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Andrew Scott's Moriarty was originally only meant to pop up briefly as Molly's boyfriend 'Jim from IT' in The Great Game. The writers were so impressed by him that they hurried to write in the swimming pool confrontation at the end of the episode, and that tense exchange between him and Sherlock was actually lifted straight from Scott's original audition script.
Some fans and critics argued the show's Irene Adler was a step down from Conan Doyle's original, who beats Holmes by simply outsmarting him rather than falling for him. Moffat pushed back on that reading in an interview with The Guardian, pointing out that in the original story Adler's 'victory' was just running off and getting married, which he didn't think counted as much of a feminist win either.
Every violin Sherlock plays on screen across the three series is a genuine instrument on loan from Cardiff Violins, not a prop. The one used in Series Three was reportedly worth around £1200, and the company was apparently pretty touched when the BBC sent it back with a nice letter.
You'd think the show would film outside the actual 221B Baker Street, but by the time production started there was so much Sherlock Holmes signage and tourist clutter around the real street that it wasn't usable. The crew ended up shooting exteriors about a mile east, on North Gower Street instead.
One of the show's series finales generated a reported 377,182 tweets, which at the time was the highest tweet count ever recorded for a single episode of a UK drama. Only a Doctor Who anniversary special beat it, and that one's technically classed as a special rather than a normal episode.
