30 Rock/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acclaimed Flop: Especially in the early years, the show never had great ratings despite being a critic favorite.
  • Acting for Two:
    • In "Generalissimo", Alec Baldwin plays a Mexican soap opera star who looks just like Jack Donaghy. In "100", Jack hallucinates a couple of alternate universe Jack Donaghys.
    • In "Governor Dunston", Tracy Morgan also plays the titular buffoonish politician.
    • In "There's No 'I' in America", Scott Adsit plays Pete's confident, not-bald alter ego, Pete Horn.
    • In "Aunt Phatso vs. Jack Donaghy", Baldwin is an actor who plays "Jack Donaghy" in Tracy's movie.
    • Baldwin yet again plays a sandwich delivery guy who looks just like Jack, causing GE's Indian engineers to wonder if they're racist.
    • In "Mazel Tov, Dummies!", Alec Baldwin yet again again plays Harriet Tubman in Tracy Jordan's mind.
    • In "Fireworks", Alec Baldwin yet again again again plays Thomas Jefferson in Tracy Jordan's mind (... again).
    • John Lutz plays both the writer JD Lutz and his mother.
  • Actor Allusion:
    • Liz references Megamind (which Tina Fey starred in) by calling Lake City, FL "Lay-keh-ceh-dee" (as Megamind did with Metro City).
    • Alec Baldwin
      • Jack, to a priest during confession: "I once declared 'I am God' during a deposition." (Aaron Sorkin's Malice).
      • In the Season Five episode "College", Jack mentions that his voice was used for, among other things, Thomas the Tank Engine.
      • "Always be talking, Jack!" (Glengarry Glen Ross).
      • In the 100th episode, Jack explains to Tracy what will happen to his movie star reputation once he begins doing TV again...
      • In the West Coast broadcast of the Live Episode, someone suggests they cut out a sketch based on Capital One credit cards. Alec Baldwin turns to the camera and repeats his pitch from those same commercials.
      • Doubled with Hypocritical Humor: Jack mocks Jenna for wanting a producer's credit, claiming its a cheap handout to shut actors up. This just before "Producer: Alec Baldwin" ticks across the screen.
    • Guest star Carrie Fisher: "Help me, Liz Lemon, you're my only hope!"
    • Guest star Alan Alda parodies his own star-making role on M*A*S*H by asking, "A man crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show!"
    • Guest star Matthew Broderick's episode featured him and Jack searching government files for the worst plan ever, which was guaranteed to offend everyone, flop, and get them both fired. The plot and Broderick's mannerisms are very similar to his role in The Producers.
    • After dating Matt Damon for half a season, Liz tries to remember who played the white guy in Invictus.
    • Elizabeth Banks playing The Veronica in a love triangle, and unexpectedly getting pregnant, only to leave the show after giving birth?
    • A minor, possibly unintentional example: Liz refers to her ex, Dennis, as "the Terminator with cheaper glasses." Dennis is played by Dean Winters, who played Charley Dixon on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
    • In the first episode of Season 4, Steve Buscemi, who plays a private investigator, claims that he is called "The Chameleon". In Monsters Inc., Steve Buscemi voices Randall the chameleon.
    • At one point in Season 1, Liz has an awkward interaction with Floyd, who's carrying a basketball. Floyd is played by Jason Sudeikis, who is a big amateur basketball player and had a shot of him shooting hoops as his introductory on the Saturday Night Live opening credits.
  • Actor Shared Background: Jack McBrayer, like Kenneth Parcell, is also from Stone Mountain, Georgia.
  • Casting Gag: The actors in Tracy's porn about Liz are the actual actors from the 30 Rock porn spoof.
    • In "Kidnapped by Danger", Alec Baldwin's brother William plays an actor playing Jack Donaghy in a TV movie.
  • The Danza:
    • Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan; last names rhyme.
    • John Lutz plays John Lutz.
    • Tina Fey's real first name is Elizabeth ("Tina" coming from her middle name of Stamatina), of which "Liz" is a nickname.
    • Grizz is both the character's and actor's first name.
    • Sue LaRoche-Van der Hout is played by Sue Galloway.
  • Dawson Casting: Jenna seems to think she's up for an audition as a college freshman on Gossip Girl in "Black Light Attack!". She was actually up for that character's crazy bitch of a mother - who dies of old age at age 42.
    • Averted throughout as every actor is the same age as their character with Katrina Bowden possibly even younger than Cerie and every teenager played by an actual teen. Played straight in one instance with twenty-six year old Pheobe Strole as a teen.
    • Tina Fey appears as a younger Liz Lemon in a number of flashbacks. In one of them, she was nine.
  • Descended Creator: Tina Fey was not originally going to star in the show.
