Trivia / Victorious

• Actor Allusion:
  • In the episode "Survival of the Hottest", one of the decorations in Beck's RV is a whiteboard with the quote "Buy the ticket, take the ride" written on it. This quote is also tattooed across the right side of Avan Jogia's chest. (Un)Fortunately, it's always covered with makeup for the show.
  • In "The Breakfast Bunch", Jade gives Cat and Robbie grief for being vegans. Elizabeth Gillies is a vegan in real life.
  • In "Tori & Jade's Play Date", Tori signs one of her posts on TheSlap with the emoticon ":{(", using a curly bracket to represent a moustache. Victoria Justice frequently uses this emoticon (and its happier variants) on Twitter.
  • In "April Fools Blank", Andre playing the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard Of Oz skit was possibly a reference to Leon Thomas III's previous role as Young Simba in The Lion King.
  • A subtle one in "Crazy Ponnie": During her rant at Tori, Ponnie shouts "It's my time to be!" "It's your time to be" is a lyric from the theme song to iCarly, the show Jennette McCurdy was starring in at the time.
  • Indirectly with Mason Thornesmith, played by Charles Shaughnessy. His son Francis has none of his accent, just like the Sheffield kids.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • In the episode "Stage Fighting", when Andre calls Tori 'white girl', she tells him that she's part Latina. Likewise, Victoria Justice is part Latina.
  • Jade got cranky when she learned that Beck is part Canadian. Avan Jogia, Beck's actor, is Canadian.
• Breakup Breakout: For many today, this series is most famous for launching Ariana Grande, who's music career really took off after production of the show.
  • The rest of the performers have seen varying levels of success or failure: Elizabeth Gillies the most notable as the lead on the Dynasty reboot, Avan Jogia has had a steady acting career if never achieving a-list level fame, Matt Bennett similar until 2018 where he's since been more of a social media personality and Leon Thomas- true to his Andre character- has worked in the music industry as a songwriter as well as various acting gigs. While most of Victoria Justice's TV and music ventures post-Victorious were commercial flops that seemed to permanently stall her career at the time, she got more notice as an Instagram model/star in the late 10's and has returned to acting in streaming films during the 2020s as well as releasing new music that's been well received if not commercially successful.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • It's a show about a performing arts school so even extras will show off, but Leon Thomas III and Victoria Justice seem to do the most on-screen performing of the main cast. However, we don't really hear Ariana Grande's legendary pipes until "Freak the Freak Out", which is performed near the end of season 1.
  • It's never mentioned beyond the credits, but "Song 2 You", "365 Days" and "Countdown" were all co-written by Leon Thomas III. "Song 2 You" is noteworthy because he initially wrote it when he was fourteen, three years before the series started. Victoria Justice also co-wrote a few songs for the show.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • The Xfinity description for "Cat's New Boyfriend" states Cat dating Trina's ex-boyfriend Michael, when really, Cat dates Tori's ex-boyfriend Danny.
  • Similarly, the "Victori-Yes" description says the students are challenged to say yes to everything for a week; in the episode itself, it really was for the rest of the day.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In this video looking back on two episodes of the show, Matt Bennett agrees with the consensus of Cat being her best in Season 1, lamenting how her character “completely changed” afterwards and saying that she just wasn’t the same.
  • According to some of Avan Jogia's TikToks, he was hungover often and hardly remembered filming anything of the show. He also voiced his displeasure of not being able to do anything on the show.
  • In "Tori & Jade's Playdate", Steven Crowley was almost cast as the operator of the Nozu karaoke machine before being cast as Chad, during which time he was told to read lines in an inflection/using vocabulary that were rather insensitive to Japanese people. It felt so discomforting that he compares it to The Aristocats.
• The Danza:
  • Tori is played by Victoria Justice.
  • Lane is played by Lane Napper.
  • Charlotte Harris, Andre's grandmother, is played by Marilyn Harris.
• Dawson Casting: Averted, for the most part as the actors were between 16 and 19 at the start of the series. Daniella Monet was 21 (portraying a presumably 17-year-old) at the time of the pilot's initial airdate, though that's comparatively borderline.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Ariana Grande, who plays Cat, dyed her hair just for the role. Dan Schneider had noticed the entire main cast had dark brown hair, and asked if Ariana would dye it a different color. She showed up next time with her red hair.
• Executive Meddling: Like iCarly, Victorious has suffered from some executive meddling, although in this case, it was executive meddling in its favor. As mentioned above, the second main cause for the ratings issues on iCarly was a lack of promotion for the show after that romantic storyline. Because iCarly looked to be coming to a close, Nick needed to push their promotional focus onto Victorious, which was slated to 'take over' as the flagship show of the network. The problem was that Victorious wasn't especially popular outside of its lead-in from iCarly. Even with iCarly getting renewed a couple more times, the poor advertising for iCarly hurt Victorious, as did the splitting of the show from a pairing where one led into the other, to airing almost at random without being together. The ratings were so bad that it pulled the network as a whole down, Victorious was cancelled at the same time as iCarly ended, along with numerous other shows on the roster, as the Nick execs wanted clear space to try and revive the network with a series of new pilots. To come full circle, the new pilot is Sam & Cat, which is a spin-off between two characters, one from iCarly, and one from Victorious.
