Trivia / Daredevil

• Ability over Appearance: It's rather difficult to find someone of the appropriate girth and acting talents to properly portray the Kingpin. For Michael Clarke Duncan in 20th Century Fox's film, they originally auditioned several white actors but none of them had enough acting mojo. For the Netflix show, Vincent D'Onofrio is a bit closer, but he doesn't look so big next to similarly tall supporting actors (Duncan had a similar issue, but camera tricks were used to make him seem even bigger).
• Approval of God: When the Kingpin was made primarily a Daredevil villain, Stan Lee applauded the move saying that in retrospect, he's much better suited as a villain for that superhero.
• Development Hell: Daredevil: End of Days, a miniseries depicting the hypothetical deaths of Daredevil and his "biggest secret", was in development since at least 2009. Thankfully, the series was finally released starting late 2012.
• Follow the Leader: Frank Miller's reimagining of Fisk inspired a number of writers to fashion supervillains in the same mold of The Man Behind the Man chessmaster. It directly inspired Lex Luthor's transformation from Mad Scientist to Corrupt Corporate Executive, with early designs of Luthor in John Byrne's run making him greatly resemble Fisk, leading Neil Gaiman to call him a "skinny Kingpin". It also led to Norman Osborn's revision since his belated revival taking inspiration from Kingpin and Luthor's transformation. It also inspired Victor Von Doom to be the head of Von Doom Industries in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie.
• Network to the Rescue: The title had been faltering since Marv Wolfman left the title. By the time Frank Miller had become penciler, sales were getting so bad that other executives advised Jim Shooter to cancel it. Shooter disagreed, having (correctly) guessed that Miller would revive interest in the title.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: There is a rumor that Kingpin was originally conceived as a black character, but editors changed this for fear it would be seen as racist. This isn't true.
• Recycled Script: Two stories in Frank Miller's run involve Daredevil's powers getting damaged (the first time, a bomb from The Hand knocks out his radar sense; the second time, exposure to radiation boosts his senses) and him having to go to Stick for help. Both times this happens, Turk gets the equipment of a supervillain - Mauler the first time, Stilt-Man the second - and thinks that with it he will be a match for Daredevil, only for Daredevil to effortlessly defeat him in spite of his handicap.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles's origin story is a deliberate parody of Daredevil's, focusing on what happened to the barrel of radioactive waste that fell from the truck: it fell into the sewer where four baby pet shop turtles and their human owner/a sewer rat were exposed to it.
  • In The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis, when Apu and Comic Book Guy accidentally crash their cars into each other, Comic Book Guy exclaims to Apu "You are as blind as Matt Murdoch!"
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Kingpin was going to appear in The Spectacular Spider-Man as the show's Big Bad, but was unable to because by the time the show was in production, the character became classified as a Daredevil villain (despite originating as a Spider-Man villain), which meant that Sony couldn't legally use him. The problem was solved by substituting him with Tombstone, who was made into a Kingpin Expy.
  • Ironically, he seems to avert this; he was allowed to appear in the Daredevil film and Netflix series, yet also allowed to appear in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It seems the only stipulation is that he's allowed to be used in the Spider-Man and Daredevil films as long as the Spider-Man films don't reference Daredevil and vice versa, though this seems to be moot due to both him and Spider-Man having versions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Frank Miller's first issue was actually pushed up a month because the previous story, a two-parter dealing with the topic of drugs in schools, was censored by the Comics Code. An altered version wound up being published over a year later after Miller had become a big enough superstar to push it through.
  • According to Shooter, Miller wanted to quit the title shortly after becoming penciler due to his dissatisfaction with then-writer Roger McKenzie. Shooter managed to talk him out of it, and editor Denny O'Neil later promoted Miller to writer.
  • The Owl was going to be the main villain of X-Factor, and there were clues planted towards it, until Apocalypse was created for that role.
  • Following "Fall from Grace", D.G. Chichester's run went to #332. He planned to continue until issue #350, which was written by J.M. DeMatteis instead.
  • Brian Michael Bendis was originally going to have Bullseye appear in Daredevil #36 as part of the storyline where Matt Murdock's identity was leaked. However, Kevin Smith had called dibs on writing Daredevil and Bullseye's next confrontation, so Bendis used Elektra instead.
  • In his original run, Smith had wanted to do a story about Matt regaining his sight, but had to nix that plan after learning that Scott Lobdell had already written a similar story. He almost skipped out on the gig entirely before coming up with the iconic "Guardian Devil" storyline.
  • Before the Netflix show, there had been several attempts at a Daredevil TV show. In the 70's there was a pitch for a live-action series starring Daredevil and Black Widow, but it wasn't picked up. In 1985, ABC was on board to air to air an animated series featuring Daredevil and a guide dog named Lightning, but a dispute with someone at Marvel led to it being dropped. In 1999, Fox Kids was approached about an animated series, but it was pushed back to air alongside a potential live-action movie that was never made.
  • A Daredevil video game was being developed in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Initially featuring a series of fight scene vignettes emulating the comic stories, the game was reworked as a Wide-Open Sandbox game to take advantage of Daredevil's radar abilities, then was reworked as a level based game where the radar abilities became more useless in the game's narrower environments. The game was cancelled, along with an Elektra game planned as a followup.

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