50 best behind-the-scenes facts about ‘The Office’ from the ‘Office Ladies’ podcast

The Office is working overtime to keep fans entertained.

The series finale of the NBC workplace comedy aired in 2013, but nearly a decade later fans are still rewatching the show on streaming platforms, reading firsthand filming accounts in oral histories by Brian Baumgartner and Andy Greene, and learning new behind-the-scenes tidbits from podcasts hosted by cast members.

One of the most insightful Office podcasts, which former co-stars and IRL BFFs Jenna Fischer (Pam Beesly) and Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin) launched in October 2019, is called Office Ladies. In it, the two Office experts rewatch the show episode by episode, share their memories of filming, and reveal intriguing Easter eggs and background details that even the biggest superfans may have missed.

Mashable has been diligently covering the Office Ladies podcast since its first episode, so we’ve learned hundreds of new Office facts over the years. We took a look back at our Office Ladies archive and pulled some of the most interesting tidbits to create a Megalist (like Dwight’s Megadesk but list form, with links to more details) of 50 revelations from the podcast that every Office fan can appreciate. Enjoy!

“I was just sort of bored and I made up a backstory that my character had found this cat in the parking lot,” Kinsey told Fischer in the first Office Ladies episode. She claimed she drew a cat on a piece of paper, passed it to Fischer in the background of a scene, and said, “You’re invited to Sprinkles’ birthday party.”

Fischer stuck the note to Pam’s computer monitor and brought up the party later in the scene when making chit-chat with Jim. “Greg [Daniels, showrunner] honed in on that. He loved it, and then for four seasons we discussed Sprinkles until his untimely death in the freezer,” Fischer said.

Definitely not Meredith.
Credit: Mashable Composite: The Office / NBC / Peacock

Next time you watch Season 1 of The Office, pay special attention to the Dunder Mifflin employees in the background of the pilot. You’ll notice that Meredith Palmer is played by Henriette Mantel, not Kate Flannery, in that first episode.

“A lot of people want to know where did the idea for this episode come from,” Fischer said, before revealing that the episode is based off of a real-life experience of the show’s writer’s assistant, Tom.

When writers were throwing out ideas for episodes, Tom told a story about one of his college classes. Fischer said they had to do “this exercise where they put notecards on their heads that said different ethnicities, and then they had to go around and regard one another as that ethnicity using stereotypes.” Yikes.

Fischer and Kinsey said that every year NBC would require the cast and crew of The Office to attend a sexual harassment seminar in the warehouse. By Season 4 or 5 of the show, the video package used for that training contained clips from The Office that illustrated how not to behave in the workplace

Lieberstein has LEFT the writer’s room.
Credit: Nbc-Tv / Kobal / Shutterstock

The Office Ladies also said that Kevin Reilly, who was head of NBC in 2005 when “Diversity Day” aired, saw the episode and loved the dynamic between Toby and Michael. That’s why Toby became a series regular. NOOOOO, GOD NO!

The Office is full of hidden details and Easter eggs, one of which is a Homer Simpson doll near Phyllis’ desk. Showrunner Greg Daniels used to write for The Simpsons, so it’s a nod to his old job.

The “Health Care” episode in Season 1 shows Dunder Mifflin employees outraged over a horrible plan that Dwight selected for the office. In response to the upset, Dwight asks his colleagues to anonymously submit any medical conditions they’d like covered in their plan. In true Jim and Pam fashion, they turned the opportunity into a prank and submitted fake illnesses with unhinged names, like “hot dog fingers,” which Dwight read aloud to the office.

Turns out “hot dog fingers” was improvised by Wilson, and it made the entire room burst into laughter on the spot. “I remember saying hot dog fingers,” Wilson told Fischer and Kinsey on an episode of Office Ladies. “They left it in the edit — you guys breaking, you guys cracking over these diseases, and it’s truly hysterical.”

While Wilson improvised “hot dog fingers” on set, he said the submission actually came from his friend Kevin, who was visiting the set that day. “[Kevin] was the one who actually threw out hot dog fingers. That’s his claim to fame,” Wilson said.

