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  • Adorkable:
    • Mina, Trina's sweet and shy meganekko sidekick with a very cute voice to boot.
    • Lenny, a timid and soft-spoken boy with a massive unrequited crush on his band's leader.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Does Trina deserve the things that happen to her for her mean and horribly selfish attitude or is she just a poor girl with issues that the band cruelly exploits?
      • In "Math of Kon" a completely different side of Trina is shown that makes one wonder which side is the real Trina; the nice(er) mathlete or the mean Alpha Bitch.
      • "Dreamreaver" implies that Trina locked away the nice side of herself in her mind, and she used to be a real kind and fun person. Her full name was Katrina, but according to Corey "No one's called her that in years." This change seems to have happened after Nick Mallory entered her life, making it a case of Love Makes You Evil.
      • Word of God states that Trina’s evilness is actually the result of being possessed by the Pink Star of Rocklympus, a supernatural power related to the Blue Star seen in “Six Strings of Evil”. So is everything we get from the Trina we see in the show merely the Pink Star’s powers, actions, and behavior (right down to her obsession with Nick), with Katrina from “Dreamreaver” being the real Trina? Could Trina be turned back into Katrina?
    • Mina, why does she help Trina so much? Is it because she terrified of Trina? In Love with Trina? Is she just as mean as Trina? Does she just enjoy the side benefits of being Trina's friend and is willing to do anything to keep them? Or does she see her as the kind girl she used to be? Word of God has confirmed it's that last one.
    • Corey himself. As commented by his friends, he has the passion and talent to come up with new lyrics (generally in the Spoof Aesop end segments), so him blatantly parasitizing his sister's diary is either the sign of extreme laziness, deliberate jerkass behaviour, being oblivious, or something else.
    • What exactly is the deal with Nick Mallory and Trina? Some episodes show him ignoring and sometimes even loathing Trina, yet in other episodes, he is his usual kind self to her.
  • Alternate Self Shipping: Shipping Grojband with their Newmans counterparts is not uncommon in the fandom. Also overlaps with Foe Yay Shipping, given their rivalry.
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: While Grojband has acquired a solid cult following, its lack of success and popularity compared to Fresh TV's previous shows can be attributed to this. Those who weren't turned off by the weird ethics of the premise (the protagonist having to steal his sister's diary to write songs) were confused to find a show that was nothing like Fresh TV's previous cartoons in execution, being much Denser and Wackier and heavily reliant on a self-aware Strictly Formula. The unusualness of the series, combined with being Screwed by the Network, ultimately led to the series lasting only one season and has made it more divisive and obscure than Fresh TV's previous works.
  • Awesome Music: Being a music-themed series, Grojband usually has at least one awesome song per episode. The background music when Trina goes diary is pretty awesome, bonus points for changing the tune depending on the emotion. In fact there are so many examples, we gave them their own page here.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Trina Riffin is definitely the show's most polarizing character. Some consider her over-the-top Big Sister Bully Bratty Teenage Daughter character to be incredibly hilarious and a great antagonist, while others find that same personality makes her completely insufferable in every single way. And then there are those who see her as a Jerkass Woobie and instead sympathize with her, due to them feeling sorry for how her life is constantly turned upside-down by Corey's efforts to make her feel rage, anguish, joy, or terror just to steal her diary.
  • Cargo Ship:
    • Trina and her sweater "Pinkredible."
    • Corey and Trina's diary.
    • Nick Mallory and Trina's car "Pinktastic" (to be fair, Trina's soul was possessing it).
  • Catharsis Factor: For quite a few fans (particularly those who hate Trina), Mina standing up to Trina and giving her an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech in the Grand Finale was an immensely satisfying moment for finally seeing the incredibly hateable Trina get put in her place and called out for who she is by the one who suffered the most from her abuse and general jerkassery.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The flashback showing why Trina is scared of puppets in "No Strings Attached". Trina's just an innocent little girl back then, so it's sad to see her scared... and then it turns out she accidentally picked up a scary puppet that just happened to look exactly like the "pretty puppet" she wanted, and the whole thing crosses the line into hilarious Black Comedy.
