12 Facts About ‘Home Improvement’

“Home Improvement” wasn’t just a sitcom about an accident-prone tool salesman raising three kids while making fun of overweight people and being as misogynistic as ABC would allow. It was also a show that defined a generation. Every week, fans would tune in to learn about tools, listen to grunting, and watch a convicted drug mule get injured in a series of easily avoidable accidents. But there’s a lot about the show that even its most diehard fans are unaware of, and some of those things are only just now coming to light. Here are 12 facts you never knew about “Home Improvement.”


1. Tim Allen was never told when his character was about to get injured so that his cries of pain and misery would be more authentic.

2. Richard Karn, who played the character “Al Boreland,” wore a fake beard for the entire show. The producers didn’t find out about it until just this past Tuesday.

3. Wilson’s face was never shown because the producers thought that Earl Hindman was too unattractive for television.

4. Pamela Anderson, who played “Lisa” for two seasons, was booted off the show because the producers thought she was too attractive for television.

5. Jonathon Taylor Thomas left the show early in its eighth season to try and start a film career, but that career ended abruptly when his ties to the communist party became public knowledge.

6. During the course of the show, Tim Allen fired twenty-three different production assistants for calling him “Tim Alan.”

7. In order to keep the character “Brad Taylor” looking as authentic and up-to-date as possible, a new Zachery Ty Bryan had to be sculpted out of a high-density polymer every morning before shooting.

8. Every scene of every episode was filmed inside Patricia Richardson’s house.

9. Taran Noah Smith was initially supposed to play “Tim Taylor,” but he ended up having a deadly allergic reaction to tools. Smith was then recast as the character “Mark Taylor.”

10. Even though the show took place in Detroit, most of the actors on “Home Improvement” grew up in Algeria.

11. Tim Allen only agreed to do the show in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.

12. The character Wilson is actually Anunochius, the God of Knowledge, who was banished from The Tower of the Divines for seducing the wife of Tilitak, the Elf King. As punishment, he has been trapped in human form for the last 3000 years where he has been whispering his wisdom into the ears of great men and women and feasting upon the hearts of newborn babies.


Written by J. S. Wydra: @jswydra
