Ensemble Dark Horse: Ben/X5-493 only appeared in one episode, but proved popular with the fans and with the writers, so much so that they decided to bring Jensen Ackles back as his clone, albeit with a very different personality. They planned to introduce the character of Alec either way (if Jensen had been unavailable, he'd have been unrelated to Ben), but preferred to have Jensen play him. As noted on the main page under "Muscles Are Meaningless", it was the same producer who'd objected to casting him before who now wanted him back after seeing him act. In fact, the episode "Pollo Loco" was so well received that the series was renewed for a second season on the promise of "more like this!".
Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Max being paired with Logan Cale in canon, Max/Alec is far more popular in fanfiction. Many fans see their bickering as Belligerent Sexual Tension. Others see it just as bickering and find the idea of them together squicky because Alec is the identical twin brother of Max's adoptive brother Ben, even if he and Max are Not Blood Siblings.
Fics where Max goes into heat around Alec and he responds as a male cat would to a female cat in heat.
Crossovers with Supernatural where Alec somehow became Dean Winchester (which requires a change in the time setting, since Supernatural is set in the present day and Dark Angel is set 20 Minutes into the Future). Or where Dean was the source of Alec and Ben's DNA (which is more plausible).
Fics where Ben and Alec actually get to meet, such as by Ben being revived or an AU where they grew up together in the first place. May be combined with the Supernatural crossover; more than one of them has Dean and Sam finding young Ben and Alec.
Harsher in Hindsight: At one point in "Pollo Loco", Max angrily calls her psychotic Serial Killer sibling Ben a "genetic mistake". In Season 2 we're introduced to his clone twin Alec, who's perfectly sane, and mentions to her that Manticore determined whatever went wrong with Ben was not genetic.
Normal confessing to "gladiator" dreams about Alec in "Fuhgeddaboudit". Also a Funny Moment.
In the same episode, hypnotic transgenic Mia compels Logan and Alec to tell each other what they like about each other and then hug. Coming to their senses they find themselves in the middle of a close, warm embrace, turn to see Sketchy watching them like a voyeur, and try to shrug it off in macho fashion, with Alec tapping Logan on the chest and saying, "Okay. Later," before walking off. Of course, that "okay, later" could be misread a certain way, too.
In another episode, Alec tells Max that he loves Logan, adding "but not the way you love him".
Occasionally one finds people on the Internet who think Max goes by the name "Dark Angel". She doesn't. The title is a reference to her dark past, dark complexion, angelic features, and job as a bike messenger ("angel" literally means "messenger").
"Angel" because from the pilot onwards she becomes a (beautiful female) hero to the downtrodden, and "Dark" because she has bleak past as a government-engineered super-soldier/assassin, and a somewhat dubious present as a part-time cat burglar, and not of the Robin Hood variety.
The angel-messenger connection is made explicit in "Art Attack" when she prevents a man from committing suicide and introduces herself as a messenger, which he thinks means "of the Lord".
Many people on forums confess to only watching for Jensen Ackles, usually after becoming Supernatural fans. Unfortunately, this often means they watch only "Pollo Loco" and Season Two, and thus don't appreciate that the rest of Season One is also good. And if you search Tumblr for "dark angel", the majority of results are Alec pics.
Both Sky One and SyFy in the UK (when it was still Sci-Fi) implied in their trailers that the main reason to be watching was Jessica Alba. This proved to be the case for a lot of people (and unlike Jensen Ackles, she appears in every single episode).
Moral Event Horizon: Normal crosses it when he attempts to turn in Max as a suspected transgenic in "Blah Blah Woof Woof." The fact he does it for something so mundane as cash moves him from simply being a Pointy-Haired Boss to being a genuinely repulsive human being with no loyalty to anyone. Worse, he gets nothing more than the runaround from Max's (technically Logan's) Friend on the Force.
The Problem with Licensed Games: A beat-em-up game was released for the PS2 and Xbox in 2002 after the series was cancelled. While the voice acting is decent, the game is repetitive and has some major problems with its stealth mechanics.
Michael Weatherly, who played Logan Cale, would later be cast as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo on NCIS, a role he held for thirteen years. Interestingly, Weatherly has said that he based his performance as Tony partly on Jensen Ackles's Alec. Later, he went on to play the title character of Bull.
Logan's ex-fiancée Daphne was played by Samantha Smith, who would go on to play Mary Winchester (Dean's mother) on Supernatural.
Max's (and Ben's) sister Syl was Nicki Aycox, who played the recurring demon Meg on Supernatural.
