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1* ActorInspiredElement:
2** Several of the casts' actual nicknames have been used for their characters: Creator/NayaRivera's "Snixx" for Santana, Mark Salling's "the Saw" for Puck, Creator/ChrisColfer's "Kurt" (which was made his character's name) and "Porcelain", and Creator/DiannaAgron's "Lady" (made "Lady Fabray") for Quinn and "Shelby" (which was made the name of her daughter's adoptive mother), and apparently "Beth", too (the name of her character's daughter).
3** Naya Rivera was the one really pushing for Santana and Brittany to become a couple.
4* ActorInspiredHeroism: Quinn was first conceived as a typical AlphaBitch, but Ryan Murphy admits that Dianna Agron "ruined" the character for him by imbuing Quinn with much more sympathy and humanity.
5* ActorSharedBackground:
6** Creator/DiannaAgron had a nose job, albeit during Season 2. She also quit her school's glee club in favor of dance (though Quinn quits for cheerleading).
7** Creator/NayaRivera had a boob job and an eating disorder in high school. More notably, she decided to quit her high school's glee club when she kept getting passed over for someone else:
8---> ''"All the good solos and parts kept going to my arch-nemesis Nazanin Mandi. Because I was totally insane at the time (and, let’s be honest, probably really hungry), I decided it was a good idea to challenge her to a sing-off. I had enough of playing second soprano and quit."''
9** Creator/HeatherMorris and Creator/BeccaTobin (Kitty) were cheerleaders and dancers in school.
10** Chris Colfer is gay just like his character Kurt Hummel. Colfer also stated that in high school, his teachers did not allow him to sing "[[Theatre/{{Wicked}} Defying Gravity]]" because it was traditionally sung by a woman, which was later used as a plot point in the episode "[[Recap/GleeS1E9Wheels Wheels]]".
11* AdoredByTheNetwork: Being the biggest hit Fox has had since ''Series/AmericanIdol'', it was renewed for a third season only halfway through the first.
12* AscendedFancast: Creator/IdinaMenzel was a popular choice to play Rachel's biological mother due to [[SeparatedAtBirthCasting her strong resemblance]] to Lea Michele. Menzel was cast in the back half of the first season as the rival coach, but was eventually revealed to be Rachel's mom.
13* AscendedFanon:
14** The creators have admitted that the idea of Brittany/Santana as a serious, OfficialCouple started with the fans, that they never planned for them to be more than a one-off joke until they saw that the fans wanted more.
15** Over at ''Website/TelevisionWithoutPity'', Brad is referred to exclusively as "Tinkles". April Rhodes later calls him this in "[[Recap/GleeS1E5TheRhodesNotTaken The Rhodes Not Taken]]".
16** Most of the character theories from the fans in social media or fanfiction have either been referenced in the show, the main plot point in an episode, or approved of by the cast and crew.
17* AuthorsSavingThrow: The show tried to do this by removing the new members of the Glee Club in Season 5 because of the fans who ''hated'' the new characters and direction old club members had taken. Instead, it began to focus on what the old cast was doing out of the club. However, it backfired horribly as they found out the majority of fans were not the VocalMinority who wanted that and it was very poorly received. They tried again by going to back to the Glee club in Season 6, and while it didn't save the show from cancellation, it was well-received by the fans.
18* BabyNameTrendStarter: The show had this impact on "Finn" and "Quinn", the names of two of the main characters. Notably, Quinn was known mainly, though not exclusively, as a boy's name before it was given to cheerleader Quinn Fabray, after which it skyrocketed in popularity as a girl's name and eventually entered the top 100 for such.
19* CaliforniaDoubling: Though the show is set in northwestern UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, it was filmed in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. This gets more and more obvious as the school year progresses and we continue to have August weather with the guys walking around in t-shirts and the girls in knee-length skirts. By "[[Recap/GleeS1E13Sectionals Sectionals]]", we were into late fall/early winter (with football season having ended), and yet there was no recognizable shift toward warmer clothes.
20** Another obvious thing that Ohioans love pointing out is that there were outdoor hallways, and an outdoor cafeteria. In Ohio.
21** Native Northwest Ohioans point out that in "Big Brother" the cast goes to a Six Flags theme park [[note]] More specifically, Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, UsefulNotes/{{California}} [[/note]], despite there not being one anywhere near Lima (the closest Six Flags park to Lima is Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois, which is 272 miles away).
22* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/ChrisColfer originally auditioned for Artie (which would go to Creator/KevinMcHale) but the producers liked Colfer so much they changed a previously planned character and wrote Kurt Hummel specifically for him.
