Trivia / Trish Stratus

• Actor-Inspired Element: Trish was annoyed at having to do the Gravy Bowl Match, so she suggested having Stacy Keibler throw her off the stage into it.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Trish hated the 'Diva' term WWE used to refer to its female performers, and tried to avoid saying it as much as she could.
  • Subverted with her program against Christy Hemme in 2005. Despite it being viewed as lacklustre by fans, Trish enjoyed the story and said Christy was fun to work with.
  • She has hinted that she wasn't too pleased with her guest host spot on Raw in 2009 - feeling as though they didn't have much of a plan for her. She had one opening promo, a backstage segment with Beth Phoenix and Chris Jericho, and one match later.
• Deleted Scene: A deleted one from Tough Enough showed her taking the contestants for a yoga session - where Smug Snake Luke was visibly struggling to keep up. Christina was noted as the standout - and this explains why she and Trish are practicing together privately in a later episode.
• Dye Hard: Is a natural brunette but spent her entire career as a blonde, which she first did when she became a model. She returned to brown hair in 2009. She became blonde again in 2016.
• Dyeing for Your Art: She returned to blonde hair for her role in the film Bounty Hunters.
• Follow the Leader: Ever since her first title run, fans have claimed WWE is constantly trying to find the next Trish as WWE constantly hires women without wrestling experience and put them in competition. The Diva Search in particular was a magnet for this 2004 onward. Melina (who had a fair bit of wrestling experience but started in WWE as a slutty manager of an initialism Tag Team not unlike T&A), Kelly Kelly (from a swimsuit magazine), Michelle McCool (Diva Search contestant hired despite losing the fan vote and being kept longer than the winner) and especially Alexa Bliss (a model that looks like Trish, but is at least going through developmental) and Mandy Rose (who is a downright Identical Stranger to Trish, but also put on developmental) were accused of this too.
• Fountain of Expies: On screen, her success was what lead to Victoria's transition to the active roster and what inspired Mickie James to take up professional wrestling (James had been wrestling longer than Stratus, but Lita wasn't available so Trish was substituted). Off screen Alicia Fox, Kelly Kelly and every hired participant of the diva search can thank Trish. Angela Fong in particular was seemingly being groomed to follow in Trish's footsteps on FCW but that ended up going nowhere when it and WWECW were replaced by NXT.
• Friendship on the Set: She and Lita are best friends ever since their run in WWE together, which was reflected in the latter's 2003 return, where they were paired together for months. After leaving WWE, they tour together occasionally as 'Team Bestie'. Trish was naturally the one to induct Lita into the Hall of Fame in 2014.
• God Never Said That: It was a rumour that she was the first choice to face Asuka in 2016 at NXT Takeover instead of Mickie James, but she denied that she was ever asked, as WWE had known of her pregnancy well in advance. Mickie James likewise confirmed that she was always the first choice, as it was intended to foreshadow her main roster return.
• Hostility on the Set: Her 2011 return ahead of WrestleMania 27 was marked by some hostility between herself and John Morrison, where Trish confessed that she could see they weren't "gelling together" after a couple of weeks. Rumours abound that he was annoyed at her getting a spot at the PPV over his then-girlfriend Melina, and he specifically "snubbed" her in the post-match celebration. Edge was reportedly so disgusted by this that he snubbed Morrison the next night during his farewell to the main roster.
• Old Shame:
  • "That Jackie Gayda Match" (with Bradshaw as her partner) on an episode of Raw in 2002. Stratus was visibly angry at the end of the match.
  • On her DVD, Trish made fun of her first promo on Raw where she introduced T&A, describing herself as looking "like a deer in headlights."
  • Inverted when it came to the infamous segment where she crawled around and barked like a dog. Trish has said she knew it was necessary for the storyline and that there would be a payoff. WWE however have tried their best to erase this moment from company history since the PG switch.
  • An aversion comes from a match she had with Stephanie in 2001. In her DVD she speaks about how people still compliment her on it - despite it being from when she had hardly any training.