Remember that scene in “The Alliance” when Dwight hides inside a box in the warehouse for far too long? Rainn Wilson wasn’t in that box for most of the scene. Phil Shea, prop master on The Office for all nine seasons, was the impromptu stuntman scooching and tumbling around in there. Shea said he wore elbow and knee pads and brought along a walkie-talkie for direction. Then, after all the tough scenes were shot, Wilson hopped in a box and busted out as if he’d been trapped in it all along.

A prestigious medal ceremony.
Credit: Screenshot / NBC / Peacock

Just like “Diversity Day,” this Season 2 episode was inspired by a writer’s firsthand experience at an old job. The Office showrunner Greg Daniels was also one of the creators of King of the Hill, and while working on the animated sitcom his assistant, Tim Croston, set up their very own Office Olympics.

“Tim was the mastermind, the self-appointed commissioner… the Jim,” Kinsey said, revealing that the King of the Hill staffers had an entire opening ceremony, a torch, and even wore special shirts to easily distinguish the different team members at the event.

“They marched through the hallways, they had like a banner that each team carried. They had like a full opening ceremony, and you know the doves that you see at the end for our closing ceremonies? They had that. They had doves that went across,” she told Fischer.

“They also had a Twinkie eating contest and Paul Lieberstein (Toby Flenderson) came in second, because Paul was working on King of the Hill at the time as well,” Kinsey said.

Steve Carell is the perfect Michael Scott, but did you know the role almost went to another lovable funny guy? THE Bob Odenkirk. The Better Call Saul star was a top choice for the role, which ultimately went to Carell after the project he was working on (a show called Come to Papa) was canceled. Fischer recalled how Odenkirk prepped for his Michael Scott audition, and though we didn’t get to see Odenkirk run the Scranton branch, we did see him star alongside Fischer in Season 9, Episode 16 of The Office, “Moving On.”

The “Performance Review” cold open featured an iconic Jim Halpert moment that wasn’t written or improvised. It was completely accidental. The episode opens with a shot of Jim and Dwight at their desks. Dwight is distracting Jim by bouncing up and down on his new “fitness orb,” which he claims has “completely” changed his life and revolutionized his ab workouts.

As Dwight goes on about core strength and the benefits of using an exercise ball, which include “more enjoyable sex,” Jim grows increasingly annoyed, and after learning the orb only costs $25 he decides to stab it with a pair of scissors.

“They did 13 takes and it worked just right and everyone was ready to move on,” Fischer said, but prop master Phil Shea decided to remind everyone he still had one more ball left. Director Paul Feig replied, “Oh what the heck, let’s just do one more,” and that’s when the magic happened.

“In all the 13 takes, Rainn slowly sunk to the ground,” Kinsey said, but on the last take, John accidentally hit the seam of the ball with the scissors and the entire thing popped.

“You can see the shock on Rainn’s face, and he fell to the floor,” Fischer said. “We were all completely shocked, like, ‘oh my god.’ And you can totally see John break — his shoulders — and very quickly, [because] he’s such a pro, he turns his back and just leaves.”

It’s one of the great unsolved mysteries of The Office: What the heck did Jim write in his teapot note to Pam? In the Season 2 “Christmas Party” episode, Pam received a teapot from her Secret Santa, Jim. Before she noticed the card that went with said gift, however, Jim stealthily tucked it in his back pocket and fans didn’t see it again until he handed it to Pam to read in the final season. 

So what was in the note? Fischer says she’ll never tell, but she at least gave us a hint.

“I’m going to say something that I’ve never said before, I also feel like I’m maybe going to cry, sort of,” Fischer told Kinsey on the podcast. “I’m the only one who knows [what was written in the note] and John knows.”

“In that episode in Season 9, I believe Greg [Daniels] suggested to John that he write a personal message from himself to me just saying what our time together on The Office meant to him, because we were wrapping up filming,” she said. “We were wrapping up the series and we were all so emotional at that time, you know? And so that was his goodbye.”

