Trivia / 24

• Acting in the Dark: Two major examples for villains.
  • Sarah Clarke wasn't aware her character was a mole until well into Season 1.
  • Gregory Itzin wasn't told his character was the Big Bad of Season 5 until the episode it was revealed. Itzin has said in interviews he'd played President Logan as a well-intentioned, but incompetent good guy up til that point.
• California Doubling: While the majority of Season 7 was shot in Los Angeles, a good chunk of the season was still shot in Washington, D.C., the setting for that season. Much more blatant in Season 8, which was set in New York City, but had none of the episodes shot in location there, with the city only appearing via Stock Footage and greenscreen shots.
• Career Resurrection: Kiefer Sutherland's Emmy-award winning turn as Jack Bauer put him back on the A-list.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • The actor who played Kevin Carroll (the false Alan York in the first season), Richard Burgi, was originally cast in the role of Jack Bauer. He would have had that role if they hadn't been able to get Kiefer Sutherland. Once Sutherland was brought on board, Burgi accepted the role of Carroll.
  • Alberta Greene was originally intended to be played by Alberta Watson in the first season (the part was named for her). She wouldn't join the series proper until Season 4, playing a character who ironically turns out to be just as "by-the-book" as Greene.
• Creator Backlash:
  • James Cromwell does not look back on his tenure on the show with much fondness. He hadn't seen the show beforehand and only took the job at the urging of his agent, claiming it would make him more-well known, and because he was being offered a lot of money for it. He hated how the show glamorized torture for information, and hated playing a character with no redeeming qualities. This view is actually shared by the writers too, as Cromwell happened to guest star in Season 6, widely considered the weakest of the show and also when the writers phased out torture as a source of information.
  • Freddie Prinze Jr. also didn't care for his time on the show, mainly due to his working relationship with Kiefer Sutherland.
  • Stephen Fry had mixed feelings about his appearance in Live Another Day, enjoying the experience of working with Kiefer Sutherland and William Devane, and also relishing the chance to play a more dramatic role after having mostly played comedic parts in the previous decade, but also disagreeing profoundly with the show's depiction of torture and some of its other political messages.
  • Ever since he portrayed the suicide bomber Marcos Al-Zacar, Rami Malek decided to quit playing characters that were known as "acceptable terrorists" and put his Arab heritage in a very bad light. He mentioned how this role made him conflicted and nearly damaged his self-esteem.
• Deleted Role: Photos from the filming of season 8 showed Glenn Morshower on the set with Cherry Jones, suggesting that Aaron Pierce originally was supposed to make an appearance but his scenes were deleted.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: A weird variant. 24 was released for streaming on Disney+ in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in 2021...but not America, where the show originated. That being said, 24 is available for streaming on Hulu, a U.S.-based streaming service not available in other countries which is also owned by Disney.
• Development Gag: The wedding side story in season 2 was a nod to the original concept that 24 be a comedy about preparing for a wedding.
• Development Hell: A feature film adaptation of the series has been in the works for years.
• Dyeing for Your Art: For continuity reasons, the cast of at least the first season had to have their hair trimmed every five days.
• Executive Meddling: The reason Keeler survives the crash and subsequently disappears was thanks to a network mandate that the writers couldn't kill off a sitting President, as was originally intended in the Air Force One attack.
• Fake American:
  • Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Hope, Elisha Cuthbert, Alberta Watson, and Roger Cross are all Canadian.
  • In "Live Another Day", Australian Yvonne Strahovski and Briton Colin Salmon and John Boyega play Americans.
• Fake Brit: Northern Irish Michelle Fairley as English Margot Al-Harazi.
• Fake Nationality: Many, many, MANY instances.
  • American Dennis Hopper as Serbian Victor Drazen.
  • A short list of Middle Eastern examples:
    • Mexican/Italian-descended Francesco Quinn as Syed Ali.
    • Cuban-American Tony Plana as Omar (from Day 4).
    • Puerto Rican-descended Nestor Serrano as Navi Araz.
    • Afrikaner Arnold Vosloo as Habib Marwan.
    • Mexican/Romanian-descended Marisol Nichols as Nadia Yassir.
    • Greek-descended Adoni Maropis as Abu Fayed.
    • Indian Anil Kapoor as Omar Hassan.
  • In Live Another Day we have Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie as British arms dealer Karl Rask.
• Fake Russian: A short list of Russian examples:
  • American Nick Jameson as Yuri Suvarov.
  • British Julian Sands as Vladimir Bierko ^note A Russian separatist, technically.