23** Telly Leung (Wes' actor) originally auditioned for Blaine.
24** Samuel Larsen of ''Series/TheGleeProject'' (and eventual winner) auditioned for Sam.
25** Creator/NayaRivera (Santana) had originally auditioned for the part of Mercedes.
26* TheCastShowoff:
27** Given that it ''is'' a musical show, it is entirely justified when even minor characters start singing and dancing. [[Creator/ChrisColfer Kurt]] breaking out the sai swords, on the other hand...
28** Since he spends the majority of his time in a wheelchair onscreen, Creator/KevinMcHale could be this anytime Artie is given a dream sequence that allows him to dance.
29* CastTheExpert: Creator/HeatherMorris was only brought in to teach the "Single Ladies" dance (she was a back-up dancer for Music/{{Beyonce}} on tour) but when the producers needed a third cheerleader, Morris was cast to play Brittany.
30* ChannelHop: Moved from Channel 4 to Sky (in the UK).
31** Re-runs are still shown on E4, if you can't afford £40-odd a month for Sky (cable TV). Or at least they were through 2014, before the exhibition rights to the first two seasons also jumped to Sky.
32* TheCharacterDiedWithHim: Finn upon Cory Monteith’s death, with Creator/LeaMichele's blessing, the character's cause of death was purposely never revealed.
33* ColbertBump: Has had this effect with some of the music they've featured or covered on their show, such as Music/{{Halestorm}}'s "Here's to Us" (ironically a BlackSheepHit) and Music/{{Rihanna}}'s "Take a Bow".
34* ContractualImmortality: Oh, it's Senior Year and most of the main characters are leaving. Of course New Directions are going to win Nationals.
35* ContractualPurity: There is a strange tendency in [[MoralGuardians some people]] to flip out every time Creator/LeaMichele or Creator/DiannaAgron appears on a magazine looking sexy. Yes, they are adult women in their mid-20s, not teenagers, yet somehow the fact that they play minors on TV means that they are "sending girls the wrong message" every time they so much as wear low-cut shirts. ''Glee'' is an unusual case, though, since it is not a kids' show and it engages in sexual and other adult themes ''on the show'', so this expectation is solely due to [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids viewer misconceptions]].
36* CreatorBacklash: It's often been joked that no one hated ''Glee'' more than the cast themselves, as many of them have derided the show's plotlines and writing quality in the years since it concluded.
37* CutSong: Several, due to last-minute changes or time constraints. Some of them managed to even be recorded and[=/=]or filmed, with the latter occasionally released as {{deleted scene}}s. A list can be found [[http://glee.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Deleted_Songs here]].
38* TheDanza: Jacob Artist as Jacob (Jake) Puckerman and Brad Ellis as Brad the Pianist.
39* DawsonCasting: All of the kids' actors are well in their 20's, with Creator/CoryMonteith (Finn), Mark Salling (Puck) and Harry Shum, Jr. (Mike) being the oldest and only a couple years younger than their teacher. The closest exceptions are Creator/ChrisColfer (Kurt), Jake Zyrus (Sunshine), and Damian [=McGinty=] (Rory), who were all in their late teens when their characters debuted. Lea Michele and Matt Morrison are old enough that they used to ''date'' when they were both on Broadway.
40** Coming to the later seasons a lot of the new kids were quite young, which made Becca Tobin stand out even more around them. She's not that much younger than Matthew Morrison, also making her ''older than all of the Originals'' except Finn, Puck and Mike.
41** Also Emma is supposed to be a few years younger than Will, but Jayma Mays is only a few months younger than Matthew Morrison.
42* {{Defictionalization}}: As one would expect, the show about a glee club took to the road, holding two concert tours between the first three seasons, with the second tour recorded for a ConcertFilm called, appropriately enough, "Glee: The Concert".
43* DirectedByCastMember: Matthew Morrison directed “[[Recap/GleeS3E9ExtraordinaryMerryChristmas Extraordinary Merry Christmas]]”, while Chris Colfer directed "[[Recap/GleeS5E19OldDogNewTricks Old Dog, New Tricks]]".
44* EnforcedMethodActing:
45** Brittany's famous nonsequiturs were originally ad-libbed. Other characters' confused reactions were real.
46** Creator/DiannaAgron (Quinn) and Creator/CoryMonteith (Finn) were not allowed to see the other actors performing "Lean on Me" in “Ballad” before the scene was shot so their reaction would be real.
