Lisa was written as a Jewish American Princess with the auditions calling for white females only. Lark Voorhees, who is African American, got the part based on the strength of her audition.
Sort of with Slater. He was originally envisioned as a white John Travolta type. When they couldn't find the right actor, producers opened casting to black, Latino, and Asian actors too - and Mario Lopez won the part.
Actor-Inspired Heroism: Slater was conceived as Zack's romantic rival, and the early episodes reflect this. However, producers found Mario Lopez so nice on set, and his growing friendship with Mark-Paul Gosselaar produced great chemistry onscreen. As such, they wrote Zack and Slater to become good friends, and Slater developed his own love story with Jessie, separate from Zack and Kelly.
Cast the Runner-Up: Elizabeth Berkley auditioned for Kelly. Although Tiffani Thiessen got the part, the producers liked Berkley's audition so much they created the role of Jessie just to have her in the series.
Channel Hop: Zigzagged in a way. The original Good Morning, Miss Bliss pilot aired on NBC in 1987, before the network passed on it. Eventually, the series was picked up by Disney Channel, which aired it for one season in 1988-89. The series then made its way back to NBC, where it was retooled as Saved by the Bell, and the rest is history.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: MeTV labels this as an "E/I" show with a preceding announcement of "The following program is educational and informational", and it's the only show that occupies their weekly Sunday educational programming slot. Aside from taking place in a school and a few episodes that deal with the consequences of drug abuse and drunk driving, Saved by the Bell really has no educational value and is primarily a comedy. It certainly doesn't help that it isn't a realistic portrayal of high school either.
Elizabeth Berkeley has said that she didn't like that Jessie wasn't able to dress as girly as Kelly and Lisa in one interview.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar originally considered "Running Zack" to be his personal favorite episode of the series. However, in November 2016, he changed his opinion of it. He apologized, stating that the episode was insensitive to Native Americans.
Mostly averted in the prime series. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Elizabeth Berkley, Tiffani Thiessen, and Lark Voorhies were all 15 (Mario Lopez was only a bit older, being 16) when they were cast and it was actually the other way around with Dustin Diamond, who was only twelve. Peter Engel apparently didn't realize he was so young at first.
Leanna Creel ("Tori") was introduced when the gang were seniors, and she was 22 at the time.
This was averted in the spin-off "The New Class". All the teen characters were played by actual teens although a couple did push into the twenties towards the end and only Lindsey McKeon graduated the same year as her character.
Dyeing for Your Art: Mark-Paul Gosselaar is a natural brunet but bleached his hair to play Zack. He had to have touch-ups every two weeks to hide his dark roots.
Edited for Syndication: Good Morning, Miss Bliss has only ever aired in syndication as Saved by the Bell: The Junior High Years. The changes include replacing the original opening and closing credits with those from Saved by the Bell (only subbing in the different actors for the opening), adding in a cold open to each episode with Zack as the narrator (to bridge the two effectively separate continuities) and switching out the incidental music with the more familiar synth stings (which is jarring as the show has a more laid-back and subdued atmosphere).
The main series also suffered from this for all of it's reruns in the U.S. with each episode having at least 1 minute or more trimmed from the run-time which sometimes resulted in plot holes and in worst cases the actual ending being cut. Worse yet many of those edited versions are the ones on all of the show's official DVD and streaming releases(with the exception of the individual season sets released in France as mentioned below)though some episodes were released on VHS uncut.
Both of the TV movies were trimmed for syndicated airings and those trimmed down versions are the ones on streaming services(though thankfully both are uncut on DVD).
Fake Mixed Race: Zack's out of nowhere Indian heritage is the focal point of "Running Zack". Afterwards, it never brought up again. Ironically, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is mixed race, just not part-Native American. He is part-Indonesian on his mother's side.
Follow the Leader: Saved by the Bell was the leader, and spawned multiple clones, many of them done by producer Peter Engel (including California Dreams and USA High), leading NBC to cancel all its cartoons, give half of Saturday Morning to a new version of the Today show, and the other half to the Saved by the Bell clones. This also extended to other channels as many sitcoms on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were heavily inspired by SBTB(Especially since several of the shows on there like Victorious and That's So Raven actually reused the same high school set from SBTB).
Friendship on the Set: While Zack and Slater were initially written as rivals, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Mario Lopez became good friends during production to the point that their characters were rewritten as being close friends.
Hire the Critic: Dashiell Driscoll, creator of Zack Morris is Trash, criticized Zack's treatment of his friends and the show's refusal to acknowledge his behavior. When the show was rebooted, Driscoll was hired as a writer.
I Am Not Spock: All of the actors have gone through this at some point. Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies, and Dennis Haskins in particular never escaped their most famous role. Showgirls tainted Elizabeth Berkley's career and has been Spocked as Nomi Malone instead. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, and Tiffani Thiessen, on the other hand, found success after the show ended. Dustin Diamond's severe case of this afterwards up to the end of his life was combined with I Just Want to Be Normal as he was irritated when people called him "Screech".
