Trivia / Good Omens (2019)

• Acting for Two:
  • Jack Whitehall plays both Newt Pulsifer and his ancestor Thou-shalt-not-commit-adultery Pulsifer. Miranda Richardson is Tracy and Aziraphale while he's possessing her, and both the leads play each other in the finale.
  • Season 2 sees several actors return in different roles. Miranda Richardson, who played Madame Tracy in Season 1, returns to the cast as Shax, a demon acquaintance of Crowley. Meanwhile, Maggie Service and Nina Sosanya return to play Maggie and Nina, a pair of shop owners neighboring Aziraphale, after playing members of the Chattering Nuns in the first season. Reece Shearsmith, who played William Shakespeare in Season 1, returns as a demon named Furfur.
• All-Star Cast: Just about everyone, even the cameos, are famous actors.
• Ascended Fanon: Hellfire destroys angels in the same way that holy water destroys demons. This was a staple of fanfic, but never mentioned in the original book.
• Billing Displacement:
  • Like Game of Thrones, the title sequence only lists the main cast members who actually appear in the episode as opposed to the entire main cast. So far, so good, but the third episode's title sequence is placed about a half hour into the episode, and lists Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Reece Shearsmith despite all three appearing in minor cameo roles that are over by the time the title sequence begins.
  • Similarly, the fourth episode's title sequence includes cameo performer David Morrissey after his role is complete.
  • The fifth episode's title sequence includes Johnny Vegas, who at least appears after the title sequence is complete... in a voice-only cameo role.
• Cast the Expert: Pat, the owner of the magic shop in the second season's 1941 flashback, is played by professional magician Peter Firman.
• Content Leak: On 12 May, 2023, Neil Gaiman posted to social media to warn fans of a content leak regarding season two, advising them to avoid spoilers until the series was released in July.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Neil Gaiman insisted on having David Tennant play Crowley.
• The Danza:
  • Enforced with Harry the rabbit, who is in fact played by a rabbit named Harry. Since rabbits breed quite fast and there was some lead time before the scene would actually be filmed, when the director explained to the animal handler what the "role" was, the animal handler just bred a white rabbit and named him Harry.
  • In the second season, Nina Sosanya and Maggie Service return as new characters Nina and Maggie.
• Development Gag: After the second season was announced Neil Gaiman began answering questions to his Tumblr about the plot with "Wait and See". This was around the time he was working on the script for the fifth episode, "The Ball", and he decided to include a nod to the running gag.
  Aziraphale: Wait and see!
  Crowley: "Wait and see"? Do you have any idea how irritating that is?
• Died During Production: Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman were working on various adaptations of their book for a long time, and then Pratchett died. Gaiman says he was probably more strict about making it a good adaptation than he might otherwise have been since he wanted to keep Pratchett's memory alive.
  Gaiman: So I had to make the thing that he wanted, which meant it became kind of a mad passion project. The things that if it was a me-project I would've given away on, things I wouldn't have held the line on like some kind of a mad-eyed prophet. Suddenly I'm going "No, you cannot take this out. This is going to be in there. Because Terry wrote that scene and he would have wanted to see it, so it's in there." And they're like "Oh, but do you know how much money we could save if you don't actually see Agnes Nutter being blown up and arrested and dragged to the stake, we got this idea," said an early bunch of producers who later left, "that we could have woodcuts and the narrator explaining what happened. Isn't that just as good?" And I sort of mentally run that by the ghostly Terry Pratchett in the back of my head, it's like: "Terry, is that just as good?" And he's like: "Fuck 'em."
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Season 2 introduces Saraquel, an Angel who uses a wheelchair as their actress Liz Carr does in real life. In scenes in Heaven, their chair floats, and on earth they are able to do miracles that make inaccessible places accessible. Notably, the character was not written with any disability in mind— Carr was cast in Ability over Appearance for her pitch-perfect humor and sarcasm— and so their use of a mobility device is treated as a complete non-issue.
• Dueling Shows: 2019's Miracle Workers (Season One) had a similar concept about two angels trying to stop God from ending the world, with heavy emphasis on comedy. Both shows were adapted from novels, although Good Omens predates What in God's Name by 22 years.
