20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Sherlock

13. John Watson Was Always An Afghanistan Vet

Taking Sherlock's assistant John Watson and turning him into a military doctor who served in Afghanistan may, to those not au fait with the books, seem like a distinct case of the show modernising its characters; how more 21st Century can you get? But in fact this is a lot closer to the source than you'd expect; Arthur Conan Doyle's Dr. Watson likewise served in Afghanistan, in this case during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. This isn't the only parallel between the two stories; when we first meet Watson in A Study in Scarlet he's just got back from the war having being injured and is in a physically downbeat state. There's another nice, more coincidental link with the character; Martin Freeman's grandfather was actually an army medic in World War II.