106 Fun Facts About Fringe

Which three people created Fringe?

J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci dreamed up Fringe while making the 2009 Star Trek film, which Abrams directed from a script by the other two.

What is the name of the cow Walter keeps in his Harvard lab?

Gene is the cow Walter demands for his reopened lab in the pilot; Peter explains that cows are close enough to humans genetically to stand in as test subjects.

Which FBI colleague of Olivia's is killed and impersonated by a shapeshifter in Fringe's second-season premiere?

Charlie Francis is murdered by a shapeshifter that takes his form and burns the body in a hospital furnace; a few episodes later Olivia has to kill the impostor wearing her friend's face.

Fringe's Observers can barely taste anything, so what do they smother their food in?

Hot sauce and peppers: in his first big scene an Observer orders a raw roast beef sandwich with eleven jalapeños, then drowns it in Tabasco and black pepper.

What style of hat do the bald, pale men in dark suits wear throughout Fringe?

Fedoras top the Observers' uniform, and the show hid one of these watchers somewhere in every episode, often as a blink-and-miss cameo in the background.

Who plays Peter Bishop?

Joshua Jackson had auditioned for Captain Kirk in Abrams' Star Trek film; he missed out, but believed that audition helped win him the part of Peter.

In which city is the prime universe's Fringe Division based?

Boston is where it all starts: an airliner full of dead passengers lands itself at the city's Logan Airport, and Olivia joins the task force sent to find out why.

What is the name of the biotechnology giant founded by Walter's former partner?

Massive Dynamic grew into a giant worth billions under William Bell; when he dies, his will hands the whole company to Walter, his old lab partner.

Who plays Nina Sharp, the executive who runs Bell's company?

Blair Brown plays Nina Sharp, whose past changes when season four rewrites the timeline: in the new version she adopted Olivia and her sister as children.

Which Star Trek legend plays Walter's former lab partner?

Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek's Spock, plays William Bell, who dies at the end of season two by turning his own body into the fuel that sends Walter and Peter home.

What is the name of Olivia Dunham's sister in Fringe?

Rachel comes to stay with Olivia during season one after her marriage breaks down, bringing her young daughter Ella with her.

What pet name does Walter use for his old lab partner?

Belly is Walter's name for William Bell, who returns in season three, after his death, by taking over Olivia's body, giving Walter one more chance to work beside him.

Who plays Astrid Farnsworth?

Jasika Nicole plays Astrid Farnsworth, the junior FBI agent whose name Walter mangles into Asterix, Aspirin and Ostrich.

Which nootropic drug did Walter test on Olivia as a child?

Cortexiphan was the drug Walter and his partner gave to children in a daycare trial; in Olivia it leaves a latent ability to cross between universes.

Which body of water in New York state is the geographic center of the Pattern?

Reiden Lake is where Walter opened his door to the other universe in 1985, and the weak spot he tore there is what the Pattern's strange cases radiate from.

What does the German acronym ZFT stand for in English?

ZFT is Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie, Destruction through Advancement of Technology; Walter traces its manifesto to a typewriter in his own lab and to his old partner.

Who plays ZFT leader David Robert Jones?

Jared Harris plays Jones, who is cut in half crossing between universes in the season-one finale yet returns alive in season four's altered timeline.

Why did Walter cross to the parallel universe in 1985?

Walter crossed to cure the other side's Peter after his own son died of the same illness; he then brought the boy back with him.

What nickname do the prime-universe characters give Walter's parallel counterpart?

Walternate is Walter's own coinage for his double, a harder man bent on getting back the son our Walter took from him.

What government post does Walter's counterpart hold?

U.S. Secretary of Defense is the other Walter's post, and it puts that universe's more militant Fringe Division under his direct command.

What nickname does Walter give the parallel universe's Olivia?

Fauxlivia is what Walter and the team call the other Olivia after she spends weeks posing as ours; the show borrowed the name from fans, while its writers called her Bolivia.

What is the name of Peter's son with the parallel Olivia?

Henry is born in the other universe, where his grandfather uses a sample of the baby's blood to switch on the Machine; once the timeline is rewritten, the boy never existed.

What does Peter use the Machine to create at the end of season three?

Peter uses the Machine to open a bridge between the two universes so both sides can work together; he then vanishes from the timeline.

