Community/Trivia

"Jeff: (upon seeing him approaching) "Holy... war.""
 * Acclaimed Flop: The series got rave reviews during its run on NBC, but got very low ratings. It could be the Arrested Development of The New Tens.
 * Actor Allusion: Chang's calm, soothing and professional approach to Shirley giving birth is a reference to Ken Jeong’s medical career before he gave it up to become a comedian/actor.
 * Star-Burns "Seems Greek".
 * Bonus Material: The first season DVD set comes with a short Kickpuncher comic written by Troy and illustrated by fellow student Jim Mahfood, DVD Commentary, extended cuts of certain episodes, Hilarious Outtakes, Deleted Scenes, the "Study Break" shorts, and a couple new sketches.
 * The interiors of the DVD cases are designed as yearbooks, Greendale brochures and even Abed's notebook from "Cooperative Calligraphy".
 * Among the many tidbits included are (presumably canon) hometowns for the main characters. Strangely, everyone is kinda paired off in this respect: Jeff and Shirley are from Denver, Abed and Britta from Riverside, Annie and Troy from Greendale itself, and Pierce and Chang are from out-of-state (Wyoming and California respectively).
 * Season 3 episode "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism" shows.
 * Creator Backlash:
 * Outside of praising the other members of the cast Chevy Chase rarely seems to have much in the way of praise to say about the show. In part, Chevy would appear to have issues with Pierce's ever increasing bigotry.
 * Several of Donald Glover's songs as Childish Gambino have lyrics that can be interpreted, if not outright stating, that he wants to leave the show.
 * Dan Harmon had a major backlash to Season 4 when he finally watched it after being rehired to the show for the fifth season, to the point he actually apologised over it.
 * In a very mild example, Joel McHale has complained (Notably on the commentary track for "Advanced Introduction to Finality") that the DVDs only feature the episodes as they originally aired, rather than including extended cuts due to the number of scenes that have to be cut to meet an ever shrinking running time.
 * Creator Killer: Season 6's underwhelming reception (coupled with the underwhelming reception of the rest of Yahoo Screen's premiere slate and a buggy proprietary media player) led to Yahoo Screen being shut down after a single season.
 * Dawson Casting: Troy and Annie are supposed to be coming directly from high school. To give you an idea, on another show, Alison Brie plays a married woman in her late twenties--at the youngest. However, Brie averts both of these examples as she's currently 27, meaning she was playing someone older than herself and now plays someone younger than herself.
 * Averted with Gillian Jacobs as Britta who is two years younger than her character.
 * A strange one happens in "Advanced Gay", where Pierce's father (being played by Larry Cedar) is played by an actor who is eleven years younger than Chevy Chase.
 * Development Gag: Before Alison Brie was cast as Annie, the character was written as Asian.
 * Defictionalization: Screener DVDs were packaged with cootie catchers based on the opening credits sequence.
 * Dueling Shows:
 * Originally ran against another Post Modern primetime sitcom about a ragtag Five-Token Band of misfits in school, Glee.
 * Season 2 changes some of the focus to Shit My Dad Says, with a sub plot about Troy's twitter account, Old White Man Says, collecting the insane rantings of Pierce with Pierce wanting to cash in on it with a sitcom. The series premiere of that show was even the same night as the Season 2 premiere (which had that Troy subplot).
 * In part due to the focus on nerdom in general and later being put up against each other in the same time slot, there is a certain rivalry with The Big Bang Theory. It's probably more apparently between the fandoms rather than anything else.
 * Executive Meddling:
 * On the DVD commentaries for season one, the producers discuss some of the various ways in which executives got involved in the process. In particular, the scenes between Annie and Pierce in "Advanced Criminal Law" were gradually supposed to get a lot nastier in tone between the two, but the executives balked and requested that they be watered down somewhat.
 * Another example of Tropes Are Not Bad is that originally Harmon was forced by NBC execs to hire females for half of his writing staff. He ended up appreciating their skill and kept hiring a large number of females writers even after the comporate rule was dropped.