47** During "The Safety Dance" in “[[Recap/GleeS1E19DreamOn Dream On]]”, apart from the dancers, all of the extras were actual shoppers at the mall where it was shot.
48** Creator/JaymaMays (Emma) didn't know about Will and Emma's kiss in “[[Recap/GleeS1E22JourneyToRegionals Journey to Regionals]]” until it happened. Matthew Morrison (Will) and Brad Falchuk had planned it secretly.
49** In “[[Recap/GleeS3E6MashOff Mash-Off]]”, Creator/CoryMonteith didn't know Creator/NayaRivera (Santana) was going to slap him. Director Creator/EricStoltz told Naya slap him for real, and during the scene Kevin [=McHale=] was sitting behind Cory and encouraging her. Cory didn't expect any of it, but loved it and told her to do it again when they did another take from his angle.
50* ExecutiveMeddling:
51** In the original draft for the show, there was no Sue Sylvester. FOX decided the show needed a villain, so Sue was created. She quickly became one of the most, if not ''the'' most, popular characters on the show. It was a case of executive meddling working out for the better.
52** Just to show that this trope can go both ways on the same show, Sue Sylvester later became increasingly out of place and less popular on ''Glee'', but executive meddling demanded that the writers keep her on instead of disposing of her.
53** It's also become a meme among many fans, supported by evidence of cut scenes and certain comments from producers, that executive meddling is behind the significant disparity in the number of kisses shown between the show's straight and widely disliked AlphaCouple (Rachel and Finn), and its gay and adored (arguable) BetaCouple Kurt and Blaine, as well as the EnsembleDarkHorse pairing of Santana and Brittany. The producers, cast members and FOX all deny it when asked directly if this happens, but when Finn and Rachel can kiss more often in one episode than both Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Brittany have kissed on-screen in the whole course of both their relationships, it's not hard to see why the fandom suspects something's up.
54** "Candles", the Regionals duet between Kurt and Blaine, is considered by many to be the weakest Warbler song due to how Kurt and Blaine's registers clash. Normally the songs are overseen by music producer Adam Anders, but creator[=/=]writer Ryan Murphy intervened for this song and specifically requested that it be sung in those registers.
55** In the original draft for “[[Recap/GleeS1E1Pilot Pilot]]“, Rachel uses Website/YouTube to upload her songs (like a normal person in the year 2009 would do) but in the final product, she uses Website/MySpace. Why the change? The fact that the same company that owns [=MySpace=] also owned Fox, the company that produced ''Glee'', probably has something to do with it.
56*** In the flashback episode "2009", the show makes many jokes at Myspace's expense.
57* FakeNationality:
58** Both of Mike's parents make references to their parents in China, but Mike Sr. is played by a Korean and Julia is played by a Japanese-American. [[InterchangeableAsianCultures Go figure.]]
59** Finn, Terri, Sugar and Hunter were all played by Canadians.
60** Mike is played by a Costa Rican with Chinese parents.
61* FanCommunityNickname: Gleeks for the entire community.
62** Many fans of Creator/ChrisColfer and Kurt call themselves "Kurtsies".
63** People who are fans of both Glee and Creator/TeamStarkid are called "Stargleeks".
64** There's a sizable group of Mercedes/Amber Riley fans called the "Mercedes Mafia".
65** Many of the ships have their own names. Klaine has Klainers, Niff has Nifflers, Brittana has "Gay Sharks" (after Brittany's meme-spawning quip), Kurtofsky has 'Pirates' (because fans have decided that it's a 'pirate' ship), Blainofsky has '[=BatKids=]' and Sory has Sponsors (after Sam was Rory's Christmas sponsor, and agreed to be his Valentine's Day sponsor as well).
66** Obnoxious Klainers have earned themselves a nickname of their own, Klainer 12, where the twelve stands for the age, implying that they're immature.
67* FandomLifeCycle: It shot to Stage 3 shockingly fast, and continued ascending into Stage 5 by the time of its third season. Season four and oneward saw things slide to Stage 6a, and mostly 6b by the end. Around 2019 and 2020 it saw a resurgence due to several factors - the close proximity to the premier's 10th anniversary and the finale's 5th causing a lot of people to look back in nostalgia, the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic giving people the chance to re-watch the show, and occasional rumours popping up about a proposed sequel or reboot series. Currently it hovers around Stage 3 still - fans who were deep in it can appreciate it for what it was, but it's nowhere near the pop culture juggernaut that it once was.
68* FandomNod:
69** Finn's mom and Kurt's dad getting together.
