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Trivia Tropes for the Comic

  • Adaptation Overdosed: There have been four different cartoons, two live-action shows, and a movie if you count the Pilot Movie for the '90s sitcom.
  • Recursive Adaptation: The late 90s/early 2000s Sabrina animated series (and its versions of the cast, etc.) was adapted back into the comics, in the context of being flashback stories to Sabrina's junior high years.


Trivia Tropes for the Television Series

  • Acting for Two: Emily Hart also plays Sabrina as a child in Season 1, while being a recurring role as cousin Amanda.
  • Actor-Shared Background: Sabrina in Season 1 tries to sneak out to a Smashing Pumpkins concert. Melissa Joan Hart is a fan of them herself. Sabrina is also a fan of the Violent Femmes, and Melissa was too, and in fact was so starstruck she could barely speak to them on set.
  • Author's Saving Throw:
    • Harvey was axed after Season 4 because producers felt Sabrina needed to leave "that high school baggage behind". After numerous fan protests, he was made a regular again in Season 6.
    • Sabrina ends up with Harvey in the finale after three seasons of Character Shilling other guys like Josh and Aaron.
    • Word of God confirms that Zelda's sacrifice in the series finale restores her adult years and removes the curse on Diana.
  • Awesome, Dear Boy: Soleil Moon Frye and Melissa Joan Hart have been good friends since their child star days and had longed to star in a project together.
  • Billing Displacement: Michelle Beaudoin is billed as a series regular in Season 1, but Jenny only appears in thirteen of the twenty-three episodes.
  • Blooper:
  • California Doubling:
    • In the Pilot Movie, Vancouver stood in for the town of Westbridge.
    • In the TV series, New Jersey doubled for Massachusetts.
  • The Cast Show Off: In "The Band Episode" has Jenna Leigh Green demonstrating her singing voice. She became a Broadway star after leaving the show.
  • Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Mexican soap opera actress Vanessa Acosta voices Sabrina for the first season. It doubles as a Role Reprise as she had previously dubbed Melissa Joan Hart's character in Clarissa Explains It All.
  • Channel Hop: The series moved from ABC to The WB in 2000. As a result, most of the cast members aside from the Spellmans, Salem and Josh were fired (though Harvey was brought back eventually after fan protests).
  • Contractual Purity:
    • Melissa Joan Hart had grown up by the time Clarissa Explains It All had ended but her mother didn't want her to pursue adult roles. This was less about purity and more because she saw the business potential of marketing towards Melissa's strong kid/teen fanbase. Melissa did, however, send Archie Comics into a frenzy when she appeared in Maxim around the time the show was airing. Archie Comics is infamously protective of its 'wholesome' brand, never mind that Melissa was twenty-three when the issue came out. She revealed that she'd signed a contract that she would never play the character naked or in a sexual fashion, and the shoot was intended to promote the movie Drive Me Crazy, but Maxim advertised 'Sabrina' posing rather than Melissa. She was even nearly fired over the incident.
    • A surprising inversion. Beth Broderick, who played Aunt Zelda, actually began her career as an adult film actress and played various Psycho Lesbians and Ms Fanservices in Girls Behind Bars films. These roles were however under the pseudonym Norris O'Neal.
  • Costume Backlash: Caroline Rhea loves to make fun of the wardrobe choices on the show, stating that Sabrina often went to school "dressed like an accountant".
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Jenna Leigh Green was initially embarrassed by the show, thinking it was cheesy and childish. But upon watching it again years later, she came around.
    I have gone back and watched a couple episodes and I feel like it was a smart show that appeals to that age group universally. Whether it was 1999 or now, kids are still interested in it. I love that kids are still watching it."
    • Emily Hart felt her work as Amanda was "awful" and wasn't really interested in acting, blaming her own acting on the Witchright Hall spin-off not happening.
  • Creator-Chosen Casting: Melissa Joan Hart was the only candidate to play Sabrina and didn't even have to audition. This is due to her mother Paula being one of the producers, who bought the rights so she could star in it.
  • Creator Couple: The band Course of Nature appear as themselves in Season Seven. Melissa Joan Hart is married to member Mark Wilkerson.
  • Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Dawson Casting:
    • Melissa Joan Hart was twenty when Season 1 aired, playing Sabrina at sixteen. She doesn't turn eighteen until Melissa herself was twenty-four.
