The king of kids' comedy in the Turn of the Millennium.Dan Schneider is probably best known to adults as Dennis Bluden on the old ABC sitcom Head of the Class. But to millions of children (and kids-at-heart), he is the creator, writer and producer of several of the most well-known and loved Kid Coms. His work portfolio almost entirely is comprised of Nickelodeon's premier shows (and vice-versa: his shows make up a very large chunk of Nickelodeon's live-action programming).His production company is Schneider's Bakery and he loves to put various Easter Eggs among his various shows, such as a Schneider's Bakery can be seen in the stock location footage of the movie theatre in Drake & Josh. His shows tend to use a similar way of talking, a variation on Buffy Speak by finding obscure, unusual or sometimes made-up words to use. Shows created and/or produced
He has a blog, which is here.See also the Nick Verse, a Shared Universe between various Nickelodeon live-action KidCom series - it's also known as the "Schneider Verse" as so far all of the shows in it are his (though that could change in the future).
This producer and his works contain examples of:
Adults Are Useless - Adults in his shows are typically incredibly Naive, Pushovers, Overly Underhanded, or just Utter Morons.
Comedic Sociopathy: By and towards his main characters. The main offenders are Megan from Drake & Josh and Sam Puckett from iCarly. Said recipients are Drake & Josh and Freddie Benson respectively.
Common Crossover - Some of the fake brands appear across all shows, such as Daka shoes, Pearpods (an Ersatz of Apple products), Wahoo Punch, and Blix.
Crapsaccharine World: Very common in the Schneider-verse world, especially in his sitcoms. Guest characters who interact with the main protagonists have high chances of being full of Unfortunate Implications.
Fan Nickname: Troll Schneider. Earned through years of trolling his fanbase via Victorious and iCarly.
Foot Focus - A common thread through all his shows.
iCarly and Victorious have both had screentime given to scenes and even storylines which serve no purpose but to make the cast expose their feet and wiggle them in front of the camera for minutes at a time.
The Slap tie-in website, which Dan has a huge amount of control over, has done a 'feet week' theme.
It's more likely that he's been given a great deal of creative freedom due to the popularity of his works, considering his earlier shows didn't try to sneak nearly as much stuff past the radar.
There's still a decent amount of radar-y stuff in those early shows though. Some of the All That and The Amanda Show sketches probably wouldn't have made it to air today.
The blatantly obvious foot fetish stuff has never been reined in.
Gosh Dang It to Heck! - There's a lot of strange euphemisms for swears in his works, the most used ones are "skunkbag," "chiz," "jank," and "suckish."
Happy Ending: He averts this in most episodes of his shows, to add to the comedic effect. Sometimes results in No Ending.
Jerk Ass - Wouldn't be a Dan Schneider show without a couple.
One unknown troper put it best when referring to iCarly. To paraphrase: "This is a Dan Schneider show, meaning that students/teachers will regularly get away with stuff that would get them a stern talking to at best and expelled/fired/arrested at worst."
Laugh Track. Averted Trope for Zoey101, due to it being a single camera work shot on location. Played very straight with every other show he's made.
Large Ham: You're gonna see a lot of characters like this in his works. Josh, Chase, Michael, Freddie, Robbie, Trina...the list goes on and on.
No Indoor Voice: Dan loves this trope. Expect at least two-thirds of all characters on a Dan Schneider-show to frequently shout their dialogue. Also expect a sequence at least once during an episode of any Dan Schneider show where the characters will have an argument - resulting in characters shouting at each other obnoxiously.
Recycled Script: Several cases since Drake & Josh where an episode has been a direct lift of an earlier episode in another series.
Also has a massive tendency to repeat jokes. One example being the "three legged cat" joke.
Dan made Drake & Josh an entire series about main characters being pranked by a young kid, and he's made half a dozen episodes of iCarly on the same premise.
He copies a lot of short one-line jokes or physical comedy bits from Friends, and before you think it's a co-incidence, Dan loves Friends and knows it like the back of his hand, as well as knowing David Schwimmer:
The entire Spencer is dead plot is completely stolen from a plot involving Ross.
Sam teaching Spencer how to lie, ripped off from Phoebe teaching Joey how to lie.
A physical joke where Spencer is sad and lies down on the kitchen table, stolen.
Melanie the twin plot. Identical to a Phoebe plot-line.
Chandler remarks about how travel sized items make him feel like a giant. Freddie says the exact same line.
Shaggy Dog Story: Loves having episodes without endings, or endings where nothing actually matters. Recent example is the iBust A Thief episode of iCarly which had the gang try to get back Sam's stolen laptop. In the end Sam had left it in a pizza box in the fridge and discovers it at the end and doesn't tell anyone.
The Flour Bomber plot in "Robbie Sells Rex". Complete with Lampshading of how horrible, boring and anti-climatic the plot is.
Most notably in iCarly. He managed to drag along both the Sam/Freddie and Carly/Freddie ships by teasing both, having an episode where Carly and Freddie get together but break up, an episode where Sam and Freddie get together followed by a four part relationship arc which ends with them breaking up, continuing to tease both sides throughout the final season to the point that going into the final episode of the series both sides would be plausible to end the show together, and it would be just as plausible if the show ended with neither being together. iCarly went for 5 years and 107 episodes. It was also a masterclass in creating and stoking the flames of Shipping Wars between the major factions.
Followed up by doing the same on Victorious, by teasing the Jade/Beck pairing, the Beck/Tori pairing and the Jade/Tori pairing, plus teasing Andre/Jade, Andre/Tori as well as stringing along Cat/Robbie shippers.
Shout Out: Dan has freely admitted to almost having an outright love of paying homage to the sitcoms he grew up with and loved as a child and teenager, particularly The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The very last whole cast scene from iCarly is in fact such an homage, for example.
Spin-Off: Despite having shows on the air for nearly 20 years, Sam And Cat and Gibby are Dan's first true spinoffs. Most everything else is just a Shared Universe.
All That spawned Kenan & Kel, The Amanda Show and Zoey 101. The Amanda Show was treated as an actual show being put on for the audience, much like All That, and both referred to each other.
Also, the idea of an older sibling taking care of a younger sibling introduced in Guys Like Us inspired the premises of both What I Like About You and iCarly.
Throw It In: If a blooper is funny enough, he'll throw it in the final cut of the show.
Teasing Creator: After becoming aware of fandom and the almost exclusive Shipping focus when he joined the online community for iCarly he then turned what was a relatively non-explosive online community into a Sam/Freddie vs Carly/Freddie Ship War that rivalled anything Nickelodeon had ever seen including Kaatang/Zutara. The usual method was inserting lines into his blogs referencing whatever pairing was not the focus of the episode.
As show for Ship Tease, he managed to tease pairings after the Series Finale of iCarly.
Has now started teasing the Jade/Tori (Jori) shippers on Victorious.
See also the Nick Verse, a Shared Universe between various Nickelodeon live-action KidCom series - it's also known as the "Schneider Verse" as so far all of the shows in it are his (though that could change in the future).
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