Daytime fans have always known that the popular sitcom Friends has a Days of our Lives connection: not only is Jennifer Aniston's dad John Aniston, who plays the soap's villainous character Victor Kiriakis, but Friends also had a storyline in which Joey was cast on the NBC soap opera as Dr. Drake Ramoray. However, it turns out that the sitcom has a pretty dang cool connection to the ABC soap All My Children, as well. All six leading Friends characters -- Ross, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Monica, and Phoebe -- were named after Pine Valley residents.
As reported by IMDb and Refinery 29, Chandler Bing's name comes from All My Children's Chandler family, which included iconic characters like Adam Chandler (David Canary) and Hayley Vaughan (Kelly Ripa). Ross's name also stemmed from the mega-rich soap opera clan, as he was named after Ross Chandler (Robert Gentry).
Meanwhile, Rachel Green came from Janet Green (a.k.a. Janet from Another Planet, played by Kate Collins and Robin Mattson), Joey came from Joe Martin (Ray MacDonnell), and Phoebe came from Phoebe Wallingford (Ruth Warrick).
The only one that is a head-scratcher at first glance is Monica, but her moniker was also inspired by AMC. The character's original name was Monique, named after Daisy Murdoch (Gillian Spencer), who briefly went by the alias Monique Jonvil.
Friends is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, having aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004. It stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer as six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City. It was quite a long-running sitcom, although not as long-running as All My Children, which aired on ABC from 1970 to 2011 and had a brief run online in 2013.
For a list of other surprising facts about Friends, check out Refinery 29's article here. And to read Soap Central's funny behind-the-scenes story about how DAYS hairstylists had to fix John Aniston's hair after his daughter, Jennifer Aniston, gave him a haircut, click here.
Did you know that all six Friends characters were named after All My Children characters? If you could be named after an AMC character, which one would you choose? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