  • Cult Classic: Grojband was not extremely popular, well-known, or long-lived (especially compared to some of Fresh TV's previous animated series), but its Awesome Music, quirky brand of comedy, creatively offbeat presentation, strong and memorable characters, and cute Ship Tease moments between Corey and Laney earned the series a fiercely devoted following of surprising size during its time on air - one that still fondly remembers the series and wishes the show had gotten another season. The extensiveness of its entry on this website is perhaps testament enough to the fans' incredible loyalty to the show.
  • Designated Hero: The band (especially Corey) can come off as this for some, as they intentionally drive Trina crazy just to get song lyrics from her diary. While Trina is a Big Sister Bully and Alpha Bitch to everyone, some feel that it doesn't justifying the band plagiarizing songs from her.
  • Designated Villain: Mina. Sure she helps Trina with her schemes and is labeled as the secondary antagonist, but she's one of the nicest characters in the show and rarely, if ever, acts mean to anyone. In-Universe, even Grojband doesn't see Mina to be near Trina's levels of rude.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:A good chunk of fans see Trina as an innocent victim of Corey's antics for having her life ruined by him and his band for the sake of getting lyrics from her diary. This ignores the fact that she's a massive Jerkass to everyone except for Nick Mallorey (who is implied to be the reason why she became mean in the first place), and often instigates conflict even when Corey and his gang are minding their own business, going as far as to even kill them over the pettiest slight. A lot of the diary scenes are a form of her getting her comeuppance, and even then she isn't particularly aware or even care about the fact that her brother's used her diary for lyrics.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • The Newmans, who are a gender-bent rival band to Grojband, especially Lenny, thanks to his endearing personality making him the most fleshed-out member of the group.
    • The Orb Experience, especially G'ORB who is loved for being hilarious and a good antagonist for the main characters.
    • Chloe is surprisingly popular for a Recurring Extra, thanks in part to her fanservice-y character design, and for just being cute.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With Uncle Grandpa, as fans of Grojband in the US are prone to blame Uncle Grandpa as the reason for the lack of reruns during Cartoon Network's fall 2013 season (in Canada, these same episodes came on Teletoon after their US airings).
  • Fanon:
    • As popularized by the Demon Spawns Series, some believe Trina's diary mode powers are a result of one of her missing biological parents being a demon. In the same token, it's believed Corey also has some degree of power, but he's unable to access it due to either being too young or as a result of repressing his rage rather than releasing it as Trina does.
    • Although she's drawn with generic black eyes like everyone else in the show, Laney is often described or depicted as having green eyes in fanworks.
    • While the official statement from Word of God is that Kin and Kon are "somewhat aware" of Laney's crush on Corey, fanfiction prefers to depict the twins as Shippers on Deck for Corey and Laney.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • There's a sizable fan community for Nick/Mina, who ship them because Nick is one of the nicest characters in the show and Mina is a long-suffering woobie, not to mention Nick being out of Trina's reach theoretically could reset her back to her nice former self (and allow her to get with Kon). There's also a surprising number of fanart for them.
    • An equally popular alternative is Trina/Mina. The Series Finale even ends with Nick Mallory unambiguously rejecting a romantic relationship with Trina, and Mina getting PISSED when Trina attempts to sell her out in order to force Nick into loving her, yelling at Trina that Nick isn't into her and that she should value her more.
    • Strangely enough, there seems to be a hefty Tumblr community who ship Kon/Trina, mostly thanks to the episode where Trina was showering Kon with affection when she thought he was a dog. It seems like a Crack Pairing at first glance, but Word of God claims otherwise.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Like some of Fresh TV's other shows, Grojband is yet another example of a Canadian animated series that has had the luck of developing a good-sized US fanbase. In fact, the show's sizeable cult following actually got its start in the latter country, and most of the fan content produced of the show during the fandom's heyday on Tumblr around 2013-2015 was made by Americans.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • The show, while enjoyable from the start, really started showing how good it could really be with episodes like "Wish Upon a Jug", "All You Need is Cake"note , and the full half-hour "Dreamreaver". After the latter episode, the series started to really cement itself and become clear on what it wanted to do as most of the elements of Early-Installment Weirdness are downplayed or abandoned by the episode "Six Strings of Evil", which was seen by many as one of the best episodes up to that point.
