The Major Mistake in the First Episode of "The Office" You Never Noticed

This major Office mistake happens in the first episode of the show.

In the very first episode of The Office, Steve Carell's Michael Scott asks Jenna Fischer's Pam to put a fax that just came through into "the special filing cabinet for things from corporate," meaning the garbage can. When he asks for the fax—which he actually needs—again later, he explains that he took that joke from someone close to him.

"Yeah, that was a joke," Michael says. "That was a joke that was actually my brother's, and...It was supposed to be with bills and it doesn't work great with faxes."

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An episode in the next season adds to the mystery.

Then there's no more talk of Michael's siblings until Season 2's "Email Surveillance." In that episode, Michael mentions a brother again, either the same brother who taught him the filing cabinet joke or another one.

"When people hear the term 'Big Brother' they immediately think it's bad or scary," Michael says. "I don't. I think, 'Wow, I love my big brother.'"

Also, in Season 4's "Dundler Mifflin Infinity," Michael references a "fake brother," a.k.a. a foreign exchange student who lived with his family for a time.

"And we called him my brother," he says. "And that's who I thought he was. Um, then he went home to what is now formerly Yugoslavia, taking all of my blue jeans with him. And I had to spend the entire winter in shorts. That is what Ryan is like. A fake brother who steals your jeans."

Being that Michael seems to have stopped thinking about this unnamed student as his brother after the jeans incident, it's unlikely that he's the same "brother" mentioned in these other instances.

For more Michael-isms, check out Michael Scott Quotes That Every "Office" Fan Should Have Memorized.

If Michael has a brother or two—where are they?

The only trouble with these lines is that we never see these unnamed brothers or hear anything more about them. Given that Michael is so driven by the idea of family and shares so much of his personal life (too much, really) with his coworkers, that seems a little strange.

Michael does have a half-sister who fans learn more about. She doesn't appear on the show, but Marnie Cooper is the mother of his nephew Luke (Evan Peters), who Michael hires as an assistant. They have a fraught history though; Michael's been estranged from her side of the family for years, after he accidentally lost a young Luke in a forest. (It's a long story.)

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The show never explains what the real deal is with Michael's family.

So what are we to make of those missing brothers? Is it a plot hole? Is it a storyline the show's writers just chose not to explore? Either way, it seems like a missed opportunity to shed more light on Michael's tragicomic background.

There is evidence to support that the two brother references are just throwaway jokes that later became mistakes when the writers chose not to give Michael more siblings. The line about the filing cabinet joke in the first episode, for example, is taken directly from the original U.K. version of The Office, in which Ricky Gervais' David Brent gives the same excuse. And the "Big Brother" quote may not have been based in reality. It's pretty clear on the show that Michael has an active imagination, especially when it comes to dreaming up a different life for himself.

With The Office off the air, we're unlikely to get any further explanation—unless fans are successful in pushing for the revival of the sitcom. So feel free to make up your own head canon about Michael's brothers—or just chalk it up to an unintentional error.

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