 * After the show was renewed for a shortened fourth season (but moved to a Friday Night Death Slot), Dan Harmon was fired as showrunner. How this will affect the quality of the show is unknown, but according to some employees, it won't be the same.
 * Regarding implications by network brass that he'd stay on as a contractually obligated "executive consulting something or other", Harmon writes on his blog, "I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying 'it has to be like this or I quit' roughly 8 times a day."
 * Fake Nationality: Chang is Chinese (“In Español, my nickname is ‘El tigre Chino’!”); Ken Jeong is Korean.
 * Lampshaded in one episode when Chang reads something in Korean and has to be reminded he's Chinese.
 * Fan Community Nickname: Greendale Human Beings.
 * Friday Night Death Slot: It was announced that Community would in fact return for a fourth season... at 8:30 PM on Fridays. Cue fandom terror. And then the show aired in it's original Thursday time slot after NBC cancelled a number of their new shows before mid-season.
 * Harpo Does Something Funny: Donald Glover is basically left to his own devices in several scenes.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: The show advertises itself this way.
 * One commercial specifically referred to Ken Jeong (Senor Chang) as "That guy from The Hangover."
 * Apparently he teaches Spanish when he's not commanding an army of LARPers.
 * The actor who plays Abed's dad also plays the principal on Dueling Show Glee.


 * Senior Community College Correspondent John Oliver.
 * The accounting teacher/debate coach is Wayne Jarvis!
 * Donald Glover (Troy) is from moderately well known online comedy troupe Derrickcomedy, creators of such YouTube classics as "Bro Rape" and "Niggerfaggot" "Spelling Bee".
 * For alternative hip-hop fans, it's more of a Hey, It's That Voice! - or at least it would be if Childish Gambino didn't openly identify himself as Donald Glover and repeatedly reference his role as Troy in his songs. Dude can rhyme a lot harder than "donde-esta-la-biblioteca".
 * The rest of Derrickcomedy also cameo as a sketch group that feeds Pierce movie riff jokes in Season 1.
 * Danny Pudi (Abed) was in several commercials before doing this show, from McDonald's snack wraps to the Blackberry "butt dialing". He has even appeared as an annoyed customer in a Walgreens training video.
 * Wait, how did Trudy Campbell get here? Why is she nineteen? Shouldn't she be, like, seventy? And why is she Jewish?
 * Oh hey, it's Jay Johnston as a police officer, yet again.
 * In "Beginner Pottery", some of the study group takes a pottery class taught by Buster Bluth while the others take a sailing class taught by Steve Austin.
 * The pool coach is Shawn Hunter's dad! Also, Slinky The Dog in Toy Story 3!
 * Yes, Chevy Chase is now ready for primetime.
 * Star-Burns is the creator of Moral Orel.
 * Lee Jordan is Magnitude. Who the hell saw that coming.
 * The pregnant girl in Abed's child-delivery background story in "The Psychology of Letting Go" is Jenny Swanson.
 * Apparently, Nurse Rose has a thing for guys with impossibly good hair, and a pattern of getting ditched for other women and disappearing forever. Sorry, Professor Slater.
 * Two of the stoner set are Morgan Grimes and Badger. Well, at least they're in college...
 * This film answers the question of what would have happened to Rhoda on Earth 2 - she would have gone to community college instead of MIT, and not been a lesbian.
 * "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy" has Enver Gjokaj as Lukka, again showing his affinity for accents.
 * Stephen Tobolowsky as the Whos the Boss? professor in "Competitive Wine Tasting".
 * The Vice-Dean of Greendale's Air Conditioning Repair Annex is John Goodman.
 * Zabu goes to Greendale and plays Abed in Abed's short films.
 * Yo, Jeff. You come at the Biology Professor, you best not miss.
 * Bill Haverchuck grew up to be a Poli Sci teacher.
 * Hey, it's Patton Oswalt!
 * The Drag Queen who sang about having a "pocket full of Hawthornes" is none other than Shangela.
 * Blake doesn't think Pierce is on the list for the Bar Mitzvah.
 * Shut up, Leonard, everyone knows you can control time!