• Playing Against Type:
  • She said she loved being a heel because she got to say whatever she wanted. Both her heel runs were quite short in comparison to how long she spent as a face. Her Plucky Girl nature and natural likeability meant that she ultimately spent more time as a face - and she's always in that role whenever she makes one-off appearances. It was then quite a surprise in 2022 when she turned heel on Becky Lynch, a role she had not played in seventeen years! And even then, she still got some babyface reactions.
  • She also played a villain in the movie Gridlocked.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Lita was meant to retain her Women's Championship at New Year's Revolution 2006 but tore her ACL during the match. So Trish had to win the title back on the fly. Her later injury coincided with Molly Holly asking for her release, effectively leaving Victoria as the only wrestling woman on Raw. The title was inactive until Trish returned from injury.
  • Lita was also being groomed to slot into the top face role in 2002, having picked up a big win over Jazz in a tag match on Raw. But Lita's neck injury on Dark Angel and Jazz's torn ACL led to Trish winning the title a second time - and Molly Holly turning heel to give her someone to feud with.
• Throw It In!: She was informed that she would be on a tour of New York and debut that weekend, so she and Lilian Garcia had to run to the mall to find an outfit to wear on TV. She saw a cowboy hat in the store and went for that. Wearing cowboy hats became one of her trademarks for the first three years of her career.
• Trope Codifier: For the ideal WWE Diva - a woman who was stunningly beautiful, had charisma and wanted to kick ass as well.
• What Could Have Been:
  • She studied to become a doctor and was pre-med in Biology at the University of Toronto. A teacher strike interrupted her studies and she had to work at a gym in the mean time - which is where she was discovered. Someone recommended she become a fitness model and the rest is history.
  • Torrie Wilson and Trish knew each other from fitness modelling - and Torrie claims that when she heard Trish was going to get into wrestling, she pulled some strings to get WCW to offer Trish a deal. As a longtime WWE fan, Trish chose them pretty easily. Given that she entered WWE around 2000, it's not unreasonable to think she would have come in with the Invasion a year later.
  • Trish said that WWE once wanted her to do a lesbian storyline with Torrie Wilson. She refused, feeling it didn't serve a purpose other than Fanservice.
  • It's been suggested that Molly Holly's feud with Trish in 2002 was written for Stacy Keibler, who turned it down as she felt she shouldn't be Women's Champion. It's been noted that Molly's crusade against a Ms. Fanservice was a bit of an Informed Flaw where Trish was concerned - as she had made her ring gear more modest and dropped any overt sexuality in her character.
  • As is widely known, Mickie's feud with Trish was originally written with Lita in mind. But Lita had torn her ACL and turned heel to manage Edge - so the feud was given to Trish instead.
  • She and many other notable Divas were asked to return for the 25-Diva battle royal at WrestleMania 25 but she turned it down.
  • Trish claims she came up with lots of potential storylines when she was first signed to WWF. Among the wrestlers she asked to be paired with were Billy Gunn and Kurt Angle. She would later get to be in Kurt Angle's corner for his title match at the 2001 Royal Rumble.
  • The program between her, Chris Jericho and Christian in 2004 was supposed to end with Trish and Chris becoming a couple and "riding off into the sunset" at WrestleMania XX. Vince apparently changed his mind on the day of the show and had Trish turn heel instead. Initially unsure about the idea, she later called it one of the favorite times of her career as a heel.
  • They were building towards a big Lita vs Trish match for WrestleMania 21. However Lita's sudden ACL injury months before meant those plans had to be scrapped. They rewrote the program to have Christy Hemme face Trish instead, with Lita being in her corner. Additionally Trish was supposed to film a vignette for the "Wrestle-Mania Goes Hollywood" campaign but had a massive black eye at the time (as a result she's only mentioned offscreen in a Basic Instinct parody with Stacy Keibler in the Catherine Tromell role). According to Christy, the match was initially ten minutes and carefully choreographed around her strengths, but their time was cut to six minutes right before they went out and she was told "Trish will call it to you in the ring".
  • Before she properly returned as part of the Tough Enough revival and WrestleMania 27 program against LayCool, she expressed interest in working with both Natalya and Alicia Fox. She would eventually work with the latter nearly ten years later at the Evolution PPV.