• Follow the Leader: Apparently, the show was created in order to cash in on the success of Hannah Montana and High School Musical. But Tropes Are Not Bad.
• Hostility on the Set: Denied. When Ariana Grande mentioned being bullied in an interview, a magazine hinted that she was referring to Victoria Justice. Due to this, it was a long believed rumor that Victoria Justice bullied her during production of the show. However, it was later clarified that Grande was referring to being bullied on Broadway, not in the show.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Daniella Monet is very talented. Trina... questionable.
  • Tori is the newcomer and is highly uncertain of herself, even though Victoria Justice was the most experienced of the main cast.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only season 1 and 2 are on DVD, and there are no plans for the last two seasons being released into DVD. Still, Victorious reruns plenty on TeenNick. As for streaming, it's on Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Vudu. In November 2019 it was one of many Nickelodeon projects added to Netflix. Paramount+ now hosts all three seasons there.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's sold purses and jewelry with the show's logo on it in for girls their Happy Meals in 2012. There was also an "MP3 player" that would play "Make It Shine". These were sold alongside Spy Gear for boys.
• No Export for You:
  • TheSlap after a period where unlike its sister show iCarly it let anyone in the entire world view the site, it suddenly started redirecting readers from other countries such as those in Europe, Australia to their country's (badly and poorly updated) Nickelodeon websites.
• Out of Holiday Episode: "April Fool's Blank" is set on the titular holiday, but aired eight days earlier on March 24, 2012. It would have been closer, but the Kid's Choice Awards that year fell on March 31, pre-empting its normal timeslot. The same thing happened to iCarly's April Fools day episode that year.
• Out of Order: Like many Nickelodeon shows, Victorious had numerous episodes aired out of order (according to their production codes). For example, the show's final produced episode is "The Slap Fight," which aired two episodes before the show's last aired episode, "Victori-Yes". Of course, it's not too noticeable given that the show is more episodic-based than arc-based.
• Quietly Cancelled: In the midst of its third season, the series had seemed to be renewed for more seasons. Until it was revealed that Nickelodeon had really cancelled the series under the guise of doing this (it's speculated they dropped it after Ariana Grande's music career started gaining ground and wanted to put more emphasis on her with the spin-off Sam & Cat). None of the cast or crew were told of this until they learned about it from their fans.
• The Resolution Will Not Be Identified: Thanks to Nickelodeon cancelling the show before getting a proper series finale, the last episode played out like a normal episode proper.
• Screwed by the Network: A very baffling case. The show was very popular and pulling in great ratings, but Nickelodeon, for some unexplained reason, felt they needed to move on. They canned the show after the third season without telling the cast or crew (they either learned about it from the Internet or fans), and the remainder of the third season was burned off as a "fourth season", forcing the show to end with no finale whatsoever. It's speculated that Ariana Grande's music career taking off enticed the execs to put her more in the spotlight, hence why she was paired with Sam in Sam & Cat (it was actually supposed to be Sam's solo show originally, being a spinoff of iCarly). Due to this, they possibly came under the impression that Victorious wasn't worth continuing and sacrificed the show to heighten the effect of the spin-off (since it was the first of its kind of being a combination of two separate series), and because they were worried about similar production issues as when they were making iCarly and Victorious on the same film lot.
• Star-Making Role: Ariana Grande had by far the biggest boost in recognition from this series, though this also applies, to a lesser extent, to Elizabeth Gillies and Avan Jogia, who have both had their fair share of main roles after this show despite neither (especially not Avan) reaching Ariana's level of superstardom. Victoria Justice already had her breakthrough with Zoey 101, but this show was the transition between her child career and her adult career.
• Throw It In!: A very large number of bloopers with actual reactions thrown in the mix.
  • The Title Sequence itself. Tori almost doesn't catch the gold microphone, and her reaction is very real.
  • During the start of Wok Star where Tori drops her notebook.
  • In Stage Fighting, where Jade tripped over something while she was going to turn on the music.
  • Tori slips on ice-cream (probably) in Ice Cream for Ke$ha.
  • The Great Ping-Pong Scam where Robbie takes a Groin Attack; the next shot is a Widescreen Shot of Beck's hand over Rex's eyes —and in the next shot, we go to a Medium Two-Shot of Beck covering Rex's eyes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Victorious was clearly intended to have a fourth/fifth season; comments by production staff indicate it was meant to run concurrent with Sam & Cat with frequent Crossover potential.
  • In one of the early promos, Rex had a different voice that was much higher and scratchier than the one used for the show.
  • According to early drafts of the show, Trina was going to be a Big Sister Bully before her personality was given to Jade.
• You Might Remember Me from...:
  • Yvette Nicole Brown reprises her role as Helen Dubois in one episode.
  • Josh Peck gets a short line of dialogue in "Wok Star". Don't feel bad if you don't recognize him.

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