    • The second half of the series really expands on the Grojband universe. There is some stronger continuity from previous episodes, the secondary cast getting bigger roles, more experimental songs, Grojband themselves receiving some minor character development, Trina's Flanderization making her a better antagonist, and the show engaging more with Laney's crush on Corey while avoiding a Romantic Plot Tumour. However, there is a Vocal Minority of fans who believe the second half of the series to instead be a case of Seasonal Rot, feeling like the show became less memorable and weaker in the writing and characterization department.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The song in the episode "Indie Road Rager" titled "Trash, Bash, Burn and Crash" includes the lyrics "You better move and play it safe, cause when you drive out of control you're gonna shake, flip and roll." This episode aired on June, 12th 2013, the same day NASCAR racer Jason Leffler was killed when his car lost control and crashed during a sprint race.
    • Mina sarcastically asking Trina if she and Corey are related in "War and Peaceville" is a little more cringeworthy when Word of God confirms they were both adopted by a single father.
  • He Really Can Act:
    • While Lyon Smith, Corey's voice actor, is a good singer, he does an outstanding performance for "No I Won't Play" in "Six Strings of Evil".
      • Another one for Lyon is "Yesterday" in "Rockersize". Fans are impressed with how he hit the last note in the song.
    • The same goes for Bryn McAuley, Laney's voice actress, for "Please Come Back" in "All You Need is Cake". She sang beautifully in that episode.
    • Another one for Bryn in the episode "Girl Fest" where Laney really delivers emotion with her rage-filled song, "You're So Untrue".
    • For the first time in the series, somebody else plays the Once an Episode song in "War and Peaceville", and it's Nick Mallory with the results being... just wonderful. Interestingly enough, Graeme Cornies, Nick Mallory's voice actor, is an actual singer like Corey's and was originally cast as the voice of Corey.
    • Even Kedar Brown, Mayor Mellow's voice actor, sings along with Grojband in the song featured in the episode "The Pirate Lounge for Me".
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Hollywood Homely: While Laney definitely looks somewhat boyish for a 13-year-old girl with her lack of explicitly feminine features, the jokes the show makes about her appearance in early episodes make her sound like some monstrously butch Brawn Hilda. The best example of this is probably in "Dance of the Dead", where her normal appearance is repeatedly mistaken for a scary Halloween costume. However, many fans consider her appearance to be very cute and adorable.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: The series' 20-second intro gets this reaction from some when compared to the originally planned one-minute version, especially with Word of God confirming the longer version was cut due to Executive Meddling wanting more commercial airtime.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Trina may be a jerk, but some viewers feel sorry for her with the band ruining her life just so they can steal song ideas from her diary.
      • Then in "No Strings Attached", the band uses fear, which REALLY pushes Trina to woobieness, but it's somewhat deserved.
      • Sadness is probably the worst, sad music and eyes filled with tears along with a really sad face and instead of writing in fire she writes in storm clouds. It's only mitigated by the fact that in the episode "All You Need is Cake", Trina is being melodramatic over a sweater, one that she gets back immediately after writing the diary entry anyway.
      • Ultimately, Trina does tend to bring this on herself, and there have been episodes where Corey doesn't think to use her diary for lyrics until she instigates something in her vendetta against her brother's band. She's mainly a Jerkass Woobie because we see in flashbacks that she Used to Be a Sweet Kid and even see that sweet kid is still alive (but imprisoned) deep inside her subconscious in "Dreamreaver", so knowing that, it's more difficult to not feel sorry for her even when her suffering is self-inflicted.