“So I’m on camera and I open up this note that John’s written to me, and I just start crying. I just start bawling. The first take was probably not usable,” she said. “It was the sweetest note and you know on camera Pam says, ‘I’ll never say what it said but just know it was perfect?’ Well I’ll never say exactly what John wrote, but I will say just know it was perfect.”

Fischer went on to compare the genuine emotion in the card-opening scene to another memorable moment from the Season 7 episode, “Goodbye, Michael.”

Pam’s Prism DuroSport.
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

Remember the Prism DuroSport? That vaguely iPod-looking piece of tech that Pam and Dwight were fiddling with in the Season 2 episode, “The Injury?” 

Readers: If you have no idea what a Prism DuroSport is, that’s because the MP3 player isn’t real. Though durosport.com, a website all about the fake tech product, may have you thinking otherwise.

Turns out the writers of The Office — including Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Paul Lieberstein, Greg Daniels, and Michael Schur — got so invested in Pam’s fake MP3 player that they not only created an entire tech website dedicated to the Prism DuroSport, they also reportedly made a fake review site called Medialoper and reviewed the gadget.

Now that’s dedication. 

For those wondering, yes, the fake website for the fake tech device is still up. Take a look around and marvel at their commitment to the bit.

If you’ve ever looked at David Wallace and thought to yourself, “Damn, this guy really seems like he’s in finance,” that’s because Andy Buckley was in finance.

During his 37 episodes on The Office, Buckley worked as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch. Buckley landed the gig on the show after running into the show’s casting director, Alison Jones, at a farmer’s market. She called him in for an audition four months later, and he got the role. But after filming “Valentine’s Day” he wasn’t called back to shoot an episode for a year, so he didn’t quit his day job at Merrill. The best of both finance worlds.

In Season 2, Episode 17, “Dwight’s Speech,” Rainn Wilson went a little too hard while playing football in the cold open and accidentally pushed Angela Kinsey and Leslie David Baker (Stanley Hudson) to the ground.

“I will never forget this cold open. Do you want to know why?” Kinsey asked Fischer. “Alright, so Jim steals the ball, he tosses it to Phyllis, Phyllis tosses it to Creed, and Dwight runs over in only the way that Rainn Wilson would do.”

“Rainn goes full out, guys. If the script says ‘tackle’ [or] ‘shove’ Dwight is like all in. So he tackles Ryan to the ground, he shoves the heck out of Creed, and then he runs towards Leslie David Baker, who is standing by accounting,” she explained. “What you cannot see is there is a petite blonde person standing behind him.”

“Let me tell you something, Leslie was not ready for that shove. Rainn came at him full throttle and shoved him. Leslie went flying. He lost his balance completely. He went almost butt-over-head, but there was someone directly behind him: A tiny blonde person,” Kinsey continued. “As Leslie lost his balance he started steamrolling back and I was under that.”

Ouch, but also, a total Dwight move.

Fischer and Kinsey shared that part of the Season 2, Episode 19, “Michael’s Birthday,” was filmed at Pickwick Ice in Burbank, California. In the episode we see Michael show off some serious skills on the ice, and that’s because Steve Carell was genuinely a great skater.

“Steve Carell is a very, very good ice skater. He played hockey growing up, he played pickup hockey every week as an adult,” Fischer said. 

“The writers had on one of their cards up on the wall [in the writer’s room] this fact about Steve being a good ice skater, and they had been looking forever for a way to incorporate it,” she continued. “You guys might remember that later when we film Threat Level Midnight the movie takes place in an ice skating rink? That was just like another opportunity to feature Steve’s ice skating ability.”

Fake Oscar, tearing up the ice.
Credit: MASHABLE COMPOSITE: The Office / NBC / Peacock

Carell wasn’t the only pro on the ice that day. “You’ll see later in the episode that Oscar is like a very good ice skater,” Kinsey said. “He does kind of like a pirouette and spins around — well that’s because there was a stunt guy that looked like him that was a really great figure skater.”

