With The Flash back on TV, let's take a look at 10 things you probably didn't know about
the Scarlet Speedster's show.
According to the show's casting director David Rapaport, before Grant Gustin was cast as
Barry Allen on The Flash, he auditioned to play Thea Queen's boyfriend in the first season
of Arrow!
And Andy Mientus who brings to life the villainous Pied Piper in The Flash initially read for
the role of the Scarlet Speedster.
Oh, and by the way, Robbie Amell, who plays Ronnie Raymond, one half of Firestorm, originally
auditioned for Oliver Queen on Arrow, though, of course, that role went to Stephen Amell,
Robbie's cousin!
Storyboard artist Adrien van Viersen made over 400 boards for The Flash pilot, compared
to only half that number for the Arrow pilot.
According to van Viersen, The Flash is the biggest pilot he and director David Nutter
have ever worked on together, and bear in mind they've made pilots for shows including
Arrow, Smallville, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The Flash is particularly complex as the stunt and visual effects teams have to combine the
“speed force” effects with the live action, and the storyboards are especially useful
for this.
About one-sixth of The Flash is computer animated, and in the pilot there were about 200 visual
effects.
Production designer Tyler Harron based the look of the show's particle accelerator set
on the Large Hadron Collider, though the set is obviously a lot smaller at just 40 foot
by 20 foot.
Also, the treadmill that Barry Allen runs on at S.T.A.R.
Labs was actually built from scratch for the show and can go up to 16 miles an hour!
In an interview at PaleyFest, Grant Gustin said that, at some point in the future, the
S.T.A.R.
Labs treadmill will become the Cosmic Treadmill which, in the DC comics, Barry used to travel
through time.
If you've ever wondered just what the Metahumans locked up under S.T.A.R.
Labs ate, a deleted scene from Season One episode 21, Grodd Lives, revealed the answer!
According to Caitlin Snow, The Weather Wizard is a Thai food fiend, Peak-a-Boo just loves
enchiladas, and Deathbolt is a vegan.
And Dr Snow didn't say who they were but, judging by her food trolley, there were quite
a few Big Belly Burger fans down there too!
Speaking of Big Belly Burger, the fictional fast food chain, which appears in both The
Flash and Arrow TV shows, first appeared in DC Comics back in June 1988 in issue 441 of
The Adventures of Superman.
The Big Belly Burger of the comic books was founded in Coast City, is a subsidiary of
Lex Luthor's LexCorp, and was actually inspired by the real-life Big Boy restaurant chain.
Composer Blake Neely, who scores both The Flash and Arrow, included a special musical
Easter Egg in Tricksters, episode 17 of the first season.
In the episode, Mark Hamill, who appeared in the original live-action TV series of The
Flash in the early 1990s, returned as the villainous James Jesse aka The Trickster.
So, Neely used composer Shirley Walker's Trickster theme which she wrote and conducted for the
1990s show.
And Hamill isn't the only actor from that early Flash show to make a comeback.
Vito D'Ambrosio, who played police officer Anthony Bellows in the original show returned
as the same character for seasons 1 and 2 of the new show, though this time he's Mayor
of Central City.
Amanda Pays also returned as scientist Dr Tina McGee.
And John Wesley Shipp, who plays Barry Allen's father, actually starred as the Scarlet Speedster
in the original series.
Actor Jesse L Martin's character Detective Joe West doesn't actually exist in the comics.
In the comics, Iris's father is either the scientist Ira West or the alcoholic William
West.
But despite the fact Joe West was created especially for the TV series, he almost didn't
even make it to the second episode as the creators were considering killing him off
in the pilot!
And if you've ever wondered why Joe is often seen wearing a black beanie, it was Jesse
L. Martin's idea, partly to give Joe a bit of a different look to NYPD Detective Ed Green,
who Martin played on TV's Law & Order for nearly a decade.
If you've seen the musical Rent though, the beanie may remind you of Martin's character
in that.
Grodd's cage very nearly didn't make it into the show's pilot due to the cost of building
it.
Later when Grodd himself appeared on screen, unlike Peter Jackson's King Kong or the recent
Planet Of The Apes movies, the show did not use performance capture to bring its sizeable
simian star to life.
Instead, visual effects supervisor Armen Kevorkian and his crew at Encore VFX built Grodd from
scratch on the computer, creating his skeleton, then adding muscles, and then skin and fur.
The show's exec producers first gave Kevorkian the heads-up, soon after finishing the pilot,
that Grodd was going to feature in season one.
For inspiration on Grodd's design, the visual effects crew looked at the comic books for
his size and attitude, and at videos of real gorillas too.
Kevorkian also roughly acted out Grodd's moves and facial expressions for the animators,
who sometimes also recorded themselves to check what did and didn't work.
The presence on set of a stunt actor in a large Grodd suit and stilts provided further
inspiration for the gorilla's actions and also helped the crew frame each shot.
Just as the Flash's speed has increased over the course of the series, the rate at which
the show is shot has also sped up.
For example, in the early days, they'd need 20 to 30 takes to film a straightforward shot
of the Flash running.
But now, they often get what they need in just a couple of takes.
When Grant Gustin first started putting on his Flash costume, it took him a whole 40
minutes to suit up, mainly because his mask had to be glued to his face.
However, after episode eight of season one, Gustin got a new mask that looks the same
but slides on with a zipper, which means it now only takes him a speedy 10 to 15 minutes
to slip into his superhero suit.
The original costume, which is mostly made of leather with some added stretchy material
for ease of movement, was designed by Colleen Atwood.
Maya Mani, who designed Arrow's season 4 suit, is behind the changes to The Flash's season
2 costume, which harks back to the comic books with its emblem featuring a lightning bolt
on a white rather than red background.
Now, let me know in the comments below, who are your favourite characters on The Flash?
And what other characters from the comics would you like to see on the show?
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Thanks for watching!
Yippee-ki-yay, TV lovers!