Which agent, played by Seth Gabel, is part of the season-four Fringe team?

Lincoln Lee, played by Seth Gabel in both universes, joins the prime team in season four after a shapeshifter kills his FBI partner.

In which country is David Robert Jones imprisoned when Olivia first visits him?

Jones is held incommunicado in a prison in Frankfurt, Germany, when Olivia first questions him in season one; he later escapes it by teleporting out.

How does Walter stop Bell's plan in Fringe's season-four finale?

Walter shoots Olivia to stop her powers fuelling the collapse of the two universes; the drug still in her body heals the wound.

What is the title of Fringe's season-three finale?

The Day We Died closed season three in May 2011, with Peter living through a doomed future inside the Machine before coming back to change it.

What name is given to the Observers' 2015 massacre of humans as they seize control in Fringe?

The Purge wiped out much of humanity in 2015, when the Observers stopped merely watching history and took it over, leaving the survivors under their rule.

What becomes of Peter and Olivia's grown daughter partway through Fringe's final season?

She is killed by an Observer soon after freeing her parents; enraged, Peter puts Observer technology into his own head to hunt her killer.

Before sealing his team in amber, how did Walter record his plan to defeat the Observers in Fringe?

On Betamax videotapes: Walter sealed the tapes in amber too, so the freed team has to dig them out of his old lab one by one to learn each next step of the plan.

Who turns out to be "Donald", the man who helped Walter prepare his plan?

Donald is September, the Observer who long watched over the Bishops; stripped of his abilities and made fully human, he took the name Donald.

In Fringe, what do scientists of the future sacrifice for greater intelligence, creating the Observers?

Emotion was the price: the plan is to carry the boy Michael, who has both feeling and intellect, to the year 2167 so the scientists drop the experiment and the Observers never exist.

What did Nina Sharp lose when she tried to stop Walter crossing universes in 1985?

An arm: the portal snapped shut on it as she grabbed at Walter, and William Bell replaced it with the high-tech prosthetic she wears for the rest of the series.

What is the lead Observer antagonist of 2036 called?

Captain Windmark, played by Michael Kopsa, leads the occupation's hunt for the Fringe team and is finally killed by Olivia's telekinesis in the finale.

In Fringe's parallel universe the Twin Towers still stand, so which of these landmarks did its 9/11 attacks hit instead?

The White House was hit instead: a newspaper Olivia reads on the other side has the Obamas preparing to move into the rebuilt one, while the Twin Towers still dominate the skyline.

How is Manhattan spelled in Fringe's parallel universe?

Manhatan, with a single t, is how the other side spells it, and its skyline differs too: on that side the Twin Towers never fell.

What do the glyph images shown before each commercial break in Fringe secretly do?

Spell out a hidden word: each glyph stands for a letter, a substitution cipher that Julian Sanchez of Ars Technica cracked in 2009, finding one themed word per episode.

What is the title of Fringe's two-part second-season finale?

Over There, split into two parts, ended season two with Walter and Olivia crossing to the other universe to bring Peter home.

What hidden phrase flashes for one frame in the opening sequence?

The words 'Observers are here' flash for a single frame in the title sequence, visible only by pausing the opening.

What element is found at high levels in shapeshifter blood?

Mercury runs through shapeshifter blood and turns it silvery, the tell-tale sign that separates one of these machine hybrids from the human it copies.

What device do the shapeshifters use to communicate with the parallel universe?

The shapeshifters type messages on an old Selectric typewriter that is quantum-entangled with a twin on the other side, which answers in the mirror.

What is the official designation of the sealing substance used in the parallel universe?

Amber 31422 is the official name for the quarantine amber on the other side; those sealed inside are alive, a fact hidden from the public.

What did the First People's book call the Machine?

The First People's text calls the Machine the Vacuum, a device of creation and destruction; the coordinates of its buried parts were hidden in numbers-station broadcasts.

Who are the First People revealed to be?

The First People turn out to be future versions of Walter's team, who sent the dismantled Machine millions of years into the past through a wormhole.

Under what pseudonym was the First People book in Fringe published?

Seamus Wiles is an anagram of Samuel Weiss, whose family guarded the First People's secrets; Nina spots the trick in the authors' names and confronts the present-day Sam Weiss.

What is Sam Weiss's day job?

