Trivia / Abbott Elementary

• Actor-Shared Background: Comedian Reggie Conquest is known for playing Devin, the bitter cafeteria worker at Abbott. However, Conquest has actually incorporated his previous experiences working as a cafeteria worker into his stand-up. Specifically, his jokes describe how students would casually refer to him as “Lunch Lady Boy,” while parents would regularly use him as an Anti-Role Model to their failing kids.
• Corpsing: During the increasingly-awful F.A.D.E. presentation in "Smoking," you can see some of the kids giggling in a couple crowd shots. Fortunately it's believable that a kid might actually crack up at how bad it is.
• Dear Negative Reader: When some commenters questioned why a show set in an inner-city public school wasn't addressing or depicting shootings, Quinta Brunson took to social media to declare those people sick and that to even bring the idea up was beyond the pale.
• Descended Creator: Quinta Brunson stars in the show. Kate Peterson, one of the staff writers of the show (who also worked with Brunson when they were at BuzzFeed) plays a small part of Tina Schwartz.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Tariq, Janine’s wannabe rapper boyfriend, is played by Zack Fox, who is an accomplished and talented rapper in real life.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Orlando Jones and Tyler James Williams are often mistaken for being related, so of course they cast Jones as Williams' father.
• Shout-Out: Brunson named Willard Abbott Public School after her favorite teacher Ms. Abbott and after fellow Philly native Will Smith.
• Tuckerization: Ava is named after Ava Coleman, the show's executive story editor.
• What Could Have Been: In the original draft of the show, Janine was originally meant to be a very minor character and Barbara was the main character.
• Write What You Know: The show is based on Quinta Brunson's experiences at an elementary school where her mother was a teacher. The character Barbara is even very closely based on Quinta's own mother.