70** A lot of fans were disappointed that the assigned Puck/Mercedes duet in “[[Recap/GleeS1E10Ballad Ballad]]” never happened. So in "[[Recap/GleeS1E18Laryngitis Laryngitis]]", they not only let them sing together but had them date as well.
71** In "[[Recap/GleeS1E17BadReputation Bad Reputation]]", Rachel told Puck that most of the school referred to them as "Puckleberry" while they were dating.
72** Pretty much the entire opening sequence of "[[Recap/GleeS2E1Audition Audition]]" is a nod to the biggest complaints of the show. [[TakeThat And it's awesome.]] The only problem with that? The show kept on doing that even when the complaints started being legitimate.
73** Various characters in ''Duet'' calling Kurt out on his previous behaviour in Season 1. It's like the writers read the Headscratchers page.
74** "[[Recap/GleeS2E8Furt Furt]]" gives us Finn mentioning popular ship names "Puckleberry", "Finchel" and "Furt".
75** "[[Recap/GleeS2E12SillyLoveSongs Silly Love Songs]]" gives a nod to a ''[[Creator/TeamStarKid different]]'' fandom during the Warblers' rendition of "[[Music/PharrellWilliams When I Get You Alone]]". At one point, Blaine and two other singers grab sunglasses from the Gap's sunglasses rack; the glasses that Blaine wears are Criss's iconic pink sunglasses.
76** "[[Recap/GleeS2E19Rumours Rumours]]" has the club rattle off all of the fandom names for the official couples - and create two new ones. "Pizes" (Puck/Lauren) and "Tina Cohen-Chang Chang" (Tina/Mike). The actors themselves are in on it as Salling gave Puck/Artie a name (Partie).
77** "[[Recap/GleeS3E12TheSpanishTeacher The Spanish Teacher]]" acknowledges a common fan complaint that on the rare occasion we hear Will speak Spanish, his accent is appalling considering he's teaching it in a high school.
78* FridayNightDeathSlot: Fox moved the show to Fridays at 9 pm for its sixth and final season.
79* HideYourPregnancy: After Heather Morris became pregnant, Brittany was noticeably absent for a couple episodes. She comes back for the season 4 finale and it is explained that she will no longer be attending [=McKinley=] (and therefore why her character will no longer be a regular). Heather has a noticeable baby bump that was clearly trying to be hidden with some looser clothes.
80* HostilityOnTheSet:
81** Creator/LeaMichele played the [[ThePrimaDonna prima donna theater brat]] Rachel Berry, and by all accounts, her character's bad attitude was [[LifeImitatesArt a pretty good reflection of her real-life personality]].
82*** Creator/NayaRivera confirmed in her biography that she didn't get along with Michele, to the point where they were not on speaking terms by season six (which Naya speculated was due to Lea being unhappy at Santana's increased prominence in the show). However, she also added that the rumors of their feud were blown out of proportion.
83*** Samantha Marie Ware (who played Jane Hayward in season six) was not nearly so diplomatic, and accused Michele of making her life a "living hell" on set. Michele tweeting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement was TheLastStraw for Ware (who is black), who called Michele a {{hypocrite}} and accused her of subjecting her to routine racist abuse on set, including claiming that she'd "shit in [her] wig". Ware claimed that she almost quit Hollywood because of her experience. Shortly after, several of Michele's co-stars from ''Glee'' and other projects she'd worked on all [[https://www.thedailybeast.com/lea-michele-has-been-terrorizing-people-since-she-was-12-years-old-say-former-castmates chimed in]] to support Ware's accusations, with some of them adding their own horror stories of working with Michele and even those defending her from some of the worst charges (including Heather Morris) admitting that she was unpleasant to work with.
84** As for the rest of the cast, both Creator/RyanMurphy and Marti Noxon have said that many of the male actors on the show did not get along with each other and that some of them also acted like bullies, but that it never got as much attention as the reports of Michele's diva behavior. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zw__jvxxQ0 An entire montage has been made of the backing actors and several main actors showing their distaste for Lea.]]
85** Rumours circulated for years that Ryan Murphy and Chris Colfer didn't get along, with Santana being given a minute long ReasonYouSuckSpeech to Kurt, insulting his appearance and "obsession with old people" as a TakeThat to the episode "Old Dog, New Tricks" that Chris Colfer wrote - and Naya Rivera describing him making them reshoot the scene an excessive amount of times seemingly just to mock him. It was also rumoured that the abrupt departure of Ashley Fink, who had been announced as having a big storyline with Kurt in Season 3, was because she was friends with the actor and was fired to punish him.