Fischer shared that the stunt skater’s name was Burt Jude Lancon. He was “a famous pairs skater who won the silver medal in the 1982 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and then later placed sixth at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games.”

Per Fischer, there’s a great shot of Lancon in the back of Michael’s talking head at around 17:42.

Speaking of talking heads, ever wonder why in early seasons of the show Jim seems to be the only team member whose talking heads are filmed in front of a window with an outdoor view? Well that was done intentionally.

Fischer emailed show-runner Greg Daniels and asked if the talking head placement was deliberate or accidental, and he said it was something that one of the show’s cinematographer’s, Randall Einhorn, suggested when filming the pilot.

“He said Randall’s intention here was that it didn’t necessarily only have to be Jim, but the idea was that any character that had a future outside of Dunder Mifflin or held some sort of internal optimism would sit in front of a window leading out into the world, but characters who didn’t want to leave Dunder Mifflin — or who maybe were in more of a position of being trapped — would do their talking heads facing into the office,” Fischer explained.

The exception, of course, was Michael, who sometimes filmed talking heads from his desk —  which has a window behind it. But otherwise, the bullpen background seems to stay consistent in early seasons, and other fans have even picked up on it later in the series.

Plaque, plaque on the wall…
Credit: MASHABLE COMPOSITE: The Office / NBC / Peacock

The talking head placement isn’t the only aspect of the show with hidden significance. The plaques, certificates, and signs hanging on the office walls in the office also tell their own stories.

At around 4:32 in Season 2, Episode 21, “Conflict Resolution,” you’ll see a plaque hanging on a pillar right next to Michael’s head. “It is a certificate of participation for Marc Christie,” Fischer said. “This is one of my favorite things about our set.”

Kinsey proceeded to explain that the plaque is so funny because Christie was the best boy grip and the key grip for seasons one through three of the show.

“Our art department created the Dunder Mifflin logo, and they created all the little plaques and signs and certificates that hang around the office,” Fischer said. “In the effort to give just like a fun personal touch they would include the names of real crew members.”

See if you spot any interesting names on your next rewatch.

Remember that teapot we talked about earlier? Yeah, well, it’s not tucked away in some NBC prop warehouse or in a glass display case in Fischer’s house. John Krasinski has it! He snagged the freaking teapot.

Krasinski explained that prop master Phil Shea sent him a box three or four years after the show wrapped that included Jim’s bag, his nameplate, and the iconic teapot.

That’s some piping hot tea. Fischer should plot a heist.

The Stamford branch loved playing Call of Duty in Season 3 because the game was so popular on set.

“[Producer] Kent [Zbornak] told me that after we wrapped Season 1 of the show the post-production guys moved to some offices in Venice to edit the episodes,” Fischer explained. She said that while they were in the new offices, Zbornak installed Call of Duty on everyone’s computers “so they could blow off steam during edit sessions.”

“When we moved to our new stages for Season 2, [Zbornak] did it again, but this time he also installed it on all of the writer’s computers, and that’s when the editors and writers started playing one another,” Fischer continued. “They did exactly what Stamford did. They would turn off the lights and have this elaborate match going on.”

The writers wanted to fit the game into a storyline for a while, and Jim’s move to Stamford finally gave them a perfect opportunity.

When Jim was in Stamford with Karen, fans saw the formerly engaged Pam and Roy hang out quite a bit. That’s because there was a real possibility that Pam and Roy would get back together. Not only that, but there was also a chance that Jim and Pam were never going to end up together on the show. gasp

“There was talk in the writer’s room that maybe Roy could win Pam back,” Fischer recalled. “I also remember it was said that maybe in the series of The Office — maybe Jim and Pam would not end up together in the end, but would instead lead one another to their actual true loves.”

Luckily for JAM stans, that wasn’t the case.

Jim talking to Pam (in the same time zone as her)
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

In Season 3, Episode 5, “Initiation,” Jim (in Stamford) and Pam (in Scranton) finally reconnected during a memorable phone call.

