You’ll understand everything if you say it backward.
In the 2nd season of 24, George Mason suddenly reveals he had a son, but they were rather distant. But then again, nobody really talks about their family on that show(unless they are threatened by terrorists), so it probably doesn’t count.
Maybe it’s just too early in the morning for me still, but 
And the revelation that Dan’s mother was a crazy lady (of course, so was Roseanne’s, but that was always true).
Also, it was revealed in the last episode that she had switched her daugher’s husbands–Darlene was married to Mark and Becky to David. That made so much more sense.
That one’s always really bugged me, too - in the S2 ep where they introduce the Gorch brothers, Buffy and Joyce split up at the mall, where Buffy is supposed to pick up Joyce’s outfit but get sidetracked follwing a Gorch. When they meet back up for dinner, she actually slips up and starts to say something about vampires. And this only warrants a slightly puzzled look from Joyce?
Okay, roughly remembered:
In one episode, a private detective shows up at the garage, looking for Jim Ignatowski. He announces that Jim’s family hired him to track Jim down and remarks casually that Jim was particularly difficult to find, especially after the name change.
Reiger: Wait, Jim, you changed your name to “Ignatowski”?
Jim: Well, it was the sixties. Everybody was changing their name to “Moonbeam” or something.
Reiger: But why “Ignatowski”?
Jim: Say it backward.
Wheeler: [hesitantly] Ix-wo-TANG-y ?
Jim: [in genuine shock] That’s not “Starchild”?!
And this week we learned that she can kick ass!
Hmmm… sounds kind of like “Star Child.”
OH, NO! That doesn’t sound *anything *like “Starchild”! :eek:
Years back, “St. Elsewhere” writers and producers apparently wanted Kim Miyori’s character, Wendy Armstrong, off the show, so in the last episode of one season, it was revealed out of nowhere that she was a depressed, suicidal anorexic.
Wendy killed herself about 5 minutes after her anorexia was revealed. A VERY sloppy segue from a show that usually handled things much better.
Except for that stupid, tacked-on “it was all an autistic kids’ fantasy” in the series finale.
Isn’t there an episode of Alias where everything we knew aboout every single previous event turned out to be not entirely as it seemed
They had a scene in this season’s West Wing where Margaret took off her sweater and we saw she was about seven months pregnant.
Hasn’t most American TV been an autistic kids fantasy? 
I might actually have an anecdote about this… Unless St. Elsewhere had another character largely unexpectedly commit suicide.
The brother of my high school art teacher came to talk to our school for a career day type thing. He was a tv writer (Growing Pains, ST:TNG). When asked how he got into it he explained- He used to watch St. Elsewhere when he was a teenager, he wrote a fan letter to one of the producers praising the show and asking if they were really going to have “X” commit suicide because that’s where it looked to be going. The producer was impressed because they thought that the character’s plotline had been so oblique up to that point that no one would see where they had planned it to go. So this producer wrote him back and became a excellent contact for this guy.
So apparently it wasn’t entirely out of the blue and some hints had been there.
Same thing happened with Doug Ross (George Clooney) back in the early days. He’s treating a little black brain-damaged kid (whose father has signed a DNR order), and the dad asks him if he has any children. He says that he has an eight-year-old son. Later a nurse says, “I never knew you had a son.” He replied something like, “I’m not in contact with him.”
I don’t think this should count on the fact that only one day passes during one season.
Fin, on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, also mentioned that he had an 18-year-old son out of the blue.
This is a really interesting thread in that it consists of about 50% interesting and surprising revelations about characters that give them more depth, and 50% hack writing that requires instant shifts and the revelation of unheard of characters to fit the plot of one episode.
It always amused me that David on Rosanne was originally introduced as “Kevin” in the first episode he appeared in. Doesn’t really make sense that a name would be changed like that, but little about that show did after a while…
Well, Franklin Sakamoto is a bastard son, so I don’t think he’d be put in front of Theodore’s legitimate children for the throne to the Draconis Combine.
And piloting BattleArmor takes some training, not just stepping into a suit, especially one likely fitted for a 7’+ 300+lb warrior.