10 TV Shows Made With INSANE Restrictions
5. The Fonz Could Only Wear A Leather Jacket When A Motorcycle Was Nearby - Happy Days
It's impossible to picture Happy Days' The Fonz (Henry Winkler) without his signature black leather jacket, but this became a major bone of contention with ever-twitchy ABC executives.
Beyond being a clothing convention of the "greaser" stereotype that The Fonz fundamentally was, ABC felt that it also indicated Fonzie was a criminal... for some reason.
And so, Winkler was forced to wear different-coloured windbreaker jackets throughout the first season in order to shake that association, before frustrated creator Garry Marshall convinced ABC to let him wear the leather.
But the network had one quite ridiculous requirement - Winkler could only wear it in scenes where the Fonz's motorcycle was visible, and so Marshall ensured that a motorcycle factored into basically every scene Fonzie was ever in.
Hilariously though, Winkler himself didn't actually know how to ride a motorbike, and so he was almost never shown riding it throughout the series.