17 Sons Of Anarchy Easter Eggs You Totally Missed
1. The Original Clay Morrow
As is often the case with pilot episodes of television shows that are marketed to networks and sold to eventually become a full series, not every actor makes it to the fully realised show. Think of the pilot as the same kind of thing as a demo record, created to hawk around to potential buyers, who would then work it up into something they wanted to sell - or in this case, broadcast.
Some pilots go on to become the first episode of the finished show, whilst some are completely reshot or even rewritten. You'll find old, scary alternate universe pilots of successful TV shows dotted all over the internet, with weird script diversions and the wrong actors in the wrong roles. Such a fate could have befallen Sons Of Anarchy, as initially veteran actor Scott Glenn was cast in the role of Clay Morrow, the president of the MC and prime mover for the majority of the conflict in the first few seasons of the show: when they decided to recast the role after the pilot episode was completed, all of Glenn's scenes were reshot with new actor Ron Perlman.
Well, not all of the scenes. For budgetary reasons, the warehouse explosion at the climax of the pilot couldn't be refilmed, so it was left in the version of the episode that made it to broadcast including the shots of members of SAMCRO running away and covering their heads. It's set at night, so it's difficult to see clearly, but Scott Glenn is in the foreground. If you have a digital copy, you can scoot forward to just after 50:00 and see for yourselves.
If you're a really fanatical fan, you'll be able to recognise a familiar silhouette in the background of the shot, too. That's Emilio Rivera, otherwise known as Marcus Alvarez, the head of rival Latino MC The Mayans. Rivera was originally cast in the pilot as a member of the Sons Of Anarchy MC, before his role was dropped or recast: Sutter liked him so much that when the show was called to series, he recast him in another role.
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Do you know of any other in-jokes, references etc that we've missed? Tell us all about 'em in the comments!