 * McLeaned: Chevy Chase's departure being as acrimonious as it was, this was perhaps inevitably Pierce's fate.
 * Money, Dear Boy: Despite the critical acclaim and passionate fanbase, Chevy Chase has been very outspoken in his disdain for the show, from calling his decision to join a "mistake", to his run-ins with eventually-ousted Dan Harmon, to criticizing sitcoms as "the lowest form of television." He's stated that the paycheck and his castmates are the only things that keep him showing up.
 * Chase appears to have something of a dislike of working in television in general, not just the show, although he has raised a lot of specific criticisms and complaints of the show specifically, including its perceivedly frequent Tastes Like Diabetes moments. The latter part about working with his castmates being one of the only things bringing him back is also slightly ironic in that his castmates often tend to make fun of him in very public ways (albeit often precisely because he's always dissing the show in public).
 * Mutually Fictional: With Cougar Town. Danny Pudi cameoed in the second-season finale of Cougar Town and it's pretty clear that he's playing Abed. That means . In Cougar Town, one character referenced buying the Community box set.
 * No Export for You: The Season 5 DVD set launched a week early in Europe, but without any of the bonus features featured on the release. Even more shockingly, is that the extras were not only advertised, but it took complaints from confused customers for websites like Amazon to alter the product listing on their websites.
 * One of Us:
 * Dan Harmon.
 * Tough-guy actor Jonathan Banks blames his participation in this show on the fact that he's become a regular D&D player.
 * Playing Against Type: Most of Chevy Chase's most well-known characters are generally smooth, suave and the smartest person in the room. Pierce Hawthorne... not so much.
 * Production Posse: With Channel 101:
 * Abed is based on Channel 101 star Abed Gheith, who Dan Harmon pushed for to get the role.
 * Fellow Channel 101 alumni Sona Panos, Dave Seger and David B. Lyons work on the series under Harmon.
 * Chevy Chase, John Oliver and Joel McHale all had cameo roles in Episode 9 of Harmon's Channel 101 series Water and Power.
 * The Dean Craig Pelton and Professor Ian Duncan are named after Channel 101 stars Dean Pelton and Ian Duncan. Dean told me Dan's just lazy with names.
 * Abed's Britta, Abed's Annie and Abed's Abed are all played by 101ers (Jenny Flack, Kelsy Abbott and Sandeep Parikh, respectively).
 * The Cast attended the Channel 101 "Channy" awards: Footage here and here.
 * Additionally, the other members and acquaintances of Donald Glover's sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy have a cameo helping Pierce write jokes in "Romantic Expressionism". (D.C. Pierson had previously appeared in "Investigative Journalism".)
 * Trope Namer: For Camping a Crapper.
 * Troubled Production: Partially due to the budget cuts instated by NBC, the showrunners were scrambling to meet deadlines for their shows, with Chevy Chase saying in his Reddit AMA would lead to *sixteen to twenty hour work days*.
 * The Wiki Rule: http://community-sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Wiki
 * Word of God: Abed's "quirks" were, according to http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/mf_harmon/all/1 intended to be some form of autism based on Harmon's own Self-Diagnosis on internet tests, although "Competitive Ecology" has him imply that he is also face-blind.
 * The girl Abed dances The Lindbergh Lean with in "Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts" is Danielle Harmon from "Pascal's Triangle Revisited".
 * Harmon's "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit.
 * The episode commentaries, nearly all of which feature Harmon, are rife with these sort of statements.
 * Dan Harmon's tumblr and twitter, where he occasionally talks about the show.
 * Writer Revolt:
 * The NBC mandated "Green Week" was lambasted by having the Dean & Enviromental Club waste materials in an attempt to promote Greendale's own Green Week.
 * In an example of the actors revolting, Joel McHale led the cast in getting Dan Harmon rehired for the fifth season.
 * Write What You Know: According to The Other Wiki, Community is based on Dan Harmon's own community-college days, and Jeff is based on his younger, more self-centered self.
 * You Look Familiar: Paget Brewster appears as IT administrator Debra Chambers in Season 5 episode "Analysis of Cork-Based Networking" before appearing as Season 6 regular Frankie Dart.