Things About Parks & Rec Only Superfans Know

Of all the things you might spend six years getting to know and love, one of the last you'd expect is a small municipal government organization like the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department. But Michael Schur's 2009 workplace sitcom grew to be one of the most beloved on television, expanding far beyond its original conception as a spin-off of The Office and giving us insightful yet lighthearted satire of government and society while celebrating the best parts of being human.

The show was unique in every way — in both the challenges it faced and the innovations it met them with — and from conception to execution, there are a lot of fun behind-the-scenes and not-so-little-known facts that endear fans to the show even more. However, while fans of Parks and Recreation are as dedicated to Pawnee lore as Leslie Knope herself, some truths about the series would surprise all but the most devoted among them.

The map of the fictional city of Pawnee is actually a map of Muncie, Indiana, flipped upside-down. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Muncie is Jerry/Garry/Larry/Terry Gergich/Gengurch's favorite town. Multiple maps on the walls appear to be cities in Indiana and elsewhere flipped or morphed in one way or another, or other altered maps: The Pawnee Parks map, for example, is a de-labeled map of Christchurch, New Zealand — with a lot of the green spaces removed, because there is considerably less vegetation in the middle of Indiana (unless you're in Eagleton).

There are many nods to Indiana in the show besides the more obvious instances like appearances by Pacers players or Donna's mural of famous people and objects from Indiana. More subtle allusions include the common appearance of beers from an Indiana brewery called Upland Brewing Company. The best part is, the brewing company has locations in two places in the United States, Indiana and California, which, respectively, match the state Parks and Rec is depicted in and the actual shooting location of the show.

Amy Poehler joked in 2011 (and has reiterated the sentiment multiple times since) about how badly she wanted Bill Murray to play the mayor of Pawnee. For a long time, this character was never depicted onscreen, but that did nothing to dampen the level of interest fans had in him, as every mention of Mayor Walter Gunderson's personality and goings-on was just a little bit odd.

It has been suggested in the series that he had an affair with court stenographer Ethel Beavers. We also know from the Parks Department members' holiday skit that he had a crazy dog named Rufus. When a possum bit Rufus, the mayor launched a vendetta against the pests, to the point that Andy mistakenly believed that it was the dog himself who was giving the orders to hunt down the possums.

Even when we finally got to "meet" Mayor Gunderson, it was with an asterisk: Murray's brief role as the infamous but beloved official came in the form of a video message to his citizens, played after his death following 39 years in office. Oh, and he also appeared as the mayor's body in the open-casket memorial. Though we never got to see him alive, it certainly seemed like we knew him. Murray's portrayal had to be almost as big a dream come true for the cast as when Joe Biden and Michelle Obama appeared on the show.

If you noticed Leslie getting less "doofy" (as Ann Perkins puts it) after the first season, you're not alone: Her character was changed after the first season to make her less like Michael Scott and more of a self-possessed, intelligent protagonist you could root for. The craziest part is, at the time of casting, the show didn't even have parts yet, which made for a very unconventional audition. The talent of the cast and writers was always there, they just had to find their footing.

Parks and Recreation went through all manner of challenges and odd circumstances over its seven-season run, from Amy Poehler's pregnancy — which forced the third season to fit around her due date — to the lackluster reception that almost killed the show after the first season. This feedback was partly due to the difficulty of critics and audiences alike in finding the justification for another workplace mockumentary with a naive lead.

But Leslie's season 2 character development, along with the efforts of the cast and crew, took care of that. Through it all, both the production (and the actual characters) adapted to the needs of an audience that grew to depend on them for laughs and heart.

It's hard to imagine, but Leslie almost really did lose to Bobby Newport: There were actually multiple endings shot to the season 4 finale, "Win, Lose, or Draw." (Can you guess what the three different endings were, based on the title?) It was actually agony trying to pick between winning and losing scenarios, and there was a lot of back-and-forth because there was merit to both for the whole arc of the series.

So when Ben says he didn't write a concession speech for Leslie, knowing she wasn't going to need it, perhaps this wasn't entirely true. There probably is a draft of a script somewhere in which Leslie does indeed have to give that speech. Though we wanted her to win, we can definitely respect the creators of Parks and Recreation for making it such a brutal fight.

Not only that, but to have her recalled after her first year (in a way, living out a version of that alternate ending) was a much-less-lighthearted-than-usual way of highlighting the discouragement and stagnation that often plagues bureaucratic institutions. But that misfortune showed us that even if that darker alternate ending had come to pass in the original election, she doubtless would have still moved on to bigger and better things.

Producers wanted a local Indiana product in a farmer's market scene, so the owner of U-Relish farms renamed one of her crockpot mixes "Pawnee Chickpea" — and actually sold it for a while! There are many "props" from the show you can get in real life, including Leslie's book Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. Universal even held an auction in 2017 that featured a Snake Juice bottle set, an autographed photo of Johnny Karate, and an "I Met Li'l Sebastian" T-Shirt.

The show absolutely created its own little universe, parts of which found its way into ours, and rural Indiana was at the center of this microcosm. This is part of what made it so special when, by the sheer force of her passion and will, Leslie expanded her world from a small department in the government of a small town all the way to the federal level.

April and Andy were a seemingly unlikely and then strangely perfect pairing. But this couple's story together was almost as unplanned as the trajectories of their individual characters. They were put together in a B-plot in one episode where their potential romantic trajectory was meant to subtly begin, and it turned out that they had great chemistry: Writer and producer Alan Yang called it a combination of planning and serendipity.

Apparently, in the episode "Hunting Trip" when the rest of the cast is off at the hunting lodge and April and Andy are alone at city hall, Chris Pratt turned to Greg Daniels before they started shooting and said, "I'm going to make her fall in love with me." And that's exactly what he did. (And the audience fell in love with both of them.)

Then an NBC promo basically spoiled the pairing by accident! Weeks before the episode in which the two got married was scheduled to air, and before they had even started officially dating, the network aired a promo that mentioned a wedding registry for April and Andy. NBC hustled to cover up the mistake, referencing Ron and Tammy's wedding instead, but a few weeks later when April and Andy did get married, audiences realized the mistake. Nothing could really spoil this couple except a bad game of Know Ya Boo!