During a 2014 Reddit AMA, Jerry Seinfeld admitted that both he and co-creator Larry David were surprised by how Seinfeld earned its “show about nothing” moniker: "The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material,’” Seinfeld explained. "The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it’s the opposite of that."
In the pilot episode, Kramer is called Kessler, as the real Kramer—Larry David’s former neighbor, Kenny Kramer—was hesitant to let his name be used for the show. Eventually, the “real” Kramer relented. Though he says he was paid just $1000 for the use of his name in the series, Kramer has since profited in other ways, namely with his Kramer’s Reality Tour bus tour (which is now in its 22nd year).
For years, it was rumored that Steve Buscemi was one of many soon-to-be-successful actors who unsuccessfully auditioned for Seinfeld (David Alan Grier was also in the mix, as was David Letterman’s bandleader Paul Shaffer, who said in his autobiography that his resemblance to Larry David—upon whom George is based—was what made him of interest to the show’s creators). But on a 2015 episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Buscemi addressed the rumor in his typical good-natured way: “I never did [the audition] and I don’t know how to correct it because I don’t know how the Internet works."