Ty Olsson, who plays the Berrisfords' bodyguard in "The Berrisford Agenda", would later play Captain Aaron Kelly on Battlestar Galactica and eventually be reunited with Jensen Ackles as Dean's vampire friend Benny in Supernatural.
Alec's doomed love interest Rachel Berrisford was Meghan Ory, known for playing Ruby/Red Riding Hood on Once Upon a Time among others, including a guest spot as a vetala on Supernatural.
Speaking of BSG, the Cylons must have landed on Earth after all: Rick Worthy (Simon) guest stars as Detective Clemente in the finale, Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben) is the town sheriff in "Exposure", where Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) plays a suspicious hotel manager, Rekha Sharma (Tory Foster) is Logan's recurring hospital contact Dr Beverly Shankar, and Grace Park (Boomer and Athena) plays an X5 in the premiere of Season 2 (the one whose breeding partner "failed to meet the minimum mission requirements").
Years after playing Lydecker's backstabbing second-in-command Agent Sandoval on Dark Angel, Fulvio Cecere played the even more unpleasantPegasus officer Lt Thorne on BSG.
Nicki Clyne played an X6 teen named Fixit in the episode "Bag 'Em" years before going on to play Specialist Cally in Battlestar Galactica. Funnily, both characters are Wrench Wenches.
Alessandro Juliani, best known as Lt Felix Gaeta in BSG, played recurring Jam Pony employee Druid in the first season of Dark Angel and one late episode of the second. And Adam the first man himself on Supernatural.
William Gregory Lee (Zack) went on to star in the steamy Dante's Cove as gay sorcerer Ambrosius.
Nicole Bilderback (Brin) played the unnamed member of Cordelia's posse of "Cordettes" whom the Master demonstrated his blood-draining machine on in the alternate reality of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Wish". Lisa Ann Cabasa (Tinga) played a likewise unnamed injured Potential Slayer in the last three episodes of Buffy's seventh season.
Fans may recognize Martin Cummins (Agent Ames White) as the duplicitous escaped criminal Aden Corso in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Forsaken". Conversely, thanks to Kevin Durand's dogboy makeup, fans will likely not recognize Joshua as Lord Zipacna from three episodes of SG-1 unless they zero in on his voice.
White's underling Otto Gottlieb is played by Craig Veroni, who later was Dr Peter Grodin, a prominent scientist in the first season of Stargate Atlantis and target for McKay's sarcasm until his Heroic Sacrifice during the Wraith siege.
The Scrappy: Asha was one of Logan's contacts who was introduced in the second season purely to drive a romantic wedge between Max and Logan. That of course pissed off the shippers. Meanwhile she had no interesting personality or skills of her own.
9/11 happened between seasons, and suddenly, portraying the government as evil, portraying the police as evil, or portraying America as evil could all lead to spectacular backlash. All those aspects had to be toned down, even though they're all necessary in a Cyberpunk setting.
Max and Logan admitted their feelings to each other but the writers wanted to keep the dramatic tension, so Max was infected with a person-specific virus that kept her and Logan from touching. Instead of the flirty Will They or Won't They? of the first season, the audience got romantic Wangst.
Max and Original Cindy's social lives disappeared along with a large part of their social circle. Instead of hanging out with their friends and dealing with dystopic city life, Max spent all of her time getting Alec and Joshua out of trouble and whining about it. Great for Jensen Ackles fans, bad for everyone else.
Most importantly, the cheese was gone, along with the Totally Radical. No more stories about Max going into heat and having to distract herself, or making enough money to bribe the police, or rescuing her friends from Japanese gangsters. Instead it was all about collecting lost transgenics, which were too serious and low budget to be exciting, and not fun enough to make up for it. Not that the show wasn't about finding lost transgenics before, the first season was about Max trying to find her family, but she did other stuff as well. The only Season 2 episodes revolving around busting human-on-human crime are "Brainiac" and "Fuhgeddaboudit", and that's accomplished with the help of the transgenics of the week (Brain and Mia respectively).
Despite this, the show actually was renewed for a third season until Fox suddenly changed their minds and put Firefly in its slot instead.
The Woobie: Joshua. Between having to kill his deranged brother Isaac to protect Max and Ames White murdering his girlfriend Annie, it's a wonder he's still gentle and well-adjusted.
For the Band
Broken Base: A lot of it between their first two and latter two albums, but the main points of contention are Don Doty vs. Ron Rinehart and the general decrease in brutality after Darkness Descends.
Sequel Displacement: It's not by any means the best (neither in fame or in quality), but there was indeed an album before Darkness Descends. Not helping matters is that one of the songs on the album was recorded again for Descends.
Signature Song: "Merciless Death" or "The Burning of Sodom".