    • Mina isn't your typical jerk, but she seems more than happy to help Trina make her brother and his band's lives miserable. Then take a look at how Trina treats her, and well... it's hard to not feel a little bad for her. In "A Knight to Remember", it's Mina that gets furious and ends up supplying the band with lyrics, leading to what is one of the best songs in the first half of the series. And what does she get out of it? Being chased around by an angry Trina while the band goes home happy.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Aside from the obvious pairing with Laney, Corey has also been paired with Carrie, Lenny, Nick, Mina, and even Trina, among others.
  • Love to Hate: Despite her Base-Breaking Character status, Trina's rotten personality and horrible attitude is considered by some to be over-the-top that when combined with her exaggerated Valley Girl mannerisms, overdramatic behaviour, and ridiculous anti-Corey/Nick-wooing schemes, she becomes incredibly hilarious and entertaining, to the point of being as much of a reason to watch the show as Grojband themselves are.
  • Memetic Badass: Angry Diary-Mode Trina, who many say is equivalent to a Super Saiyan.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Moe:
    • Laney Penn. With her diminutive stature, cute appearance, gigantic crush on Corey, and occasional exposure of her sweet side, it's hard not to find her super adorable.
    • Mina is an Adorkable geek with a cute voice, mannerisms, and appearance. Her Butt-Monkey status makes people feel sorry for her then intended.
    • Corey's precociously energetic and optimistic personality can certainly make him very cute as well - especially when it comes to his interactions with Laney.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Some episodes show Trina to not be that bad of a villain or even a threat, in fact in some episodes, Trina is the victim or even the hero. In "Hear Us Rock!", however, she is at her worst. She ends up sabotaging Grojband when they were trying to save the world, she horribly tells Mina off, and instead of choosing to save her she instead wants to save Nick Mallory who isn't even into her. (Did we mention she also kidnaps Mallory against his will while doing this?)
  • Narm: While "You're So Untrue" is widely agreed by fans to be one of the best songs in the show and a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Laney, some find it difficult to take her seriously when she's jumping up and down, especially due to how short she is.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • In "Smash Up Terby" when Trina grabs Mina's tongue and uses it to clean the barf off her face.
    • There is A LOT of barf in "Kon-Fusion", due to everyone's revolted reactions to the Grojband-Newmans hybrids.
  • Never Live It Down: On the Canadian website, Lenny is seen flipping a coin in the "Battle of the Bands" intro video. Since then, fans have portrayed the coin flip scene as a Character Tic, often saying it's his lucky coin.
  • One True Pairing: Pretty much everyone in the Grojband fandom ships Corey and Laney (known as Corney or Caney), and the vast majority of fanart and fanfiction made of the show features the couple. Heck, even the writers seemed to ship them, if the development of their Ship Tease in later episodes means anything.
  • Periphery Demographic:
    • While not as large as that of Fresh TV's other animated series (although certainly larger than that of Todd Kauffman's other works), Grojband has a sizeable following of teens and young adults who love its quirky sense of humor, boatloads of Awesome Music, strong characters, and the romantic relationships between its strong cast.
    • The show has a surprising number of fans among people with ADHD, many of whom find comfort in Corey as a representative of the disorder (especially given Diagnosis of God confirming he does actually have it).
  • Quirky Work: There is so much weird stuff going on in Peaceville and the surrealism, while not up to Regular Show standards, is still pretty high. You can expect every episode to have its own WTF moment and that's not even counting Trina writing in her diary... And the show's fast-paced energy adds to this, meaning episodes can be quite a wild ride sometimes.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Some fans prefer Trina as her over-the-top performance is more favorable than the band, who do unethical things like purposefully tick her off and steal her diary for songs.
  • Self-Fanservice: Laney goes from rather boyish in canon to a true feminine beauty in fanart. Similarly, Trina and Mina become much curvier as opposed to their stick-like figures in canon.