Bowling alley manager Sam Weiss doubles as Olivia's unlikely therapist: Nina sends her to him, and his cure includes collecting business cards whose letters spell 'you're gonna be fine'.

Who is the leader of the shapeshifters, played by Sebastian Roché?

Thomas Jerome Newton, the shapeshifters' leader, borrows his name from Bowie's alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth; he kills himself in season three.

Which rare mineral does David Robert Jones mine in Fringe's fourth season to merge the two universes?

Amphilicite powers the devices Jones plants around the town of Westfield, which merge a patch of the two universes and wipe the town out; the stockpile he mined could do far worse.

Which real building's exterior stood in for Bell's company headquarters?

7 World Trade Center, rebuilt after the original fell on 9/11, supplies the exterior of the company's headquarters, in a show whose parallel universe never lost its Twin Towers.

Which mode of transport is common in the parallel universe?

Zeppelins rule the other side's skies because, the showrunners reasoned, the Hindenburg never blew up there, so airships went on to dock at the Empire State Building as once planned.

Under what alias did Walter's old partner perform brain surgery on him?

Dr. Simon Paris was the name he used to cut away Walter's knowledge of how to cross universes, an operation Walter had asked for himself and then forgot.

What was the name of the mental institution Walter was held in?

St. Claire's is where Walter sat for 17 years; only close family may see him there, which is why Olivia first has to track down his estranged son.

In Fringe, what was Walter Bishop's father secretly doing while he worked as a scientist under the Nazis?

Spying for the Allies was Robert Bischoff's secret; decades later a Nazi who once worked beside him turns Bischoff's formula into a poison that picks victims by their DNA, and Walter kills the man with a dose made for him alone.

Which university did Olivia Dunham attend?

Northwestern graduate Olivia first served as a Marine Corps special investigator; her prosecution of Sanford Harris there is why his friend, her future boss, starts out resenting her.

In which Florida city was Olivia experimented on as a child?

Jacksonville was home to the daycare where Walter's drug trials used Olivia as a child; taken back there as an adult, she can pick out objects from the other universe only once she feels afraid.

From which university did Peter falsify a chemistry degree?

Peter faked a chemistry degree from MIT and even published papers under the pretence before the fraud was uncovered.

Where is Peter when Olivia first tracks him down in the pilot?

Olivia finds Peter doing business in Baghdad, Iraq, and blackmails him into flying home by hinting at an FBI file on him; he later works out that she was bluffing.

Which government agency was John Scott secretly working for?

John Scott, who seemed to die a traitor, was an undercover NSA operative, as Olivia learns from his memories in 'The Transformation'; his love for her was real.

In Fringe's pilot, what does Nina Sharp order for John Scott's corpse?

Questioning: told that Scott has been dead for five hours, she replies only 'Question him', and her technicians set about retrieving the memories from his corpse.

Fringe's pilot opens on a doomed transatlantic airliner that took off from which German city?

Hamburg is where Flight 627 took off; by the time its autopilot brings the plane in to land in America, everyone on board is dead.

Which Fox drama's season premiere led into Fringe's second episode?

House opened its fifth season that night and handed Fringe a big lead-in, so the new show's audience grew by almost half in a week, to about 13.3 million.

Why did the cow from Fringe's pilot have to be recast for season one?

Livestock restrictions kept her in Canada once filming moved to the United States, so a lookalike was cast, and the crew talked of using makeup to hide the swap.

Where did Fringe's production move for seasons two to five?

Vancouver became home from season two after New York looked set to drop the film tax credit its budget relied on, a cost-driven move the producers said they did not want; the show stayed until it ended.

Which Fox experiment halved the commercials so that Fringe's season-one episodes ran about six minutes longer?

Remote-Free TV gave Fringe and Dollhouse half the usual ad time; Fox pitched it as leaving viewers less reason to grab the remote and change channel.

To which timeslot did Fox move Fringe midway through season three?

Friday 9 pm became Fringe's slot in January 2011, a night with so deadly a reputation that Fox ran a cheeky promo spoofing the 'death slot'; the show lasted two more seasons there.

Which Fringe ally is the resistance's secret informant, "the Dove"?

Phillip Broyles still commands Fringe Division under the invaders while secretly feeding the resistance; exposed and interrogated in the finale, he is rescued by Peter and Olivia.

