YMMV / Barney Miller S 2 E 08

• Hilarious in Hindsight: The episode's B-Plot revolves around Fish being mistakenly declared dead. In Real Life, Fish's actor, Abe Vigoda would later have numerous false reports of his death circulate in the mass media, the most famous being People Magazine erroneously declaring him dead in 1982. He took the report with good humor, including posing for a picture of him sitting up in a coffin. The periodic mistaken reports of his "death" (others happened in 1987) became something of a Running Gag, to the point that a parody website was set up in 2001 with the express purpose of showing Vigoda's current status of life. When he died for real in 2016, some media outlets took (respectful) pains to let people know that this was real and not another error.