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How did Danny Tanner’s wife die in Full House? Bob Saget had a macabre theory
How did the mom on Full House die? It depends on who you ask and when you ask them

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All week long: Revisit the highlights and lowlights of 1987 with Popverse's Made in 87 week.
Full House is a family sitcom about a widower named Danny Tanner raising three daughters. To fill the void left by his late wife, Danny’s brother-in-law Jesse and best friend Joey move in to lend a hand. This led to eight seasons of family hijinks which ran on ABC from 1987 through 1995.
However, many viewers have often wondered what happened to the mom. How did Danny’s wife Pam die? Bob Saget had a macabre theory.
“We were at a press conference early on with the show,” John Stamos says during a Full House spotlight panel at Megacon 2021. “The character of Pam died, and somebody at the press thing said, ‘How did Pam die?’”
In 1987, the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon debuted - and all our lives were changed. Watch this reunion of the original voice actors:
“It was of course me that answered,” Bob Saget says. “They said, ‘How did the mom pass away?’ And our executive producer said, ‘Cancer,’ at the same time I said, ‘A car accident’ Then I said, ‘Well, she had cancer in the car.’ It’s gallows humor but having had a lot of death in all of our families, that’s how we dealt with it, which is to make humor about it. That’s what that joke is. Not in good taste at all, but it did make some of the press laugh.”
This theory was never mentioned in the show itself, but the season eight episode ‘Under the Influence’ contains a reference to Pam dying because of a drunk driver.
“People come up and say, ‘I lost my mom and watching it with my dad and siblings helped us to have conversations afterwards.’ And that’s valuable from the show for a lot of people,” Saget says.
Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:
- Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
- The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
- How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
- How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
- How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
- The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
- How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s
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