Trivia / The Legend of Korra

• Acclaimed Flop: Throughout its run, the series struggled to maintain consistent ratings with the actual target demographic, despite a boatload of positive reviews. While Season 1 maintained strong ratings, season 2's switch to Friday nights saw the series' ratings start to freefall. By season 3, ratings dropped low enough that Nick completely pulled it off air, and ran the remainder of episodes they ordered exclusively online. That being said, the series remained very popular with older audiences and has an enduring online presence.
• Approval of God:
  • Mike was screenshotted liking some fanart of Korra and Asami after the final episode was released. Note that this was a day or two before Bryke would make the announcement of it being canon.
  • Bryan has admitted that various pun-related memes have become something of a Guilty Pleasure for him and other people working on the show.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • "Book: Air" was a very common name for fan sequels, in keeping with the Theme Naming of the show's seasons, as it was the only main element remaining that did not have its own season. The first season of Korra is titled "Book One: Air".
  • When the series was initially announced as The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra, some fans rejected the Artifact Title and its association with the much-disliked film adaptation, instead referring to the series as The Legend of Korra. Official sources soon followed suit.
  • Two of Aang and Katara's kids are named Kya and Bumi, after Katara's mother and Aang's oldest friend. Fanfiction writers named hypothetical daughters of Katara "Kya" years before The Legend of Korra was ever announced.
  • Likewise, the popular Avatar Aang: An Annotated Bibliography nailed "Tenzin" as the name of one of Aang's sons.
    • And in the same vein, several fanfics predicted "Rohan" would be the name of one of their sons too. They were just a generation early.
  • Nick.com advertises a clip from of "The Spirit of Competition" with the tagline "Makorra Vs. Borra," actively invoking Ship-to-Ship Combat.
  • An armless water bender who can bend water to use as replacement arms? Fans came up with the concept before.
  • Fans have speculated that if airbenders weren't such adamant pacifists, they could be very effective at killing people by simply bending the air out of their lungs and making them suffocate. In "Long Live The Queen", Zaheer does just that.
  • Korra and Asami started out as little more than a Crack Ship mostly in protest of the stilted Love Triangle in the first two seasons. Suffice it to say, it grew.
• Banned in China: Banned in Kenya in 2017 for Korra and Asami's relationship along with a number of other children's shows, as same-sex sexual relations are illegal in that country. Strangely averted with the Netflix release.
• Content Leak: Happened twice throughout the show's run:
  • The series premiere was going to be put on Nick's website for early viewing but got leaked beforehand due to poor cybersecurity on Nick's part. Someone who worked for the network had a default username and password.
  • MundoNick, the Latin American affiliate, mistakenly put episodes 3-6 of Book 3 up for viewing early during the summer of 2014, causing the season to have to air almost immediately without any marketing.
• Creator Backlash: If "Remembrances" is anything to go by, how Unalaq and by extension Book 2 turned out were this to Bryke.
• Creator's Favorite: Asami Sato. She was initially meant to be The Mole but Bryke ended up loving her too much to follow through with that. They ended up rewriting her into being a good guy and later Promoted to Love Interest. Luckily, Asami also became very popular with the fans, so everything worked out well.
• The Danza:
  • Cora Baker, daughter of Dee Bradley Baker, voices the young Korra.
  • In-universe, the character Ginger plays Ginger in the Play Within a Play, "Nuktuk, Hero of the South".
• Dear Negative Reader: Bryke have been incredibly defensive over negative reactions to the series. Bryan Konietzko lashed out by creating a comic that blamed all negativity on "rabid fangirls" - which borders on Insane Troll Logic. He claimed that people simply too stupid to understand their writing, specifically the romance aspect of it and that they were being hypocrites if they enjoyed Aang but not Korra.
• Dueling Dubs: The show has two Russian translations made for two different channels, one of which was a Voiceover Translation. Both translations seem to have almost the same script. The 2x2 voiceover only covers the first season, while the dub covers all four. When 2x2 started airing books 2-4, they used the dub instead of voiceover. Strangely, Korra's VA is the same in both the dub and voiceover. Even stranger, it's the same VA that voiced Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender dub.
• Executive Meddling: Nick slashed the budget for Season 4, not giving the crew enough money to produce all the episodes they wanted. They had to either fire some of their staff or do a Clip Show. "Remembrances" was the result.
• Fandom Nod:
  Jinora Gran-Gran, I've been reading all about your old adventures; I've been dying to ask you; what happened to Zuko's mom?
  Katara: Well, Jinora, it's an incredible tale—
  Ikki: [interrupting] Gran Gran, you look old. How old are you? Why is it so cold in the South Pole? Can we sit around a fire and play games and tell scary stories and make snowmen? And then could you make the snowman move with waterbending and chase us? Wouldn't that be fuuuun?
