50 Fun Facts About The Strain

When Guillermo del Toro first pitched The Strain to Fox as a TV series, the network president asked for what?

A comedy was the request, so the talks broke down and del Toro walked away. An agent then suggested telling the story as a series of books instead.

The Strain opens with a silent jet full of dead passengers on the tarmac at which New York-area airport?

Kennedy, or JFK, is where the jet goes dark with all but one window shade drawn. Four people, the pilot among them, are later found alive on board.

Which Harry Potter actor, the caretaker Argus Filch, plays the vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian in The Strain?

David Bradley plays the Holocaust survivor who has spent decades hunting the Master. He is also the villainous Walder Frey in Game of Thrones.

Which Lord of the Rings actor plays Jim Kent, the colleague who betrays Eph Goodweather's team in The Strain?

Sean Astin was cast because the producers liked the idea of the most famous sidekick of all turning betrayer. He played Samwise Gamgee in the film trilogy.

Which Canadian city doubled for New York during filming of the vampire series The Strain?

Toronto hosted the shoot, and its own international airport played the New York one in the opening scenes. Filming of the pilot began there in September 2013.

Billboards for The Strain were replaced after complaints about artwork of a worm burrowing into what?

An eye with a worm boring through it was the show's original key art. The worm matters to the story: it is how the vampire virus passes from body to body.

In The Strain's first season, what lets the vampires hunt New Yorkers in the middle of the day?

A solar eclipse darkens the city, and the vampires use the cover to feed and infect in the daytime. Eph slips away from two FBI agents in the chaos.

Which Game of Thrones composer scored The Strain after working with Guillermo del Toro on the film Pacific Rim?

Ramin Djawadi had already scored del Toro's monster film when he took on The Strain. He went on to win two Emmys for Game of Thrones.

Chuck Hogan, co-author of The Strain, wrote the novel Prince of Thieves, which Ben Affleck filmed as what?

The Town, which Affleck directed and starred in, was nominated for an Academy Award. Hogan's novel had already won the Hammett Prize.

The Strain, the vampire drama created by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, aired on which US cable network?

FX won the rights because it wanted to follow the books closely and liked a story with a planned ending. The authors had talked to every cable network that showed interest.

Dr. Ephraim Goodweather of The Strain leads the Canary Project, a rapid-response team at which US federal agency?

The CDC sends his team aboard the dead plane because the Canary Project handles biological threats. He soon ends up a fugitive from the authorities himself.

Abraham Setrakian, the elderly vampire hunter of The Strain, runs what kind of shop in Harlem?

A pawnshop is where the heroes shelter until Eichhorst and his vampire army storm it late in the first season. They get out through a secret passage.

Vasiliy Fet joins the vampire hunt in The Strain after seeing New York's rats act strangely in which city job?

Exterminator Fet follows the rats into the sewers and finds vampires living below the streets. The part was first written with Ron Perlman in mind.

What does Abraham Setrakian call the vampires of The Strain, using a word from Romanian folklore?

Strigoi, in Romanian folklore, are troubled spirits said to rise from the grave and gain vitality from blood. The show's version feeds through a stinger in the throat.

Abraham Setrakian of The Strain carries an ancient sword made of which metal that burns vampires on contact?

Silver burns the vampires of The Strain, so the old man also loads his gun with bullets made of it. Even the cover of an ancient book scorches one who grabs it.

Billionaire Eldritch Palmer helps the Master reach New York in The Strain in return for a promise of what?

Immortality is the one thing his fortune cannot buy, so the frail tycoon bargains with a vampire for it. He is furious when the Master only restores his health.

Jonathan Hyde, Eldritch Palmer in The Strain, played a relentless big-game hunter in which Robin Williams film?

Jumanji gave Hyde two parts in one film: the hero's father and the hunter who chases him. He was also the shipping boss J. Bruce Ismay in Titanic.

Richard Sammel, The Strain's Thomas Eichhorst, appeared in which Quentin Tarantino film?

Inglourious Basterds cast Sammel as Sergeant Werner Rachtman, years before he played a Nazi turned vampire. The Strain role earned him a Saturn Award nomination.

At the end of The Strain's third season, Eichhorst plants a nuclear bomb inside which New York landmark?

The Statue of Liberty blast frees the Master from a sealed sarcophagus, and its fallout blots out the sun so vampires can walk by day.

In The Strain's wartime flashbacks, Setrakian is a prisoner and Eichhorst a commander at which Nazi camp?

Treblinka is where the young prisoner first sees the Master, feeding on sleeping inmates at night. His attempt to kill the creature there leaves his fingers crushed.

In The Strain's flashbacks, which trade do young Setrakian and his brother claim, earning work for the Third Reich?

Carpenters were useful, so the brothers were put to woodworking. Eichhorst then noticed the young man's carving and ordered an ornate box from him.

Jusef Sardu, the Polish nobleman whose body the Master wears in The Strain, was afflicted with which condition?

Gigantism afflicted the kind-hearted Sardu, and his relatives took him hunting for a wolf whose blood might cure him. The creature they met in a cave took his body instead.

Which ancient book, said to reveal how to kill the Master, do Setrakian and Palmer both chase in The Strain?

Occido Lumen was thought destroyed by the mother superior of an Austrian nunnery. It resurfaces in New York, and its hidden text shows how the Master can be trapped.

Which half-human, half-vampire hunter, once a gladiator in ancient Rome, vows to kill the Master in The Strain?

Quinlan, known as the Born, was infected in the womb, which left him half human. He believes that killing the Master will end his own life too.

Which hacker does Eldritch Palmer hire to knock out New York's internet and phone networks in The Strain?

