Acting for Two: Anthony Mackie plays both Sam Wilson / The Falcon, and also portrays Conrad Mack in a photo in Episode 3 to explain why Sam is dressed in such a ridiculous suit. Sam himself is quick to lampshade that he and Mack look eerily alike.
Acting in the Dark: No one involved with the show was given any idea about whether Steve Rogers was actually supposed to still be alive.
Actor-Inspired Element: Julia Louis-Dreyfus suggested changing Valentina Allegra de Fontaine's skunk stripe from white to purple, as she wanted to modernize the character in her own way and avoid comparisons to Cruella de Ville.
This version of Sam Wilson is shown to be from Louisiana and heavily involved with the fishing business, much like his actor Anthony Mackie. In the comics he was originally from Harlem.
Like her character, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is descended from an aristocratic European family (the Louis-Dreyfus family of France).
Approval of God: Sebastian Stan has quite amusingly given his approval to all the people being shipped with Bucky due to this show, even calling Bucky x Sam its true love story. He also tweeted out #ReleaseTheBuckySarahCut to show support for the Bucky and Sarah ship.
Ascended Fanon: Bucky wearing dogtags, sleeping on the floor, associating the word "Homecoming" with Steve Rogers, attending therapy, and having experience working with boats due to being a Brooklyn dock worker were all very popular subjects of Fanon for years.
Daniel Brühl jumped at the chance to reprise his role as Helmut Zemo for this series after learning that it would be incorporating more of the character's aristocratic background from the comics. He was also excited to wear the Baron's iconic mask after spending the entirety of Civil War without it.
After the series ended, Julia Louis-Dreyfus mentioned that she accepted the role of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine simply because she liked the idea of portraying a female evil mastermind, and had always wanted to play a contessa in a movie, and so was grateful that the MCU gave her that opportunity.
California Doubling: Prague stands in for an unnamed city in Switzerland in "New World Order". Plus other countries in Georgia - as Anthony Mackie recalled, at first he thought he'd really go to 7 countries, then it was just Atlanta and Puerto Rico, only for the latter to be cut after being devastated by hurricanes.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A lot of publications and bloggers have confused the character played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, for Madame Hydra, a completely unrelated character in the comics, who Contessa has often been opposed tonote Madame Hydra, also known as Viper, is The Baroness of HYDRA, one of the organisation's most common leader figures, and who's real name is Ophelia Sarkissian; Contessa Valentina de Fontaine is a SHIELD agent and is most commonly known for being Nick Fury's Love Interest, though she did briefly pose as Madame Hydra while undercover for Leviathan. Though Composite Characteris possible, this isn't what people are assuming, but genuinely believing that her character is Madame Hydra simply because of The Baroness vibes, and knowing enough about the comics to be aware of Madame Hydra but not knowing enough.
A minor example. Wyatt Russell enjoyed playing Walker in the series, and was extremely excited to see the new US Agent outfit that the character would wear in his last scene. Not being familiar with the comics, he was surprised and slightly disappointed to learn that the US Agent outfit was just a black version of the Captain America outfit he'd already been wearing.
Anthony Mackie expressed mild annoyance at fans who fixated excessively on the homoerotic side of the relationship between Sam and Bucky, as he felt that the reading overshadowed his efforts to portray a healthy platonic friendship.
He also was not fond of the "You need to do better" speech he gives in the final episode, to the point where he took it on himself to adjust it in a way that he felt was more appropriate and in-character.
Don Cheadleadmitted that he was confused about getting an Emmy nomination for his brief guest spot in the first episode and that his performance during his cameo wasn't anything exceptional.
Delayed Release Tie-In: Falcon & Winter Soldier was released in February 2020 in anticipation that this show would come a few months later, but it ended up being over a year before it would.
Deleted Role: Florence Pugh and Chris Evans had filmed cameos for the series as Yelena Belova and Steve Rogers respectively, but they were both cut from the final product. Yelena's appearance was removed due to the delay of Black Widow (2021), though why Steve was taken out is unknown.
Disowned Adaptation: A partial case, as Winter Soldier creator Ed Brubakernote Bucky himself was part of the Captain America comics from the start, but spent decades as simply Cap's friend who was tragically killed before Brubaker reimagined him as having been brainwashed all that time. said he has "serious mixed feelings" about the character getting this kind of starring role. He has nothing but praise for Marvel Studios and Sebastian Stan, but the fact that he only gets minor recognition for his work and no financial compensation has gotten "harder and harder to live with".
