Ascended Fanon: Due to his normal disgust for girls, fans of Archie Comics have speculated whether that Jughead is either gay or asexual. The 2015 reboot has confirmed that he is asexual.
The Archie series was meant to capitalize on many of the "Andy Hardy" features of the era. Its own popularity soared enough that near-countless rip-offs were created, some by Archie Comics itself. "That Wilkin Boy", "Josie" and "Wilbur" were all Archie-made blatant rip-offs (though Josie got re-tooled). Lampshaded in the "Archie Marries Veronica" timeline, when Betty's post-Archie boyfriends include Andy Hardy, Henry Aldrich and Richie Cunningham.
The 2015 reboot is seen by fans as Archie Comics following Marvel and DC in doing it just for the sake of it. Yeah, one of their titles, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), did it earlier- but it was forced on them due to a lawsuit from an ex-writer (though it did them a favor by eliminating all the Continuity Snarl the title had been afflicted with).
Franchise Killer: Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was the longest-running franchise-based comic series. However, two lawsuitsnote The first lawsuit involved Ken Penders, and the second involved Scott Fulop., the lukewarm reception of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, which heavily used characters from other franchises from Capcom and SEGA, Archie's "Riverdale Reborn" initiative and the advent of Riverdale ultimately killed the series, which led to IDW Publishing getting the Sonic comic license. This has trickled down to Archie itself as the only titles still running consecutively is Archie Comics (2015) and the various digests. Only time will tell if this will turn into a Creator Killer.
No Export for You: In Europe and Brazil, the Archie franchise is completely unknown. The Archie Comics used to be reprinted in Greece and several other countries, but most such publications have ended.
Recycled Script: Used often and unabashedly, due to the incredible number of stories already in existence and the short timeframe of an Archie Comics reader. And, of course, no one would notice because they were for kids. Anyone who has been reading for more than a decade could easily pick up a Digest collection and find that only the cover story was new to them.
One digest twice featured short strips with Jughead walking into a haberdashery and asking the man behind the counter to take a tie out of the window because he couldn't stand the sight of it or it was so ugly it gave him a headache every time he walked past the store.
The same Jughead gag showed up in two different digests released in the same week of that month.
It has been worse. One digest reused a near-exact version of a joke in two comics on the same page.
This was lampshaded on two different covers, wherein Archie mentioned that the comics would now be printed on recycled paper, causing Jughead or Reggie to respond, "Your jokes have been recycled for years!"
A big, current example: several of the "New Look" stories have just been taken (characters, whole sections of dialogue, etc.) from the "Archie Novels" series from the early 1990s. Moose & Midge's break-up, Veronica & Betty fighting about Nick St. Claire, and Archie moving away were all topics taken.
There is also the faithful Archie Joke Generating-Laugh Unit 3000, always good for an oldie but goodie, and noted courtesy The Comics Curmudgeon.
Joked about in an episode of Friends where Chandler sells a story to the company where Archie temporarily becomes Reggie's butler to earn some extra money, based on his own time working as Joey's assistant. Joey fails to see the parallel but does wind up remembering that they have done a similar story in the past.
A first season episode of Veronica Mars is called "Betty and Veronica".
Screwed by the Network: Archie's biggest demographic for most of its existence was kids casually buying books while shopping with their parents. When major retailers such as Walmart and K-Mart stopped carrying single issue comics in the late 1990s, almost all books by the publisher took a significant hit in sales numbers.
Archie Comics approached Nintendo for the rights to make Nintendo comics, but they turned them down. Sketches were made, however.
Archie had a storyline where Archie and his friends went on a world tour, going to various places. One stop was supposed to be in Russia, however this was changed when Putin's controversial anti-LGBT laws took effect and they sent the gang to another location in its stead.
General Trivia:
From a 1970's trivia book: Moose Mason's real first name is Marmaduke.
In the early 1970's, artist Al Hartley, who had become a born-again Christian a few years before, somehow managed to get the company – which was and still is run by two Jewish families – to license out the Archie characters for use in blatantly religious comics published by Spire Christian Comics. These Christian Archie comics were apparently successful and continued to be produced into the early 1980's. They were pretty blatant about their messages, with Bible verses aplenty strewn throughout the dialogue, and depicting Betty and Archie as uber-Christians.
They were also, if you can believe it, a bit Darker and Edgier at times (Christian publishers didn't observe the Code) depicting pot-peddling, temptations to drug use, and one issue in which two drug-using kids get in a car crash and are near death. See here for more.
The political agenda of the Spire Comics is fairly clear such as in one story, Archie's Something Else where hostile TV reporters pepper Mr. Weatherbee with sensationalistic questions that equate sex education with witchcraft and the occultnote Not that these Archie comics ever mentioned Sabrina the Teenage Witch, all bugaboos of the fundamentalist Christian groups like the Moral Majority.
Then there is Archie's World, where the gang visit Christian missionaries around the world in vignettes that treat other religions with disdain as primitive fearmongering and even were more insulting such as depicting India/Pakistan as openly allowing the slave trade despite the fact that they were under British colonial rule until the late 1940s with its prohibition on slavery since the 1850s, and certainly didn't reestablish it after independence.
for more.