You Got It, Dude: Secrets About ‘Full House’ Fans Always Wanted to Know

The role of Danny Tanner was originally played by John Posey.

Admittedly this isn't a great revelation, but it’s still pretty mind-blowing when you think about how different things could have been. The original intention was to cast Bob Saget in the role of Danny Tanner, but he was contractually tied to The Morning Program on CBS, so the producers had to look elsewhere. Eventually, they signed John Posey for the pilot episode. After filming was done, it just didn’t feel right, and with Bob suddenly being available, the casting was changed. In recent years, John played Judge Bill Millstone in How to Get Away With Murder, and Dr. Conrad Fenris in Teen Wolf (the MTV series). Bob, of course, was so good as Danny that no one could imagine anyone else in the role (unless they watched that first pilot, which was released as part of the first season’s DVD collection).

"I have no idea whether I was good in that pilot or not," John admitted to Yahoo Entertainment. "It was all very new to me. Full House was very, you know, sweet and different and unlike the sitcoms that I was watching when I was growing up, which was All in the Family and Chico and the Man and Welcome Back, Kotter, things that were very cynical. This show was quite different. Overall I thought everything was pretty decent. And the show went. [ABC] picked it up with me, and everything was fine, until about a month or so later when I heard otherwise."

Uncle Jesse had a different name.

Did you know that John Stamos' Uncle Jesse’s name was originally Adam Cochran? That was the plan, but the producers listened to John's desire for the character to more closely resemble his own Greek heritage, thus he was Jesse Cochran, which became Jesse Katsopolis.

Laziness actually resulted in the creation of Full House.

Series creator Jeff Franklin, who recently departed Fuller House under controversial circumstances, had detailed that Full House came to him out of a desire to stop writing for other people’s shows, and a need to actually own what he was writing. He told Variety, "I came up with possibly the laziest idea for a sitcom ever, a show called House of Comics about three single guys sharing a house trying to make it as stand-ups. The Lorimar TV guys asked me who are the characters? I said whoever we cast, because they will be playing themselves. (Told you it was lazy.) ABC wanted to meet with me, but asked if I could please come in with a family show. So I made one guy a widower with three kids, and thought let’s make one a baby, because hey, that’s one less character to write. The three ‘dads’ morphed into a comic, a sportscaster and a rocker, because I like comedy, sports and rock ’n’ roll. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized my lazy idea had accidentally turned into a very strong premise for a TV comedy."

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are fraternal twins, which almost became a problem.

The belief, for the most part, is that Mary-Kate and Ashley are identical twins, but the truth is that they are fraternal. For the first few seasons, this didn’t matter with them both playing Michelle Tanner — those differences were kind of subtle — but come to the sixth season, and the differences were becoming more noticeable. There were rumblings from behind the scenes that Ashley would be let go and only Mary-Kate would play the character. It was John Stamos who insisted that this not happen, which is ironic when you consider that their incessant crying when they were babies made him want them off the show! He had a change of heart then, though, and the rest is history.

Comet was a total movie star in his own right.

The Tanner family dog, the golden retriever named Comet, was actually a movie star after the show finished its run, playing the lead role in both Air Bud and Air Bud 2. Unfortunately Comet — whose real name was Buddy — died from synovial cell sarcoma in 1998. His memory certainly lives on in the hearts of his TV family and fans.

It seems the troublemakers on set were the adults.

You'd think dealing with all those kids would be a behind-the-scenes problem on the show, but, as it turns out, it was actually the adults. As Bob Saget noted to The New York Post, "Dave, John, and I would egg each other on and we were often driven to outbursts of non-family-friendly humor. When this happened, the producers and the parents of the kids would take us up to the conference room for a good talking-to." Apparently, another problem was Dave Coulier’s tendency to pass gas, but no criticism here; we’ll just turn the other… cheek.

The WB would have picked the show up for Season 9.

ABC had made the decision to cancel Full House at the conclusion of its eighth season, but The WB was definitely interested in picking it up. Those plans fell through, however, when both Candace Cameron and John Stamos made it clear that they weren’t crazy about the idea of continuing.

John Stamos has finally embraced the legacy of Full House.

