Re-Read All About It

Everyone in television gets the same news — literally, in fact.

The top picture above is from an episode of Desperate Housewives, and the one below it is from Married With Children.  Notice the newspaper?  How about the young woman pictured in both editions?

Yep, it’s the same paper.

Married with Children aired from 1987-1997; Desperate Housewives debuted in 2004.  It would take an incredible coincidence for a box of newspapers to last that long.  That isn’t what happened here.  Most likely, it’s a legal issue — the shows producers found a royalty-free newspaper — or it’s some running joke among television prop master. Either way, the newspaper pops up everywhere.  Check out this compilation of screen shots from a dozen (or more!) TV shows using the same newspaper Al Bundy once read in between customers at the women’s shoe store.

Bonus item:  Another bit of re-used content?   The Wilhelm Scream fits this to a tee.  This one-second sound bite is re-used in numerous movies (as demonstrated by a video on YouTube) from the death of Storm Troopers (twice!) to Buzz Lightyear’s fall out of a window.

Related: You, too, can own a prop newspaper — but it differs from the one pictured above. (Sorry.)