But that’s not all! This episode is packed with little quirks. For example, when Gilligan disguises himself inside a tree trunk, a woodpecker starts pecking at his head. Fun detail, right? Except, woodpeckers don’t actually live on oceanic islands.
The original theme song left out The Professor and Mary Ann
It’s safe to say that the castaways wouldn’t have lasted long without The Professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), who were often the brains and voices of reason on the show.
But when the show first premiered, the two were uncredited in the opening and left out of the theme song, referred to simply as “the rest.”
However, thanks to their growing popularity with fans, and at the behest of series star Bob Denver, “the Professor and Mary Ann” were added to the opening starting in season 2.
The boat was named after an FCC chairman
Fans remember that their wrecked tour boat was called the S.S. Minnow, but it wasn’t named after the fish — it was reportedly named after FCC chairman Newton Minow.
Minow is most famous for describing American television as a “vast wasteland” due to what he saw as poor quality programming. Series creator Sherwood Schwartz decided to name the shipwreck after him as a tongue-in-cheek dig.
So Sorry, My Island
In the memorable episode So Sorry, My Island, we see the first appearance of Vito Scotty as a World War II Japanese sailor — only he doesn’t know the war has long been over. Arriving in a one-man submarine, he comes ashore and takes the castaways captive.