Fischer explained that the scene took hours to film, and she also noted that while real phone conversations were a rarity during filming, she and John Krasinski were really talking to each other during this scene.

“Randall Einhorn [director of the episode] requested that we be able to hear one another. But not just that, he wanted to shoot both sides of the conversation at the same time,” Fischer said. The task, which Einhorn now realizes was “a very bold, complicated request,” proved to be quite the challenge, because the Stamford set was in one building, the Scranton set was in another, and between them was a huge parking lot.

The NBC Universal IT squad actually had to come out to hook up the phone lines, set up “Video Village” (the tent with all the monitors) in the parking lot, and make sure that cables could run from each of the two sets to the tent. They also had to record audio on three different lines. There was a boom operator for both Jim and Pam, but the conversation on the phone line was recorded as well.

“It made all the difference for John and I to hear one another and to be able to really talk,” Fischer said.

Licensing the rights to music can be seriously expensive, but sometimes, when the song completely makes a scene, it’s worth it. Take The Office‘s “Benihana Christmas” episode in Season 3, for example. 

Episode writer Jen Celotta recalled that a dumb joke she wrote, in which Michael Scott sings parodied lyrics to Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise,” wound up costing the show a whopping $60,000. 

“I wrote a joke where Michael says, ‘I got two tickets to paradise.’ And he says, ‘Pack your bags we’re leavin’ day after tomorrow,'” Celotta said. “At the sound mix I found out from Kent [Zbornak, The Office producer] that was a $60,000 joke.”

“I was like, ‘It’s a fine joke, but none of my jokes I’ve ever written have been $60,000 jokes,'” she continued. “But I remember not so long after that we had some of our music budget pulled away from us, and I can’t help but think. I mean, I was sitting at the mix and had no idea that because we sang that song the song had to be cleared, and that joke was $60,000.”

In the same Season 3 episode, fans may recall that Andy and Michael sang karaoke to John Mayer’s “Your Body Is A Wonderland.” How could anyone forget? Prior to filming, B.J. Novak, who knew Mayer, reached out to the singer to ask him if they could use his song in the episode, and let’s just say things didn’t go as planned.

“[John Mayer] was like, ‘I don’t think so,'” Fischer said. “And he actually wrote about this on his blog,” she continued before reading the following excerpt from Mayer’s 2016 blog post:

“One of my favorite shows on television, The Office, wanted to use my song, “Your Body Is A Wonderland” in a scene for their Christmas episode. Now, I’m not making apologies for my work, but it’s safe to say I don’t get asked to use ‘Wonderland’ for strongman competitions and documentaries about aircraft carriers. I usually get asked so that people can goof on it, so I initially turned down the request. But, after thinking about it I decided to go for it — but with one stipulation.”

The stipulation? He wanted his own personalized Dundie award. So B.J. Novak presented John Mayer with a Dundie for “Tallest Music Dude” and the singer agreed to let the show use his song.

Train Boyz.
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

If you assumed that train scene in “The Convention” was shot with a green screen, you’re wrong. Fischer reached out to producer and production manager Kent Zbornak for the inside train scoop, and he delivered.

“They let us shoot on the train for free but we had to agree that we would not disrupt their schedule in any way,” Fischer explained. “So on Day 2 of filming, while the set dressers and the production designers were setting up the hotel room at the convention, Steve, Rainn, and a very small crew loaded into vans and drove to the Simi Valley train station.”

According to Fischer, the cast and crew had the entire caboose car to themselves. They boarded at 10:30 a.m., got their first shot at 11:03 a.m., and when the train reached the Burbank airport station at 11:27 a.m. they simply got off and drove back to the main set.

In Season 2, Episode 17, Dwight delivers an impassioned acceptance speech after winning the award for Dunder Mifflin’s salesman of the year. (Dwight’s address may or may not have inspired Kimberly Guilfoyle’s 2020 RNC speech, but that’s beside the point.)

