Summary

• Victorious was a hit show that ended in 2013 despite a loyal fan base, sparking speculation about its cancellation.
• Cast members, including Ariana Grande, were rumored to have behind-the-scenes drama, but rumors were later clarified and debunked.
• Creator Dan Schneider, known for producing Nickelodeon hits, has a history of creating shows around talented performers.

In Nickelodeon's 2010 Victorious pilot, protagonist Tori Vega (Victoria Justice) isn’t looking to be a star, but behind the scenes, the Victorious cast was primed for stardom. When Tori's sister (Daniella Monet) can't perform due to allergies, Tori steps in to fill her sister's place since she's learned all the lines. As a result, she becomes the newest student at Hollywood's high school focused on the performing arts and meets a cast of eccentric classmates.

Victorious was a success that spawned merchandise including video games and CDs of the show’s music. Fans were disappointed when it ended in 2013 after four seasons. Many of them would love a reunion special to wrap up everyone’s character arcs — not just Tori but spacey Cat (Ariana Grande), insecure Robbie (Matt Bennett), dreamy Beck (Avan Jogia), and frenemy Jade (Elizabeth Gillies). The stories of what was going on backstage at Victorious are often as interesting as what aired on TV.

Victorious Targeted The Hannah Montana Audience

Targeting The Gleeks?

Disney’s Hannah Montana was a massive game-changer when it hit the airwaves in 2006. '90s shows focused primarily on the kid cast doing conventional kid stuff, though exaggerated for comic effect. In Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart had teen problems, but she also faced the demands of her secret identity as a superstar teen singer. As the theme song put it, she had the best of both worlds.

Other networks with shows aimed at kids and tween audiences wanted a similar hit. Nickelodeon, for example, tasked producer Dan Schneider to "follow where the kids are." If kids were into music shows, Nickelodeon wanted its own. Casting the lead was no trouble: Schneider had already pegged Justice as the next Nickelodeon star because of previous work with her. It proved a successful move, though never close to the Hannah Montana level of success.

Victorious Didn't Actually Last 4 Seasons

Wait, There Weren't Four Seasons?

If fans search for an episode guide to Victorious, it’ll show the series as having run four seasons. The truth is though, Victorious only had three seasons’ worth of episodes. The cancelation axe fell on Victorious in the middle of the third season, generating a buzzing hive of speculation about the reasons why.

Nickolodeon broke Victorious' final season into two parts.

Rather than simply use up the remaining episodes right away, Nickolodeon broke Victorious' final season into two parts. Season 3’s initial twelve episodes wrapped up in June 2012 with “The Blonde Squad”. The remaining episodes were broken off to become Season 4, starting in September 2012 and running through February of the following year.

2012 also saw the end of Dan Schneider's other hit Nickelodeon series iCarly come to an end. Plans for an iCarly spinoff, Gibby, didn’t come to pass either.

Another Victorious Cast Member Was Rumored To Make Ariana Grande Miserable

Behind The Scenes Drama: Cast Member Feud Rumors

According to Ariana Grande, who played Cat after previously working on Broadway shows, working on Victorious was not a great experience:

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

At least, that's what Seventeen Magazine made it sound like when they printed Ariana Grande's quote in a cover story in 2013. Many fans assumed the “someone” referred to Victoria Justice, who was the lead of the show, but that isn't the case. Both Justice and Grande have clarified numerous times in the decade since the cover story was printed that Grande wasn't even referencing Victorious, but someone she met while working on a Broadway show. Grande even had Seventeen release a statement from her:

The stories I shared with Seventeen were actually reflective of a different work experience. Please don’t send hate to anyone, it’s undeserved, and I would never want that. Love you guys VERY much, and thank you for being here and supporting me. Also, thank you to Seventeen for allowing me this opportunity.

Despite Grande releasing the statement and Justice having to answer questions about feuds on set repeatedly, fans still persist in believing that the two didn't get along.