  • So Okay, It's Average: Grojband has a strong fandom and is considered an underrated series by many, but there are also many who see it as just decent, and it's generally deemed the weakest of Fresh TV's four main series. This can probably be attributed to its vastly different approach and execution, as well as its Strictly Formula, giving it a much more niche appeal compared to the previous shows. That said, it is overall considered by most to be the best of Todd Kauffman's three animated series by most people, with Sidekick being more generally mixed in reception and Looped being mixed-negative.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: "Stuck in Peaceville Zoo" is literally a rock cover of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", down to the rhyme scheme of the chorusnote  and the cadence of the singing.
  • Sweetness Aversion: Laney's "Trina impersonation" voice. Some fans even compare it to Snow White's voice.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The show was never able to get past Cult Classic status and reach the same level of popularity as Total Drama and 6teen simply because its vastly different direction didn't appeal much to Fresh TV's usual audience, some of whom became very fierce detractors of the show as a result.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Despite the series' incredibly devoted following, it does have a pretty vocal hatedom too. Some circles even frequently accuse the series of being nothing more than a poor imitation of Phineas and Ferb, due to their shared writing style, several character similarities (Trina in particular is often accused of being a bad imitation of Candace Flynn), and the musical elements.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • The Newmans fell into this in the second half of the series. After being used in the first half as little more than generic rival characters for Grojband with little personality to call their own, they started to get fleshed out in "Rock the House" and "Kon-fusion", such as having other Newmans than just Carrie speak, establishing Lenny's personality as the opposite of Laney's despite their similar dynamics with their crushes, revealing Carrie has a good sibling relationship with Mina in contrast to Corey and Trina, and having Grojband even slowly begin to befriend them. Sadly, the characters totally vanished from the show just as this begun and are never seen or mentioned ever again after "Kon-fusion".
    • Despite their prominence in the series, Kin and Kon were underutilized by the show, which preferred to focus more on Corey and Laney. Being largely relegated to the role of comic reliefs, they never got the same degree of Character Development or episode limelight that Corey and Laney did, making them feel oddly neglected and less fleshed-out compared to their bandmates.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Six Strings of Evil" ended with Trina forming a Villain Team-Up with the Blue Star of Rocklympus, almost as if teasing a potential follow-up. Sadly, the next episode presses the Reset Button and none of the events are ever referenced again, despite there being great potential for bringing back the Blue Star to continue its plot in a Sequel Episode (especially with Word of God revealing the Blue Star to have a much bigger role in the series' universe than seen in the show related to Corey, Trina, and their biological parents).
  • Tough Act to Follow: Like Stōked before it, Grojband was ultimately much less popular and successful than Total Drama and 6teen. But whereas Stōked failed to fill Total Drama and 6teen's shoes due to being too similar, things didn't pan out for Grojband because of its more cult-styled appeal and offbeat execution, which garnered it some very intense detractors and eventually caused it to slip into semi-obscurity. As a result, the show is Fresh TV's shortest-lived standalone series and still rather polarizing in certain circles, with Fresh TV having never really revisited the series or done any non-TD spinoff original cartoons since it ended. However, this is averted in regards to its status as Todd Kauffman's next show after Sidekick, as Grojband developed a much larger fanbase and is generally seen as the better show by many.
  • Toy Ship: Plenty of examples with Grojband and The Newmans, with the biggest being Corey and Laney, which the show absolutely loved Ship Teasing as the series went on.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Trina is a Big Sister Bully with very little in terms of redeeming qualities, but some fans find her sympathetic due to the titular band repeatedly going out of their way to tick her off, terrify her, or make her sad just to get song lyrics.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Mina is ignored or treated as dirt by most of the characters, especially Trina, but she's quite well-liked by the fanbase for her cute character.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
    • Some first-time viewers would assume that Laney's a boy due to her lack of clearly feminine characteristics (such as her Boyish Short Hair). It probably doesn't help that everyone in-universe mistakes her for one as well.
    • Likewise, some first-time viewers would also assume that her Newmans counterpart Lenny is a girl due to his feminine behavior and having the opposite problem of Laney.
  • The Woobie: Mina, she can make some really sad faces when Trina is being mean to her or ignoring her. Overlaps with Jerkass Woobie since Mina is actually willing (VERY willing!) to help Trina in her evil schemes rather than being forced to.

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