MacDonald Carey's voice over in the opening title was kept as a tribute to the actor after he died.
Drake Hogestyn was hired in 1986 to take over the role of "Roman Brady" after Wayne Northrop left the series after a falling out with the show's writers. Several years later Northrop approached the producers of the show about him returning to the series, which created a problem because Hogestyn had quickly became one of the show's most popular actors. In order to keep Hogestyn on the show while allowing Northrop to return to the series as Roman, a storyline was crafted that revealed that Hogestyn's Roman was actually a mercenary named John Black who had been brainwashed into thinking he was Roman Brady as punishment for betraying his employer Stefano Dimera. This allowed Hogestyn to continue on the show while allowing Wayne Northrop to resume his previous role.
In September 2015, while reporting on the millions of Syrian migrants who were undergoing extreme hardships to get to safety in Europe, John Oliver and the other writers on Oliver's HBO show "Last Week Tonight" saw a news interview with an enthusiastic, bright, wheelchair-bound sixteen-year-old Syrian refugee named Noujain Mustaffa. Mustaffa said that she had learned English by watching her favorite TV show, Days of Our Lives, she was a particular fan of the relationship between Sami and E. J., and she wished that E. J. had not been killed off. In response, "Last Week Tonight" arranged for Days actors Alison Sweeney (Sami) and James Scott (E. J.) to film a scene for "Last Week Tonight" showing E. J. returning from the dead (after having been resurrected by a witch doctor). In the scene, Sami and E. J. briefly discuss E. J.'s return but then quickly move on to sympathizing with the plight of the Syrian migrants, making sure to work Noujain's name into their conversation multiple times.
In 1991 Deidre Hall (Marlena Evans Black) was lured back to Days of Our Lives with the promise that she could serve as executive producer of a DAYS spin-off called "Manhattan Lives". Initial hopes were to begin airing in 1994 if Another World wasn't renewed. In the end Destini (1964) was renewed and the spin-off never came to be.