86** Ryan Murphy also allegedly disliked Dianna Agron, particularly when she disliked how her character was being written in Season 2 and approached him about ideas she had for Quinn's direction - and there was a not-so-subtle TakeThat to her in his show ''Series/TheNewNormal'', where an actress called 'Brynn' is portrayed as a diva who complains about her lines. She notably did not return for episodes where it would make sense for Quinn to be there - particularly Cory Monteith's tribute - where both admitted to not reaching out to each other to appear.
87* IronyAsSheIsCast:
88** Besides Heather Morris and Harry Shum, Jr., the best dancers in the cast are easily Dianna Agron - a professional dancer before ''Glee'' - and Kevin [=McHale=] with his boy band training. Yes, they each get some great dance routines because of this, but in the season 3 episode “[[Recap/GleeS3E16SaturdayNightGleever Saturday Night Glee-ver]]” - which is understandably all about dancing - both their characters are paralyzed and confined to wheelchairs, and not even given a dream sequence between them, leading to a massive WhatCouldHaveBeen moment had either of them been able to whip out their epic dancing skills for a big number this episode instead of the writers wanting to show Finn Hudson trying to be Travolta.
89** Max Adler is one of the only two actors (the other being Jayma Mays) in the whole cast to have ''actually'' been in a Glee club, and a successful one, thus meaning he can sing pretty well. He plays Dave Karofsky, who wants nothing to do with the club, and doesn't sing a single song in the entire series.
90* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Well, in the United Kingdom anyway, because people believe the DVD sets are EditedForSyndication versions.
91* KilledByRequest: Dianna Agron got so sick of Quinn's plots (which she saw as character derailment) that she wanted Quinn to die during the third season when she gets hit by a truck. The creators seemed to compromise by having her survive, but letting her end the season recovered both from the crash and the crazy plots before she was allowed to GraduateFromTheStory, with Agron then reprising her role sporadically all the way to the final episode.
92* LicensedGame: In 2010, Konami released a special Glee version of ''VideoGame/KaraokeRevolution'', exclusively on the Wii.
93* LifeImitatesArt: In 2022, Lea Michele was cast as the (replacement) Fanny Brice in the first Broadway revival of ''Theatre/FunnyGirl'', just as Rachel Berry was in Season 5 (2013).
94* LyingCreator:
95** After Creator/IdinaMenzel was cast, creator Murphy insisted she would not turn out to be Rachel's mother. Pretty much no one bought it.
96** Murphy also said that Finn and Rachel would stay together in Season 2. “[[Recap/GleeS2E9SpecialEducation Special Education]]“ pretty much did away with that.
97** On accepting a GLAAD award on behalf of the show, Murphy promised the gay audience that Kurt would never be the victim. Cut to season 2, in which anti-gay bullying becomes a huge plotline. Of course, that was ''before'' the rash of well-publicized suicides due to bullying. Even those gay advocates who completely supported Murphy's initial standpoint agree that the way schools deal with homophobic bullying needed to be addressed, and that ''Glee'' did it perfectly.
98** The entire "who is going to be Kurt's boyfriend" debate is a perfect example of this trope. From implying it'll be Sam to saying "Chord is definitely not the boyfriend" to "BLAINEBLAINEBLAINELOOKATBLAINEVERYONE" to "We haven't decided yet" (with the latter two included in the same interview, no less), well, somewhere in there there are several lies. By the end of season two it was clear that Blaine and Kurt were endgame, regardless of any hiccups they had along the way.
99* TheOriginalDarrin: In the Latin dub, Leyla Rangel reprises her role as Rachel Berry midway through the fifth season after being replaced by Creator/AlondraHidalgo at the beginning of the third season.
100* TheOtherDarrin: The actors who end up playing Rachel's dads are different from the photos in Rachel's locker that we see back in "Pilot".
101** For the Latin dubbing, Rebeca Manriquez, who voiced Sue Sylvester in the first season, was replaced by Magda Giner since the second season, due to the former residing in New York at the time.
102** Leyla Rangel dubbed Rachel Berry in the first two seasons. However, she was replaced by Creator/AlondraHidalgo in the third season because Leyla was in London to continue her studies. Leyla returned sometime after, but Alondra still kept the role until she was forced to withdraw it in the middle of the fifth season, due to her having to go on tour outside of Mexico. As a result, Leyla was given the role back, from the tenth episode "Trio".