  • Croatian Rade Šerbedžija as Dmitri Gredenko.
  • Australian John Noble as Anatoly Markov.
  • British-Canadian Callum Keith Rennie as Vladimir Laitanan.
  • German Jürgen Prochnow as Sergei Bazhaev.
  • Scottish Graham McTavish as Mikhail Novakovich.
• Foiler Footage: There were two alternate endings of the first season filmed: one with Teri escaping torment, and one with a Really Dead Montage.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The Russian consulate in season 6 is the same building that was JAG Headquarters.
• Hostility on the Set: At a Comic-Con panel, Freddie Prinze Jr. revealed that he hated working with Kiefer Sutherland.
  I did 24; it was terrible. I hated every moment of it. Kiefer was the most unprofessional dude in the world. That's not me talking trash, I'd say it to his face. I think everyone that's worked with him has said that. I just wanted to quit the business after that. So, I just sort of stopped.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Live Another Day has Stephen Fry playing UK prime minister Alastair Davies, who according to Word of God is a member of the Conservative Party. In real-life Fry is an outspoken liberal, who has been openly critical of the depiction of torture on the show.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Although the entire series is on DVD and can be streamed on Amazon, the "Previously on 24" recaps that originally appeared in the original airings of the first season have not been used again and have not been featured in any reruns, home video releases, or streaming services. It's extremely odd since the recaps from all other seasons are featured in reruns and home releases.
• Killed by Request:
  • In Season 3, Vanessa Ferlito, who plays Claudia, was committed to filming Man of the House.
  • In Season 6, Eric Balfour, who played Milo Pressman, a recurring character from Season 1, specifically requested to get killed off in the show so he could film another TV pilot with Dean Cain.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • Disclosed memos from within the former Bush administration suggest that, if 24's torture methods didn't inspire the initial events at Abu Ghraib Prison and Guatanamo Bay Prison Camp, they at least inspired their justification and continuation to this day.
  • The suspects of the Abu Ghraib abuses also claimed 24 as inspiration for their tactics, and military intelligence instructors have complained to reporters that they have to drill 24 and its depiction of torture out of the heads of new students.
  • On a less controversial note, the positive portrayal of David Palmer is at the very least credited (which the writers deny despite actor's Dennis Heysbert's approval) for the election of the the first African-American President. On top of that, it's mentioned that Palmer won in a landslide, and won several states that hadn't voted Democratic for a long time — Obama would do the same thing in 2008, winning some states that hadn't voted for the Democrats since Lyndon Johnson's victory in 1964.^note (Averted, however, when Hillary Clinton became the first woman to run as a major party's candidate for president. Unlike Allison Taylor, who won a landslide victory over Noah Daniels, Clinton ended up losing in a landslide to Donald Trump — in the electoral college at least, with Clinton actually winning the popular vote — and in 2016, the same year that Taylor was canonically elected, to boot)
  • The set of CTU LA also inspired the design of the real-life National Counterterrorism Center.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: This was originally a much different show than what it ended up becoming. Prior to the first season, the producers had envisioned the show as a romantic comedy with dramatic overtones about the planning of a wedding. This was changed in pre-production to a government agent (originally named Jack Barrett) trying to stop the assassination of a senator. The "wedding" angle would be revisited in the first few hours of the second season with the Warner family.
• The Other Marty: Margo, the antagonist of "Live Another Day," which was originally supposed to be played by actress Judy Davis. As principal photography began though, Davis was forced to drop out because of family concerns, so the role was recast to Michelle Fairley.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Chloe O'Brian is a rare dramatic role for comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub.
  • Same goes for Janeane Garofalo as Janis Gold.
  • Stephen Fry as the British Prime Minister.
  • Kal Penn, much more known for his comedy roles, playing a villain.
  • Bob Gunton, more commonly known for playing villainous or morally corrupt characters, playing the very much moral Honest Advisor Ethan Kanin.
  • On the opposite side, Aisha Tyler, who usually plays nice or heroic characters plays Marianne Taylor, who's not only incredibly callous but also turns out to be working with the villains.
  • Kiefer Sutherland himself had mostly played villains before this show, and even his more positive characters like in Flatliners and Dark City were on the sketchy side.
• Post-Script Season:
  • The seventh season ended with a large number of plot threads being resolved (including Tony Almeida confronting, and Renee Walker presumably killing, the mastermind behind the Myth Arc of the last four seasons) and bringing things full circle with Kim Bauer returning to save Jack from a weaponized virus via a transplant. There was lots of uncertainty for a time, but the show was unexpectedly renewed and brought back for another year. In response, the producers moved the show all the way to the other side of the country (New York), introduced an entirely new cast of characters, reworked a previously-good supporting character into the season's Big Bad and indicated that the previous mastermind, Alan Wilson, paid for his crimes at the cost of Renee's career.
