Trivia / The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries

• California Doubling: Many locations in California were used all-too-obviously in place of exotic locales within the series. This is extremely obvious in second season:
  • Mystery of the African Safari uses the San Diego Zoo and its Safari Park for the wilds of Kenya. They use the Safari Park's boat ride to simulate a trip down a jungle river to a Kenya ranch, with the zoo's logo not-quite-successfully hidden on the boats. Fenton even points out "wild monkeys" that are openly swinging on human-built play-sets!
  • The Creatures Who Came On Sunday has the arid mountains of New Mexico looking suspiciously like the green hills around southern California.
  • Voodoo Doll has a spacious, wide-open Los Angeles cemetery with shiny new headstones attempting to be a New Orleans cemetery in the French Quarter. Never mind that cemeteries in the Quarter are all above-ground mausoleums, well-aged, and jam-packed.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Shaun Cassidy's singing career. A number of episodes featured Shaun singing whatever his latest hit single was. Luckily, the show worked around this by having Frank never stick around to hear his younger brother perform. Plot follows Frank, with cut-backs to Joe's performance.
  • Parker Stevenson was also a good surfer in real life. One episode, "Wipe Out" had a silly contrived mechanism of Frank Hardy placing in a national surfing competition, just to get the boys to Hawaii and in the middle of a hotel theft ring.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Jamie Lee Curtis auditioned for the role of Nancy Drew and wasn't retained. She still had a small role in the series in the end.
• Dawson Casting: Parker Stevenson was in his mid-twenties at the time he portrayed 17-year old Frank Hardy; Shaun Cassidy was a little closer, being 19 to play 16-year-old Joe. The show eventually tried to avert this in third season by having the brothers grow up to take jobs with the Justice Department.
• Deleted Scene:
  • The third season DVD release deleted the opening scene of "Game Plan", which shows Joe Hardy chasing down a bad guy in an airport as a precursor to the plot. Versions in circulation from "other sources" have the scene in question.
  • Ditto the opening of the 3rd season episode "Scorpion's Sting"; there was a full sequence of Frank running from the cops through the streets of Chicago. The DVD release cuts all that out. However...Netflix's newly-remastered HD stream of the episode restores the full scene in all of Parker's sweaty, heavy-breathing glory.
  • Assault on the Tower (3rd Season) likewise has an extended opening of Fenton Hardy on the run from the villain, which was cut from the DVD release. Netflix's remastered HD stream also restored the full scene.
• Fake Russian: Third Season Episode "Life on the Line" has the villain sporting a horrible, Boris-Badenough fake Russian accent...even though he's supposedly the head of "the Mob".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Likely due to the extensive overuse of David Gates & Bread music, Season Three will probably never see the light of day. It's aired in reruns on Retro TV, the Disney Channel, and Nick's TV Land. Copies of those have been discreetly airing among fans for years.
  • Averted! Season Three is now available on DVD from Shout! Factory — however, it's the syndication versions only, with missing scenes and bad edits. Disclaimers on the DVD state the eps were remastered from "best available video sources", which is industry code for "the originals no longer exist".
• Star-Making Role:
  • Shaun Cassidy was mostly unknown, appearing in small productions with his mother and in independent films before winning the part of Joe Hardy, which opened his career up. He went on to star in the TV Series Breaking Away and to produce award-winning TV shows such as American Gothic (1995). His Facebook page profile proudly lists that he's a "former boy detective" in honor of that star-making role.
  • Parker Stevenson had been in films such as A Separate Peace and Our Time before the Hardy Boys, but wasn't well known. Playing Frank Hardy made his career: he went on to star in Baywatch and many other TV-series and movies, and is now a successful professional photographer.
• The Other Darrin: Happened three times on the Nancy Drew side of the series:
  • Nancy Drew's actor, Pamela Sue Martin, was replaced mid-season two by Janet Louise Johnson, who looked nothing like the original actress. The change is not noted nor commented on by the other actors, though in Voodoo Doll, when Janet makes her debut, there is a moment where Nancy takes off a mask, and Frank and Joe looked completely shocked & surprised at not having recognized her before this.
  • Ned Nickerson was originally played by George O'Hanlon Jr for first season, then inexplicably replaced by Rick Springfield in season two AND re-introduced as a completely new character, a young hotshot lawyer that Nancy has supposedly never met before.
  • Nancy's best friend, George Fayne, also gets replaced mid-series, originally played by Jean Rasey, then changed to Susan Buckner. Again, no explanation and no comments from her close friends.
• What Could Have Been: Jamie Lee Curtis auditioned to play Nancy Drew. She later had a guest starring role on the show.