Trivia / The Terror

• Actor Allusion: Possibly by accident, but during his long-winded retelling of his old war story at the officers' dinner, Fitzjames talks about feeling like "Caesar crossing the Rubicon." Franklin looks briefly amused. In Rome, Tobias Menzies played Brutus to Ciarán Hinds's Julius Casear.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • A lot of the main cast lost weight to look appropriately gaunt for the starvation scenes later in the series. In a cast Q&A, Jared Harris and Adam Nagaitis commented on how they in particular ended up losing a lot of weight in the end.
  • This is averted in regards to the appearance of historical characters prior to the events of the series. For example, the real Sir John was bald, unlike Hinds; Crozier kept his hair long, Fitzjames was curly and redheaded, etc. Some crewmen are played by much older or younger actors than their real counterparts, and presumably meant to be of a different age.
• Fake Brit:
  • It's highly ironic that the eminently English Franklin, who discriminates against the Northern Irish Crozier, is played by Ciaran Hinds, from Northern Ireland.
  • Crozier himself is a mild example- Jared Harris naturally has an RP accent from being raised in England and attending ritzy English schools, so the very specific Banbridge Northern Irish accent he uses in character is fake, but he identifies personally as Irish (because of his father, Richard Harris) and Welsh (on his mother's side) and is a staunch supporter of Irish independence (in contrast to Crozier trying hard to fit in among the English).
• What Could Have Been: Various.
  • Several plot points in the book were abandoned in the show, such as:
    • Crozier marrying Silna at the end of the ordeal, presumably because it comes out of nowhere.
    • Crozier finding HMS Terror at the end of the book, far south of where it was abandoned, finding evidence of something as nightmarish as the Tuunbaq possessing the ship, and burning it, was abandoned as well. Originally the ships were supposed to be destroyed in Ep. 5 or 6 in a fire, but the discovery of HMS Erebus (surprisingly close to where Simmons placed Terror in the novel) and HMS Terror (ironically, in Terror Bay, named in honor of the ship by searchers years prior) in 2014 and 2016 respectively forced them to change the ending to having Crozier leave skeleton crews on the ship, implying they would be sailed by these men south into their final resting place.
  • The first draft of the first episode had several differences from the final product, including:
    • The Tuunbaq appearing to David Young in various split-second visions throughout the episode before making a quick appearance alongside the Shaman in Young's dying vision.
    • Hickey being "attacked" by a polar bear cub during the grave digging scene, before shooting it.
    • Hickey and the grave digging crew finding a gigantic swathe of dead animals on the beach, implied to be the work of the Tuunbaq.
    • Manson's confrontation with an officer over going into the hold was originally in episode one-here it is between Manson and Mr. Des Vouex, not with Mr. Irving, and it was due to his apprehension of meeting Billy Orren's body down there, due to him having been defenestrated from the mainmast earlier on, not due to dead bodies being eaten by rats in the hold.

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