Trivia / Elseworlds (2018)

• Acting for Two: Tyler Hoechlin plays Superman and Deegan in Superman's form.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Grant Gustin is an admitted Superman fanboy; Barry is a little flustered at finally meeting Clark.
  • Ruby Rose's numerous tattoos are always covered up in her appearance here, but Kara still comments on them after using x-ray vision to learn Batwoman's identity.
• Darkhorse Casting: Ruby Rose's casting as Batwoman came out of left field for many, particular because some see her as being above a show on The CW.
• Deleted Scenes: Many, but the most notable is the attempt to put Stephen Amell in the Flash intro.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The real tattoos on Ruby Rose's right forearm and hand were covered in makeup and a new tattoo (a tree) was created in their place. This was not strictly necessary, since the new tattoo is never brought up specifically or shown in great detail.
• Executive Meddling: Downplayed, if benign example. According to Marc Guggenheim, the scale, scope, and logistics of filming Crisis on Earth-X understandably left the cast and crew of all four Arrowverse shows burned out. In fact, they were so badly wiped out even a year later that when The CW met to discuss the annual crossover, the production teams basically begged them to take 2018 off and come back the following year (as Crisis on Infinite Earths was already in early development). While The CW wouldn't budge, they did ultimately compromise by allowing Esleworlds to be scaled down and that the production teams could leave one of the four shows out (which ultimately was Legends).
• Fake American: Australian Ruby Rose plays the American Kate Kane.
• Fandom Nod:
  • Earth-90 Flash greeting Diggle as an old friend but noting that he's 'not wearing [his] ring' nods towards a long-held fan theory that Diggle will become a Green Lantern.
  • When Oliver wakes up in Barry's life, he immediately assumes it's Barry's fault somehow for messing with the timeline so much.
  • A character named after former Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim being among the criminals in Arkham Asylum nods to his status as a scapegoat among the fanbase and the public in general.
• Milestone Celebration: With the DC Extended Universe mired in problems, it falls to this special to provide a proper celebration of the 80th anniversary of Superman's creation, plus the 40th of the 1978 film.
• Promoted Fanboy: LaMonica Garrett has been a lifelong fan of comics, and was very familiar with the character of The Monitor (primarily through Crisis on Infinite Earths) even prior to getting the role.
  • Elizabeth Tulloch was similarly excited about taking the role of Lois Lane, being especially a fan of Margot Kidder's performance as the character in Superman: The Movie.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Nora Fries' actress, Cassandra Jean Amell, is the wife of Arrow lead star Stephen Amell.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Why Legends of Tomorrow wasn't part of the crossover. As detailed under Executive Meddling, The CW still wanted an Arrowverse crossover event for 2018 — but recognizing how burned out the production teams were after Crisis on Earth-X, they compromised by allowing it to be scaled down to a 3 show/episode event. Legends was ultimately selected as the odd duck out between its tight seasonal narrative (which would've made fitting in Elseworlds too difficult) and the event's status as Batwoman's Backdoor Pilot further overcrowding the field. In-universe, the absence of Legends was justified due to temporal shenanigans over on their end during "Legends of To-Meow-Meow".
• Recycled Set: The Kent farm on Earth-38 is the same one used in Smallville.
• Trolling Creator: Stephen Amell released a picture of him hanging out with Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, ie Clark and Lex from Smallville, and saying he was very excited about whatever they were doing together, raising hopes that the special would do Arc Welding with the series as another Earth. It actually just uses the same farm set. Then the fans got trolled again as because the next year, Smallville ultimately participated in an Arrowverse crossover, after all.
• Troubled Production: Averted by design; filming Crisis on Earth-X was by all accounts very grueling as they had to coordinate and juggle around the four show's different schedules. For this year they decided to make things easier by leaving the Legends out of the story (the decision was later poked at during a Legends of Tomorrow episode)
• What Could Have Been: Guggenheim thought about using the crossover to revive Sara Diggle, but couldn't make it fit here.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Ruby Rose had to close her Twitter account and the public comment section for her Instagram, thanks to the cyber-bullying she suffered from some rabid fans who thought she wasn't fit to be Batwoman (the reasons cited, apparently, were because Rose is non-binary and not Jewish). The fallout spilled over to her series as well, which has been consistently derided by those same people, even though professional critics say it is not as bad as the fandom make it out to be.
• Written-In Infirmity: Elizabeth Tulloch was five to six months pregnant when she was shooting her scenes as Lois Lane. Lois announces her pregnancy to Kara in the episode's denouement.
• You Look Familiar: Jeremy Davies, who plays Dr. John Deegan, previously played Ritchie Simpson on Constantine.