Did You Know?

Will Smith's character name in the show is actually different than in real life. In the show, he is "William" Smith, in real life he's "Willard" Smith. This is referred to when one of Will's girlfriend's father calls him Williard as a joke.

Will Smith's future wife 'Jada Pinkett-Smith' auditioned for a role of his girlfriend, Lisa, on his show, but was told she was too short.

The character 'Philip Banks' was ranked #34 in TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" (20 June 2004 issue).

The part of Aunt Vivian Banks was portrayed by two different actresses during the series run. 'Janet Hubert-Whitten' portrayed the original Vivian during seasons 1-3, but growing problems between Will Smith, the producers, and Hubert-Whitten caused her to depart in 1994. The producers offered Hubert-Whitten a 12/25 contract for season four, but she declined. Daphne Maxwell Reid replaced her in the role from 1994-1996, seasons 4-6.

In the episode "Lucky Charm" in season one, we learn that Will's birthday is 3 July 1973 and that Carlton's birthday is on August 4th 1974

May have been the first TV series saved from cancellation by pleas from TV-station managers. The show aired its 1990-1994 episodes in syndication after the fourth season while running the fifth season on network. At the end of that season, NBC wanted to pull the plug because the new episodes were getting a mediocre 8.6 rating. But the reruns were drawing a 7.4, extremely good for an ad-hoc collection of shows you've seen three or four times, and the managers of the local stations thought they might have one of those "phenom" series where people religiously watch their favorite episodes and a lot of them. To avoid over-running the shows they already had (about a hundred, already run three times), the station managers agreed to buy the fifth and sixth seasons at a greatly inflated price (adding 50 more shows to their libraries and helping avoid burning out the audiences) - meaning NBC would NOT lose money by picking up the show after all.

In the episode "Love Hurts" in season five, we learn that Hilary's birthday is August 18th.

Sherman Hemsley appeared as two different characters throughout the show, once as Judge Carl Robertson and again later as a cameo playing George Jefferson

Geoffrey's last name is Butler and in the episode Hare Today, it's revealed that his middle name is Barbara.

According to Will Smith in an interview, the reason for his character being named "Will Smith" was that, during the creation of the show, he and Alfonso Ribeiro were brainstorming names for their characters. Alfonso remarked that Will had to be careful in naming his character, as people would refer to him in public by that name for the rest of his life, and suggested that he name the character "Will Smith".