Top 10 Facts about Hannibal You Need to Know

Mads Mikkelsen did all of his own cooking on screen, including the egg trick. He was trained by the show's food stylist, Janice Poon.

David Tennant auditioned for the lead role of Hannibal. Bryan Fuller was so impressed with his audition, he told a magazine that even though he didn't get the role, he wanted to write Tennant a a guest role as a deranged serial killer.

In the series Hugh Dancy plays Will Graham opposite Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter. In the film King Arthur (2004), almost ten years before Hannibal, Dancy's character says: "I don't kill for pleasure. Unlike some." Mads responds with: "Well, you should try it someday. You might get a taste for it."

Hannibal and Will sometimes discuss Hannibal's use of a method for mentally storing information called a "memory palace." This is not an invention of either the show's writers or of Thomas Harris, who mentions Lecter using a memory palace in his books about the killer; rather, it is a method of aiding memory that dates back to ancient Rome.

The colour Red is in almost, if not all, scenes of the show. Sometimes extremely obvious, other times subtle and may be either darker or lighter in tone.

Dr. Alana Bloom is actually Dr. Alan Bloom in the books.

Bryan Fuller considered Lee Pace, who was the lead in Fuller's Pushing Daisies (2007), for the part of Will Graham.

Otherwise known as Francis Dolarhyde, the Tooth Fairy is one of the main antagonists of season three, and Armitage is brilliantly cast in the role, building on previous TV roles in Spooks and Robin Hood and on film in The Hobbit trilogy. He went into Hannibal, meanwhile, having not watched a single episode or even read a script sent to his agent.

Early on in the writing process, however, Kacey Rohl's was supposed to survive in the place of somebody else having a nasty demise (leading to Will throwing up somebody else's ear and getting carted off to a jail cell). According to actress Hettienne Park, it was her crime scene investigator Beverly Katz who was supposed to kick the bucket.

Gillian Anderson, who plays Bedelia Du Maurier, was in talks to play the role of Clarice Starling in the film Hannibal (2001). In fact, Anderson has admitted that her characterization of Dana Scully on The X-Files was largely inspired by Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs (1991).