Trivia / Alexa Bliss

• Adored by the Network: Between receiving the honor of being the first woman to have held both the Raw and SmackDown Women's titles, getting five solo title pushes, continuing to be given shots at Bayley's SmackDown title despite being on the Raw roster and most of SmackDown's women's division being Out of Focus, and getting to be half of the team that finally took the Women's Tag Team Championship belts off of the IIconics (Billie Kay and Peyton Royce) over two more popular tag teams, it's incredibly clear that someone in the back loves the hell out of Alexa Bliss. Even further proof came with her storyline with The Fiend Bray Wyatt, something Alexa herself had pitched for since 2016!
• Approval of God: She frequently will post fan art of her to Twitter and Instagram.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • Fans nicknamed her finisher the "Sparkle Splash", and other moves the "Glitz Flip"^note Her moonsault into a knee drop and "Glitter Blizzard"^note A sunset flip powerbomb from the corner — and they eventually became canon. After a Face–Heel Turn, the Sparkle Splash was renamed "Twisted Bliss" and the Glitz Flip was renamed "Insult to Injury" to fit the new character.
  • When she was paired with Braun Strowman in the Mixed Match Challenge, fans started calling them "Team Little Big". (Strowman is 6'8" and nearly 400 pounds to Bliss' 5'2" and slight frame.) The pair soon adopted it as their moniker.
• Creator Backlash:
  • She pokes fun at her attempts at ring announcing, saying she needed sticky notes on the microphone to remember the names.
  • She also describes her "Fairy Princess" gimmick as a mistake, saying she had no clue what she was doing. She does seem to have mellowed towards it, as a 2020 interview with Alison Rosen had her saying she was "having a blast" doing it — and she was actually worried about the heel turn.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • She was signed to WWE just after a bodybuilding routine and was dangerously underweight, claiming she weighed 96 lbs. She was actually told she couldn't get into the ring until she had gained at least 10 lbs.
  • She initially dyed her hair completely purple, with blonde streaks. The colour ruined her hair, so she opted instead to be blonde with coloured hair pieces in afterwards.
  • According to her, the day after her Face–Heel Turn was the tapings for the next set of episodes. She arrived at the arena to be told that they wanted her to change her hair red to match Blake and Murphy — and she had just five hours to do so. She ended up literally cutting the bottom off her hair pieces and spraying them red.
• Executive Meddling: Her heel turn on NXT came about because the writing team told her that the "Fairy Princess" gimmick was "not relatable" and they couldn't write for it.
• Hostility on the Set: Tensions between her and Sasha Banks were evident for years until both women essentially confirmed it in 2017. While the reason wasn't stated, many believed it was due to a match at NXT back in late 2014 in which Sasha busted Alexa's nose, since she allegedly never apologized backstage. Fortunately, they seem to have reconciled by 2020.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Alexa for a time disliked her sparkly gimmick in NXT, publicly calling it out in various interviews but actually softening her stance on it by 2020. Fans loved the character, and even though it's universally agreed that her Heel character is great, many argued that the sparkly gimmick had a potential to be a great Kid-Appeal Character.
• Playing Against Type: Given that she found her feet and became a star as a ruthless Alpha Bitch heel, it's incredibly jarring to believe that her initial NXT persona was a Kid-Appeal Character who wore a tutu and blew glitter everywhere.
• Promoted Fangirl: After she stated publicly that Bowling for Soup was her favorite band, the band's frontman Jaret Reddick reached out to her, and the two became friends. Their friendship inspired Jaret to make a pop punk song about wrestling with his band, and he decided to write it about Alexa. He surprised her with the song, simply titled "Alexa Bliss", on her birthday, and she was later invited to star in the song's music video.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Her debut came about because they needed another slot in the NXT Women's Championship tournament after Paige was called up to the main roster. The sparkly gimmick was something she had tried out in her last promo class.
  • Blake and Murphy needed a manager for symmetry against Enzo, Cass and Carmella. Murphy's actual girlfriend just being around in NXT waiting for some plot direction sort of wrote itself.
• Reality Subtext: Nikki Cross becoming Alexa's Morality Pet and only loyal friend takes on a new level of depth when one takes into account that Lexi Kaufman and Nicola Glencross are damn close to best friends out of character.
• Refitted for Sequel: Since her debut, she lobbied to be involved with The Wyatt Family in some way, and finally got her wish when she was partnered with Bray Wyatt in late 2019 during his character Retool as The Fiend.
• Romance on the Set: She and Buddy Murphy were confirmed to be in a relationship in 2015 and got engaged in 2016 before breaking it off in 2019.
• Throw It In!:
  • How her sparkly gimmick was conceived. She was given the news that she'd be making her televised debut at the last minute; short on time to think of what gimmick she'd use, she just went with the one she thought of during her previous promo class. Her initial ring gear was also made up of cheerleading outfits she already had because she didn't know what else to go for.
  • Alexa briefly got in trouble with NXT management for the glitter she blew in her entrance sticking to her hands and remaining in the ring for the subsequent matches, so it was banned for a while. When they let her do it again, she compromised by wearing gloves and removing them during her entrance.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Her careers in all-star cheer and bodybuilding, for a start.
  • She appeared to have been given a redneck gimmick, appearing on live events as the girlfriend of Scott Dawson. She even filmed vignettes for it in a promo class that were leaked online ("have a Blissful day, girl" could have been a potential Catchphrase judging from her video with Christina Vargas). However she dropped the gimmick and had adopted a completely different one by the time she actually debuted on TV.
  • Following on from the above, the Alexa Bliss name was conceived as a Punny Name from the way "bless your heart" is pronounced in a Southern Belle voice. Alexa intended for "Bliss your heart" to be her Catchphrase but it didn't amount to much. She kept the name because of the wordplay potential however. A close runner up for her ring name was 'Lexie Kaye', which she nearly went for but found it too similar to her old name.
  • Before she debuted, she worked several live events teaming with Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks. Rumor went around that she was going to become a new member of the Beautiful Fierce Females, as Summer Rae was starting to be featured less on NXT due to her Total Divas commitments. These were intensified when Alexa appeared with Sasha and Charlotte as a trio of women in Triple H's entrance at WrestleMania XXX. But she ended up debuting with the sparkly gimmick instead.
  • She was supposed to have a match at Evolution, but a concussion from Ronda Rousey forced Alexa to be sidelined until January.

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