- In 1990, the producers chose to “leap” the character of Chrissy five years, and she suddenly became seven years-old.
- Jeremy Miller’s character Ben Seaver has the middle names, “Hubert Horatio Humphrey” in honor of the famous senator from Minnesota.
- The Family’s last name was Seaver and they had neighbors named Koosman. Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman were teammates on the New York Mets during the ’60s and ’70s. The show takes place on Long Island so it’s likely that the creators were Mets fans.
- Between the 88-89 season cliffhanger and 89-90 season premiere, ‘Kirk Cameron’ had a religious awakening and demanded that ‘Julie McCollough’ ‘s character of Mike’s fiancee be written out of the show because of McCollough’s real-life Playboy Magazine past.
- Producers had to seriously re-tailor the show to better include other cast members after the network complained that the pilot too heavily focused on the Mike character.
- ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ was brought on in a last ditch effort to pump new life into the show and appeal to the teenage fan base, but alas, the show performed poorly, Dicaprio’s character dropped, and the show cancelled.
- Alan Thicke was predominantly known as a Canadian talk show host before the role of Jason on the show. Most involved with the production did not want him, but when no one reading for the part fit the bill, Thicke was auditioned and hired.
- Kirk Cameron was so intent keeping the show devoid of adult themes that he phoned the president of ABC and accused producers Guntzelman, Marshall and Sullivan of being “pornographers”. The three then resigned from the show, having had enough of Cameron’s shenanigans.
- ‘Matthew Perry’ appeared in the 88-89 season as Carol’s boyfriend, Sandy. After a handful of episodes Perry is killed off by having his character die from injuries sustained from a drunk-driving accident.
- Actor Jamie Abbott , who portrayed Ben’s best friend “Stinky Sullivan”, was first featured on the show as another character which was a bully of Ben’s.
- Tracey Gold (Carol) suffered from severe anorexia and missed most of the show’s final season. Pay close attention to the final episode and you will notice Gold does not take one bite of the pizza she is holding.
- Cameron met his future wife Chelsea Noble, who played Kate, on the show.
- Julie McCullough, who played Kirk Cameron’s love interest Julie Costello during the fourth season, was abruptly fired from the show at the start of filming for the episode “Mike and Julie’s Wedding” (in which her character would have married Mike Seaver). When she arrived for filming, she was given a new script, in which Julie left Mike at the altar. While no official reason was given to McCullough, it was common knowledge that Kirk Cameron had demanded that she be fired from the series. Cameron, who had become a born again Christian several years earlier, disliked McCullough because the actress had posed in Playboy months before being hired, and demanded her firing as a condition of his signing a new contract. This caused a huge backlash among fans of the series, forcing the show’s producers to bring a reluctant McCullough (who had wanted nothing more to do with the show and Kirk Cameron) back in a hastily written episode to give the Julie character proper send-off.
- Three versions of the theme song were sung: the first season featured a female vocal only, sung by Dusty Springfield; the second season through fifth and then seventh featured B.J. Thomas and Jennifer Warnes; and season six featured an a capella chorus.
- The video portion of the theme featured five different variations; season 1 had Renaissance art with the cast’s names superimposed; season 2 had clips of season 1; season three showed real-life photos of the cast when they were younger, and always had Thicke standing alone at the end of the song, then running to catch up with other cast members; season four and five had a different cast member linger in front of the camera before running for other cast members; seasons six and seven featured a professional family photo before and after the credits.
- Growing Pains ran for seven seasons, beginning on September 24th, 1985 and ending on April 24th, 1992. 165 episodes.
- Julie McCollough was unaware of her firing as she was handed the script just moments after showing up on-set. She found it difficult to do a follow-up episode a year later, as her character makes good with Mike, when in real-life she resented Cameron for having her fired.
- The character Jason Seaver was ranked #37 in TV Guide’s list of the “50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time” (20 June 2004 issue).
- Maura Tierney admitted to having been fired from the show.
- The show was originally supposed to air an episode arc in and around Europe, but the idea was later scrapped when ‘Kirk Cameron’ expressed a fear of flying.