    • Nate Richert was an aversion - he was seventeen and emancipated from his parents so he could work longer hours.
    • Jenna Leigh Green and Michelle Beaudoin were the oldest of the actors playing high schoolers - already twenty-two and twenty-one respectively.
    • Lindsay Sloane meanwhile was the same age as Valerie.
    • Donald Faison was 23 playing fellow teenage witch Dashiel.
    • It extends to the college seasons as well. Roxie is nineteen, but Soleil Moon Frye was twenty-four. Elisa Donovan was nearly thirty as Morgan (who is twenty-one at the oldest). Trevor Lissauer was twenty-five.
    • One of the student extras was a balding man!
  • Directed by Cast Member:
    • Melissa Joan Hart directed nine episodes, while Beth Broderick did three.
    • In the Italian dub, Chiara Salerno and Barbara Castracane respectively played Hilda and Zelda Spellman, in addition to serving as the ADR directors.
    • The French dub was directed by Blanche Ravalec, who was also the voice of Zelda.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Melissa Joan Hart bobbed her hair for the Pilot Movie, to match Sabrina's hairstyle in the comics. But she wore it long in the TV series, save for the third season.
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Apparently the execs didn't like the Salem puppet much in season one, so there's a lot more live (extremely inattentive, often licking itself while the cast were talking) cat around. They relaxed this rule when the character's popularity became obvious.
    • Showrunner Nell Scovell had the executives trying to have Sabrina's mother be deceased, as they didn't feel a mother would go off and leave her child like that. Pointing out that the execs were okay with the father being in the Other Realm all the time, she got her wish to make Diana an archeologist travelling for work.
    • According to Michelle Beaudoin, the reason Jenny was axed was because the network wanted Sabrina to have an 'ethnic' best friend. This is odd, seeing as her replacement Valerie wasn't ethnic (unless being half Jewish counts). Sabrina does gain an ethnic best friend in Valerie's replacement Dreama.
    • For Season 5, the showrunners wanted to rename the series to just Sabrina, since she was no longer a teenager. Archie Comics refused the change. The WB still however advertised it as 'Sabrina' or 'Sabrina Goes to College' in marketing.
    • Harvey was dropped in Season 5 because producers felt Sabrina "needed to leave that high school baggage behind". Due to negative fan reactions, he was brought back in Season 6.
    • Miles was dropped from the last season due to budget cuts and because producers felt fans weren't responding well to his character.
    • For Season 6, the episode "A Birthday Witch" was originally meant to be a Christmas Episode. But after 9/11, The WB requested that all of their shows not do Christmas episodes that year feeling like it would be in poor taste, so the episode was rewritten at the last minute to be about Sabrina's birthday.
  • Fake American: Canadians Ryan Reynolds, Michelle Beaudoin, Lalainia Lindbjerg, and Laura Harris in the Pilot Movie. Technically, though, the movie is set in Riverdale (as opposed to the show's Westbridge) and Archie Comics have said that Riverdale could be anywhere - including Canada. Which would make Melissa Joan Hart a Fake Canadian in that case. But as the show is set in Massachusetts, Michelle Beaudoin still counts as this trope.
  • Friendship on the Set:
    • Melissa Joan Hart, Caroline Rhea, and Beth Broderick all became close friends and remained so twenty years on. Beth has described them as "like family to me."
    • Melissa Joan Hart was also close friends with Jenna Leigh Green (Libby), Lindsay Sloane (Valerie), and Nate Richert (Harvey).
  • Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted. Zelda was the strict and stern one of the aunts. Beth Broderick is just as much of a goofball as Caroline Rhea in real life.
  • I Am Not Spock:
    • Nate Richert is known entirely as Harvey, as he didn't do much more acting after leaving the show.
    • Beth Broderick has a pretty extensive resume in both TV and film, but she's best known as Zelda.
  • Irony as She Is Cast:
    • Twice the show has made Hilda out to be a terrible performer - first when she performs a stand-up routine under the influence of a belt that turns her into a Pungeon Master, and second in a What If? scenario where she's pretending to be a ventriloquist. Caroline Rhea is also a stand-up comedian.
