Reality Subtext - Married… with Children
The writers fully embraced Katey Segal’s first pregnancy as material for that season, and had Peg in-show getting pregnant as well. Unfortunately, this plan did not materialize as perfectly as the writers hoped. Right before the pre-determined birth, Katey suffered a miscarriage. This forced the writers to give the season an All Just a Dream ending. Fans were initially displeased, but after the writers explained the tragic situation behind the season finale, they cooled down and expressed their condolences to Katey Segal. Even though the actress got pregnant again before the show ended, the previous experience scared them away from creating a tie-in plot, and instead opted for a Hide Your Pregnancy approach instead.
Reality Subtext - Harry Potter
The Dementors are the personified result of Rowling’s own battle with depression.
Reality Subtext - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When Angel breaks up with Buffy in the third season, the tears are real. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who considers Angel and Buffy soulmates, apparently cried for so long that the set had to be shut down briefly.
- Similarly, in the episode of Angel where Angel becomes human and he and Buffy have 24 hours of perfect bliss before he voluntarily gives it all up, Gellar was so distraught during filming that viewers can actually hear actor David Boreanaz consoling Sarah by name rather than Angel comforting Buffy. She even asked Joss Whedon to rewrite the scene.
Reality Subtext - Friends
Supposedly, Rachel Green’s pregnancy was written into the plot because Jennifer Aniston expressed her plan to start a family with Brad Pitt.
- The same Joey’s broken arm in another episode.
Reality Subtext - Calvin and Hobbes
One strip features Calvin getting upset over going to bed since it means that he can’t play with Hobbes. Then he realizes that going to sleep doesn’t have to mean being apart because they can always play together in their dreams. Bill Watterson wrote the strip because his cat - who served as the inspiration for Hobbes - had just died, and what made him feel better was realizing that they could always be together in his dreams.
Reality Subtext - Seinfeld
In the episode “The Jacket”, Jerry and George meet Elaine’s father, Alton, and they’re very intimidated by him. Lawrence Tierney, the actor who played Alton scared the Seinfeld cast and crew just as much with his offscreen behavior (he stole a butcher knife from the set and hid it under his jacket), which is why the character never appeared again.
Reality Subtext - The Princess Bride
The reason Mandy Patinkin’s Heroic Resolve was so convincing is a bit of very dedicated method acting. He thought of Rugen in that scene as being the cancer that killed Patinkin’s own Real Life father.
Reality Subtext - Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea
Hayao Miyazaki made Ponyo partly as an apology to his son Goro, who he had publicly feuded with during the production of Tales from Earthsea, Goro’s first movie. Word of Miyazaki is that Sosuke is modeled after young Goro and his mother after his wife, which by logic would make the father who’s always away Miyazaki himself. The Morse code messages the father sends them from his ship when he tells them he’s not coming home yet - “I’m sorry and I love you” - are thus meant for Miyazaki’s family.
Reality Subtext
The Reality Subtext extends past the Fourth Wall to issues surrounding the production itself or on an even larger scale.
During the creation of a work, the rest of the world and its struggles go on. Maybe the author or actor is having relationship issues, drug issues, got pregnant, or someone close to them died. Or something major happened in the world: a disaster, a war, the death or birth of a public figure, a chaotic political climate, what have you.
Often these events have an effect on the work, but not one that is visible to the viewer or reader unless they are privy to that outside knowledge. Some subtext is only speculative, and some comes from first hand sources such as interviews and DVD Commentary. Either way, it is either not intentionally called out within the work, or the reference is oblique except to those who are ‘in on it’.
You ever notice that Batman never goes to the bathroom? Maybe that’s why he’s always grimacing.
Nobody Poops - Sequential Art
Nobody Poops - It’s Grinch Night
In the world of Dr. Seuss, they “go to the euphemism”.
Well, I feel that films — the film industry — has increasingly failed to reflect reality as people live it. No-one goes for a piss in Star Wars, you can watch the whole of Ghostbusters and no-one brushes their teeth, and in Lost in Translation, nothing happens. At all.
Do you know why we never see Jack Bauer go to the bathroom? Because nothing escapes Jack Bauer!
Nobody Poops - Harry Potter
Toilet and bathroom scenes are often quite important, although we never actually see them used for, y’know, what they were designed. Characters will use them to cry, brew illegal potions, talk to ghosts, find secret chambers, decode mermaid messages - anything but the whole defecation thing.
- Moaning Myrtle does mention that people sometimes flush her into the lake through the toilet she haunts, but Harry’s mind shies away from this topic before he can wonder about what happens to her beforehand.
