YMMV / Big Time Rush

• Actor Shipping: Tons of this for Kendall/Logan and James/Carlos.
  • Also, Katelyn Tarver/Erin Sanders (Jo and Camille, respectively) get this.
  • And of course Carlos Pena and Alexa Vega, who were already engaged when she appeared in the finale and later married. They even competed against each other on Dancing with the Stars!
  • James Maslow and Victoria Justice from Victorious is pretty popular too.
• Adorkable: Logan is the brain of the group who almost always wears vests/neckties/t-shirts, and occasionally a lab coat.
• Angst? What Angst?: Logan in "Big Time Girlfriends". He certainly forgives James and Camille for accidentally kissing each other very quickly, but that may be a by-product of the storyline having to split time with Kendall and Jo's relationship issues and Carlos and his girlfriend.
• Award Snub: At the 2011 Kids' Choice Awards. They lost "Best Show" to iCarly and "Fave Music Band" to The Black Eyed Peas.
  • They also lost "Favorite Breakthrough Band of 2011" to A Day to Remember.
  • Happened again at the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards. Carlos Pena was nominated for "Best Male TV Actor", and the band was nominated for "Favorite Music Group". Neither won in their respective category.
    • From the beginning, it was very obvious that the band itself had almost no chance of winning "Favorite Music Group," because they were up against the juggernaut that is One Direction. Rushers actually had a big lead in the Twitter voting, but unsurprisingly, 1D came out on top. While many Rushers thought that 1D beat them by the skin of their teeth, it was later reported that One Direction got 63% of the vote, meaning that BTR could not have pulled off any more than 37%; and, at the very minimum, 1D had nearly twice as many votes as BTR.
    • Carlos's loss for "Favorite Television Actor", on the other hand, was much more of an upset, considering the fact that the winner, Ross Lynch from Austin & Ally, wasn’t much of an idol, at least at the time.
  • The 2014 KCAs. BTR wasn't nominated for anything. Way to go, Nick, leaving your own band off of Favorite Music Group. 1D and Ross were nominated again for their respective awards, and both ended up winning.
• Base-Breaking Character: Kendall, for his Only Sane Man status, will be either loved or hated.
  • On some level, he also was kind of a Creator's Pet. He always got the most storylines, his family are main characters on the show, and if something bad happens, he's the one to resolve it. Lucy being Kendall's love-interest when he already had Jo also bordered on this. Couldn't the three other boys have had storylines?
• Cargo Ship: James/Palm Tree, which later turns into Random Girl/James/Palm Tree.
• Cliché Storm: In-Universe. The Show Within a Show "Coco.0" hits all the clichés of a typical teen sitcom. Female main character with some kind of secret (in this case, being a Robot Girl), best friend who is also a Secret-Keeper, mean girls who want either know or guessed her secret and want to bust her and loads of overproduced romance and drama.
• Crazy Is Cool: Camille. Her crazy nature often helps the guys with their problems.
• Creator's Pet: Jo, for the fans that don't like her and Kendall's relationship.
• Crossover Ship: James/Tori Vega.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mercedes. She's a Rich Bitch who makes the boys her boyfriends and do what she says because she "loves manipulating people" and is a Clingy Jealous Girl at times... but she's so hilarious that everyone wants her to make another appearance. It helps that she brings back nostalgia for a certain other character actress Carlie Casey is best known for.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While Kendall and Logan end up with Jo and Camille respectively, most fans ship the two together instead due to the large amounts of Ho Yay they have together, the two actors' chemistry, and their real-life friendship. Meanwhile, James ends up with Lucy in the final episode, but most fans ship him with either Kendall or Carlos.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Between Kendall Knight and Jett Stetson, especially after "Green Time Rush".
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Averted. The show has almost as many male fans as it does female fans. The band’s fan base, however, is pretty overwhelmingly female.
• Growing the Beard: Later episodes do expand out into more interesting plots while still keeping true to its musical core.
• Harsher in Hindsight: James spends most of "Big Time Dance" helping Logan ask Camille to the dance. Then came "Big Time Girlfriends", where James and Camille kiss despite her now being in a relationship with Logan. What the hell, James? (Though in some fairness, the kiss in was blatantly played as a consequence of the two getting too far into character and literally forgetting for a moment that they weren't a Hair-Model Spy and a Robot Princess who had fallen in love. "There was a bomb", indeed.)
• LGBT Fanbase: The show had a number of gay/bi male fans. Four hot guys who provide some light fanservice, with plenty of ho yay. Are you surprised?
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Big Time Rush Theme played over several cinematic deaths.
  • A common meme is to put their song "Boyfriend" over image macros of various fictional characters. Observe.
• Mis-blamed: Despite popular belief, as well as the overall similar cast members and humor, the show is not a Dan Schneider show.
