12 Facts You May Not Have Known About Sherlock Season 3

WARNING: Spoilers Below! Proceed with Caution!

This past Sunday (2/2/14) concluded season 3 of BBC’s hit series “Sherlock” for American audiences (the show aired in the UK three weeks before the US). Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat never fail to fill each season with complicated story arcs and fantastic content, each episode warranting a rewatch or two (or five). So how many times have you seen each episode?

Multiple viewings aside, here’s some extraneous info you all might not have known.

Watson’s Stag Night (episode 2, The Sign of Three) originally included a scene at a gay bar:

“I regret there was one bit of that drunk stuff that was missing, and that was the gay club scene. When we were absolutely mullered in the gay club! There were lots of topless men going past, and [Sherlock and John] are just like, ‘Why are we here?'”
–Martin Freeman

So why was this scene cut? Moffat claims the drunken bar hopping sequence was just too long or maybe it’s really because the notorious deleted scene would have killed Johnlock shippers with feels. The world will never know.
It was Mark Gatiss’s decision to to include Moriarty, Andrew Scott, at the very end of the third episode (post credits).
Moffat said of the scene: “That was in the cutting room … Mark just decided we would use a little bit of it. It was just a final little treat really just to wind people up…I was as surprised as anyone when he turned up. He was definitely dead. You can’t fake shooting yourself in the face. The back of his head came off!”
Moffat was so impressed by ratings for the return of Sherlock, he’s now teasing an even longer hiatus before Season 4. Another 2 years, you’re wondering? Try 4 or 5. Fingers crossed he’s just trolling.
Moriarty was never intended to have a big role, at least — not in the first season of Sherlock. It’s a credit to Andrew Scott’s acting ability that Moffat and Gatiss edited the script to include the big showdown at the swimming pool. Originally, Sherlock was supposed to realize Moriarty was actually Molly Hooper’s “Gay Jim”…and he’d just missed him.

“We had to…cast Moriarty on the basis of Gay Jim, but know he was going to be our Moriarty. So I wrote the most daft scene, the most ridiculous scene anyone’s ever written, as a confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty just for the audition. It’s full of the maddest dialogue. ‘I would burn the heart out of you!’ and all this crap, just to see if anyone could say any of this shit. And then Andrew came in and he did it and he was amazing. I said to [executive producer] Mark Gatiss, “Well, not only are we gonna cast him, but we’ve got to do a version of this scene now.” –Steven Moffat with Vulture.com
While Moriarty’s reappearance was (allegedly) a last minute whim, Moffat says everything through season five has been planned out.
Moffat has no qualms, personally, with murdering a bad guy (like Magnussen or Moriarty) in real life.

“I would have shot [Magnussen].I think people who behave like that should get shot. I don’t have a problem with it. If someone treated my family like that I would kill them and I’d spend absolutely no time worrying about it beyond thinking, It was really messy, wasn’t it? It’s a bit icky when he was bleeding all over there.” –Moffat with Vulture.com
Sherlock’s parents on the show are Cumberbatch’s parents in real life.
Benedict Cumberbatch is the only child of Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, both actors themselves.
Mrs. Mary Watson is played by Martin Freeman’s wife, Amanda Abbington. When asked how she was cast for the part, she admitted to a tiny bit of nepotism.

“I was sitting around the kitchen table at Mark Gatiss’s house one day, and he and Steven asked if I’d like to play her. I was honored, I really was. Slight nepotism, but I’ve been working for so many years now that I think that’s fine. You can have a bit of nepotism now and again.” – Amanda Abbington with Vulture.com
Abbington confessed Drunk Watson is remarkably similar to Drunk Martin. Surprise, surprise.

He did stuff in those scenes that he does at home, or when he’s mucking about. Like in the episode when someone says “Mr. Holmes” and he points at Sherlock and whistles, that’s my favorite bit. Martin does that a lot.”- Abbington
Abbington used James Bond’s gun to shoot Sherlock.
According to Moffat, Mind Palaces like Sherlock and Magnussen possess, are actually a thing.

“…Clever people can have them. You construct it out of spaces you’ve actually been in. You start in a house you live in and you put things in it and then you maybe join it to a theater you know well or something. So you’ve got a map in your head of places with which you’re familiar. The look of [Sherlock’s] mind palace would be conditioned by where [he] had been. There had to be places in contemporary London he knew well.” -Moffat
Like Andrew Scott’s Moriarty, Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey) wasn’t supposed to reappear after the first episode but Gatiss and Moffat liked Brealey’s interpretation so much, they made her a recurring character with an interesting development- especially in regards to Sherlock.

“She’s become one of a very small select band of people he absolutely trusts. And he adores Molly, of course he does. He loves her. I don’t think she has the same sort of crush on him anymore. She’s fascinated by him, but she knows that’s not who she actually wants to end up with. She properly cares about him — and gets angry at him, and tells him off. It’s revealing that she’s in his mind palace. She’s one of the people he keeps himself up to the mark with.” – Moffat