“The Big Bang Theory” prides itself on being a show about a bunch of dorks who engage with all sorts of pop culture with a near-religious fervor. Considering they all live in California too, it makes sense that the series would eventually have Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Raj (Kunal Nayyar), Howard (Simon Helberg), and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) make the trek to the geekdom sanctuary that is San Diego Comic-Con, aka Comic-Con International.
Starting out as a relatively small gathering of comic book geeks, Comic-Con International has grown exponentially to become a global phenomenon. It’s now one of the premiere locations for highly anticipated developments in the world of movies, television, and, well, comic books. There are panels, vendors, cosplayers, and bizarre corporate branding as far as the eye can see. You can practically envision the main characters from “The Big Bang Theory” causing chaos on the convention floor.
The season 7 episode “The Convention Conundrum” sees the “Big Bang Theory” gang scrambling to secure tickets while Sheldon is off on his own James Earl Jones-centric adventure. There’s also “The Comic-Con Conundrum” from season 10, which sees Raj attempting to secure the money for tickets, in addition to a dilemma surrounding Penny’s (Kaley Cuoco) ambivalence about going with Leonard. However, the thing that’s perhaps most notable about the sitcom’s reverence of SDCC in these two episodes is that its characters certainly discuss making time for it, yet are never actually shown attending the event.
There’s a pretty good reason for that, as “The Big Bang Theory” co-creator Bill Prady would tell you.
Comic-Con is way too hectic to control
In a 2009 interview with TV For The Rest of Us, Prady admitted he and his fellow “Big Bang Theory” creatives had considered showing Sheldon and the others on the ground at SDCC. However, they quickly realized there were too many external factors that would make it difficult. As he recalled:
“Our line producer just laughed [at] us, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ You can’t shoot in any direction because of all the copyrights. So, any direction you shoot is copyrighted material. It’s somebody’s logo, trademark. So we would end up with fake Comic-Con with fake costumes. Yeah, it would be awful.”
In addition to crowd control and copyright panic, there’s also the matter of “The Big Bang Theory” being a sitcom performed in front of a live-studio audience. Prady noted that breaking that mold was never exactly the show’s forte:
“We’re a four camera stage show and sometimes we go outside — there’s a little park opposite stage 25 on the Warner Brothers lot that we go outside to the little park and we go, ‘Whoo hoo, we’re on location! We’re 50 feet away from our stage! We’re on location!'”
Most non-documentary film and television projects taking place at a Comic-Con event have done so with what Prady essentially described in this interview. If you take a look at any picture taken at Comic-Con, it’s hundreds of thousands of attendees from wall to wall. Trying to wrangle all those people from ruining the shot or descending upon the actors like birds to a piece of bread sounds like a total nightmare. The only project I can recall actually shooting at one, however briefly, was when “Ted 2” needed some coverage during New York Comic-Con.
In a way, though, the “Big Bang Theory” crew technically has been to SDCC … but as themselves in a series of panels held across their show’s 12-season run.
Every episode of “The Big Bang Theory” is currently streaming on Max.