  • Dueling Shows: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. 30 Rock won, as Aaron Sorkin acknowledges, bitterly, in a later cameo.
  • Executive Meddling: In Fey's original treatment, the Show Within a Show was a newscast; they told her to go ahead and make it a sketch comedy because that's what she knows.
  • Fake American: Subverted, a British actress plays an American pretending to be a Brit and only has to do one line with an American accent.
  • Fake Nationality: The Mexican Salma Hayek as the Puerto Rican Elisa.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
    • Seeing Alex Cabot as a sweet, bubbly lesbian was weird in the extreme.
    • Season 1 Episode 7 features April Ludgate as a random NBC page.
    • Season Five's "Double-Edge Sword" features John Cho as a wise meth dealer.
    • The coach of Vocal Adrenaline is an Out of Focus member of the TGS cast.
    • Donald Glover has shown up as a PA and the gay student at Tracy's former high school, as well as young Tracy during a flashback in the second live episode. He was also a writer for the show.
    • Vincent Chase appeared as a waiter in Season 1, something Comedy Central capitalized on in their advertising once they picked up the syndication rights.
      • Liz also had an on-again/off-again relationship with Drama.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: "Audition Day" features voice cameos from Christopher Walken, Gilbert Gottfried, and Martin Scorsese.
  • Hide Your Pregnancy:
    • Jane Krakowski in Season 5. This is lampshaded in "100" when Jenna develops a hysterical pregnancy just to be an Attention Whore, and the show briefly stops hiding Krakowski.
    • In-universe: Avery does this on her news show.
  • Milestone Celebration: The 100th episode "100", a one-hour episode with clips from past shows and special guest stars Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks, Brian Williams and Rachel Dratch.
  • The Other Darrin: In an early episode, Tracy's wife Angie was played by Sharon Wilkins in a non-speaking cameo. In all subsequent episodes, Angie is played by Sherri Shepherd.
    • During the fifth season live show, Julia Louise-Dreyfus also played Liz Lemon, alongside Tina Fey.
    • During the sixth season live show, Amy Poehler played Liz Lemon as a young girl.
  • The Other Marty: Rachel Dratch as Jenna, though they kept her for the first season and gave her a number of cameos.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • Jennifer Aniston as a Stalker with a Crush. Though arguably matching her portrayal in certain tabloids.
    • Jason Sudeikis as Nice Guy Floyd, which is quite a contrast from the loudmouthed idiots, boisterous Southerners, and preppy douchebags he normally plays (both on and off Saturday Night Live).
    • In the show itself, Tracy Jordan was known to do this. In the movie, Black Cop/White Cop, Tracy played the white cop. According to Tracy, he was set to star in the movie Rush Hour until being replaced by Jackie Chan. He also starred in a movie with Betty White about a rapping grandma. Betty remarked about how well Tracy played the grandma. And there's a constant tension between his normal persona, his happy home life, and his efforts towards critical success.
      • Tracy played both the black cop and the white cop.
  • Real Life Relative: John Lutz (who plays John Lutz) and Sue Galloway (who plays Sue LaRoche-van der Hout) are married in real life.
  • Star-Making Role: Kenneth Parcell for Jack McBrayer.
  • Throw It In: The Credits Gag of "Black Light Attack!" has Lutz dancing energetically, with the rest of the cast chanting, "Go Lutz! Go Lutz! Go Lutz!" It was actually completely unscripted, as the actor Lutz was grooving to the generic techno music. It was such a fun moment that the scene was left in.
  • What Could Have Been: Blake Lively and Leighton Meester were set to appear as themselves, but the timing couldn't be sorted out with fellow California Doubling-averter Gossip Girl. (Blake did, however, host the 12/5/09 episode of another show from the same producers.)
    • Among aspects to have changed from the initial draft of the "Untitled Tina Fey Project" script (later to become the basis of the Pilot episode), Liz Lemon was named Lisa Lemon, Tracy Jordan (presumably not yet cast) was Lawrence Jordan, and the SNL-like show Jenna initially appears in is called "Friday Night Bits" (set to be retooled by Jack into an Artifact Title-free "The Lawrence Jordan Show").
  • Word of God: We know of Cerie's last name (Xerox) from executive producer Robert Carlock. We know of Liz and Jack's lack of a romantic future from Tina Fey.
  • Writer Revolt: When forced to write an environmental-themed episode for NBC's Green Week, the writers instead wrote a brutal satire of NBC's own environmental greenwashing, and then did it again the following year, and brought back former VPOTUS Al Gore to "re-cycle" a joke. Also the one episode broadcast during the WGA writer's strike in Season 2 (the unnamed Episode 210) has no writers in it, implying that they are on strike. During the Writer's Strike, the cast of 30 Rock performed a live episode on-stage off-Broadway to raise money for the strikers.
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