  [Jinora hangs her head in disappointment]
• Friday Night Death Slot: Book 2 aired Friday night instead of Saturday morning. By the numbers, it is down about 1-2 million viewers per episode than last season. And then they push it back another hour without warning, leading to another drop of a million viewers. Book 3 remained in the Friday night slot until it was taken off the air completely for an online-only release.
  • There is fan speculation that the series was moved online due to the content of the show getting darker, as well as some jarring moments that shocked even the adult viewers of the show.
• God Never Said That:
  • Despite the quote from Andrea Romano being that the original cast might as well be dead, for all of the impact they'll have on the plot, numerous people still insist she declared the entire cast to be dead and gone, accusing her of being mistaken or lying when it was proved otherwise.
  • No one ever said that Iroh II was 36 at the beginning of the series, it’s a cut joke that got taken out of context. Back when the show was supposed to be a mini-series, Asami was going to end up in the United Forces and in a relationship with Iroh. When she told Mako, he would have said "He’s, like, 36!", which would have been him exaggerating. Iroh is supposed to be a bit older than Korra and her friends, but not that much older. In fact, they cut his sister out of Book 4 due to time constraints, and she was going to be Mako’s love interest. It seems unlikely that he is that much older than his sister.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The Legend of Korra video game is one of the only games in the franchise with a positive reception from the fanbase — and is also impossible to get outside of emulation, due to being delisted back in 2017 when Activision lost the license.
• Invisible Advertising: Book 3 went from announcement to air in roughly a month after four episodes were leaked from Nick's Mexican affiliate. Book 4, being broadcast entirely online, got it even worse. The announcement came merely three weeks prior, with no television advertising.
• Life Imitates Art: Behold, Janet Varney dresses up as Korra for a Kickstarter project.
• Memorial Character: Mako was named for the late voice actor Mako Iwamatsu, who voiced Iroh in the first two seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• No Dub for You: Unlike the previous series, the show never got a Japanese dub.
• The Other Darrin: Korra's father Tonraq was voiced by Carlos Alazraqui in Book 1, and then by James Remar in Book 2.
• The Other Marty: Rob Paulsen's dialogue for adult Aang was dubbed over by DB Sweeney.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Steve Blum as Amon, Clancy Brown as Yakone, and Lance Henriksen as The Lieutenant are the only major exceptions so far.
  • Janet Varney had been almost an exclusively comedic actress before getting cast as Korra.
  • PJ Byrne starred in quite a few medical and/or legal dramas before being cast as Bolin.
  • Mako's voice actor David Faustino was best known for his role on Married... with Children as the sane, smart, yet perpetually dateless son, Bud Bundy. In the first season, Mako has many fangirls and dates two women.
  • Mindy Sterling (Lin Beifong) and Janet Varney (Korra) are best known for comedic roles.
  • While Dee Bradley Baker isn't new to voicing menacing villains such as Tarrlok, it's certainly not something he's necessarily well-known for (mostly Baker does announcer voices, comedic losers, depraved Germans, and animal/creature noises).
  • There's also J. K. Simmons, best known for playing hilariously foul-mouthed, choleric Jerkasses, as Tenzin, the most calm and spiritual member of the cast (though he has his moments).
  • Bruce Davison, who specializes in sleazy or just plain weird characters, is the new Zuko.
  • Zelda Williams, a model who acted in a few obscure roles, is Kuvira.
  • Stephanie Sheh, known for playing Shrinking Violets and Genki Girls, as well usually playing these type of characters with high-pitched voices, plays Zhu Li, a stoic Servile Snarker, and Stephanie uses her normal voice for her.
  • Quiet, serene, reasonable Pema is voiced by Maria Bamford, a comedian known for her manic energy, surreal humor, and bizarre voice impressions.
• Post-Script Season: The series was supposed to end with just Book 1, hence the term "Mini-series" when it was first conceptualised. However, its popularity led to a green-lit Book 2 mid-production. The same thing wound up happening all over again during the production of Book 2 with the production team being suddenly informed that they were green-lit again for two more seasons. This constant Moving the Goalposts production-wise was considered by many fans and critics alike to be one of the biggest reasons the show didn't do well as it could have been due to the creators not being able to make long-term plans.
• Production Nickname: The giant spirit form that Korra takes at the end of Book Two is labeled "Cosmic Korra" in the art book.
• Production Throwback: Naga the Polar Bear-Dog, Korra's animal guide and occasional transport for the new Team Avatar, was originally going to be Aang's waaaay back before the series was fully realized- sketches and concepts for this can be seen in the Avatar: The Last Airbender official art-of book.
• Promoted Fanboy: Janet Varney was a big fan of the original series even before auditioning for the role of Korra, needless to say she was stoked to hear that she'd booked the part.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Janet Varney is bisexual, as is Korra.
