Twin Peaks

Frank Silva was a set decorator who worked on the pilot episode. One day, when he was moving furniture in Laura Palmer's bedroom, a woman remarked to Silva not to get locked in the (Laura Palmer's) room. The image of Silva trapped in the room sparked something in Lynch, who then asked Silva if he was an actor. Silva replied "Yes", and Lynch told him that he had a part in mind for him on the series. Silva accepted, and Lynch shot footage of him behind Laura's bed with no real idea of what he would do with it.

When Lynch shot the scene of Sarah Palmer's frightening vision, Silva's reflection was accidentally caught in the footage. Silva can be seen in the mirror behind Sarah Palmer's head. Lynch was made aware of this accident, but decided to keep Silva in the scene.

MIKE's appearance in the pilot episode was only originally intended to be a "kind of homage to The Fugitive. The only thing he was gonna do was be in this elevator and walk out."[4] However, when Lynch wrote the "Fire walk with me" speech, he imagined MIKE saying it in the basement of the Twin Peaks hospital – a scene that would appear in the European version of the pilot episode, and surface later in Agent Cooper's dream sequence. MIKE's full name, Phillip Michael Gerard, is also a reference to Lieutenant Philip Gerard, a character in The Fugitive.

Lynch met Michael J. Anderson in 1987. After seeing him in a short film, Lynch wanted to cast the actor in the title role in Ronnie Rocket, but that project failed to get made. While editing the alternate ending of the foreign version of the pilot episode, an idea occurred to Lynch on his way home one day: "I was leaning against a car — the front of me was leaning against this very warm car. My hands were on the roof and the metal was very hot. The Red Room scene leapt into my mind. 'Little Mike' was there, and he was speaking backwards... For the rest of the night I thought only about The Red Room."