Dutch Velders takes the job, then joins the fight when she sees what she has helped unleash. By the final episode she is rebuilding the internet she broke.

Which rock star, one of four survivors of the doomed flight, later becomes the Master's new body in The Strain?

Gabriel Bolivar turns in his penthouse, killing the doctor sent to treat him, and serves the Master as an acolyte before becoming his host.

Which character, infected in a subway tunnel, ends her own life on the electrified third rail in The Strain?

Nora Martinez touches her sword to the rail after a turned Kelly attacks her at the end of season 2. After her death, Eph drinks more heavily than ever.

Who sets off the bomb that finally destroys the Master in The Strain's last episode, dying in the blast?

Zach Goodweather triggers it after refusing the Master's order to kill his own father. Fet had planned to be the one who died setting it off.

In The Strain, what does Abraham Setrakian cut from his infected wife Miriam and keep for decades as a memento?

Her heart, still beating and full of worms, stays in his shop until he is forced to abandon it. Palmer later keeps the same grim keepsake of his assistant.

Which House of Cards actor, known as Congressman Peter Russo, stars as Dr. Eph Goodweather in The Strain?

Corey Stoll won the lead on the strength of playing Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris. His House of Cards role had earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

Which Canadian actor, Martin Keamy in Lost and Little John in Robin Hood, plays Vasiliy Fet in The Strain?

Kevin Durand had worked with the showrunner before, on Lost. He went on to play Proximus Caesar in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Which star of The Elephant Man filmed The Strain's pilot as Abraham Setrakian before leaving the series?

John Hurt shot the whole pilot, and filming had even been delayed to fit his schedule. When he dropped out, his scenes were all redone with a new actor.

Which former Lost showrunner ran The Strain as executive producer alongside creators del Toro and Hogan?

Carlton Cuse cast the series with del Toro and made his directing debut on its third-season finale. He had planned five seasons before settling on four.

Which creature performer, the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, plays an Ancient vampire in The Strain?

Doug Jones was wanted for a bigger part but had scheduling conflicts, so he played an Ancient and an earlier host of the Master instead.

Which Oscar-winning actress appears in season 1 of The Strain as Ruby Wain, a rock star's manager?

Regina King played the manager of a doomed musician years before winning her Academy Award for If Beale Street Could Talk.

The Strain's Eldritch Palmer takes his name, reversed, from a novel by which American science fiction author?

Philip K. Dick wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and the authors flipped its title character's name as an in-joke. The book was a Nebula nominee.

What is the title of The Strain's pilot episode, which Guillermo del Toro co-wrote and directed himself?

Night Zero covers only the first half of the first novel. Its scenes inside the plane were filmed on a set left over from the thriller Non-Stop.

Which publisher, the home of Hellboy, turned The Strain novels into a comic-book series?

Dark Horse had writer David Lapham and artist Mike Huddleston adapt the first novel as an 11-issue story arc, before the television series began.

Councilwoman Justine Feraldo of The Strain wins fame by declaring which part of New York free of vampires?

Staten Island is her own district, and she shows beheaded vampires to the press to prove her tactics work. The mayor then wants the same done citywide.

Eldritch Palmer of The Strain built which company with a pay-off cheque from the wealthy father who rejected him?

Stoneheart was his jab at the cold parent who offered $10,000 to sever their ties. He put the whole cheque into building the business.

In The Strain, Eichhorst forces a chained captive to eat which fruit to sweeten her blood before he feeds?

Pineapple is his seasoning of choice in a hotel dungeon. His prisoner fights back with a can of mace before her friends blast through a brick wall to free her.

Before joining the Nazi party, The Strain's Thomas Eichhorst failed at selling what door to door in Germany?

Radios were what the future SS officer hawked without success in the 1930s. A Nazi recruiting speech he heard on a dinner date set him on a new course.

What does The Strain call the blind children turned into psychic vampire trackers for Kelly Goodweather?

Feelers are made on the Master's order after sunlight leaves his own body dying. They help the turned Kelly track down her son.

Angel Guzman Hurtado, the restaurant dishwasher Gus idolised as a child in The Strain, was once a famous what?

A wrestler in the lucha libre tradition, he starred in a string of low-budget Mexican adventure films until a crippling injury ended his career.

Which Brooklyn neighbourhood do vampires invade in The Strain after cutting power to its ultraviolet lamps?

Red Hook goes dark when Eichhorst and Kelly shut down a power station. Getting the electricity back relights the lamps and wipes out the invading army.

In The Strain's final season, what do the vampires call the regime they run with human collaborators?

The Partnership rules nine months after a nuclear blast dimmed the sun. Its farms, sold to volunteers as places to work, are camps that keep humans as livestock.

In The Strain, Eph kills the turned pilot Doyle Redfern in a hospital basement with which improvised weapon?

A fire extinguisher does it after the captain escapes quarantine to drink stored blood. Eph is later set up to be arrested for his murder.

Late in The Strain, Setrakian poisons Eichhorst by taking a massive dose of which drug before being drained?

A blood thinner, given to him by Eph, turns the old man's own veins into a trap for his oldest enemy. He then beheads the weakened Eichhorst.

What do characters in The Strain call the rejuvenating fluid the Master uses to keep Eldritch Palmer alive?

The white is dripped from the Master's finger down the dying man's throat. Palmer's own researchers later try and fail to copy it.

Why does Jim Kent secretly take bribes from Eichhorst in the first season of The Strain?

His wife's medical bills are the reason: she has cancer, and Eichhorst dangles a place in an experimental treatment trial to keep him loyal.