• Real-Life Relative: The show features Dee Bradley Baker as Tarrlok and various animals, along with his daughter Cora as Young Korra.
• Recast as a Regular: The Brazilian dub cast Charles Emmanuel, who voiced Teo and Izabel Lira, who voiced Zuko's mother Ursa in the original series as members of the new Team Avatar, Bolin and Asami, respectively.
• Role Reprise: In the Brazilian dub, Ana Lúcia Menezes reprise her role as Toph in flashbacks from when she was younger and police chief.
• Screwed by the Network: While its predecessor was far from the best treated show on the network, this series takes the cake as one of the very worst examples of this trope in the history of the network.
  • Book 1 was aired on Saturdays with a great deal of promotion, and it got very high ratings. But for Book 2 the channel gave less promotion and moved it to the Friday Night Death Slot. The Book 2 premiere only had half the ratings of the Book 1 premiere. Then with little warning, the show was pushed back an hour and ratings fell in half again. See how bad the numbers got. Whether intentional or not, the network screwed this show hard.
  • When Bryan Konietzko announced the time change, he added that it may have been done to try and counter-act this. It kinda worked for episode 9.
  • Book 3 received shockingly little marketing for what's ostensibly the network's flagship show alongside SpongeBob SquarePants, with the return date only being announced a few weeks in advance. This may have been related to the Short Run in Peru leak of four Book 3 episodes. In any case, the ratings dropped even further. Then, after four weeks of new episodes, covering episodes 1 to 7, Nick pulled episode 9 from the schedule and moved the entire series to a weekly release on their website. Ironically, this was after a bizarre set of ads that asserted the season could only be seen on television.
    • Then later as the season progressed, the bodies started hitting the floor, leading some fans to think Nickelodeon moved the show online due to its content. Though the Season 3 episodes later started airing on TV in late September, and hadn't finished by the time Book 4 started.
  • Book 4 aired entirely online, and not even a month and a half after Book 3's finale (and the TV premiere of the last few episodes of Season 3 are still yet to finish). This, along with further lack of advertising not dissimilar to Book 3, has led to fandom outrage that Nick is trying to "shove Korra out the door."
  • When the Book 4 episode "Remembrances" was revealed to be a Clip Show, the fandom was not happy. Then Bryan Konietzko took to Tumblr to explain, and revealed that Nickelodeon had cut the Book's budget in the middle of production, by roughly the cost of a full episode, requiring either significant layoffs or significant footage recycling. To Bryan and Mike, the first idea wasn't even an option.
  • Played with in the final scenes of the series finale, many blamed Nick for the ambiguity of it, and assumed that Bryke had to sneak it in without the studio's knowledge, but after Bryke confirmed Korra and Asami were a couple online, they mentioned that the studio was supportive of the idea, though due to their Standards and Practices would only allow so much to be shown. So the studio is the reason for the ambiguity, but the scene was done with them fully knowing what was being expressed.
  • The Legend of Korra game was a digital-only game that never saw physical release — which means that it is now impossible to play outside of emulation, thanks to Activision abandoning the license in 2017.
• Short Run in Peru: Kinda. Several episodes of the Spanish dub of Book 3 were leaked onto the internet before Book 3 aired anywhere. This may have caused Book 3 to air prematurely with little marketing.
• Shrug of God: Bryan has admitted that even he has no idea how Jinora helped Korra defeat UnaVaatu in the Book 2 finale, and that any of the fan-theories about this are technically correct as a result. This was mocked in "Remembrances" with Varrick calling her "queen of the fairies."
• Star-Making Role: Korra's voice, Janet Varney, had previously been well known for hosting Dinner and a Movie (a movie wraparound program) on TBS.
• Throw It In!:
  • A scene in "The Spirit of Competition" where Mako is angrily walking through a door and completely ignores a fan trying to say hi ("Hey Makooooo-oh") originated when someone drew a random extra standing next to Mako in the animatic and the episodes director thought he looked disappointed.
  • There was an In-Universe case in a mover where Bolin kisses an actress in a scene where he wasn't supposed to and the director decided to keep the kiss.
• Trolling Creator:
  • Not five minutes into the new series and they hit viewers with this gem:
  Jinora: I've been dying to ask you: what happened to Zuko's mom?
  Katara: [epic theme music begins to swell] Well, Jinora, it's an incredible tale—
  Ikki: [theme cuts off] Gran-Gran, you look old! How old are you? [starts rambling]
  Jinora: [hangs her head in annoyance]
  • There's also something pretty suspect about releasing a trailer that features Korra and Mako kissing the day before April Fool's, even if it actually did happen.
  • It feels like the episode "The Spirit of Competition" was trolling all the shippers at once.
