MacGyver/Trivia

• Defictionalization: In "Friends", a woman Mac used to know introduces him to her husband, who plays football for The Titans. There was no such team in 1987, but there is now (somewhat more problematically, Mac congratulates the guy on "having a great season" in the present tense in an episode that takes place in March...perhaps they were a USFL team?).
• Reality Subtext: See Written in Infirmity below.
• Real Life Relative: Not quite: MacGyver's grandfather Harry Jackson was played by John Anderson. It's often assumed he was Richard Dean Anderson's real grandfather, due to their resemblance and same last name -- but the two were not actually related.
• Written in Infirmity:
  • Dana Elcar developed glaucoma which led to blindness; Pete Thornton accordingly developed the same condition.
  • "Every Time She Smiles" had MacGyver's arm in a cast from the start, supposedly due to a skiing accident in Switzerland, rather than have him injured somewhere in the middle of the episode. This was because Richard Dean Anderson had injured that arm and needed to have the cast written in. The same injury re-appeared in the next episode, "To Be A Man", with a different backstory.