On the Office Ladies podcast, Fischer and Kinsey explained that select cast and crew members spent a day filming scenes for the episode at the Universal Studios Sheraton Hotel. There, they hired 400 extras and used 100 dummies to fill the auditorium where Dwight spoke. They also had five “dummy wranglers” carry the fake torsos with arms and legs (that were dressed up in suits) around the room and place them accordingly. The dummies were primarily located on the sides and in the back of the room, but Zbornak says if you pause on the audience shots you can pick them out of the crowd.

At one point during Dwight’s big speech the audience scenes are actually flipped. You can tell because the name tags on the audience members switch from the left side of their chests to the right, and the names also look like they’re written backwards. What a scene.

In a talking head from Season 2, Episode 20, you can briefly see that Carell’s left ring finger is wrapped in a bandage. The story behind the wound is that he jammed his finger playing pick-up hockey, and it swelled so much that he wasn’t able to get his wedding ring off for filming. Since Michael wasn’t married, they had to opt for a quick visual fix.

Stamford Jim and Pam.
Credit: MASHABLE COMPOSITE: The Office / NBC / Peacock

When Jim transferred to Stamford you may have thought the writers and crew members moved on from him and Pam, but a scene in the Season 3 “Initiation” episode proves that the couple was always on their minds.

In the scene where Jim wheels his chair over to the copier, there’s something special going on in the background. Look carefully and you’ll see an interaction between Stamford’s very own Jim and Pam. :’)

“I also talked to Randall about this, and he said this was totally on purpose,” Fischer said. “He planted a guy standing at reception in the same way that Jim would always stand at reception and talk to Pam. He even has his sleeves rolled up the way Jim used to roll up his sleeves… And Randall said that was on purpose, to keep that Pam/Jim thing sort of in our orbit.”

To this day, I firmly believe that Steve Carell not winning an Emmy for his role as Michael Scott is one of the biggest award snubs in history. The cast of The Office felt the same, and they made it clear in the background of Season 3’s “Branch Closing” episode.

At around 6:21, if you freeze and zoom in on the white board that’s hanging by the accounting department, you’ll see that Tuesday the 5th reads: “CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL FOR OUR FIRST OF MANY EMMYS. STEVE WAS ROBBED!”

The episode was filmed two weeks after the 2006 Emmy awards, which makes the white board message especially iconic. You should keep an eye on the board in future episodes, too, because Fischer and Kinsey said the writing was frequently changed.

In the Season 3 episode “Phyllis’ Wedding,” Michael famously checks on Phyllis in her dressing room before the ceremony and asks her if she broke wind. He later says the line, “That is…pungent,” but Carell could barely get “pungent” out.

“That scene was unbelievable. We had the best time. I don’t know how many times we had to stop to start over because there was one word in particular that we just could not get through,” Phyllis Smith (who played Phyllis Lapin-Vance) said on the podcast. “And that was ‘pungent.'”

“Every time Steve said the word ‘pungent’ he would break out into this high-pitched cackle. And then I would start laughing,” she continued. “And then all of a sudden we heard the Video Village and the sound people outside the door, because we were in a small dressing room area with just the camera guy and a sound boom… So we could hear them cackling and laughing on the outside.”

The line was so hard to get through without giggles that the sound crew had to relocate to the bottom of the stairs and set up. In the end, it was all worth it.

Meredith 🙁
Credit: Mashable Composite: The Office / NBC / Peacock

Remember when a bat terrorized the office and ended up giving Meredith rabies after Dwight trapped it in a bag over her head? Of course you do. You don’t just forget something like that.

As you can imagine, the bat scenes were tough to shoot, and the crew needed several different bats — one real, one mechanical, and one CGI bat — to make the episode look good. Whenever you see a bat flying around the office, that bat was made using CGI. The bat used in the scene where Dwight puts a bag over Meredith’s head was mechanical. And a real bat was used in three scenes.

“The scene where Dwight stands on Pam’s reception desk to look inside the ceiling. A few shots of the bat on the ceiling in the conference room. And for that shot of the bat on the ceiling in the kitchen,” all featured a real bat, according to producer Kent Zbornak.