Canceling Victorious Made Fans Suspicious

Victorious' Sudden End Leaves Fans Wondering

Despite Victorious’ good ratings, fan base, and Emmy nominations, Nickelodeon canceled the show in 2012. Schneider made it clear when he heard the news that there was nothing dubious or sinister about the cancelation. Nickelodeon simply believed approximately 60 episodes is the most profitable run for a kids’ show, and ended Victorious before that magic number. Other Nickelodeon shows have suffered the same fate. it's not uncommon, as Disney Channel used to end every show before getting to 100 episodes as well.

Schneider also said the cancelation was 100 percent Nickelodeon’s decision, not his. Nevertheless, alternative theories have abounded online about the real reason Victorious came to an end. For example, some fans think that Schneider ended it so that Grande could move on to the spinoff show, Sam and Cat. Others believe that Justice refused to stay on the show so that she could go off on a solo singing tour. Justice and Schneider have denied the theories repeatedly, but they still circulate on the internet.

The Weird Details About Ketchup And Mustard

Condiment Conundrum

When watching Victorious, which has a lot of scenes set in an outdoor area where the classmates eat lunch and hang out on a regular basis, fans noticed a strange detail about the items on the table. Like a restaurant, the tables in the scene feature condiment bottles. The ketchup and mustard bottles in the show, however, are extremely short.

In some of the early episodes, when the cast were sitting at tables to eat, the condiment bottles blocked their faces.

TV shows, however absurd the plots, try to look like they’re set in the real world. Victorious, for example, was shot on Nickelodeon’s studios dressed to look like Tori's home and school. To back up the illusion, they used shots of a real Los Angeles high school for the outside of Hollywood Arts. When push comes to shove, though, some things are more important than realism, like seeing the actors’ faces. In some of the early episodes, when the cast were sitting at tables to eat, the condiment bottles blocked their faces. The solution? Use significantly shorter bottles.

Creator Dan Schneider Was A Teen Star Too

From Kids' Show to Sitcom

Schneider had already produced multiple shows for Nickelodeon before Victorious, but he didn't always work behind the camera. Two decades before Schneider built a series around super-gifted Tori Vega, he played an exceptionally gifted student himself. Head of the Class was a 1986 ABC sitcom focusing on a high school class of academically brilliant students. Overachieving intellectually, they were lacking socially. Enter Charlie Moore (Howard Hesseman), a new teacher who set out to improve his student’s social skills along with their academics.

Schneider, who’d had small parts in various films, got his first series-regular role on Head of the Class as Dennis, one of the students. He and his classmates were almost as eccentric as Hollywood Arts’ oddball students, but with their new teacher’s influence, they began to show their potential as people, not just amazing GPAs.

Victoria Justice's First Nickelodeon Role Wasn't Victorious

Before Victorious

Like Schneider, Justice’ first steady work on a TV series foreshadowed her time on Victorious. It was her role as Lola on an earlier Schneider show, Zoey 101. The 2005 show’s central character was named Zoey and played by Jamie Lynn Spears. The show dealt with Zoey's experiences as the first female student at an exclusive all-boy school. In the second season, her original roommate left, replaced by Justice’s character, Lola.

Like Tori Vega, Lola was an aspiring performer, with ambitions of becoming an actor. Nickelodeon allowed Schneider tremendous creative control over his shows, so bringing Justice to a new show as his star was simpler than it might have been for some producers. He started The Amanda Show after working with Amanda Bynes on All That, Drake & Josh after working with Drake Bell on The Amanda Show, iCarly after working with Miranda Cosgrove on Drake & Josh, and Sam & Cat after working with Grande and Jennette McCurdy on Victorious and iCarly.

Schneider was known for developing new series around performers he worked with on previous series, and for casting the same actors in a recurring capacity in multiple shows, like Jerry Trainor, who appeared in supporting roles in both Drake & Josh and iCarly.

Justice's Singing Career Didn't Take Off After Victorious

Singing Shortcomings

Justice had recorded some songs even before Victorious. With the series as her platform, she did considerably better: three singles from the show’s soundtrack cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 in 2011. After Ariana Grande launched a smash post-Victorious career as a singer, it looked likely that Justice would follow in her wake with similar success. Instead, Justice’s first post-series single, “Gold”, wasn't a hit.

