Trivia / The 100

• Actor Leaves, Character Dies:
  • This affected the lineup in season 3. Alycia Debnam-Carey needed to focus on her role in the show Fear the Walking Dead, which she had signed prior to The 100, while Ricky Whittle was cast as lead in American Gods (2017). This necessitated Lexa and Lincoln's departures from the show. The producers chose to have both characters murdered during the season. The fact that both actors left the show due to other commitments did not prevent the fanbase from freaking out.
  • Shaw was killed off at the beginning of Season 6 because of commitments to a different show.
• Ascended Fanon: After many fans pointed out Miller's lack of interest in women and wondered if it could mean he was gay, the show's crew liked the idea and promoted it to canon in Season 3.
• Billing Displacement:
  • Bob Morley (Bellamy) retains second billing after Eliza Taylor's Clarke throughout most of Season 7 despite only really appearing in three episodes near the end.
  • The show in general is fairly inconsistent with its billing, often billing actors that don't appear in the given episode, and sometimes even continuing to give billings to actors whose characters are already dead and gone.
• California Doubling: The series is filmed in Vancouver, despite being set on the east coast of the United States, primarily in Virginia and the territory surrounding Washington, D.C. Evidence of its location appears onscreen in the season 3 finale "Perverse Instantiation – Part 2." (When an AI-protected Clarke enters the City Of Light in a bid to find the kill switch and stop A.L.I.E.,a sign for Burrard Street appears in several shots.)
• Cast the Runner-Up: Genevieve Buechner, who played Fox, originally tried out for the part of Murphy. The showrunners were impressed, but the part ultimately went to Richard Harmon.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Bob Morley was quite unhappy with Bellamy's story in Season 3, and even went so far as to warn fans it wouldn't ever get any better.
  • On Javier Grillo-Marxuach's Tumblr page, a fan asked about Lexa's death and whether he and the rest of the writing staff was aware of the omnipresence of the Bury Your Gays trope and the otherwise lack of happy endings for queer couples on TV:
    I absolutely did, it absolutely was, we discussed it, and yet, in spite of all of our best intentions and conversations, we were naive enough - or arrogant enough - to believe that the lgbt representation in our show, and our ability as writers would separate/redeem our use of the trope. We were wrong.
  • And after that, the floodgates really opened with numerous actors (most prominently Ricky Whittle and Lindsey Morgan) complaining about the increasingly toxic work environment and describing Jason Rothenberg as a petty tyrant who refuses to hear a single word against his ideas, and retaliates against any actor who dares question him by cutting their scenes.
  • Whittle upped the ante after the episode where Lincoln was killed off aired, making a point to thank everyone involved with the show except Rothenberg, including "the writers whose hands are constantly tied."
• The Danza: The main villain of Season 6, Russel Lightbourne, is played by Canadian actor J.R. Bourne - not a perfect match, but suspiciously close.
• Dawson Casting: The 100 are all supposed to be below 18 at the beginning of season 1. Their actors were not; during seasons one and two, the worst offenders were Marie Avgeropoulos (~29), Jarod Joseph (~29) and Christopher Larkin (~27), who were are all about 12 years older than their characters, Octavia (17), Miller (17) and Monty (15). Alleviated with the six-year timeskip at the end of season 4, aging the surviving teens of the cast up to their mid-twenties.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Henry Ian Cusick (Kane) directed "The Other Side" and "The Warriors Will".
  • Bob Morley (Bellamy) directed "Ashes to Ashes".
  • Lindsey Morgan (Raven) is confirmed to have directed "The Queen's Gambit" from season 7.
• Fake Nationality: The Grounders and Mt. Weather civilians are born and raised in America. There are nationalities on The Ark, but all of the characters we have been introduced to are Americanized; they have been coded as American and have American accents.
  • Australian actors Eliza Taylor (Clarke), Bob Morley (Bellamy), Alycia Debnam-Carey (Lexa), and Dichen Lachman (Anya).
  • Scottish actor Henry Ian Cusick (Kane).
