History Trivia / SherlockHolmes

* OldShame: Creator/PeterCushing later said that he would rather sweep Paddington Station for a living than go through the experience of again, blaming the rushed production schedule for the shortcomings of his performance:
-->Whenever I see some of those stories they upset me terribly, because it wasn't Peter Cushing doing his best as Sherlock Holmes - it was Peter Cushing looking relieved that he had remembered what to say and said it!

** The biology in "The Speckled Band" is also flawed. Snakes do not work that way. In particular the plot revolves around snakes being attracted by high pitched sounds; in this case a whistle. Snakes do have inner ears and can pick up ground-borne vibrations and low frequency sounds but are extremely unlikely to be able to hear a whistle. Nor is a "swamp adder" (fictitious, but given the name probably not aboreal) likely to be able to crawl up and down a bell-rope. And snakes ''definitely'' don't drink milk.

** The biology in "The Speckled Band" is also flawed. Snakes do not work that way. In particular the plot revolves around snakes being attracted by high pitched sounds; in this case a whistle. Snakes do have inner ears and can pick up ground-borne vibrations and low frequency sounds but are extremely unlikely to be able to hear a whistle. And they ''definitely'' don't drink milk.

** In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", Sherlock determines that a man is intelligent by his hat size, reasoning that a man with a big head has a large brain, and therefore is smarter than average. While there is some dispute among modern scientists as to whether there's any correlation brain size and intelligence, any correlation would be subtler and less pronounced than the one Holmes claims.

* {{Canon}}: The TropeNamer -- the Sherlock Holmes fandom was the first (well, besides TheBible fandom, of course) to use this term to refer to the "official" body of work as opposed to unofficial adaptations.

* TheWikiRule: [[https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page The Baker Street Wiki]].

* TropeNamer:
** HyperspaceHolmesHat
** InspectorLestrade
** SherlockCanRead
** SherlockHomage
** SherlockScan
** TheWatson
** WatsonianVersusDoylist (compare Creator/ArthurConanDoyle)
** Former TropeNamer of:
*** BreakoutVillain (under the name TheMoriartyEffect)
*** UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom (under the name SwissMessenger)

* US President UsefulNotes/FranklinRoosevelt once made a [[WildMassGuessing WMG]] that [[http://books.google.com/books?id=9LGvL2WcXX0C&pg=PA404&lpg=PA404&dq=franklin+roosevelt+sherlock+holmes&source=bl&ots=fnk7VRLhg4&sig=cBzqBFUwBsmlxFgA6lhtEBrabCY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lsEDT-eLOMWYiQKF1b2EDQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=franklin%20roosevelt%20sherlock%20holmes&f=false Sherlock Holmes was born an American]].

* US President Franklin D. Roosevelt once made a [[WildMassGuessing WMG]] that [[http://books.google.com/books?id=9LGvL2WcXX0C&pg=PA404&lpg=PA404&dq=franklin+roosevelt+sherlock+holmes&source=bl&ots=fnk7VRLhg4&sig=cBzqBFUwBsmlxFgA6lhtEBrabCY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lsEDT-eLOMWYiQKF1b2EDQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=franklin%20roosevelt%20sherlock%20holmes&f=false Sherlock Holmes was born an American]].

* TheOtherDarrin: Between the first and second series, Edward Hardwicke replaces David Burke as Watson. (Burke actually suggested Hardwicke to the producers.) The distinction is quite sharp - The Final Problem uses Burke, but Holmes returns to Hardwicke in The Empty House (they even reshot a few scenes with Hardwicke for flashback purposes). Overall, David Burke came across as much younger, more naive Watson, albeit one who resembled the original illustrations. Edward Hardwicke, however, was older, more distinguished, and more ex-military. Most fans agree Hardwicke was the more memorable Watson, although Burke is still held in high esteem, nonetheless.

** The biology in "The Speckled Band" is also flawed. Snakes do not work that way. In particular the plot revolves around snakes being attracted by high pitched sounds; in this case a whistle. Snakes do have inner ears and can pick up ground-borne vibrations and low frequency sounds but are extremely unlikely to be able to hear a whistle.

* YouLookFamiliar: Peter Madden, who played Inspector Lestrade in the '65 series, reappears in the '68 episode ''The Boscombe Valley Mystery'' as Bill McCarthy.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: This series practically defines the England of the late nineteenth century for most readers. The state of politics and science nails the period down, and decades of fans have generally been able to pinpoint the exact years that most of the stories were set in (it helps that several of the stories have years tacked onto them; "A Scandal in Bohemia" begins in March 1888, "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" takes place 30 years after the UsefulNotes/IndianRebellion of 1857, "The Final Problem" is dated May 23, 1891, etc.).
* TheWikiRule: [[http://bakerstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page The Baker Street Wiki]].

* TheOtherDarrin: Between the first and second series, Edward Hardwicke replaces David Burke as Watson. (Burke actually suggested Hardwicke to the producers.) The distinction is quite sharp - The Final Problem uses Burke, but Holmes returns to Hardwicke in The Empty House (they even reshot a few scenes with Hardwicke for flashback purposes). Overall, David Burke came across as much younger, more naive Watson, albeit one who resembled the original illustrations. Edward Hardwicke, however, was older, more distinguished, and more ex-military. Most fans agree Hardwicke was the more memorable Watson.

!!Other television adaptations:

* TroubledProduction: The 1960s tv series:

** Creator/TheBBC's 1964 anthology series ''Detective'' included an adaptation of "The Speckled Band" starring Douglas Wilmer as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Stock as Dr. Watson. The Conan Doyle estate granted the BBC the rights to adapt a further four Holmes stories in 1965, with an option to choose another eight from among those for which the rights were not already claimed. Wilmer, a huge Conan Doyle fan, jumped at the chance to play Holmes on a regular basis, but soon regretted the decision, later saying the writers ranged from "brilliant" to "deplorable". He found some of the scripts so poor that he re-wrote them himself, sometimes having to stay up until 2am to finish them before shooting began. The production also struggled with a tight schedule and an even tighter budget, precluding the possibility of any effects shots.

* {{Fandom}}: Before ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', before ''Series/DoctorWho'', before even Creator/JRRTolkien, there were people who would write letters, fan-fics, pastiches and overanalytical articles pertaining to Holmes and "The Game" using the LiteraryAgentHypothesis.
* FanNickname:
** [[invoked]] The Agent - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; a reference to the LiteraryAgentHypothesis.
** The Master - Literature/SherlockHolmes.
** The Good Doctor - Watson. [[Series/DoctorWho No relation]].
** John "Three Continents" Watson - the three continents in question refer to the [[TheCasanova number and variety of the women he's sampled.]]