1. The people on Friends were real human beings, but they were actors who had been hired to read from scripts and pretend to be characters with names like “Ross,” “Rachel,” and “Man at Coffee Shop.” They performed in front of cameras on soundstages and their backstories were elaborate fictions.
2. Friends was on NBC, the same TV network that broadcast The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and Caroline in the City.
3. In order to pay for the production of Friends, which was beamed to homes throughout the United States at no charge via radio waves, NBC aired commercial messages from various sponsors in between scenes. The scheme was so successful they actually turned a profit despite paying the actors (see above).
4. There is a park in New York City named “Central Park,” which is almost the same name as the coffee shop “Central Perk.” However, the shop has very little in common with the park, which has many trees and hardly any coffee unless people bring it in with them.
5. The theme song to Friends was played on the radio. The band that performed the song, the Rembrandts, receives royalties every time the song is played on TV or the radio, but not when you think about it in your mind.
6. Webster’s dictionary defines “friends.”
7. In order to pull off the famous “Rachel” hairstyle, barbers needed to use scissors to reduce the length of customers’ hair.
8. Each letter in the title of Friends is different. There are no repeats. The seven letters represent more than 25% of the Roman alphabet.
9. Friends ran for ten seasons.
10. Ross and Rachel, the characters, were in an on-again, off-again relationship, and the characters were sort of selfish about it.
11. The weird one was named Phoebe and the sarcastic one was named Chandler.