Trivia / Young Sheldon

• Ability over Appearance: Annie Potts looks absolutely nothing like June Squibb, who played Connie in The Big Bang Theory, even taking the two-plus decade timeframe into account, but most fans are willing to excuse this due to how well she plays the part.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Jason Alexander plays Sheldon's drama teacher, and throughout the episode he does song-and-dance numbers. Alexander himself is an accomplished Broadway performer.
  • Mckenna Grace previously played an child prodigy on Gifted.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: This promo from TVLine says "In this week's Young Sheldon, Mandy gave birth to their daughter, a precious niblingo named..." The word "niblingo", which was used in several different episodes, refers to Mandy (not the baby).
• Creator's Oddball: Chuck Lorre is known for his multi-camera sitcoms shot before a live studio audience, and for being one of the last holdouts in both of these traditions. This show is a single-camera series with no live audience, akin to The Goldbergs.
• Dawson Casting: While Paige is a month younger than Sheldon, Mckenna Grace is two years older than Iain Armitage, and it definitely shows in "Bible Camp and a Chariot of Love." Though it's not too far fetched, since girls typically start puberty a few years before boys do and it is often implied both in this show and in The Big Bang Theory that Sheldon was a late bloomer.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Iain Armitage is a natural blond, but dyes his hair brown to look like Sheldon.
• Irony as She Is Cast: "Summer Sausage, a Pocket Poncho, and Tony Danza" has Missy convincing George to take her to Red Lobster, and she loves the experience. Missy's actress, Raegan Revord, is a vegan in real life. Perhaps alluded to in "A Live Chicken, a Fried Chicken and Holy Matrimony", where Missy becomes upset that the Sparks' are going to kill their pet chicken Matilda, and steals her, along with trying to stop her family from eating fried chicken. It's possible that the character is on her way to becoming vegan also.
• Dueling Dubs: There are two Hungarian dubs. One for HBO, and another for Comedy Central. Máté Szabó reprised his role as adult Sheldon in both dubs.
• The Other Darrin: Justified Trope as this is a prequel.
  • Real-Life Relative: Sheldon's mother Mary is played by Zoe Perry, the real-life daughter of Laurie Metcalf, who plays the present-day version of the character on The Big Bang Theory.
  • A partial example with Debbie Wolowitz's voice cameo in the season 2 finale, which is a combination of archived audio of the late Carol Ann Susi and new dialogue recorded by Pamela Adlon, who voiced Halley Wolowitz in Big Bang. ^note  Debbie's one spoken line is "Howard, turn off that verkakte game and go to sleep!" "Howard" is Susi, the rest is Adlon and there is a noticeable difference.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub, Luis Alfonso Mendoza, who voiced the narrator/adult Sheldon, was murdered after season 2 aired.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "Mighty Little Man" by Steve Burns. Yes, that Steve Burns.
• Recast as a Regular: Lance Barber previously guest starred on The Big Bang Theory episode "The Speckerman Recurrence" as Leonard's old school bully Jimmy Speckerman, then was cast as George Cooper on Young Sheldon.
• Romance on the Set: Reba McEntire (who plays June Ballard) and Rex Linn (who plays Principal Peterson) began dating in 2020.
• Screwed by the Network: When the show joined Nick@Nite it was really hyped up (even promoting the series during daytime Nickelodeon) and started off the block every night, but not too long after, the series was moved to airing weekday mornings at 6:00am.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Iain Armitage and Raegan Revord, who play Sheldon and Missy, look so much like each other they could easily pass for siblings in real life, and the resemblance has only increased as they've grown older. They actually look more like each other than the actors playing the adult versions of their characters did on The Big Bang Theory (Though Reagan started looking a lot more like Courtney Henggeler as she matured). As a matter of fact, if Armitage didn’t have to dye his blond hair brown to play Sheldon, the resemblance would be even stronger.
• Voice-Only Cameo: In "Teenager Soup and a Little Ball of Fib", Kaley Cuoco voices the pool water in Sheldon's nightmare.
  • Both Mayim Bialik (twice) and Simon Helberg make returns this way as their The Big Bang Theory characters Amy and Howard.
• What Could Have Been: The season four premiere "Graduation" was obviously intended to be the final episode of season three, but it had to be pushed back due to the COVID-19 Pandemic putting a halt on filming.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Medford is a fictional town, somewhere in East Texas. It sounds similar to Bedford, a suburb in the DFW Metroplex. However, Sheldon mentions that his phone number is in the 409 area code, placing it near^note at least in the late 80s-early 90s setting; the 936 area code spun off from 409 in 2000 Huntsville, Lufkin, or Beaumont. This makes sense, as it’s mentioned that Sheldon lives about an hour away from Rice University, which is in Houston.
  • In the episode "Carbon Dating and a Stuffed Raccoon," there's a scene where George Sr. drives Sheldon out of Medford along U.S. Route 59, which also runs through Houston. They're headed to the "Natural Science Museum of Texas," which is supposedly in Houston.
• You Look Familiar: Sheldon's father George Sr. is played by Lance Barber, who'd previously played Leonard's childhood bully Jimmy Speckerman on The Big Bang Theory.
  • Ms. Fenley, Sheldon's music teacher, was played by Melissa Tang, who was also in The Big Bang Theory as Mandy Chow.
  • Vernee Watson, known as Althea on TBBT, once again portrays a sassy nurse in this show as well.
  • Teller, who previously played Amy's father Larry Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, appears in "A Clogged Pore A Little Spanish And The Future" as Puss, alongside Penn Jillette as the pimple.