• Moral Event Horizon: Hawk crosses this in "Big Time Superheroes" when he not only steals Gustavo's hard drive which holds BTR's second album, but then tricks the police into thinking Gustavo stole it, and not the other way around, which gets him, Kelly and the boys arrested.
  • Jett Stenson also does this in "Big Time Sneakers" when he attempts to make a fake relationship with Jo public, even knowing that she is already dating Kendall. He also has Jo's publicist support the decision, claiming that fans will take his side as he has a bigger fanbase.
• Narm Charm: Part of the series' appeal is how over-the-top everything is.
• One True Threesome: The most popular pairing is all four of the main boys, James/Logan/Kendall/Carlos, but it's not hard to find any kind of threesome combo out there, sometimes even with one of the girls thrown in. James/Logan/Camille is a popular trio with fans, especially considering how Logan orchestrated James and Camille's dress/tux trade in the prom episode.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: It's hard to believe the show's supposed to be about four guys from Minnesota trying to make it in the music business and not about them chasing girls constantly. The most notable case is the Kendall/Jo romance.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Jo to much of the fanbase; whether you consider her a lovable character or not, canon has never placed her in a villainous role, but a wide variety of fanfiction portrays her as manipulative, cheating, verbally abusive, and even homophobic in the right context.
  • On the flipside, many Jo positive fics do this with her father. While in canon, Jo's father had an antagonistic role in his only appearance, he was portrayed as strict and overprotective at worse, and even then had a Pet the Dog moment where he comforts who he thinks is a depressed Jo. However, in fanfics revolving around Kendall and Jo, her father often gets portrayed as an Abusive Parent and an obstacle in their relationship.
• Ship Mates: The fandom as a whole doesn't seem to have a problem with the final canon pairings (Kendall/Jo, James/Lucy, Logan/Camille and Carlos/Alexa) and they all generally get along well.
  • Special mention for Jendall(Jo/Kendall) shippers and Lomille (Logan/Camille) shippers as the two longest canon ships. Because Kendall/Logan and Jo/Camille being respectively best friends and the fact they had even a double date in "Big Time Gold".
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: As the tv fandom said Kendall/Jo and Kendall/Lucy rivalry is ignited in "Big Time Decision".
• Spiritual Successor: A four man Boy Band assembled for a TV show that sees them get into wacky hijinks on a regular basis? They're basically the 21st century equivalent to The Monkees.
• Tear Jerker: The end of "Big Time Break Up"
  • The performance of "Till I Forget About You" from "Welcome Back Big Time": Kendall is out there singing this song about how he's given up hope of ever repairing his relationship with Jo. Fortunately, it ends on a Heartwarming Moment.
  • The finale has the boys performing "We Are", set to clips from the entire series. The song opens with the opening scene from the pilot and just continues from there. And then the end scene has the entire cast singing along to "Big Time Rush".
• Ukefication: In the majority of fics, Logan is frantic, uptight, and skeptic with good reason, but typically he's portrayed as a whiny wimp who reluctantly gives in (sometimes very reluctantly). The others are susceptible to this as well. There's a sorting algorithm of dominance which almost directly correlates to height; Kendall tops James tops Carlos tops Logan (results may vary). Kendall can even retain some of his natural seme qualities while biting pillows.
• The Woobie:
  • Logan, at least in the pilot, where Gustavo's "The Reason You Suck" Speech (well, screaming rant) causes him to go into a Troubled Fetal Position, rocking back and forth. Kendall later claims Gustavo made Logan cry, but we don't see it.
    • His freakouts go between being a Funny Moment and cementing his The Woobie status. Bonus points for his freakout in "Big Time Mansion", which ends with him fainting in terror.
    • And the way he jumps into Kendall's arms a la Scooby-Doo when frightened in "Big Time Crib."
  • James in the pilot, but only when the boys are telling Kendall's mom why they were arrested.
  James: And now I'm sad.
  • "Big Time Terror" features the revelation that Gustavo wasn't allowed to act like a kid when he was a child, and his mother forced him to practice playing the piano instead of playing games with other kids his age. Partially averted, in that when Kendall says that he feels bad, Kelly immediately tells him not to. Really, he could count as a Jerkass Woobie.
  • In "Big Time Breakup," Jo leaves California to film three movies in New Zealand, a supposed once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. By the beginning of "Big Time Decision," however, everything had come crashing down around her. The test audiences hated the first movie so much that they burned down the theater, and the studio cancelled the remaining two. Jo had given up a year of her life, a year that she could have spent in Los Angeles with her friends and the boy she loves, doing work that might have actually advanced her career, and instead, she walked away from her "New Town High" contract, broke up with Kendall, and left behind all of her friends, only to return to California with nothing to show for it. To top it all off, upon returning to Palm Woods, Jo, who had been hoping to rekindle her relationship with Kendall, is crushed with disappointment to find him kissing a new girl. (Jo's fortunes did, however, take a brighter turn by the end of the episode.)

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