Billboard, the music-industry bible, said the problem wasn’t the singer as much as the choice of song. Where Grande’s Victorious singles had showcased her vocal power, Justice’ release was “a completely safe, forcefully pleasant pop-rock come-on.” The magazine judged that the earlier songs served Justice much better. However, Billboard thought that with the right song and collaborators, Justice could still turn herself into a singing success. Justice, however, has remained focused on acting instead.

Victorious Exists In A Shared Schneiderverse

Victorious' Connected Nicktoon World

There’s an endless fascination with the crossovers and possible connections between different TV shows. Several of the Nickelodeon shows hint at being connected; with iCarly and Victorious, it’s explicit that their worlds are interlinked. iCarly focuses on a different kind of performer: Carly, a teenage girl who runs her own popular streaming show. In the first of four crossovers with Victorious, Carly discovers her boyfriend is also dating Tori. Hilarity ensues when Carly and her friends decide to travel to Hollywood and confront him.

Both shows got even more crossed-over with the sequel spinoff, Sam & Cat. This was yet another Schneider production: Tori’s buddy Cat and Carly’s best friend Sam become roommates and start a babysitting business together following the conclusion of iCarly. Sam left Seattle where iCarly was set to start over when Carly decided to move with her father. Although Nickelodeon green-lit this with an exceptionally large 40 episode order, Sam & Cat only made it to 35 before cancelation.

The Victorious Female Cast Members Had To Dye Their Hair

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It’s surprisingly easy for viewers and readers to get fictional characters confused. Writing guides warn against having a Joe, a John, and a Jonah in the same story so the names don't confuse the reader. In visual media, it’s just as important that characters not look too much alike — for example, that they have different hair colors. It's a simple technique that's employed in media. Take Archie Comics (and adaptation Riverdale): the main female characters are a blonde (Betty), a brunette (Veronica), and a red-head (Cheryl).

In the case of Victorious, Cat has bright red hair, Tori and Trina are the brunettes, and Jade, whose hair has colorful streaks, is usually dyed black. Before Victorious started filming, all the girls were brunettes. Grande said in an interview that Nickelodeon told her before she started the series that they wanted a complete change to her hair. It took some time to find a treatment and a color that was right for her hair and her character.

Schneider And Grande Both Have Issues With Ponytails

Ponytail Paranoia: A Schneider and Grande Quir

Dan Schneider isn’t a fan of ponytails. He's been upfront about not liking for his fictional characters to wear them, though it's not clear why it's such a problem. “As everyone who works for me knows, I almost never let the girls wear ponytails on my shows,” Schneider said on his Danwarp blog. However, he made an exception on Victorious, for the episode “Stage Fighting”. As one scene in the episode involves Tori having to clean up a disgusting mess, Schneider decided binding up her hair in a ponytail made sense.

Grande doesn’t like ponytails either, but after leaving Sam & Cat, a ponytail became her visual trademark as a singer. She explained that even though she hated the look, her hair had been worn out from all the years of dying it red to play Cat. Wearing a ponytail extension seemed the best solution until her hair recovered enough that she could let her natural curls grow out.

Victorious Cut A Joke About French Kissing

French Kiss F fumble: A Censored Victorious Joke

Kids' shows frequently slide jokes past the censors that only adults will understand. Victorious is no exception. There are jokes about all kinds of bodily functions intended for adults. Or at least lines that could be taken that way, but are vague enough that the audience can’t be sure.

But there’s a limit to how far a kid’s show can flirt with crossing the line, and Schneider decided one line in “Stage Fighting” went too far. After one of Tori’s classmates asks why she’s learning the French horn, Tori’s original reply was that, “I like French fries, French toast, French kissing.” Schneider felt that was pushing things beyond what was acceptable, so he cut "French kissing." Considering how much Schneider's adult humor in his Nickelodeon show's has come under scrutiny in the years since, cutting the joke was likely a good choice.