Who composed the music for Fringe's pilot before handing off to Chris Tilton?

Michael Giacchino owes his screen career to video games: his scores for titles such as Medal of Honor led to a call to score the spy series Alias; on Fringe he wrote only the pilot.

Who wrote the Fringe theme music?

J. J. Abrams wrote the Fringe theme himself, as he had for Felicity, Alias and Lost, leaving the episode scores to other composers.

Mike McCready, who helped score Fringe's "Northwest Passage", plays guitar in which Seattle band?

Pearl Jam's McCready, a fan of the show, reworked composer Chris Tilton's cues into guitar parts; he reckoned the producers wanted a north-west musician for an episode shot there.

Which two Fringe episodes are 1980s-styled flashbacks with retro title graphics?

'Peter' and 'Subject 13' are the 1985 flashbacks, with retro credits whose far-out topics include personal computing, laser surgery and in vitro fertilisation, all ordinary now.

Who plays the time-travelling scientist Alistair Peck in "White Tulip"?

Peter Weller, RoboCop himself, plays Alistair Peck, a scientist who has wired his own body to travel back in time to save his fiancée.

Which season-two episode is Fringe's only musical?

'Brown Betty' is the season-two musical, made for a Fox week of music-themed episodes; in it Walter spins a singing detective story for Olivia's niece.

What does Walter smoke before telling Ella a noir story in season two?

His own blend of marijuana leaves Walter high while he babysits, so he casts Olivia as a 1940s private eye hunting Peter, a con man who has run off with a glass heart.

Which Fringe episode, made for season one, aired out of order as episode 11 of season two?

'Unearthed' was shot for season one but held back until January 2010, so viewers were startled to see a character alive again months after the show had killed him off.

Why does the season-three Fringe episode "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" turn into a cartoon partway through?

Its guest star had retired from on-camera acting, so the actor behind Walter's old partner agreed to return by voice alone and the scenes inside Olivia's mind were drawn as animation.

Which season-three Fringe episode mixes the blue and red title sequences?

'Entrada' splits its running time between the universes as Olivia escapes the other side, so its opening blends both worlds' title schemes.

Which season-four Fringe episode jumps ahead to an Observer-ruled 2036?

Letters of Transit follows two resistance agents in 2036 instead of the usual team; written before Fox renewed the show, it became the launch pad for the final season.

Who guest-stars as resistance agent Simon Foster when Fringe first jumps to 2036?

Henry Ian Cusick, Desmond on Lost, plays Simon Foster, who sacrifices himself so that Peter can be freed; Cusick had worked with Abrams on that earlier show.

What is the title of Fringe's series finale?

'An Enemy of Fate' ends with Peter opening an envelope from Walter that holds only a drawing of a white tulip, the sign of forgiveness Walter had once hoped for.

Where is the Observer child Michael held in Fringe's penultimate episode?

Liberty Island holds the Observers' secure facility, so Olivia crosses to the parallel universe, travels to the same spot there and crosses back inside its walls.

Who plays Olivia Dunham's younger sister on Fringe?

Ari Graynor plays Olivia's sister, who turns up with her young daughter when her marriage breaks down and moves into Olivia's apartment during season one.

Which Philadelphia-born singer plays the scrapyard seer Simone in the Fringe episode "The Human Kind"?

Jill Scott plays Simone, who has kept an electromagnet at her scrapyard for years because her mother promised a stranger matching Walter's description that someone would come for it.

What do resistance agents break into an Observer-held vault to recover in Fringe's 2036?

A piece of Walter's brain, cut out decades earlier at his own request and stored in the old company vault, is what they need to repair his damaged mind.

What is the title of Fringe's first-season finale?

There's More Than One of Everything closes season one in May 2009 by pulling Olivia into the parallel universe for the first time, just as she decides she has been stood up for a meeting.

Who ran Fringe alone as showrunner for its fifth and final season?

J. H. Wyman ran season five alone after co-showrunner Jeff Pinkner left in 2012, and he wrote and directed the series finale himself.

Which comics imprint published the Fringe prequel comic that launched alongside the show in 2008?

DC's WildStorm released the first issue in August 2008, then held the rest back for months so that the comic could be brought into line with the show's mythology.

What is the title of the Fringe encyclopedia guide released in 2013?