Likewise, Rick Remender, who first wrote Sam Wilson as Captain America, has posted on Instagram how his pride in that creation is difficult to summon due to resentment over lack of credit and financial compensation.
Distanced from Current Events: There was originally supposed to be a plotline involving an airborne virus, but it was cut in light of real-world events. This came late enough that rewrites and re-shoots were necessary to delete all references to the removed plotline. Some remnants of the concept can still be seen in the series, such as the Flag Smashers bombing the Global Repatriation Council in the season finale with gas bombs that were likely originally intended to contain the virus.
Dueling Works: The first episode premiered one day after the DC Extended Universe film Zack Snyder's Justice League. Aside from the usual Marvel-DC rivalry and the fact that they are superhero stories, both are streaming-exclusive installments of their respective franchises, both feature superheroes teaming up (on a lower scale for Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and dealing with threats in the absence of The Cape (Steve Rogers and Superman). In a skewed way, it's also a rematch after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War, since both installments share a lot of the same protagonists as their predecessor.
Executive Veto: The show runners had ideas for the MCU's New York-based heroes like Spider-Man to appear in the final battle, but Kevin Feige flatly refused to let them do it.
Lying Creator: After the release of the show, showrunner Malcolm Spellman claimed that while there was a "lost storyline" during the series' production, the "airborne virus subplot" didn't actually exist. Two years later, the release of "The Reign of Marvel Studios" confirmed that the subplot was indeed a part of the show, and that it was cut due to current events.
Daniel Brühl is aware of Zemo's infamous dance from the third episode going viral, and thinks it's hilarious. Marvel themselves took notice of the #ReleaseTheZemoCut hashtag that trended after Brühl mentioned that there was a longer version of the scene that existed, and decided to release an hour long extension of it!
Wyatt Russell personally found memes where Walker is compared to Carl Frederiksenhilarious and admits as such that he loves seeing them, as per this interview.
One of Sam's Fan Nicknames during his time as Captain America in the comics was Captain Falcon. Marvel themselves seems to have acknowledged the meme as one reporter asked in Episode 6 if his new name is Captain Falcon due to his new costume being a combination of his Falcon identity and Captain America.
Upon watching the teaser trailer for Eternals, Shang-Chi frontman Simu Liu acknowledged the popularity of Zemo's "masterpiece" line from this show by quoting it to show his support for both the film and the show.
Milestone Celebration: Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic pushing the series back a bit, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was serendipitously released in 2021 — the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Captain America — of whom both Bucky Barnesnote Who is also celebrating his 80th anniversary in 2021 and The Falcon are major supporting characters in the comics and in the MCU. It also began airing just short of the 10th anniversary of Captain America: The First Avenger.
Missing Trailer Scene: One of the trailers depicts a scene of Bucky in a baseball cap and jacket out in public, seemingly as a Paper-Thin Disguise. At no point does Bucky ever disguise his identity on the show proper.
In the Japanese dub, the eponymous Falcon, who was voiced by Junpei Mizobata in the MCU films, is now voiced by Daiki Hamano instead. This is specially relevant, considering the Japanese dubs of the MCU franchise had normally tried to keep the voice cast mostly consistent across the years, with very few replacements. Also, and avoiding Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor, Leah, who is played by the Japanese-American Miki Ishikawa, is voiced by Hitomi Nabatame instead back in Japan. note Very likely because, since this is a TV series rather than a film, Ishikawa cannot fly to Japan to dub herself back, having to resort to a soundalike instead.
The same goes in the Latin American Spanish dub, through only with Bucky, since Luis Leonardo Suarez replaces Irwin Daayán from the MCU films.
For a brief while, a story went around that Wyatt Russell was being horribly harassed on social media by crazy Cap fans who didn't care that he was just playing a character, and that it got so bad that he ended up deleting his Instagram account. Russell doesn't actually have any social media accounts in the first place, making the basis for this theory pretty unlikely.
The show serendipitously slid into it, as its intensive examination of the "new world order" just months after half the planet's population suddenly returned after five years fits very well with how the show was released as the world was just starting the process of emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic with several vaccines developed and exponentially increasing distribution.
The second episode's depiction of white Baltimore police officers confronting and almost drawing their weapons on Sam comes hot off the heels of the Black Lives Matter movement and the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, particularly since the majority of the series had been filmed before March 2020.
Happened again due to the show's delay. The Flag Smashers stealing vaccines in the second episode looks a good deal worse with the context of airing when the world was still just starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and still in desperate need of vaccines, complete with actual attempts to sabotage distribution by anti-government extremists.