• Dyeing for Your Art: David Tennant dyed his hair red to play Crowley (the various hairstyle changes during flashbacks were done with wigs but all present-day scenes are his own hair). Michael Sheen bleached his hair to play Aziraphale and had to shave his beard for the second series.
• Fake Brit: New Yorker Michael McKean plays Shadwell, almost fitting since in the book Shadwell is described as having an accent that is unplaceable beyond being vaguely British. In the series, he sounds mainly Scottish. There was some precedent to this, in the audiobook adaptation Shadwell was played by genuine Scot Clive Russell.
• Irony As He Is Cast: Openly gay Mark Gatiss plays the Nazi spy Mr. Harmony.
• Misblamed: In the leadup to season two, Nina's SoHo store was changed from a porn shop to a coffee shop. Several on Tumblr were quick to blame Amazon for "cowardice", but Neil Gaiman himself posted that between the time the book came out and the time the series came out, the porn shops in SoHo had mostly closed down due to internet porn becoming readily available.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • While the Hell's Angels who decide to become the other Four Horsemen ended up cut, tiny references to them remain in the series. One is near the end of second episode as passages from Agnes Nutter's prophecies flash on the screen, including one which reads "Four shalle ryde and Four shalle also ryde," though within the series, this may refer to Adam's gang riding into the airfield base on their bikes.
  • The Elvis appearance is missing both its set-up and ultimate pay-off from the book, leaving it as more of a random cameo.
• The Other Darrin: Beelzebub is played by Anna Maxwell Martin in Season 1 and by Shelley Conn in Season 2, as Martin was too busy to reprise the role. This is joked about in-universe; Crowley actually asks Beelzebub if they're wearing a new face, only for them to brush it off and say they've had it for ages, while when Gabriel questions them about it, Beelzebub simply says they got bored of having the same face for centuries.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Michael Sheen has been a big fan of the book since it came out (and has hinted at a certain level of familiarity with fanfic and fanart).
  • Jon Hamm was also a fan of the book and jumped at the chance to play the expanded role of Archangel Gabriel.
  • Nina Sosanya as well. Her agent was very doubtful about asking her to play a Satanist nun, and she immediately said "Oh, Sister Mary Loquacious!"
  • Nick Offerman literally offered to fly himself to South Africa for a handful of lines. 'I would have come twice as far for half the lines.'
  • The Hillywood Show not only make a parody video of season 1 but also participated in the promotion for season 2 with Neil Gaiman himself appearing to hand "Crowley" the basket with the DVD to be delivered to the studio execs. Maggie Service and Daniel Mays also appear in the video.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: In series 2 episode 5, Mutt's Spouse is a non-binary character played by non-binary performer Andrew O'Neill.
• Real-Life Relative: David Tennant (Crowley)'s father-in-law Peter Davison appears in "The Clue" as Job. Ty Tennant, David's oldest child and Peter's grandson, plays Job's oldest son in the same episode.
• The Red Stapler: Fans are quite enamored of Crowley's sunglasses and Aziraphale's angel-wing-handled mug.
• Refitted for Sequel: Inverted. In an interview with GQ, Neil Gaiman said that certain elements — like the expanded roles of some of the angels like Gabriel, Uriel and Sandalphon — were ideas that he took from a sequel to the book that he and Terry Pratchett had planned but never written. Played straight with the announcement of a second series, which Gaiman has indicated will use material from said unwritten sequel.
• Role Reprise: Josie Lawrence played Agnes Nutter in the 2014 radio adaptation of the book, and plays her again here.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Michael Sheen is infamously supportive of Crowley/Aziraphale shippers, and has been known to retweet shippy fanart and even slashfic.
• Self-Adaptation: Neil Gaiman, who was one of the co-authors of the original book, served as the showrunner and main writer for this series.
• Shipper on Deck: No one ships Aziraphale/Crowley harder than Michael Sheen. No one.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Crowley's answering machine plays way too big a role to be jettisoned completely, so it's referenced as an antique he's hanging onto, and his cell phone also plays a part in the plot point.
  • Crowley's cell phone also replaces the Bentley's car phone, so we don't get the "I bet it needs a lot of wire" joke.
• Throw It In!:
  • Shadwell's "Witchfinder Sergeant Pepper" line was ad-libbed by Michael McKean.