Schneider Enjoyed Writing Bad Dialogue

Dan Schneider's Dialogue Choices

Some episodes of Victorious offer two shows in one. There’s the show set in Hollywood Arts, and then there’s whatever show the students might be performing during the episode. It’s how they justify the cast breaking into songs every few episodes. Schneider says that works out great for him in episodes such as “Stage Fighting” where the dialog of the show-within-a-show is dreadful.

“It’s fun to intentionally write bad dialogue,” Schneider said on DanWarp. “It’s not so fun when you do it, but didn’t mean to.” The episode has characters Robbie and Trina trying out for a play, and reading some of the lines at an audition. Schneider says he particularly enjoyed writing, “I am also a woman … who loves you.”

Schneider didn’t specify which unintentional bad dialogue he might have been thinking about when he made the blog post.

Victorious Has Four Emmy Nominations

Award Recognition: Victorious' Emmy Nominations

Victorious has been nominated for several awards, and even won a few, which isn't always easy for shows aimed at children.

At the Emmy level, the big league for TV show awards, Victorious has been nominated four times. In 2012, the show was a technical nominee for both hairstyling and makeup (specifically, non-prosthetic makeup). The show was twice a contender for what's considered the biggest award in children's shows: the Outstanding Children’s Programming Emmy. It lost at the 2011 Emmys to HBO’s A Child’s Garden of Poetry and in 2012 to Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place.

Victorious has been nominated for a number of other awards besides the Emmys, as has Justice herself. The big wins were the Kids Choice Awards, where Victorious was picked as favorite TV show in both 2012 and 2013, an award determined by Nickelodeon audience members.

Victoria Justice's Career Spans More Than 20 Years

A Career From Kid to Grown-Up

In the pilot episode, Tori has no interest in becoming a singer or an actor. It’s not until she gets up and sings the episode’s big number that she discovers performing for an audience is fun. Justice, however, had known that for years.

By the time Justice filmed the pilot episode, she was an experienced actor. Justice had started with a guest star role in Gilmore Girls in 2003, and gone on to other parts, including a supporting character in Schneider's Zoey 101. She’d also gotten to sing in various roles, such as the Nickelodeon TV movie Spectacular!

Justice told the New York Times that while she'd come to Los Angeles to become an actor, she also loved to sing and dance. Doing them all in Victorious was a deal Justice says she found irresistible.

Schneider Leaving Nickelodeon Stirred Up A Wave Of Speculation

Schneider's Exit: A Cloud Over Victorious' Legacy

Nickelodeon has had so much faith in Schneider it once commissioned a Schneider series without knowing anything about it (via Washington Post). He had created hit after hit for the children's network. That made it a shock when Nickelodeon made the official announcement that he would no longer be producing shows for their network.

Rumors swirled that Schneider's abusive or predatory towards his cast, including tweeting photos of the girls' feet could have been the cause. Other sources dismiss the faceless accusations as merely faceless accusations. The break-up between Schneider and Nickelodeon has also been blamed on Schneider's notorious temper. Or a dispute over the network canceling his Game Shakers without an ending episode. Or a change in management at Nickelodeon. Or that the failure of Sam & Cat was the last straw.

More information about what it's like to work on a Dan Schneider property, however, has come to light since Jennette McCurdy wrote the memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died and Drake Bell and other Nickelodeon employees were interviewed for the docuseries Quiet On The Set about the abuse suffered while working under Schneider. Their statements have added fuel to the speculation.

Some Critics Think Victorious Has An Unhealthy Focus On Fame

Is Fame the Focus? Criticism of Victorious' Priorities

For some critics, the transition from Clarissa Explains It All (a normal TV teen with TV teen problems) to stars and those who want to be stars such as Tori and Hannah Montana is a bad thing.

“On kid's cable in general, the children play characters who are famous, are seeking some level of fame, strive to be associated with famous people, or are dealing with the hassles of being famous,” writer Bryan Lufkin said in 2012. Shows still deal with teen problems such as dating, but also “chasing record deals and fielding autographs.” For some adults, there's a worry that it sends the wrong message to kids in the audience.

Justice, however, thinks Schneider's shows are still about "normal kids dealing with normal problems" (via NY Times). The kids in Victorious just happened to love performing.