103* TheProductionCurse: When Becca Tobin's boyfriend died in similar circumstances to Creator/CoryMonteith a year after the latter, some fans thought that it would become a recurring event. When it became August 2015 and none of the ''Glee'' cast's boyfriends had died, the "curse" was seemingly just coincidence and everyone was thankful... until Mark Salling was arrested at the end of the year for possession of child pornography, later hanging himself in January 2018 before sentencing. Two years later, Naya Rivera went missing while on a boating trip and was found dead on the anniversary of Monteith's death, causing many fans to describe the show as officially cursed -- or at least the date July 13 as cursed for the show. Other deaths linked to the show include Nancy Motes, a production assistant who killed herself in 2014, leaving a note calling her sister, Creator/JuliaRoberts, a BitchInSheepsClothing, and Jim Fuller, an assistant director who died of a heart attack in 2014 at the age of 41.
104* PromotedFanboy:
105** ''Series/TheGleeProject'' for Samuel Larsen, Damian [=McGinty=], Alex Newell and Blake Jenner.
106** Creator/DarrenCriss is also an example.
107** Creator/MaxAdler has said that he auditioned for a part in Glee because he admired Creator/RyanMurphy and his work.
108* QueerCharacterQueerActor: The show has gay Creator/ChrisColfer playing Kurt. There are also other queer roles played by queer actors who identify differently: bisexual Creator/NayaRivera as lesbian Santana, non-binary Alex Newell as trans girl Unique, and lesbian Creator/DotMarieJones as gay trans man Beiste.
109* RealitySubtext: A couple.
110** Starting in the second season, Colfer and Michele's mutual adoration of each other[[note]]Lea has made no secret of the fact that she ''loves'' Chris, calling herself his number one fan; Chris is a bit quieter about it, but quite obviously returns her regard[[/note]] has spilled over into an in-show closeness between their characters. In fact, their "Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy" duet is quite obviously not just Kurt and Rachel enjoying singing together, but Chris and Lea ''loving'' singing with each other. And don't even get us ''started'' on "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead".
111** Blaine sings the praises of Ohio State's football team. In real life, Creator/DarrenCriss graduated from the University of Michigan. The rivalry between OSU and Michigan is on the order of the Yankees/Red Sox feud.
112* RecycledScript: More like recycled ''plotlines''. This show is notorious for repeating the same storyline over and over again. The most jarring being the Jake/Marley/Ryder love triangle in season four being resurrected for season five, the Jake/Marley/Ryder love triangle being an almost carbon copy of the Puck/Rachel/Finn one, Sue deciding to seem to leave the Glee Club at peace before randomly once again being on a quest to shut it down and the bitchy Cheerio becoming a nice girl (such as the case with Quinn, Santana, Kitty and potentially Bree).
113* TheRedStapler: Has occurred with a good chunk of the music on this show. One of notable example is Music/{{Journey|Band}}'s "Don't Stop Believin'". The effect on music is especially noticeable in the UK where the ''Glee'' music doesn't get radio plays but there is a significant increase in play time for the original versions of songs the show has covered. When songs such as "Animal", which only just scraped into the top 40 on release, all of a sudden appear on a radio playlist the week the featuring episode airs in America, you KNOW this isn't a coincidence.
114* ReferencedBy: In the ''Series/TheOfficeUs'' episode “Viewing Party,” the employees of Dunder Mifflin have a Glee watch along party.
115* RenewedBeforePremiere: Glee was already renewed for a second season before the first one ended, but a third was also commissioned while it was airing. Later on, both a fifth and sixth season were commissioned before the finale of season four.
116* RevivalByCommercialization: Most songs featured in the show are discovered by newer audiences - [[ColbertBump and even reenter the charts!]]
117* RomanceOnTheSet: Happened quite a bit.
118** Creator/CoryMonteith and Creator/LeaMichele, who played Finn and Rachel, dated in real life.
119** Creator/MelissaBenoist and Blake Jenner who played Ryder and Marley, were married in real life.
120** Creator/NayaRivera who played Santana, and Mark Salling who played Puck, dated briefly.
121** Recurring guest star Creator/GwynethPaltrow began dating series co-creator Brad Falchuk when they met filming the 100th episode, and married in September 2018.
122* ScheduleSlip: The series took a three-week hiatus after [[Recap/GleeS4E17GuiltyPleasures the previous episode]] before airing "[[Recap/GleeS4E18ShootingStar Shooting Star]]" on April 11, 2013. Speculation says it was out of respect for the Newtown school shootings that took place a few months earlier. Said episode was [[ContentWarnings prefaced with a slide that warned of school violence]], although this did not appear on online streams.