  • The reveal that Toph's daughters have different fathers feels like this. Ever since Lin's introduction much speculation has gone into who her father is, but the fact that neither her nor her sister knows who their respective fathers are has opened the door for a whole slew of speculation, no doubt sparking shipping wars by the mere implication that the popular Tokka ship is potentially canon. Then came "Operation Beifong", which resolved Lin's father in five seconds as some unknown guy named Kanto. Expecting some big reveal, huh?
    • They've also stubbornly refused to say who Suyin's father is, even on bonus materials, so fans will likely never know one way or the other if Tokka applies there or not.
  • The day before "Remembrances" aired, Nickelodeon tweeted "Will Masami return tomorrow? You're gonna have to wait to find out! ;)" The answer was no.
  • For Book 4, it was mentioned that Varrick's childhood would be explored at some point. Right up until the finale, people wondered how they'd address that... then Varrick uses an out-of-context anecdote as a comparison for how he has been treating Zhu Li, before mentioning that he was taken away by circus people, leaving more hilarious questions than answers.
• Viral Marketing:
  • Korra Nation. The point was to get people to inform their friends of the show by having automatic posts show up on you Facebook/Twitter profile for people to click. The person sending the posts earned points for every link clicked and every person who signed up using their personal link, with the points going towards prizes including a drawing for a trip to this summer's SDCC and exclusive MP3 releases of music from the show.
  • Another branch of Korra Nation dealt with gaining likes, shares, and tweets of the Korra Nation website; on which fans could discover hidden content such as production sketches and background art. Sharing the site 100,00 times would allow fans to see the premiere a week early. It earned 100,000 points within the first week of its announcement, and as promised the first two episodes were available online on March 24th.
  • The Korra Nation website no longer exists, but the viral marketing continues with the Korra Nation tumblr and facebook pages. Art, production information, and clips of the upcoming episodes are posted to these pages once or twice a week.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
• Word of Dante: Fanon has long speculated that Kya is a lesbian, a belief perpetuated by someone on tumblr posting a statement that was allegedly from the creators (though unconfirmed and unverified) that Kya was "part of the lgbtqia+ community". This became Ascended Fanon in Turf Wars.
• Word of Gay:
  • The relationship between Korra and Asami was confirmed as romantic by both Mike and Bryan. Apparently they debated with themselves for over a year over whether or not to do this.
  • Word of God outed Aiwei as not straight though as of 2017, it's yet to be elaborated on what exactly his orientation was.
• Word of God:
  • Mike and Bryan clarified a number of details concerning events that bridge the two series, such as who's ruling the Fire Nation in Zuko's stead and why Aang was only in his 60s when he died.
  • It was later clarified due to potential ambiguity that Ghazan and Ming-Hua were both killed.
  • The NYCC panel revealed that the airbending wingsuits featured in Book 4 were designed by Asami herself.
  • Both Mike and Bryan have confirmed the Korra/Asami pairing as canonical. The reason it was a little ambiguous is due to standards and practices only allowing so much, but Nickelodeon were actually supportive of the idea. Basically, they could do absolutely everything except having them actually kiss on-screen. So they went all out, mirroring the final scene of Avatar: The Last Airbender when it came to staging, music and action, just pulling away the camera where the original showed Aang and Katara kissing.
  • They've also assured us that once Mako finds his own true love, his experiences with both Korra and Asami will help him do a much better job being good to them.
  • Nick.com has released family trees that give the names of people like Asami's mother.
  • There was a question and answer period on the avatar wiki, where we find out that Ghazan really did grow his moustache at age 10. Which of the other two of Bolin's predictions is still kept a secret.
  • Mike & Bryan confirmed in the Book 4 commentary that Zuko has a granddaughter whom they originally wanted to include but couldn’t work into the show once the outline changed.
• Working Title: First Avatar: Legend of Korra, then The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra. The "The Last Airbender" Artifact Title was ultimately dropped, while the "Avatar" supertitle was retained for overseas markets.
• You Look Familiar: A vocal variant.
  • Steve Blum had voiced Amon in Season 1, as well as Yao in "Beginnings" and Hundun in the video game. It's especially fun when Varrick tells the refugees his own take on the show's whole story, with Blum also getting new Amon lines in addition to Baraz ones.
  • Including the rest of the Universe, Dante Basco voiced Zuko and is now Iroh II; Seychelle Gabriel played Princess Yue in the live-action film adaptation but is more remembered as Asami Sato. Additionally, Grey Delisle voiced both Azula and Ming-Hua.
  • In Brazil and Italy, Korra wound up with the same voice as Azula, while in Russia she is Aang.
  • In Hungary Raava is Azula, Shiro Shinobi is Earth King Kuei and Prince Wu is the original Jet.
    • Also Yakone, Tonraq and Vaatu voiced by same actor.
    • In Poland Mako is Zuko, Varrick is King Bumi, Ikki is original Suki and Mai

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