Trivia / That '70s Show

• Actor-Shared Background: The show is set in Wisconsin, where Kurtwood Smith (Red) was born. Worth noting is that Kurtwood is the only main cast member born in Wisconsin.
• Billing Displacement:
  • For the bulk of the show’s run, the six teenagers were billed in alphabetical order - Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama - which resulted in Kunis having second billing behind Grace ahead of the more appropriate Masterson or Prepon, and Kutcher being billed third as he became the biggest star on the show. It also means that Grace gets first billing by sheer luck of being first in the alphabetical order, and he plays the main character!
  • In the final season of the show, Josh Meyers would be billed between Kurtwood Smith and Don Stark despite ostensibly being the fifth lead alongside Kunis, Masterson, Prepon and Valderrama. Furthermore, the series never used And Starring credits, so Meyers jumped both Stark and Tommy Chong in billing order.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • The 15-year-old character of Jackie Burkhart was played by the actually 15-year-old Mila Kunis. The story goes that when asked how old she was, Mila said, "I'll be 18 on my birthday." She just didn't say which birthday. The producers liked her so much that they decided to keep her even when they found out the truth. Thus, she was 14 when they started filming the series, but the producers thought she was 17.
  • When the show started, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama were also teens; however, they aged normally, while their characters did not.
• Corpsing: In Leo Loves Kitty, Debra Jo Rupp can't suppress a giggle when Kurtwood Smith says "You've got a date for the Stoners' Ball." Also in Career Day, Laura Prepon can barely keep it together when Don Stark takes off his top hat to reveal his afro has deformed from a serious case of hat hair.
  • Actually, according to several behind-the-scenes videos, this show is built on corpsing. Roughly 75% of the laughing fits you see on this show were cases of Throw It In! corpsing right from the very first episode, when the first Circle segment ended with Kutcher, Danny and Topher falling down laughing after Hyde's first "car that runs on water" story.
• Costume Backlash: Topher Grace hated having to maintain a '70s-style hairdo for Eric. He later had to cut his hair for a film role and wore a wig for the rest of his time on the show — which led to Grace lamenting why he didn't just think to wear a wig sooner.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Partially. The teenagers were about sixteen/seventeen at the beginning (with Michael a year older and Jackie a year younger): Mila Kunis (Jackie) was fourteen when the show started, Laura Prepon (Donna) was seventeen, and Wilmer Valderrama (Fez) was eighteen. The rest of the gang was played by actors aged twenty and over. Eventually, they all became examples, since they aged normally over the eight years, while their characters only aged three years.
  • When Mila Kunis was considered for casting, they wanted to know if she was old enough. She said, "I'll be eighteen on my birthday." She just didn't say which birthday.
  • Also applicable for many of the recurring cast playing the main cast's teenage friends and/or acquaintances. Notably, Lisa Robin Kelly who plays Laurie Forman, was 28 when Season 1 aired and was 32 when Season 5 aired - Before she was fired from the set. Laurie Forman was supposed to be just a couple years older than the 18-ish Eric Forman. The most extreme example however, is Cynthia Lamontagne who plays Big Rhonda, Fez's Season 4 girlfriend. Being the oldest of the "youth" actors and actresses, she's 35 when Season 4 aired!
• Dyeing for Your Art: A lot of the cast had to maintain those 70's hairstyles when the show was in production. Topher Grace grumbled a bit at realizing, rather belatedly, that he could have worn a wig the entire time and saved himself a lot of time and hassle.
• Fake American: Tommy Chong is Canadian.
• Fake Mixed Race: Hyde, who has a black dad and a white mom, even though the actor who plays him isn't half-black.
• Fake Nationality: Fez's country of origin is a Riddle for the Ages, but Wilmer Valderrama was born in the United States.
• Hostility on the Set: A self-admitted case by Debra Jo Rupp during season 3, as told in one of her episode intros on the DVD. Obviously, things never reached a boiling point and got better as years went on.
  Debra Jo Rupp: ...third season, Debra Jo Rupp, myself, quit smoking and it wasn't very pleasant for many people, Kurtwood especially. I kinda took it out on him.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Jackie's frequent disparaging comments about foreigners become funnier because, of all the main cast, Mila Kunis is both one of the two actors born outside of the US (the other one being Tommy Chong, who was born in Canada; Kunis was born in what is now Ukraine) and one of the two whose native language is not English (Wilmer Valderrama's is Spanish; hers is Russian), so if anything, she is the most foreign member of the cast. For added irony, Wilmer Valderrama, who plays the main target for Jackie's xenophobic remarks Fez, was born in the US.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Laurie was portrayed by Lisa Robin Kelly until Season 6, where she was replaced by Christina Moore (who, like Josh Meyers, was on MADtv (1995), but only lasted a season).