  • Ratings for season 8 suffered and the show was not renewed as a result. However, the last stretch of episodes were highly praised for shaking up the series' status quo dramatically (and ended with Jack on the run and President Taylor disgraced and forced to resign from office over her role in the Russian treaty). A year-and-a-half later, it was announced that the show would return in a limited series called 24: Live Another Day. Three years later, another limited series called 24: Legacy (which doesn't feature Jack Bauer or any other returning characters, except Tony) began in February.
• Production Posse: Downplayed example. After Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled, showrunner Manny Coto joined the staff of this show during Season 5, and co-creator Brannon Braga did the same in Season 7. Whether by coincidence or not, Enterprise stars Connor Trinneer and John Billingsley had bit parts in Season 7.
• Promoted Fanboy: Leighton Meester appeared in a couple of Season 4 episodes. She was a huge fan of the show and was ecstatic to hear that her character would get killed off.
  • Senator John McCain, an avowed fan who considered himself "a Jack Bauer type", had an uncredited, non-speaking cameo in a Season 5 episode.
• Real-Life Relative: The actors who played George Mason and Nina Myers married between the first and second season, making the interrogation between them in the latter rather interesting to watch.
• Role Reprise: As it takes place between Days 2 and 3, but was released during the run of Day 5, a lot of people whose characters had been killed or written out of the show returned for The Game. Such as Sarah Wynter (Kate Warner), Paul Schulze (Ryan Chappelle), and Zachary Quinto (Adam Kaufman).
• Shrug of God: The writers have not settled on what the ultimate fate of Wayne Palmer was after the events of Day 6. A newspaper prop in 24: Redemption viewable by freezing the movie indicates he died sometime between the sixth season and the movie, but the writers have stated that for all they know, he might still be alive. As of April 2014, he's labeled as "Deceased" on the 24 wiki.
• Spared by the Cut:
  • Chase Edmunds was also originally slated to die as a result of a botched hand-reattachment operation at the end of the third season, but this was scrapped in the script stage.
  • Agent Aaron Pierce was originally slated to die in the fifth season, but Glenn Morshower blew the producers away with his ad-libbed response of "Is there anything else, Charles?" during a pivotal scene with President Logan late in the season. The writers hastily changed the scripts to keep him alive.
  • Tony Almeida managed to cheat death several times. He was supposed to die when he was shot in the neck in season three, when Mandy detonated the car bomb in season four, in another car bomb in season five and when Christopher Henderson stabbed him with a syringe.
• Stunt Casting:
  • Dennis Hopper as Victor Drazen.
  • Jon Voight as Jonas Hodges.
• Throw It In!: Aaron Pierce addressing President Logan as "Charles" at the end of his "The Reason You Suck" Speech was an ad lib by Glenn Morshower. Gregory Itzin's stunned reaction was the real thing and it was kept in because of how awesome and fitting it was.
• Uncredited Role: Harris Yulin was not credited for his role as Roger Stanton in the second season. Due to some disagreements with the producers over his credit (Yulin wanted his name to be the sole credit when it came up during the Guest Stars credits and not have it shared with another actor's credit, but was refused), leading to him requesting to have his name removed from the credits of each episode he appeared in.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The series was notoriously written on the fly, with the writers starting each season with practically no concrete idea where the thing was going to end up. Initially averted by Season 7, due to the 2007 Writers Strike and a year-long delay, resulting in a much more cohesive, planned-out storyline for that season; however, the final quarter of the season fell right back into it.
• You Look Familiar:
  • The actor who played a mosque door greeter in season 2 also played minor season 4 villain Tomas Sherek.
  • Tony Todd played the detective investigating the death of Alan Milliken in season 3. He then came back season 7 to play General Juma.
  • Michael Bryan French, who played one of the Secret Service agents interrogating Jack during the first season, went on to play a completely different Secret Service agent helping out against Juma's White House invasion eight years later in the seventh season.
  • Averted with Adoni Maropis. He filmed scenes for one episode of Day 4 as the father of the two Arab-Americans Jack and Paul teamed up with before later playing Abu Fayed, one of the main antagonists of Day 6. However, his scenes for Day 4 were deleted (though can be viewed on the DVD set), leaving Fayed as his only character to actually appear in the series.

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