    • "The Band Episode" shows Harvey to be a Dreadful Musician. Nate Richert had a music career after the show ended.
  • The Original Darrin: In the Latin American Spanish dub, the late Luis Alfonso Padilla returned to voice Ted Spellman after he was replaced by Roberto Mendiola for his second appearance in Season 1.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Similarly to M*A*S*H, very few actors carried over from the original Pilot Movie to the series proper. Other than Melissa Joan Hart, only Michelle Beaudoin, who played Marni in the movie and Sabrina's (first) best friend, Jenny, in the series, appeared in both of them. Hilda, Zelda, Harvey, and the voice of Salem were all re-cast. Libby does not appear in the pilot; a character named Katie fills a similar role. There's also a character named Seth in the movie who acts as Wrong Guy First; he has no analogue in the series, as Sabrina is hot for Harvey (which is more or less requited) from the outset.
    • A more conventional example, during the show's run; Sabrina's father was first played by Robbie Benson in Season 1 and Doug Sheehan in Season 4 and 7. Notable because the latter looked several years older.
    • Cousin Marigold is another example, first played by Robin Ricker and later Hallie Todd.
    • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Vanessa Acosta originally voiced Sabrina for the first season. When Acosta left to focus on her theater and soap opera career, Xóchitl Ugarte took her place for the remaining six seasons.
  • Playing Against Type: Shelley Long, best known for being the naive, blonde Nice Girl of 80s romcoms, guest stars in "Sabrina and the Beanstalk". Not only is she playing a character described as The Wicked Witch, she's brunette!
  • Playing Their Own Twin: Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina) and Beth Broderick (Zelda) also played their evil twins, Katrina and Jezebelda Spellman, respectively.
  • Produced by Cast Member: Starting with Season 4, Melissa Joan Hart served as one of the show's producers.
  • Prop Recycling: A strange example. For some reason there was no Season 6 photoshoot, so the DVD box uses Season 5 promotional photos of Melissa Joan Hart. Photoshop changes her hair from red to blonde, removes her necklace and changes the color of her jacket.
  • Real-Life Relative:
    • Recurring character Amanda (Sabrina's evil cousin) was played by Melissa's little sister, Emily Hart - who, as noted above, ended up playing Sabrina herself in the cartoon.
    • Likewise, Amanda's little sister Allie is played by another Hart sibling - Alexandra Hart-Gilliams.
    • Melissa's mother, Paula Hart, was one of the series' executive producers.
    • Another family member - Elizabeth Hart - appears in small roles in the high school years as a student called Emma (that's her getting mocked for her outfit in "When Teens Collide") and in the college years as a featured extra.
    • The finale had all the remaining Hart siblings as wedding guests.
    • In Season 1's Latin American Spanish dub, Hilda was voiced by Dulce María Romay and Sabrina was voiced by her daughter, Vanessa Acosta.
    • In Seasons 2-4's Latin American Spanish dub, Sabrina and Amanda's voice actresses, Xóchitl Ugarte and Gaby Ugarte respectively, are sisters. In Season 2, Harvey is also voiced by one of the Ugarte siblings (Victor).
    • Likewise in the Latin American Spanish dub, Miles's voice actor, Gerardo García, was married to Sabrina's at one point.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • Hilda's rocky love life in Season 1 parallels that of Caroline Rhea; she had just gone through a bad break-up when she was cast. She jokes that she signed on as soon as she heard that Hilda imprisoned a man in a ring for not loving her.
    • In Season 2, Harvey goes on a couple of dates with Valerie when he and Sabrina are open to seeing other people. His Expy in her spy story also gives Valerie the Big Damn Kiss. Nate Ritchert and Lindsay Sloane were dating around the time she joined Sabrina.
    • The Season 4 premiere has Britney Spears being zapped into Sabrina's room to hang out briefly. According to Melissa Joan Hart's autobiography, this parallels how when they were filming, Britney would not be allowed to go to lunch with the other cast mates - because her entourage insisted on her doing more work.
  • Recast as a Regular:
    • In Season 1's Latin American Spanish dub, young Zelda was voiced by Diana Pérez. From Season 2 onwards, she'd voice Hilda.
    • In the same dub, it's inverted for Isabel Romo. She was Jenny's voice actress in the first season and, after the character left the series, she would ocassionally voice one-shot characters (such as Harvey's mother in the Season 3 finale).