123* ScrewedByTheNetwork: FOX didn't treat ''Glee''[='=]s final season very well at all, opting to place it on the FridayNightDeathSlot alongside ''World's Funniest Fails'', a knock-off of ''Series/AmericasFunniestHomeVideos'' with a completely different demographic from that of ''Glee''[='=]s. It was quite clear that the network was only still airing the show because it had been renewed for Season 6 before Season 5 began and also Cory Monteith's death.
124* SeparatedAtBirthCasting: When the show debuted practically everyone commented on how Creator/LeaMichele looked like a young Creator/IdinaMenzel. Sure enough, Menzel herself was eventually cast as Shelby Corcoran, who was eventually revealed to be Rachel's mother.
125* ShrugOfGod: The show is pointedly vague about how Finn died following Monteith's death, emphasizing that the focus should be on life, not death.
126* StarMakingRole: Essentially applies for every cast member who wasn't already a known name in TV or screen acting, and even ones that were (like Jane Lynch and John Stamos) gained recognition from a new generation of viewers. Chris Colfer ended up winning a Golden Globe eighteen months after his professional acting debut. As for Lea Michele, she was unambiguously the star of the show, and pursued a carrier in several other domains, but she became well-known for being an atrocious person to work with, and got called out on her hypocrisy and racism by several former ''Glee'' cast members.
127* SuppressedMammaries: Creator/LeaMichele is naturally curvy, but had to flatten her chest to play Rachel Berry, who is described as being "Kinda hot if you're not into boobs".
128* TakeThatTitForTat:
129** One of Creator/NeilPatrickHarris' Tony performances referred to Platform/{{Broadway}} shows as "a two-hour, live-action, barely affordable, un-lip-synched version of ''Glee''", causing the TV show to have more songs performed live on set rather than pre-recorded and edited.
130** ''Series/OurGayWeddingTheMusical'' claimed that it's entire premise was "gayer than ''Glee''" -- the next season then contained [[Recap/GleeS6E08AWedding a double gay wedding]], just to make sure it kept the title.
131** After ''Film/PitchPerfect'' subtly trashed the show, characters began saying things like "the a cappella thing is boring, done".
132** After ''Series/{{Community}}'' characters told the glee club on their own show (an {{expy}} for the rival shows) to "write some original songs", ''Glee'' did just that. However, ''Glee'' did not respond to ''Community'''s mocking that it "got a lot of awards" for just doing "sing sing singaling", possibly because actually winning all those awards was giving the return Take That for them.
133** The show also started its own little war, when in [[Recap/GleeS4E18ShootingStar a season 4 episode]] one character claims that a couple she doesn't like makes her feel "dryer than the cast of ''Series/HotInCleveland''", HIC later responded with one of their characters who was played by a former star of ''Glee'' (Creator/ChrisColfer) tell his mother how he was "in the glee club for ''six long years''" as if despairing.
134** On ''Series/VirtuallyFamous'', primarily about modern internet use, Chris and Seann would mock Creator/KevinMcHale for being on ''Glee'', so the next season of the show had the first episode ditch the computing extracurricular in favor of glee club.
135* TransCharacterCisActor: Coach Bieste, who came out as a transgender man and medically transitioned in Season 6 after being written as a straight, if butch, cisgender woman for the previous four seasons, is played by cisgender lesbian actress Dot-Marie Jones.
136* UnderageCasting: Season 4 features 16-year-old Katherine Mcnamara as one of Rachel's college classmates.
137* ViralMarketing: Italian network "Italia Uno" ("Italy One") has aired bumpers such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJVN6QjETCU&feature=related this one]] (see the others in the related videos), evidently designed to surprise anyone who doesn't have internet and/or never heard of ''Glee'' before. [[IncrediblyLamePun GLEE-talia Uno!]]
138* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
139** The series was at first conceived as a film by Ian Brennan; he wrote the script in 2005 but it never got anywhere, in 2008 the script fell into Murphy's hands and he and Brad Falchuk (who worked with Ryan on ''Series/NipTuck'') decided the concept would be better as a TV series.
140** Originally the creators where going to include a character named Rajesh. However, Chris Colfer made such an impression at his audition (for Artie) that the character of Kurt was written specifically for him.
141** The producers originally wanted a black girl in the Brittany role (who was then only ever intended to be a background character) but Heather Morris was given the part after teaching Chris and Jenna the Single Ladies dance.