Was Gary a reference to Michael Gary Scott? We may never know, but Kinsey says the cast and crew called the live bat Gary all week. Aww.

While the bat inside the bag that Dwight trapped over Meredith’s head was mechanical and definitely not real, Kate Flannery decided not to use a stunt double and braved the scene herself.

“I did all of it. The motorized thing on the head. It was like, sort of like this fluttery thing, something like a headband with a motor,” Flannery explained. “And yes, I could breathe with a bag over my head. We figured it out. It was fine. So I was acting my ass off. And it was one of the most fun scenes I got to do with Rainn, since he is an amazing actor and he goes for it, man.”

Look at that damage, baby!
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

Remember in Season 3 when Michael makes his way to the roof with the intention of jumping off onto a trampoline? Then Dwight suggests they test the stunt by tossing a watermelon off the roof first? The final scene shows a real watermelon smash, but the team almost had to rely on CGI to get the shot.

According to the podcast, they purchased 12 watermelons for the trampoline test scene. The first 10 or 11 takes didn’t go well, so showrunner Greg Daniels thought they’d have to use a CGI watermelon in the end. But one finally bounced off the trampoline and onto a Chrysler 300 in the parking lot. Beautiful.

The watermelon that hit the Chrysler 300 reportedly dented the roof and broke the electric moon roof. The production team had to pay $6,500 to fix the damages. 

• When Michael found out Phyllis was flashed, he cracked a few jokes, put his finger through the fly of his pants, and pretended it was a penis. He then had an exchange with Toby that was so funny John Krasinski could barely keep it together. 

• Later in the episode, Dwight describes the anti-flashing task force he’s forming and Rainn Wilson couldn’t get through the lines without breaking. They had to do 15 or 16 takes before they got the shot.

• Remember the scene where Michael Scott tries to spell out “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” like Aretha Franklin and simply butchers it? That wasn’t scripted, and it sent the actors into a laughing fit.

• The episode also features a scene where Meredith eats potato chips while driving, and that sent Fischer into giggle fits.

• And then, of course, there’s the scene between Angela and Michael in Victoria’s Secret. Carell showed Kinsey no mercy, and (successfully) set out to make her break. “He was one hundred percent messing with me and I’d been given a very strict note from Tucker Gates [director] and Lee [Eisenberg, writer] and Gene [Stupnitsky, writer] that they really did not want Angela to entertain him at all,” Kinsey said. “So I had to sit there, very stoic as Steve as Michael just got to throw these lines at me. And there’s a few in the bloopers because it was really hard to keep it together. And Steve was just having a great time.”

Look at Angela’s poker face.
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

In the Season 3 “Beach Games” episode Michael presents 800 hot dogs and challenges the office to partake in a horrible hot dog eating contest. Andy wins after eating 13 dogs, but the cast did not have a good time filming.

The scenes reportedly took so long to shoot that the guys started gagging, and though there were spit buckets on the beach, they apparently weren’t easy to access. Blech.

Ed Helms (Andy) and Leslie David Baker (Stanley) sustained real injuries while filming those scenes with the inflatable sumo wrestling suits.

“What happened was that during all this sumo wrestling, Leslie got sand in his eyes and they tried to flush it out, but they couldn’t,” Fischer explained. The sand was so painful that Baker had to leave set and seek medical attention, and it turns out he scratched his cornea. 

Then, when Andy and Dwight went to fight each other in the sumo suits, Helms lost a fingernail. 

“[Wilson] walks over and then they just start going at each other. And Ed is like kind of flailing his arms at him. Somehow in this tussle, Ed broke his fingernail. But he said he broke it really bad, like it ripped,” Kinsey said. Ouch!

Fans may recall that the “Beach Games” episode featured two noteworthy stunts. The first was when fingernail-missing hot dog king, Helms, fell into the water and floated away from shore in his sumo suit.