  • Jackie's mom was played by Eve Plumb for a brief appearance in Season 1. She returned as a recurring character in Season 6, played by Brooke Shields.
  • Narrowly averted with Eric when Topher Grace left after Season 7. Originally, the producers wanted Josh Meyers to play Eric in Season 8, but they instead wrote Eric off as spending a semester in Africa, and cast Meyers as a guy named Randy who became the gang's newest member. Either way, audiences didn't like the arrangement, and Randy was barely in the series finale.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Mitch Pileggi, best known as Director Skinner, Colonel Stephen Caldwell, and Samuel Campbell playing Bull, Red's old war buddy who's now a hot tub salesman who's into swinging.
  • Marion Ross, best known as the sweet lovable wife Marion Cunningham in Happy Days, returns as a sadistic bitch of a grandmother. The actress claims to have loved Playing Against Type.
  • Betty White, known for her more sweet-natured roles and personality, plays Kitty's rather emotionally distant mother who is also a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Post-Script Season: The seventh season finale was clearly supposed to be the series finale: first, Red finally caught the guys smoking pot in his basement. Then he finally said to his son he loved him without insulting him in the process. And, of course, at the end of this episode, the main character Eric left the series. Aside from an open ending of the Kelso-Jackie-Hyde love triangle storyline that seemed to be tacked on to allow for another season, there was nothing more to add to the story.
• Production Posse: Producer/writer Linda Wallem brought in Carlos Alazraqui, who she'd worked with on Rocko's Modern Life, to play Jackie in Kelso's vision of her without makeup. Tom Kenny also showed up in a much later episode as the Funland mascot.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Christopher Masterson is the brother of Danny and plays Todd (a mall manager interested in Jackie) in a few Season 4 episodes. In the last of which, the brothers appear in the same scene; Hyde encourages Kelso to beat up Todd and then is amused when it turns out the little guy is a black belt.
  • In addition, Danny Masterson's youngest brother Jordan had a small role in "Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die" as a paperboy.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: The episode "Time Is on My Side" where Donna decides to dye her hair blonde, which came about because Laura Prepon had dyed her hair for the film Karla.
• Real Song Theme Tune: A cover of Big Star's "In the Street". By Cheap Trick, no less, a group who are substantially more famous than Big Star. Random score for a then-fledgling sitcom. In later seasons, the theme song would be appended to feature the line "we're all alright", from Cheap Trick's hit "Surrender".
• Romance on the Set: Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis would eventually get married & have children together, but didn’t start a relationship until years after the show wrapped. Kunis, however, has admitted that her first kiss was with Kutcher due to their on-screen relationship and that she did have a crush on him at the time.
• Star-Making Role: Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, and Mila Kunis. The other actors were also unknowns prior to the start of the show, but did not really have much success afterwards (although Laura Prepon would eventually have a Career Resurrection with Orange Is the New Black, along with Wilmer Valderrama having success in NCIS (as Tony's replacement and between the two shows, he was in the Disney Junior show Handy Manny) and Danny Masterson reuniting with Kutcher in the Netflix sitcom The Ranch, which is seen as the show's Spiritual Successor).
• Throw It In!:
  • In "The Best Christmas Ever," Kelso hops over the couch but slips and crashes his legs against the table. This was a real accident on Ashton Kutcher's part, but it was left in because it felt in-character for Kelso. It was also the only moment we saw Lisa Robin Kelly (who played Laurie Forman) breaking character when she saw the accident.
  • Kitty's hilariously awkward dance in the strip club in "My Wife" was entirely improvised by Debra Jo Rupp. Even outside of the blooper clips, Mila Kunis (who played Jackie) completely broke character during this moment.
• Un-person: Danny Masterson's character was conspicuously missing from the show's 25th anniversary display at the 2023 San Diego Comic Con, several months after he had been convicted for multiple rapes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • One of the potential actors who was given a call-back for the role of Jackie was Ana Kasparian, from The Young Turks radio show, whose mother vetoed the idea before it progressed too far into the auditioning process.
  • There is at least one picture of Lisa Robin Kelly still playing Laurie Forman in the season 6 premiere.
  • Charlie Richardson was supposed to be the new member of the group for season 8 after Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left, but his actor, Bret Harrison, instead went to play the lead in another Fox sitcom, The Loop, so he had to be written out too, which lead to the casting of Josh Meyers as Randy.
  • Speaking of Josh Meyers, another idea that was toyed with was for him to play... Eric, who returned from Africa "a changed man".
• Working Title: Apparently, the show was going to be titled either Teenage Wasteland or The Kids Are Alright (incidentally in 2018 another sitcom set in the '70s would use the latter name), but focus groups kept calling it "that 70's show", which led to Carsey-Werner adopting that as the title.

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