142** The "Don't You Want Me" duet between Blaine and Rachel shows what a lot of duets would have been like if Darren was cast as Finn, the part he originally auditioned for.
143** [[Theatre/NextToNormal Aaron Tveit]] also auditioned for the part of Finn. Some of the more Broadway-obsessed portions of the fandom wish he had gotten the part.
144** Creator/MaxAdler also auditioned for one of the male leads, and after [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHN_9Mfl4L8 hearing him sing]] [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct and seeing him act]] one wonders why he wasn't cast as one.
145** Sam was originally intended to be the Kurt's romantic interest, but at the last minute the writers decided Chord's chemistry with Dianna Agron meant he would be better as Quinn's boyfriend. At the end of season 2, he and Mercedes had a RelationshipReveal that was supposed to continue on into the next season, but unfortunately Chord declined to come back after his option as a series regular wasn't picked up.
146*** Then another WCHB instance cropped up after the writers introduced a highly likeable side character as Mercedes' love interest, shortly after which Chord ''did'' return and whatever plotline involving Mercedes and Shane were sidelined to bring Samcedes back into being.
147** Through no one knows what would have happened had Cory lived, Ryan Murphy had a plan:
148--->'''Murphy''': The final year of the show, which will be next year, was designed around Rachel and Cory/Finn’s story. I always knew that, I always knew how it would end. I knew what the last shot was, he was in it. I knew what the last line was—she said it to him.
149*** This has been revealed both in-show and in further interviews: Finn is content and fulfilled as the new Glee club teacher; Rachel becomes a big Broadway star, happy with her life and yet not quite. The last scene would be Rachel suddenly coming into the choir room where Finn is teaching, and when asked what she was doing there, she would answer "I'm home".
150** Originally, "[[Theatre/{{Rent}} Seasons of Love]]" was intended to be performed at some point during season 3 (possibly during the finale), as implied by an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZU3T6YllI unreleased cast recording]] of it that got leaked out to the internet, but was cut from the episode for unknown reasons.
151** David Martinez was rumored to return at some point, but he never did, which makes “[[Recap/GleeS3E12TheSpanishTeacher The Spanish Teacher]]” really stick out.
152** The character that would become Kurt was supposed to a freshman in Season 1, and Puck a junior. Both were at least {{RetCon}}ned to be sophomores.
153** The school was originally called Harrison High (a different President they'd have a harder time making jokes at the expense of), and the original five New Directions were already going to be in the show choir with Hank (reportedly part of the "in-crowd") as their leading man, before Will took it over. In “[[Recap/GleeS6E122009 2009]]”, Rachel says that out of the five she was the only one in choir before Will; Hank's part from ''Pilot'' was drastically cut.
154** Like Quinn was originally called Liz, Rachel's mom was going to be called Amber, and her dads were Joe and Bruce in the pilot. Joe was originally called ''Apollo'' in the Season 3 scripts.
155** In (early drafts of) the ''Pilot'', Rachel was written as a child model who now loved ''Series/HannahMontana'', and she was going to perform [[Film/{{Grease}} "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee"]], ''in an Series/AmericanIdol audition''. Simon's feedback was harsh.
156*** She also had the line "Glee club isn't about solos... it's a team sport." Original Pilot Rachel was a lot different to the one that ended up getting filmed, and the stronger personality probably made her better. Then again, Mercedes got a lot more lines with this Rachel around...
157** Vocal Adrenaline's song in the pilot was originally Music/RobbieWilliams' "Let Me Entertain You".
158** At the end of Finn's inspirational speech, instead of saying that both glee and football need him, he was originally going to quit football and just leave with Artie.
159** Howard Bamboo was originally a young girl called Ginny. Terri was also an actual hard worker at Sheets N' Things, but it was going to get shut down and this is why she pressured Will to earn more money.
160** Mercedes and Rajesh (who became Kurt) were going to eventually date.
161** One that carries over the ''The Glee Project'' is how the ending of the first season would have worked out if Cameron had stayed and Damian had been eliminated. Would all four finalists have gotten on the show? Would Cameron's character make more of an impact and last longer than Rory did?
162* WrittenByCastMember: Chris Colfer wrote season 5's "[[Recap/GleeS5E19OldDogNewTricks Old Dog, New Tricks]]". Unusually for this trope, the producers actually approached ''him'' to write an episode (it may have helped that he had writing experience beforehand, having written the film ''Film/StruckByLightning'' - which he also starred in, co-produced and novelized - and the book series ''Literature/TheLandOfStories'').

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