One more example is in episode five, when a member of the GRC suggests that they need not vote on their next course of action; this could bring to mind the recent push to limit voting times in future US Elections, which multiple states started pushing after the 2020 results saw voting fraud allegations.
Episodes four and five also happened to be released at the exact same time that Derek Chauvin's trial for the murder of George Floyd was going on, which ended the next week with him being resoundingly found guilty on all counts largely thanks to multiple bystanders recording the entire incident with their phones just like Walker's murder of Nico.
The series being delayed to 2021 provides an even eerier example, as the final episode features a group of fanatical extremists staging an attack on a government building to prevent a significant vote from being filed, forcing the lawmakers to evacuate. This episode aired just shy of five months after the Jan. 6th attack on the United States Capitol building by right-wing extremists seeking to disrupt the election votes from being certified.
Release Date Change: The series was supposed to premiere sometime in 2020 but ended up moved to 2021 because of COVID-19 induced production delays. WandaVision took its place as the first Disney+ MCU series. Most notably, the dramatic entrance of Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is because we were supposed to have already met her in Black Widow (2021), though luckily the scene's direction works just as well as just "Look at the big name actress we got!"note And her appearance in Black Widow was ultimately limited to The Stinger, so Falcon would still have been the first major appearance of the character and the first time anyone who hadn't stayed through Black Widow's credits was introduced to her.
Sequel in Another Medium: Falcon's and Bucky's story continues here after Avengers: Endgame, but unlike that theatrical film, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a streaming Mini Series. It's also one to Captain America: Civil War since it follows directly upon plot threads that were established in that movie and includes characters that haven't been seen since.
Throw It In!: Daniel Brühlrevealed that Zemo's hilarious, meme-worthy little dance in the third episode was improvised, and he was genuinely surprised to find that it made it into the final product. He also improvised the part where he creepily strokes Bucky's chin while talking to Selby, noting that it was difficult for Sebastian Stan to keep a straight face while he was doing it.
Troubled Production: The series wasn't completed when the COVID-19 Pandemic broke out, and filming, particularly that of several action setpieces, was delayed for several months as a result. The story also had to be significantly rewritten as originally the climax was built around Sam and Bucky stopping a global pandemic from being released.
Early plans for the show would have seen Sharon Carter become the superhero Union Jack.
A subplot involving an airborne virus was written out of the show entirely after the COVID-19 Pandemic began, and some scenes had to be reshot to remove references to it.
Malcolm Spellman said that had the series been about 10 episodes long, Joaquin Torres would've had an important plotline.
According to Daniel Brühl, there was a longer version of Zemo's dance scene at Sharon's club, but it was trimmed down to the three-second clip seen in Episode 3. Marvel eventually uploaded the scrapped footage onto the internet after fans jokingly asked for it in theform of a hashtag (#ReleaseTheZemoCut) in the wake of Zack Snyder's Justice League (which came about due to the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement).
Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine was supposed to debut in Black Widow instead of this series, but the film's COVID-19 related delays prevented it from coming out before this series debuted.
Kari Skogland wanted Ben Barnes to be part of the show, but he had to decline due to scheduling conflicts.
Florence Pugh and Chris Evans had filmed cameos for the series as Yelena Belova and Steve Rogers respectively, but they were both cut from the final product. Yelena's appearance was removed due to the delay of Black Widow, though why Steve was taken out is unknown.
The series was originally planned to be 8 episodes long before getting cut down to 6 instead.
One of the ideas for the final title card that was left on the floor was "Captain America and the White Wolf", rather than "Captain America and the Winter Soldier" as seen in the final product.
An appearance from Spider-Man in the series finale was considered at one point, due to the climax taking place in a big part of New York, which is where Peter primarily operates. However, Kevin Feige prevented this from happening, presumably due to contractual issues with Sony. Amusingly, Sam-as-Cap was also planned to appear in Spider-Man: Far From Home to assist Peter at one point, before being scrapped out of fear of the title character being Overshadowed by Awesome.
Battlestar was planned to have electrified gloves as part of his arsenal, which would've come into play in regards to a scrapped battle sequence in Puerto Rico. The scene never got filmed due to earthquake scares, and the gloves never made an appearance on the show.
Veronica Falcon confirmed in an interview that her character Donya Madani was meant to feature more heavily in the show until the COVID-19 Pandemic forced them to put a pause on shooting and signicantly revamp or refilm whatever scenes they had, resulting in Madani becoming a Posthumous Character who was largely excised from the show.
, at first he thought he'd really go to 7 countries, then it was just Atlanta and Puerto Rico, only for the latter to be cut after being devastated by hurricanes.