  • Reclusive Artist: Michelle Beaudoin, who played Jenny, rarely updates her Twitter and doesn't talk about Sabrina much. She's normally absent from reunions or conventions.
  • Recycled Script: Season 7's "Ping, Ping a Song" is a pretty blatant recycling of Season 2's "The Band Episode" - Sabrina and friends enter a talent contest, use magical items to make themselves better singers, a side effect causes them to become egotistical and ends with them letting their more talented competition perform. It's even lampshaded by Sabrina and Harvey.
  • The Red Stapler: Beth Broderick has had numerous women approach her and say that they were inspired to become scientists because Aunt Zelda convinced them women could be attractive and smart.
  • Romance on the Set:
    • Nate Richert was dating Lindsay Sloane during Season 2.
    • Years later, he and Melissa Joan Hart admitted to having a mutual crush during filming but never went anywhere.
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot:
    • The subtitle The Teenage Witch was added to avoid confusing people with the 1995 remake of Sabrina (which is given a Shout-Out in a Season 1 episode).
    • According to Melissa Joan Hart, some of the characters being dropped came about because the writer that created them left and execs didn't want to pay them to keep using the character.
  • Sleeper Hit: ABC didn't really support the show in its early days, favouring Clueless instead. Sabrina ended up as the highest rated show on the network for four years.
  • So My Kids Can Watch:
    • Melissa Joan Hart's mother, Paula, bought the rights to the series so the former could play Sabrina.
    • Martin Mull played Mr. Kraft in order to impress his daughter, who was a fan of the show.
  • Stunt Casting:
    • Following sitcom tradition for this to be done for visiting relatives, Sabrina's Aunt Vesta is played by iconic sex symbol Raquel Welch.
    • Coolio appears in "A Girl And Her Cat" when the aunts conjure a poster of him to life to ask for directions.
    • The Backstreet Boys cameo in "The Band Episode", playing a basketball team who drink Sabrina's leftover Bottled Talent and then become great singers.
    • One episode involves Sabrina and Valerie trying to sneak into a club to see N*Sync.
    • Britney Spears appears in the Season 4 premiere to cross promote Melissa Joan Hart's movie Drive Me Crazy. The Stinger just has the video for her single of the same name playing (which Melissa also appears in).
    • Due to Melissa Joan Hart being a huge wrestling fan, many WWE and WCW stars appeared - such as Kevin Nash, Billy Gunn and Chyna.
    • Ru Paul plays a Witches Council judge in "Sabrina's Choice" out of costume, and then appears in drag when the judge is pretending to be a hairdresser. This one was notable because the judges had usually been played by the same two actors beforehand. According to Beth Broderick, Ru Paul was a big fan of the show.
    • Figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan have random cameos in "Jealousy" and "Sabrina the Teenage Writer" respectively.
    • Usher appears as the Love Doctor in Season 6, naturally getting a chance to sing a song.
    • The seventh season's setting at Scorch Magazine allows for appearances from notable pop stars of the day, like Daniel Bedingfield, Avril Lavigne and Ashanti.
    • When a never before mentioned Evil Matriarch of the Spellman family appears in Seasons 6 and 7, who else would they get besides Barbara Eden - star of famous Fantastic Comedy I Dream of Jeannie. Word of God is that they'd have loved to get Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched on the show somehow, but she passed away before Season 1.
  • Throw It In!:
    • The Seasons 5-7 opening sequence has a moment where Melissa Joan Hart leans back on the bed but smacks her head on the wood, and she can be seen rubbing her head.
    • Sabrina inexplicably dyeing her hair red at college is something Melissa Joan Hart did when she was at college.
  • Typecasting: Lindsay Sloane frequently played neurotic characters like Valerie in The Odd Couple and The Wonder Years.
  • Vacation, Dear Boy: When ABC asked for TV Movie specials to be made in addition to Seasons 3 and 4, Melissa Joan Hart expressed dismay at the additional workload, however after discussing it with the network and producers (including her own mother), made an agreement the movies would be filmed abroad in locations Melissa wanted to vacation in anyway, Italy and Australia.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Nell Scovell, the first showrunner, later revealed that the head of the network at one point wanted one of the aunts to not want Sabrina to live with them. She argued against it, feeling it would be too sad, and got her wish.
