Trivia / Nancy Drew

• Acting for Two: In The Silent Spy, Lani Minella does the voices for both Nancy and her mother Kate in flashbacks. It can get a little confusing after a while.
• Approval of God: Despite being very campy, Mildred Wirt Bensen, the original writer of Nancy Drew, was said to have enjoyed the low-budget film series from the late 1930s.
• Completely Different Title:
  • The franchise (and thus the character) is called "Alice Roy" in France. The first entry in the franchise not to go by that name there is The Hidden Staircase, the 2019 film starring Sophia Lillis.
  • In Norwegian translations, Nancy keeps her original name, but the franchise is called "Frøken Detektiv," which literally translated means "Miss Detective." The translations sometimes justify this by claiming that "Frøken Detektiv/Miss Detective" is one of Nancy's seldomly-used nicknames.
• Creator Backlash: In 2020, Her Interactive discontinued Ransom of the Seven Ships due to the Values Dissonance behind its racist depiction of a white character posing as Jamaican.
• Dancing Bear: The first novel, The Secret of the Old Clock, has been read more than any other book in the series—more than most mystery novels in general, actually. That's mainly because it was the start of the famous Nancy Drew franchise. Judged on its own merit, it's not exactly trash, but it's still pretty corny by today's standards, and quality-wise it's not much better or worse than the other books in the series.
• Defictionalization: An entire channel exists specifically to replicate the Food Porn from the games.
• Flip-Flop of God: The series is written by a number of assigned ghostwriters under one pen name, therefore limiting how much you can rely on Word of God. It's gotten really bad in the recent series, Girl Detective. The stories are now spread over three-book trilogies, and it becomes clear that they're written by three different people who don't consult with each other (and don't seem to know much about the series itself). In one, "Serial Sabotage," Nancy begins to call her housekeeper "Mrs. Gruen," despite calling her "Hannah" for the past 80 years. This was also a book two in a trilogy, so she went from calling her Hannah to Mrs. Gruen back to Hannah, all in the course of three days.
• Follow the Leader: The look and feel of the games takes very clear inspiration from Myst, such as the pre-rendered CG screens, using the "slideshow" style of movement, and taking place in the first-person view. In terms of gameplay mechanics, however, it is closer to a traditional adventure game due to using an inventory system and having dialogue trees in conversations.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The original 1930-1959 versions of the first 34 books before they were revised from 1959-1977. The first 21 were reprinted by Applewood Books from 1991-2007, but only the first 6 remain in print. Finding the rest means looking for copies printed before they were revised, although they're surprisingly not too hard to find on the used book circuit if you know what to look for.
  • After the series switched publishers from Grosset & Dunlap to Simon & Schuster with Vol. 57 in 1979, new books were published in paperback format until it concluded with Vol. 175 in 2003. Almost all of these books are out-of-print, though sometimes easy to find in libraries and the used book circuit. The publishing rights to #57-64 transferred to Grosset & Dunlap in 2005, and those are now the only ones in print.
  • The Nancy Drew Files series from the 80s is out of print.
  • Her Interactive stopped selling copies of the first two games because said games were so old-tech they wouldn't work on modern computers. (The old games after 1 and 2 still work, but you need to install them a particular way.) The company released a remake of Secrets Can Kill, but prospective Stay Tuned players need to find the game on Ebay and a working method of installing it.
    • ''Stay Tuned'' has been re-released almost five years later with instructions for installing it.
    • They also stopped selling Waverly Academy copies. It's not clear why, because that was not one of the 'old-tech' games. It is still available for purchase as a digital download (PC only).
    • In August 2020, HER pulled Ransom of the Seven Ships from all platforms out of racial/cultural appropriation concerns. A white character (the villain) disguises himself as a black man.
  • The live-action Nelvana series from 1995 had a DVD released in the UK that contains four of the show's thirteen episodes; the rest of the series has yet to be released.
• No Export for You:
  • The series' Russian website. Merchandise, by the score, for those who can read Russian! (The English website has merchandise too — just a lot less of it.)
  • Any of the earlier games in the series were not dubbed in French.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Prior to the release of Sea of Darkness, Her Interactive announced that from Midnight in Salem onward, Nancy will now be voiced by a different actor.
  • Nancy was also recast in The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. Pamela Sue Martin played her in the first season, where she was a lead role. When the role was reduced in Season 2, she dropped out mid-season, and was replaced with Janet Louise Johnson. Nancy didn't appear at all in Season 3.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Arglefumph, who does video walkthroughs for the games, has his picture on the Student of the Month wall in Secrets Can Kill: Remastered.
  • HildaGlitz, whose spoof trailer for "Warnings at Waverly Academy" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE54k-7WSks) was tweeted by Her Interactive.
  • Since around Tomb of the Lost Queen or so, there have been competitions for members of the public to enter photos or artwork into the games.
• Schedule Slip: Midnight in Salem has been pushed back to a 2019 release due to Her Interactive implementing a new game engine.
• Technology Marches On: Back in the first few games, there were no cell phones to be seen, and there were plenty of VHS tapes and floppy disks that were used. Usually they were able to justify it with the stories taking place in locations that were old enough (like old rustic mansions or antique trains) or far enough away to be considered "off the grid" and less sensitive to changes in technology. Despite this, the earlier games, particularly the first two, really show their age.
  • Nancy's cell phones also gradually evolve throughout the series.
• Those Two Actors: Two years before the 2007 movie, Tate Donovan (Carson) and Max Thieriot (Ned) appeared in The Pacifier as father and son respectively—though they didn't share any scenes together in that one though.
• What Could Have Been: Jamie Lee Curtis' very first audition was for Nancy in The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. Likewise, Rachel McAdams' first audition was for lead in the 2002 Nancy Drew pilot on ABC.