  • Aziraphale and Crowley's dialogue about magic tricks was also largely ad-libbed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Neil Gaiman and Michael Sheen have both stated that when they began discussing working on the show they both assumed Sheen would play Crowley. Once Gaiman actually started to write the scripts he realised that Sheen would be better suited to the role of Aziraphale. Episode six gives us a glimpse of how Sheen might have played Crowley.
  • The Hell's Angels bikers who decide to be sidekicks to the Horsemen were cast for the show, but due to budget issues their scenes were never filmed.
  • It's a small scene but in the book Crowley is the one to revive the dead dove after the magic show, whereas in the show it's Aziraphale. It was in the script as was originally written in the book, but the director needed to change it for blocking reasons (they needed to get Crowley in the car first for the actions of the scene to play out in a way that visually made sense).
  • There was originally going to be another flashback scene showing Aziraphale getting ready to open his new bookshop, and heaven attempting to give him an promotion that would have taken him away from Earth, the shop and Crowley. Crowley convinces Gabriel Aziraphale needs to stay on Earth so he can “thwart” him, through the use of some tailor dummies. It was cut due to budget reasons and Neil feeling it didn't really further along Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship as much as the other flashbacks. Which were entirely cut in favor of the bookshop scene in one draft he was presented with. Re-created in animatic form here.
  • War's introduction originally more closely followed the one in the book. It was even shot. However, people found it confusing, necessitating that it be rewritten and reshot.
  • The Good Omens Script Book features quite a few things that ultimately never made it into the final version of the show. Most notably, the theme song was originally going to be "Every Day" by Buddy Holly (which would also be a reoccurring theme throughout the show itself), but this was eventually dropped in favor of the theme composed by David Arnold. A line from the song was eventually used as a tagline for the second season, and the song itself plays an important role in the plot of season 2.
  • The second season was written with Sandalphon returning alongside the other angels. When Paul Chahidi turned out to be unavailable the character was dropped as he wasn't vital to the plot. Saraqael was created to fill out the ranks of the angels.
• Word of Gay: Downplayed, given that the series is already brimming with Homoerotic Subtext. The creators have confirmed that Aziraphale and Crowley are in love, but their otherworldliness means they don't follow our notions of relationships (or gender).
  • This trope is completely inverted as of Season 2. In addition to Aziraphale & Crowley, we also have Maggie/Nina and Gabriel/Beelzebub in prominent storylines.
• Word of God: Well, aside from the literal In-Universe voice of God we hear. Neil Gaiman has revealed some things about the series on his Tumblr. Including:
  • In their retirement, Pestilence spends a lot of time on the internet ranting about vaccines.
  • Concerning why demons have animals on their heads: One might as well ask "Why the animals have people shaped things beneath them to get from place to place?” - it's up to interpretation what's what and how much of it.
  • Crowley would love watching The Good Place.
  • The scene where Aziraphale does the Gavotte is set at the 100 Guineas Club (a real life historic gentleman’s club for gay men).
  • The relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley has been written as a love story from the Garden of Eden onwards.
    • Season 2, though, reveals that they actually met before Crowley fell (well, sauntered vaguely downwards), during the Creation.
  • Beelzebub uses neopronouns, specifically "Zzzzzzir".
    • Though in Season 2, where they play a larger role, the dialog ended up using they / them, presumably for simplicity.
  • Archangels with a big A and archangels with a little A are two separate things. The latter is the second-lowest rank in Heaven's hierarchy, while the former are the highest-ranking angels who answer to God Herself, being a synonym for seraphim. This is to explain the religious inconsistency of Aziraphale, a Principality, answering to Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon, despite a Principality outranking archangels.
  • What we see happening in Heaven is simply what our limited human brains can approximate. This was to explain why Michael has perfect photos of Aziraphale and Crowley's meetings in times when the camera hadn't been invented.
  • Metatron is not Enoch having Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence like in theology.
• Word of Saint Paul: Michael Sheen said he was intentionally playing Aziraphale as being in love with Crowley. He believes the moment where Crowley saved his books from the Nazis is the exact moment Aziraphale realizes the depth of his feelings for Crowley. David Tennant has also said he believes their relationship to be open to interpretation, and that "...Crowley absolutely loves Aziraphale. He hates that he loves him. It's really annoying for him."

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