September's Notebook is laid out as an in-world journal of case files and notes kept by one of the show's Observers, hence the title; its authors had earlier compiled the Lost Encyclopedia.

The Fringe episode "Northwest Passage" shares its name with the working title of which cult small-town mystery series?

Twin Peaks was called Northwest Passage while in development; Fringe's episode echoes it with a Washington town, a diner famed for its pies and a stranger helping the local sheriff.

Who plays Peter's mother, Elizabeth Bishop, in both universes?

Orla Brady plays Elizabeth Bishop on both sides: one raises the Peter that Walter brought home as her own and is undone by the secret, while her double is still alive when he returns.

Which cable network began rerunning Fringe in November 2012?

Science bought the reruns a month after Fox granted a 13-episode final season, which took Fringe to 100 episodes, the milestone that makes a show far easier to sell into syndication.

Which media mogul married the aunt of Fringe star Anna Torv?

Rupert Murdoch's second wife was the journalist Anna Torv, the actress's aunt and namesake, which makes the Fringe lead a cousin of Lachlan, James and Elisabeth Murdoch.

Which Fringe co-star did the actress who plays Olivia marry in 2008?

She married Mark Valley, who played John Scott, the partner and lover Olivia loses in the pilot, in December 2008; the couple had split by early 2010.

Which Lord of the Rings character did the actor who plays Walter portray?

He played Denethor, the Steward of Gondor in The Return of the King who, believing his son Faramir dead, tries to burn them both on a funeral pyre.

Which teen drama made the actor who plays Peter famous as Pacey Witter?

Dawson's Creek cast him as Pacey Witter, the title character's best friend, who by the 2003 finale is the one Joey ends up with.

Which real-life doctor did the actor who plays Peter portray in Peacock's Dr. Death?

Christopher Duntsch was a Texas neurosurgeon who left patients maimed and was jailed for life in 2017; Peter's actor took the role after Jamie Dornan left the project.

Which Emmy nomination did Fringe's pilot receive in 2009?

Outstanding Special Visual Effects was the pilot's 2009 nomination; it lost to Heroes, and the show's next Emmy nod, for the sound editing of 'White Tulip', also went unrewarded.

To promote Fringe in 2009, Fox planted a silent, bald Observer in the audience of which talent show?

American Idol viewers spotted the expressionless figure in the crowd, and he also turned up on the sidelines of an NFL playoff and at a NASCAR race, all live Fox broadcasts.

Anna Torv played psychologist Wendy Carr in which Netflix crime drama?

Mindhunter based Wendy Carr on Ann Wolbert Burgess, though it turned the real forensic nurse who helped the FBI shape criminal profiling into a psychology academic.

John Noble played Morland Holmes, the great detective's estranged father, on which CBS crime drama?

Elementary had spoken of Sherlock's wealthy father for three seasons as the man who paired his son with Joan Watson, before Noble finally played him in season four.

Before Fringe, Lance Reddick played Cedric Daniels on which HBO series?

He played Lieutenant, later Commissioner, Cedric Daniels across all five seasons of The Wire, having first auditioned for Bubbles and Bunk.

In Fringe, the phrase "be a better man than your father", which Peter's mother told him nightly, is in which language?

Greek is the language of the phrase Olivia cries out on waking from a coma in the season-two premiere, a message she cannot remember being given.

Who plays the Observer who rescues Walter and Peter from the frozen lake in 1985?

Michael Cerveris, a two-time Tony winner, plays the Observer; one of his kind can be glimpsed somewhere in every episode, often only as a passer-by in the background.

What is the title of Fringe's fifth-season premiere?

Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11 is the device meant to piece together Walter's deliberately scrambled memory of his plan; when the team finally switches it on, it finds nothing.

Who stars in Back to the Future in Fringe's parallel universe?

Eric Stoltz heads the bill at a cinema on the other side; in our world he really was cast as Marty McFly, then replaced by Michael J. Fox weeks into filming.

Abrams named which film about a scientist experimenting on his own mind as an inspiration for Fringe?

Altered States follows a Harvard researcher who drugs himself inside a flotation tank; in Fringe's pilot, Olivia climbs into Walter's own tank to link minds with her comatose partner.

What is the title of Fringe's fourth-season premiere?

Neither Here Nor There opened season four in a timeline where Peter has been erased from both universes' history, with the two sides working uneasily together.