Of all the cast members, it was John Stamos who made the most noise about wanting to get out of Full House, but as a producer and star of the spin-off, he has truly come to recognize the importance of the show to people. "Me, more than any of them, was the first guy to say, 'I don’t want anything to do it,'" he related to wtop.com. "When I realized there was no getting away from it, I embraced it. I'm glad I did." Years ago, he added, the show wasn't acclaimed and wasn't number one all the time, and was certainly never on the cover of magazines, or got nominated for awards. "We weren't hip, we weren't cool. There wasn't social media, so we didn't know how important it was. You couldn't just post a picture and see how many people liked it; you had to go to the mall to see if you were popular. So it's nice to sit back and go, 'Oh, this did mean something.'"

The end of Full House might have played a role in Jodie Sweetin's personal struggles.

Full House came to a close in 1995, and actress Jodie Sweetin was, on the one hand, looking to live as a normal teenager, attending high school and college. But during that time though, she also found herself lost, and drifted into the world of drug addiction. As she explained to Good Morning America, "There is a certain sense of loss when a series ends. It is kind of hard to figure out who you are when you've lost your job at age 13, when that was basically how you identified yourself." Admirably, she eventually kicked the habit and has rebuilt her life, which, in a perfect example of the circle of life, has led her to reprising the role of Stephanie Tanner on Netflix's Fuller House.

This whole thing is pretty mind-blowing to Scott Weinger.

One of the returnees to Fuller House has been Scott Weinger as DJ's boyfriend Steve Hale, a role he brought back to the new show first in a recurring capacity and, now, as a regular. He has also been the voice of Disney's Aladdin in the animated film, sequels, TV series, video games and so on for all of these years. When the film celebrated its 25th-anniversary last year, we spoke to him about the fact that somehow both Aladdin and Full House are still very much a part of his life.

"It's crazy," he laughed. "I always knew that Aladdin was going to be this classic movie that we'd still be talking about all these years later, just because Disney has a tradition of making those kind of movies. But the Fuller House thing is mind-blowing. There's two things: One, it’s still so much in the zeitgeist that kids grow up watching and they’re and they’re so obsessed with the original show. The fact that it's all happening kind of at the same time is so weird. So bizarre. At the start of Fuller House, they'd need me to be available on such-and-such a date, but I can't be available because I’m busy doing something for Aladdin and vice-versa. I'm, like, 'What year is this? How is this happening that Aladdin and Full House are fighting for my time?' But it’s awesome. I have to tell you, I’m enjoying every second of it."

Mary-Kate and Ashley have completely distanced themselves from the show.

There's never been any explanation for this given, but it seems that both Mary-Kate and Ashley have a problem with Full House and, especially, its spin-off. The duo refused to attend a 25th-anniversary reunion of the cast, and they've basically ignored all invitations to be a part of Fuller House. Is there something mysterious going on there? For her part, Candace, when asked by Glamour about the question she was tired of being asked, responded, "Stop asking us about Mary-Kate and Ashley. There are no hard feelings at all, but let's just move on. If they show up, great, but if they don’t, we have this awesome, amazing show that the audience isn't missing anything because it’s so full as it is." So there!

Fuller House is like "comfort food" to the one and only Kimmy Gibbler.

In its third season, Fuller House is going like gangbusters on Netflix, having connected with audiences from the beginning. Actress Andrea Barber, who plays Kimmy Gibler, pretty much stopped acting when the original series went off the air, but found herself drawn back based on the wonderful experience she had on that show. As to why this version has been so well received, she related to Backstage.com, "It’s like comfort food. Audiences crave the familiarity, the beloved characters, and the same family themes we had on Full House. There is comfort in nostalgia. Our show has always been about family and love — family that may or may not be biologically related to each other, but family that is comprised of people who unconditionally love and support one another. I think at the core, everyone wants to be part of a family like that."

One cast member hopes the new show never ends.

Candace Cameron Bure is making no secret of the fact that she’s the one who is having a really great time on Fuller House and finds it such a comfortable place to be that she’s more than happy to stay there for a while. She enthuses to Vanity Fair, "I hope there's a Fullest House. I hope it never ends. We'll just keep rebooting it. And then our kids will grow up, and we'll get to be grandparents. Who knows? As long as people love it, and as long as it's producing good content, is as long as I'll be on it."