kara) and Chris Wood (Mon-El) who play love interests in the show, started dating in 2017 and married in 2019, and announced they were expecting a baby in 2020.
  • "Take That!" Tit-for-Tat: The Incredibles famously had Edna announce "NO CAPES!", which could be seen as a 'Take That!' on DC Comics, the creator of superheroes wearing capes. In several DC works since then, they have found ways to justify wearing capes, like in Supergirl when Winn initially dismisses capes as tacky, but then goes back on his reservations because, actually, they provide better aerodynamics to help Supergirl fly faster and more agilely (and, being invulnerable, she doesn't have to worry so much about it getting stuck). Later, at the time of release of Incredibles 2, Mon-El weaponizes the cape of his red and blue suit, and teaches Kara how to do so, too.
  • Tourist Bump: The series was set in the U.S. in the fictional National City (there IS a National City in California but bearing little resemblance to the one depicted on the show), but filmed in Vancouver, Canada. There was interest in areas like Burnaby where they did occasional filming, an area that was previously better known for either being an industrial city or notoriety for the William Bennest pedophile scandal of 1996, which it still has an association with even now, although over time the scandal is fading into obscurity.
  • Troubled Production: Season 3 was derailed halfway through by numerous sexual harassment accusations against writer and producer Andrew Kreisberg. He was fired after an investigation, but the show was left in the awkward position of being partway through a story that he'd been the major brain behind, which everyone was naturally not comfortable at all with continuing (plus this would mean they'd still need to pay him for the story ideas). Thus, the second half of the season suffered very noticeably from the remaining writing crew trying their hardest to pull an alternate second half of the story out of their ass, often being very obvious about it.
  • Typecasting:
    • Glenn Morshower is playing a military man for the umpteenth time.
    • Jay Jackson is playing a news reporter for the umpteenth time.
    • Katie McGrath playing a good character and friend to the protagonist who eventually turns evil and becomes their enemy.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Claire Holt was the runner-up for the role of Kara Danvers before Melissa Benoist was cast.
    • David Harewood was originally supposed to portray Hank Henshaw as an eventual villain. But while filming the pilot, the producers noted that he could have played the Martian Manhunter, and Geoff Johns convinced the rest to rewrite their plans for his character. In the second season, he gets to play both.
    • Greg Berlanti actually wanted to have Laura Vandervoort much earlier but she couldn't because of her commitment to Bitten (she plays The Hero there). After shooting that series' Grand Finale, she was finally able to appear.
    • Brent Spiner was originally cast as President Baker in Season 4 but had a scheduling conflict, and was replaced with Bruce Boxleitner, incidentally creating a quite fun irony with his role in Babylon 5.
    • A two-fer with the move to Canada for filming. If they hadn't moved, then Cat Grant would have probably stayed on through season 2 (Calista Flockhart nigh-exclusively shooting in LA), but they probably wouldn't have got Katie McGrath as Lena Luthor (as an Irish citizen, it would be a lot harder to be able to work in the US for a long-term project with an unknown end date like a TV show is.)
    • Jeremy Jordan was supposed to return as Winn for an undisclosed number of season 4 episodes in a recurring capacity but scheduling prevented it from happening, though its still being planned for season 5
    • After Andrew Kreisberg was fired, the majority of the second half of season 3 had to be heavily rewritten. A lot of what was originally planned can be worked out by comments before the season. These include, word of God confirmation from Kreisberg himself that Lena would have turned evil by the end of season 3 by doing one small bad thing at a time; the casting for Sam and Ruby stated that the former was a one season fractional regular and the latter was recurring with an option to be a regular in season 4. It doesn't take much to work out that Sam was supposed to die and Alex would end up adopting Ruby; the shared nightmare that Kara and Sam had about Alura turning into a monster, and Kara's dream about Purity were never explained. With Erica Durance signed for a certain amount of episodes and the Argo story coming out of nowhere, it seems likely that Alura would have been revealed as the creator of the Worldkillers (it was Jor-El in the comics) and Kara might have well have been one as well.
    • The series was originally planned to run for seven seasons, but by the time season 6 began, it was clear that much of the cast (particularly Melissa Benoist) were tired and, after briefly contemplating a seventh season without Supergirl in it, the showrunners decided to simply end the series with the sixth season.
  • Word of Gay: Downplayed, but Jesse Rath stated in an Instagram story in 2019 that he shipped his character Brainy with Winn the most, implying that he saw Brainy as bisexual.
  • Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Halfway through Season 3, Andrew Kreisberg was fired after numerous sexual harassment accusations. Since he'd been the main architect behind the season's story and would still have to be paid if it was used, the other writers had to quickly whip up an alternate second half that received many accusations of being obviously made up as they went, most notably with how several episodes were spent building up to the arrival of the villain Pestilence, only for her to be anticlimactically disposed of just one episode after her arrival.
  • You Look Familiar:
    • Since this show is eventually confirmed as part of The Multiverse of the Arrowverse's, then Jemm's actor Charles Halford also played Chas Chandler on Constantine until its cancellation.
    • Lionel Luthor's actor, Ian Butcher, also played a minor villain in Arrow Season 2.
    • A vocal variant. Phil LaMarr provides the voice of Malefic J'onzz; in The Flash (2014), he also provides the voice of Peter Merkel / Rag Doll.

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