  • Canadian actors Marie Avgeropoulos (Octavia), Devon Bostick (Jasper), Jarod Joseph (Miller), Eve Harlow (Maya), Toby Levins (Emerson), Ty Olsson (Nyko), Chelsey Reist (Harper), Katie Stuart (Monroe), Genevieve Buechner (Fox), Sachin Sahel (Jackson), and Alessandro Juliani (Sinclair). Although Rhiannon Fish (Ontari) is best known from Home and Away, she was born in Canada.
  • English actors Ricky Whittle (Lincoln), Joseph Gatt (Tristan), and Chuku Modu (Xavier).
• The Other Darrin: Madi is played by Imogen Tear in the last episode of season 4, but was recast to Lola Flanery in season 5.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: Lindsey Morgan and Ricky Whittle in season 2. (Underlined by the show actually having a proper opening title sequence from season 2, with the main cast credits plus "Developed By: Jason Rothenberg." And yes, the colon's there on screen.)
• Reality Subtext:
  • Season 3 features a Grounder-hating racist demagogue who advocates preemptive military action against even allied Grounders getting elected Chancellor of Arkadia, in a rather blatant parallel to the 2016 American Presidential election.
  • The Sky People's general hostility against Grounders in season 3 parallels today's people's hostility towards Muslims after terrorist attacks from radical Muslim groups.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • The actors who play Murphy and Niylah (Richard Harmon and Jessica Harmon respectively) are brother and sister.
  • Bob Morley (Bellamy) and Eliza Taylor (Clarke) got married in 2019.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Wick's abrupt disappearance in Season 3 is because of his actor making several Twitter posts insulting black people, one of which even implied that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Naturally, this got him fired.
  • The death of Nyko was due to his actor's intermittent availability having caused the writers some problems in seasons 2 and 3.
  • Diyoza is pregnant in season 5 because actress Ivana Milicevic was pregnant while shooting the season.
  • Bob Morley, who plays Bellamy, chose to take some time off at the start of season 7. Jason Rothenberg, the director, managed to find a way to make it work and Morley’s character was abducted in the first 5 minutes of the season 7 premiere.
• Romance on the Set:
  • Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley, who play Clarke and Bellamy respectively, announced on twitter that they got married on June 8, 2019. Impressively they managed to keep their relationship a secret up to that point.
  • Richard Harmon (Murphy) and Rhiannon Fish (Ontari) confirmed their relationship in July 2019.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jasper was originally going to die from getting speared by the Grounders in the pilot.
  • If it wasn't for Alycia's schedule and her commitment to another show, the producers say that Lexa would have been promoted to series regular for season 3.
  • It was originally going to be revealed in the series premiere that Kane was Octavia's father but the producers scrapped this after filming it.
  • The Season 3 finale had two major changes very late in production: Jasper was going to kill himself after being freed (which is why that shot of him walking off by himself after making up with Monty looks so ominous), and Pike was going to survive to the next season, until the actor joined another show.
  • Lincoln was originally supposed to get killed off in the season 3 finale before his actor decided to quit early into production.
  • Genevieve Buechner mentioned on an Instagram story that she was told Fox would live to season 3, but the character ended up being killed in the season 2 finale.
  • Diyoza was meant to die by the end of Season 5, but since her actress was pregnant at the time, they decided to implement it into her character.
  • According to Jason Rothenberg the reason that Bellamy was absent for large portions of Season 7 is because his actor Bob Morley wanted some personal time off during filming so the show had to write around losing it's male lead for most of the season. In a later interview he mentioned that Bellamy was going to be part of the group who meet Clarke after rejecting transcendence implying that he wouldn't have died in the original plan for the season.
  • According to an interview Rothenberg had after the finale if the show hadn't been able to get Alycia Debnam-Carey back to reprise her role as Lexa then the Judge would have probably appeared as Abby to Clarke instead.
• Word of Gay: Katie Stuart confirmed via twitter than Monroe is not straight.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The series has twice filmed scenes (not merely planned, not merely written, actually filmed) where Jasper dies, and both times the writers decided against it at the last minute, either cutting his death scene before the episode went to air or using the next episode to explain how he actually survived.

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