Trivia / The Dick Van Dyke Show

• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Jerry van Dyke's childhood sleepwalking became Stacy's adult sleepwalking.
  • Rob used to entertain his fellow troops in the Army, just like Dick Van Dyke.
  • Van Dyke was raised in Danville, Illinois, which is also Rob's hometown.
  • In the reunion special, Rob is a computer animation enthusiast who creates a dancing CGI version of himself just like Dick Van Dyke. In fact, the dancing character was Van Dyke's personal creation.
• Colbert Bump: The episode "It May Look Like a Walnut" got more views on its YouTube upload after WandaVision revealed it to be the episode the Maximoffs were watching when their apartment was bombed.
• The Danza: Jerry Paris as next door neighbor Jerry Helper.
• Development Gag: "The Last Chapter" ends the show with one recalling its origins. Rob completes a manuscript about his various experiences as a writer, but the publisher rejects it. However, Alan loves it and intends to turn it into a TV series, where he'll play Rob. This also counts as a meta-Casting Gag since Alan was played by Carl Reiner, who played Rob in the pilot episode.)
• Directed by Cast Member: Jerry Paris took over as the show's chief director during the third season, leading to his acting role in the show being cut down. He'd later have a prolific career as a television director, directing the lion's share of Happy Days episodes, among other shows.
• Executive Meddling: Carl Reiner wrote the role of Rob Petrie for himself (sensibly, considering the show was based on his experiences writing Your Show Of Shows), but the studio rejected him in the role and instead cast Dick Van Dyke. In fact, there exists a pilot of Carl in the role of Rob Petrie called Head of the Family. It actually aired in the summer of 1960, and is a bonus feature on the show's home media releases (it appears as the very first episode of the series on Hulu and other streaming services). The whole cast - including Reiner - consider this a rare case of Good executive meddling.
• Fake Nationality: Maria, the Petries' Spanish maid in "Turtles, Ties and Toreadors", was played by Puerto Rican American actress Míriam Colón.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Writers would occasionally leave space for Dick Van Dyke to fill in as he saw fit.
• Marathon Running: Nick@Nite's The Dick Van Dyke Collection.
• The Other Darrin: 2 different actresses (Barbara Perry and Joan Shawlee) played Buddy's wife Pickles and both towered over him
• Real-Life Relative: Jerry Van Dyke appears in a few episodes as Rob's brother Stacey.
• Referenced by...:
  • In The X-Files episode "Arcadia", Mulder and Scully go undercover as married couple 'Rob and Laura Petrie' while investigating mysterious disappearances in an apparently idyllic suburb.
  • Episode 8 of WandaVision reveals that The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of Wanda's favorite shows to watch with her family and to learn English with as a child. In particular, the episode "It May Look Like A Walnut" was Wanda's favorite episode. The Maximoff family was watching that very episode when their house was blown up and everyone inside except Wanda and Pietro were killed. The television continues to play the episode as Wanda and Pietro cower in their ruined home and Wanda heartbrokenly wishes that their horrific new situation were All Just a Dream like the episode. Notably, Dick Van Dyke himself served as a creative consultant for the show's Retraux sitcom segments, most notably the first episode which borrowed heavily from this show.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The scene with the kangaroo in Never Name a Duck is obviously the available footage of the man controlling the 'roo run back and forth.
  • Rob's nightmare in It May Look Like a Walnut involves aliens cutting off his thumbs. This effect is achieved by Dick Van Dyke simply tucking his thumbs into his palms and trying (very unsuccessfully) to hide it from the cameras.
• Un-Cancelled: CBS officially cancelled the show after its first season, and the cast had even had a farewell party before Procter & Gamble threatened to yank all their popular soap operas (As the World Turns, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow) off of the network's daytime schedule if the series wasn't renewed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Johnny Carson was the runner-up for the role of Rob.
  • If not for the influence Procter & Gamble had with CBS, the show would have been A One Season Wonder.
  • "That's My Boy?" almost had a different ending. The executives were nervous about The Reveal (the Peters and Petrie babies couldn't have been swapped because the Peters are African-American), fearing that viewers would think the show was mocking the Peters. Luckily, one of the creators talked them into letting an audience see it, and the positive reaction saved the shot.
• Write Who You Know:
  • Carl Reiner based Buddy and Sally on fellow comedy writers Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond. Despite endless conjecture, however, Reiner insisted that Alan Brady was not based on his former co-star Sid Caesar, who could be demanding, but who was generally well-liked and not an abusive jerk like Brady. Rather, Brady was an amalgam of the worst qualities of 50s variety stars Red Skelton (known in the industry for backstage temper tantrums and hiring and firing writers at whim, employing no fewer than 163 of them in a single two-year stretch), Milton Berle (whose ego-driven prima donna tendencies were legendary even at the time, and later got him permanently banned from Saturday Night Live) and Jackie Gleason (who may have been a comic genius, but was not personally popular with virtually anyone who actually worked with him — he was labelled "an abusive, unappreciative shit" by no less than Neil Simon.)
  • On the domestic side, Rob was based on Carl Reiner himself, Laura on his wife Estelle "I'll have what she's having" Reiner, and Richie on his eldest son, Rob Reiner.
• Write What You Know:
  • The entire basis of the show. Carl Reiner has said that he was a New York comedy writer who lived in New Rochelle with his wife and son, so he decided to write a show about a New York comedy writer living in New Rochelle with his wife and son.
  • Reiner carried this over into running the show, insisting that the plots should be based not on old sitcom tropes but on real things that happened to the writers in their family or work lives. Ironically, many of these stories have themselves become stock sitcom plots thanks to their use on this show.
  • The Petries even live on the same street as the Reiners did (Although Carl DID add a 1 to the house number).
• You Look Familiar: Greg Morris guest starred in two episodes as two different characters.
  • Van Dyke's stand-in Frank Adamo often turned up in various supporting parts.
  • Carl Reiner played several different guest parts in addition to his recurring role as Alan Brady.