The scenes — one of Helms floating in the daytime and one shot at night — were a challenge to film, but the actor decided not to use a stunt double, so he floated on the water for more than 45 minutes.

The second stunt was Pam’s hot coal walk. While the coals weren’t actually hot when Fischer walked across them, she explained that her feet were in real pain from walking over the rocky surface so many times.

“I’ll say that people have mentioned that I look like my feet really hurt after I walk across the hot coals and they’ve wondered if I really walked on hot coals,” Fischer said. “No, my feet were sore and bruised from having to run across lava rocks over and over again.”

The Season 3 finale, “The Job,” ends with Jim’s big interview. He went to meet David Wallace at Dunder Mifflin’s corporate office in New York, but after finding a yogurt lid gold medal and an encouraging note that Pam slipped into his bag, he becomes visibly flustered and recalls an intimate moment he shared with Pam in the “Beach Games” episode. We then see him drive back to Scranton where he interrupts Pam’s talking head to ask if she wants to grab dinner after work. Pam says yes, and Jim replies, “Then it’s a date.”

It’s a perfect episode ending, but things almost went down differently.

“There were actually two versions in the script for the ending of this episode. There was this version with Jim interrupting my talking head, and then there was a second version which we shot,” Fischer explained. “And in the script it says, ‘Shoot both versions.'”

The scene didn’t even make the deleted scenes reel, but Fischer described it for podcast listeners.

“In the second version, you hear voiceover of Jim throwing his interview with David. But it’s even more. It’s like, he’s really cracking jokes. He’s not taking it seriously at all, to the point that David actually says, ‘Do you even want this job?'” she said. 

“Meanwhile, while all that’s happening, you see Pam leaving for the day. She doesn’t do a talking head. She’s just leaving for the day,” Fischer continued. “She gets in the elevator, she goes down the elevator, and then when the elevator doors open, Jim is standing there and she says, ‘You’re back.’ And he says, ‘Yeah, do you want to go to dinner?’ And Pam says, ‘Yeah, I do.'”

“She walks out of the elevator and Jim pushes the camera back into the elevator. And as the doors are closing, they walk off together and he puts his arm around her and they smile at each other,” Fischer said.

Jim and Pam recently started dating before the Season 4 “Fun Run” episode, so they were still secretly reveling in the beginning stage of their romantic relationship. (Even though they’d been flirting for literal years.) It’s easy for fans to assume that they leisurely walked for the duration of Michael Scott’s (Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am) Fun Run Race for the Cure because they wanted to be alone and cherish their time together. But the real reason they didn’t take the race more seriously is because Fischer injured her back IRL and wasn’t allowed to run.

The “Fun Run” episode features the return of Elizabeth the stripper, played by Jackie Debatin. She’s seen in a nurse’s outfit and presents Michael with a giant check that’s made out for $340.00 to SCIENCE. Fischer shared that the nurse’s outfit was custom-made to feature a red circle with a white cross in the middle, because the Red Cross doesn’t like their symbol (with the colors inverted) used for fictional purposes.

If the outfit looks familiar, that’s because it reappears in the show’s Season 7 Halloween episode.

“I wore that outfit, the exact same one, and it was a little too big for me, so I had to wear a little lace tank top underneath it and… they gave me the chicken cutlets to make everything a little bigger,” Kinsey said. This wasn’t the first time an item of clothing was reused on the show either. Remember Pam’s Dundie’s shirt? 

“Wanna share?”
Credit: SCREENSHOT: The Office / NBC / Peacock

The delightful episode ends with a simple yet deeply hilarious scene in which Michael and Meredith share a lollipop in the hospital. Would you believe that gross move was all improv? 

 “We asked Kate [Flannery] about it and she said they did not rinse [the lollipop] off,” Fischer said. “She also said Steve improvised that in the moment and she just went with it,” Kinsey added.

Extremely gross, yet so perfectly The Office.

If you’ve enjoyed this mega collection of Dunder Mifflin facts, check out all of Mashable’s Office and Office Ladies podcast coverage. You can stream episodes of The Office on Peacock and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.