In Memoriam: When Dustin Diamond died in February 2021 of cancer, both MeTV and E! had memorial cards in his honor and marathons of the show in different ways: whereas the former aired six Screech-related episodes, the latter had a 24-hour marathon of the show and featured vignettes of interviews with him in addition to the memorial card.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: In the U.S. many episodes have not been seen uncut since their original NBC airings (though a handful were released uncut on VHS in the 90s) every single DVD/streaming release (except for the individual season DVD sets by Elephant Films in France, they are also uncut on Amazon Prime France though those versions lack an English audio option like the DVD sets have) and all reruns have always featured the Edited for Syndication versions of the episodes (even the dedicated Saved by the Bell FAST channel has the edited versions of at least half of the episodes like the DVD and streaming releases). This is in stark contrast to the rest of the world where the episodes have always been aired uncut (with some countries like The Netherlands even airing them as late as 2010), this is most noticeable with the original pilot "King of the Hill" as the overseas version is lacking the expository voice-over by Zack at the beginning (since it actually aired in it's proper place in the beginning of the season overseas).
No Export for You: The complete TV series and two movies are available as box sets in Canada and France whereas in the U.S. the movies are sold separately.
The only way to see all of the episodes uncut in English is on the individual season DVD sets released in France by Elephant Films.
There were two Latin American Spanish dubs, which shared almost the whole cast. The only exception was Zach, whose voice actor went from Raúl Aldana to Irwin Daayán for the second dub.
Out of Order: At least 20 episodes were made for the first season, but only 16 of those episodes would air in the same season, with the series pilot, "King of the Hill", being the fifteenth episode to air during that season. The additional four episodes would air sporadically throughout the remainder of the show's run, with "Close Encounters Of The Nerd Kind" and "The Babysitters" airing during the following season, and "Screech's Birthday" and "Slater's Friend" not airing until the final season, leading to some noticeable inconsistencies with the characters' ages.
Although the production order is the definitive order for the most part, it is preferable to watch "Isn't It Romantic?" first, then "Graduation", and finally "The Time Capsule". For the "Tori episodes", it is preferable to begin with "Best Summer of My Life", and end with "Day of Detention".
Post-Script Season: The show had finished taping its finale (which centered around the characters' high school graduation) when NBC ordered more episodes. Which shouldn't have been a problem, as the finale hadn't aired yet, and they could simply air the new episodes prior to the finale—except that the actors' contracts had expired, and everyone but Tiffani Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley decided to sign new ones. As a result, Kelly and Jessie were replaced with a new character named Tori Scott. No explanation was given for Kelly and Jessie's absence in the new episodes, and since the finale was already in the can, no explanation could be given for Tori's absence at graduation.
Recycled Set: The hallway/locker area set, originally built for the show's first incarnation as Good Morning, Miss Bliss, never got destroyed, and has been reused in many high school-based shows. It was last used as the school set for iCarly and Victorious after That's So Raven used it before.
Romance on the Set: Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Lark Voorhies were a couple for three years. He also dated, at separate times, Tiffani Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley. He also met his first wife, Lisa, when she played an extra on an episode of The College Years.
Sleeper Hit: The show became enormously popular almost overnight. When it had been on the air for only four weeks, a survey revealed that 50% of teenage girls in America were watching it. In its heyday, it frequently attracted more viewers than The Cosby Show, which was the number one rated primetime show at the time.
Technology Marches On: Zach's cell phone was used for comedy, since the idea of a high school student having one was considered ridiculous at the time the show aired. Today, when cell phones are commonplace, audiences are more likely to laugh at how huge said phone is.
As aforementioned, Lisa was originally going to be a Jewish American Princess. Before Lark Voorhies was cast, Lisa's backstory was going to be that her parents had moved to California from Long Island.
Zack and Lisa were supposed to become an item after "The Bayside Triangle", but after receiving complaints from parents of viewers, the storyline was ultimately aborted.
Jessie was supposed to be hooked on amphetamines, not caffeine in the infamous "Jessie's Song". This was nixed as TPTB thought it would be too dark.
Working Title: Producers were keen on Saved by the Bell as a title, but weren't sure that it was already copyrighted. Until it could be verified, the working title was As the Bell Rings. A five-minute Disney Channel series would later use that title.
You Look Familiar: Minor characters Scud and Ox were played by Troy Fromin.
Other Trivia:
The bright colors of the set, the wardrobe and even the intro were intentional according to the E! True Hollywood Story of the show, given that it was a live-action show admist a sea of animated programs. The Max in particular has many bright colors and random zig-zag background designs.
Speaking of cartoons, many veteran voice actors guest-starred in the first two seasons, including Hamilton Camp, Ruth Buzzi and Casey Kasem.
during Lopez's Dancing with the Stars appearance.