    • Cicely Tyson was pitched as a choice to play Aunt Zelda. As Caroline Rhea was going to be Hilda, Nell Scovell felt it wouldn't make sense for the two to be sisters, and went with Beth Broderick instead. She later regretted not pursuing the idea, especially after her agent reminded her "It's a world of magic. Maybe one sister is Black." Another possible reason Tyson wasn't chosen is because she was considerably older then Rhea (with her being 72 at the time the show premiered) and it would've looked awkward for Sabrina to have two aunts that were several decades apart agewise and producers likely thought at her age she wouldn't have been up to the demand of the main role in a TV series.
    • Melissa Joan Hart recalls reaching out to Shirley Temple and asking her to play her grandmother, though didn't specify whether it was the mortal or witch one. She turned it down, having not acted since the 70s, but said she loved the show and later gave her the rights to adapt her life for the movie Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story.
    • They attempted two spin-offs with Amanda. The first would have been about her, Allie, and Marigold moving in with Emile and his boys - one of whom played by Frankie Muniz. The second would have focused on her antics at Witchright Hall. Neither happened, though Emily Hart did get to voice Sabrina in the Animated Adaptation.
    • The plot of Season 7 would have revolved around Josh proposing to Sabrina and the growing love triangle with Harvey. When David Lascher opted to leave the show, Aaron Jacobs was created to fill his role. Additionally, they wanted a two-part finale but were only granted one episode.
    • Some plans for a Season 8 would have involved Sabrina and Harvey moving into a haunted house. Barbara Eden would have joined the show as a regular.
    • Had the aunts stayed on board for Season 7, the plot would have involved them giving up their magic and trying to live mortal lives.
  • You Look Familiar:
    • Charlene Fernetz played Zelda in the Pilot Movie and later appeared as Gail - the girlfriend of Sabrina's father - in Season 1.
    • Eddie Cibrian appears As Himself in The Stinger of "The True Adventures of Rudy Kazootie" and then as Zelda's date built out of 'man-dough' in "Dream Date". Of course there's no reason Zelda couldn't intentionally have modelled him after the real guy though.
    • Bumper Robinson appeared as Clifford Weaver in Season 1's "Trial By Fury" but re-joined the show as James in a regular role for the seventh season.
    • John Ducey first appeared as Wayne Kraft in Season 3's "The Band Episode", and again was a regular in Season 7 as Leonard.
    • Tara Strong voiced Molly Dolly in Season 3's Halloween Episode, and appeared in live action as Gwen in Sabrina Goes to Rome and Sabrina Down Under.
    • Evelyn Furtak appeared briefly as Isis in the Season 1 finale, and stars as Senora Guadagno in Sabrina Goes to Rome.
    • Lindsay Sloane was Valerie in Seasons 2 and 3, and Fin in Sabrina Down Under.
    • Sean Laughton appeared in various episodes throughout the first three seasons as cops and firemen, but also starred as Valerie's boyfriend Ken in Season 2's "The Equalizer".
    • Charles Shaughnessy played Hilda's egotistical date Alec in 'You Can't Twin' and reappeared later that same season as James Hexton in 'Witchright Hall'. (This second appearance is probably because Shaughnessy was planning to star as Hexton in the series that 'Witchright Hall' would have become had it been picked up by the network.)
    • Donald Faison had a small role in Season 1's "Magic Joel" as a student called Justin. He reappears in Season 2 and 3 as Dashel - another half-mortal witch who is Sabrina's love interest.
    • A variation. The puppet used for the cat Juliet in season 4 is the same one used for Hilary in Sabrina Down Under. What makes this hilarious is that they're both cursed witches and Salem falls for both. Perhaps the Witches' Council are just lazy when turning witches into cats.
    • An odd example with Elisa Donovan. She starred on Clueless, to which Melissa Joan Hart crossed over as Sabrina. She later joined Sabrina as Morgan in Season 5.
    • Frank Conniff plays the adult Rudy in "The True Adventures of Rudy Kazootie", and the out of shape prince in "Troll Bride".
    • Patrick Thomas O'Brien plays the indexer in "Meeting Dad's Girlfriend" and then has a recurring role as Cupid in Seasons 2-4.

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