‘Supernatural’ Turns 15: 15 Fun Facts About the Hit CW Series

Supernatural is preparing for the “end of the end” as it hurtles toward its November 19 series finale, but before that happens, the CW series will celebrate 15 years on the air.

The cult favorite, about demon-hunting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester (Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki), premiered on September 13, 2005, back when Destiny’s Child was still a thing, Tom Cruise was still jumping for joy over Katie Holmes, and YouTube had only been online for five months.

To celebrate 15 spooky, scary Supernatural years, we’ve rounded up 15 fun facts about the series. Read on, SPN Family!

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1. By the time Supernatural premiered in 2005, creator Eric Kripke had been developing the idea for nearly a decade. In 2019—as the show hit 300 episodes—Kripke shared his original pitch from 2004, which described a very different pilot episode.

2. Kripke named Sam and Dean Winchester after Sal and Dean from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and the surname Winchester was partly inspired by California’s Winchester Mystery House.

Colin Bentley/The CW

3. To promote Supernatural’s series premiere, The WB installed trick mirrors—which revealed the image of a terrified woman pinned to the ceiling—in 200 nightclubs in three U.S. cities. The network also sent coffee cup sleeves—which revealed the same image when exposed to heat—to 500 cafés around the country.

4. Padalecki and Ackles have a Man of Steel connection. Padalecki auditioned to play the part in a scrapped Superman movie scripted by J.J. Abrams, while Ackles auditioned to play Clark Kent in Smallville. (Ackles eventually starred in Smallville’s fourth season, playing charming assistant football coach Jason Teague.)

5. Steve Adler, mayor of Austin, Texas, declared June 23, 2018, as Supernatural Day, in honor of the two lead actors who have homes there.

I’m humbled. I’m awed. I’m speechless. I’m grateful. The #spnfamily is an INCREDIBLE force, and I truly can’t believe yall made this happen. Thank you. And thank you @MayorAdler #akf @realGpad @JensenAckles @DanneelHarris pic.twitter.com/Qh4hxuvlBw

— Jared Padalecki (@jarpad) June 24, 2018

6. Sam and Dean’s father, John Winchester, is played by actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan who is only 11 years older than on-screen son Ackles!

7. In what Kripke calls a “spooky” coincidence, his son was born on May 2, 2007, two years after Kripke picked the same day of the year as Sam Winchester’s birthday.

8. Supernatural star Mark Pellegrino was the second choice to play Castiel, a role that went to Misha Collins. The producers later offered Pellegrino the part of Lucifer, no audition required.

David Gray/The CW

9. The character of Ruby was reportedly written for Kristen Bell, but when the Good Place actress passed on the part, it went to Katie Cassidy.

10. Supernatural is the rare TV show with two music composers. Jay Gruska and Chris Lennertz alternate composing duties, each scoring every other episode.

11. The show inspired a 2011 anime spinoff, fittingly titled Supernatural: The Anime Series. Jared Padalecki voiced Sam in all 22 episodes of the English-language version of the anime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=306xlpswTy8

12. Seventeen novels based on Supernatural were released between 2007 and 2019.

13. Supernatural fan fiction gave birth to the fan fic subgenre known as Omegaverse, which The New York Times describes as “wolf-kink erotica.”

14. Twitter had to intervene after Supernatural fans tweeted the phrase “Lucifer is coming” en masse to promote the fifth season premiere. Amid controversy—and amid “God is here” rebuttals from other users—Twitter removed the phrase from its list of trending topics.

15. Supernatural ranks as the longest-running sci-fi/genre series in the history of American broadcast television, per Deadline.

Supernatural, Final Episodes, Thursday, October 8, 8/7c, The CW