Trivia / Night Gallery

• Colbert Bump: Jerry Wallace's "If You Leave Me Tonight I'll Cry" went to #1 thanks in part to its appearance in the episode "The Tune in Dan's Cafe".
• Creator Backlash: Rod Serling didn't mind being blamed when things went wrong on The Twilight Zone (1959), but it was a different matter here because "when it was bad (he) had nothing to do with it."
• Dawson Casting: John Astin, who was 41 at the time, plays a "young" hippie in "Hell's Bells".
  • 19-year-old Laurie Prange played an 11-year-old girl in "Brenda".
• Edited for Syndication: The stories are no longer shown on TV in hour-long segments; they are instead broadcast as half-hour slots, meaning that stories have been moved around to fit within the time constraints. Longer stories have had up to ten minutes cut from their run time and shorter ones have had extra footage added. Seen most notably in "Big Surprise", which added five extra minutes of footage to an eight minute story by inserting endless, repeating shots of a darkening sky, setting sun, and murders of crows, and for some reason edited the ending to make it look like either the main character imagined the whole thing or a Here We Go Again! type scenario.
• Executive Meddling: Rod Serling was often frustrated by his lack of creative control on the show compared to The Twilight Zone (1959), with the execs insisting on simple horror stories rather than any grand ideas. Several of his scripts were also heavily rewritten after being submitted.
• Playing Against Type: Comedic actor Arte Johnson played a serious role as a callous DJ with an unsavory past in "The Flipside of Satan".
• Recycled Script: A number of Serling's episodes have similar premises to some of his work from The Twilight Zone:
  • "Lone Survivor" is very similar to "Judgment Night" with both focusing on a man who is punished after his death by being forced to relive a shipwreck.
  • "Make Me Laugh" is somewhat like "What You Need", particularly the ending, as both men are promised further help only to be struck and killed by a car.
  • "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" is like "Walking Distance" and "A Stop at Willoughby" as it focuses on a dispirited ad executive who attempts to escape into the past.
  • "Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator" is very similar to "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" as both are about con men in an old Western town who claim they can bring back the dead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In anticipation of the show's fourth season, series artist Tom Wright created three paintings. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled before they could be produced, leaving the drawings without stories.
  • The statues displayed around the gallery never got any stories, despite being quite creepy.

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