15 Things You Didn't Know About Mean Girls

Released in 2004, Mean Girls was the movie for those of us who were teenagers in the noughties. And its legacy has lived on through memes and gifs and quotes and jokes. It was just brilliant though, wasn't it! It was a movie that represented an entire generation.

The movie was all about previously home schooled Cady getting to grips with the high school experience. This involved her becoming a mean girl or "plastic" in order to fit in. The movie owes its success to how relateable it is for young people or just anyone who has ever been to high school. We all just wanted to fit in.

Then there's the excellent writing from Tina Fey who wrote reams of zingy one-liners into the movie that you will never forget. It was just such a laugh-out-loud kind of film and it really was fetch… Not to mention, the message of the movie was all about women supporting women. That's another reason why we loved it so much.

You might be able to come out with a Mean Girls quote at the drop of a hat, but we bet you didn't know some of these interesting facts about the movie:

13 Jingle Bell Rock

This is the exciting news all Mean Girls fans have been waiting for… the musical version of Mean Girls will debut at The National Theater in Washington, D.C. on October 31st 2017 and run until December 3rd. The book has been written by the film's writer, Tina Fey; music will be provided by Fey's Emmy-award-winning husband Jeff Richmond; lyrics by Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde) and it will be directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon). How exciting is that! Here's the synopsis The National Theatre has provided:

“After years of living with her zoologist parents in Africa, Cady Heron moves to Illinois and must find where she fits in the social hierarchy. A sweet, naive newbie, Cady quickly attracts the attention of The Plastics, a trio of popular frenemies led by the vicious and calculating Regina George. When Cady devises a plan to end Regina's reign, she learns that you can't cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.”

12 Made Out With A Hot Dog

Mean Girls is packed full of hilarious quotes that we've been repeating ever since it was released in 2004. A couple of the lines that we haven't stopped lolling over came about to give the movie a PG 13+ rating instead of an R rating. So, when a guy asks Cady, "Is your muffin buttered?" it was originally going to be, "Is your cherry popped?" The latter makes it a lot more obvious what the guy is talking about. Also, the girl in the burn book who "made out with a hot dog", originally had "masturbated with a hot dog". We don't know about you but we think the PG 13+ lines are a lot funnier. They're way more creative and less gross-out, but more silly and audiences like that silly kind of humor that Mean Girls has.

11 You Are A Mean Girl!

Here's an interesting fact for you, Lindsay Lohan was originally cast as Queen Bee Regina George. Instead she chose to play the nice girl character Cady because she didn't want the public to see her as a real life mean girl. You can understand why Lohan didn't want that kind of rep. But to be honest, she's gained a rep anyway because of her off-screen antics, maybe not as a mean girl but certainly as a party girl. So, the producers chose Rachel McAdams to play Regina as "only nice girls can play mean girls". McAdams is a nice girl, that's true, we loved her in The Notebook. And she's a great actor, it's hard to recognize her as the same actor playing those very different roles. Anyway, the producers obviously nailed it in choosing the right actors for the right roles.

10 There's a 30% Chance That It's Already Raining

Mean Girls was a cracking success and represented some firsts for the people involved. Can you believe that it was the first time Amanda Seyfried (who played Karen) appeared in a film? She's such a well-known face in Hollywood now and she did such a great job in Mean Girls it's hard to believe that it was her first film role.  Since then she's gone on to have leading roles in other much-loved films such as Mamma Mia! (2008) and Dear John (2010). Mean Girls was also Tina Fey's screenwriting debut and further proved her to be a comic legend - we've already talked about the quotes. More recently, she created and also wrote several episodes for Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which was another home run. She really is a top lady. You go, Tina Fey!

9 Why Are You So Obsessed With Me?

It's no surprise that Mean Girls has scores of fans, including celebrities. One the movie's biggest celebrity fans is in fact Mariah Carey. She showed this first of all by using Mean Girls quotes in interviews. In 2009 Carey released the song "Obsessed" and in the intro can be heard saying, "And I was like, 'Why are you so obsessed with me?' Regina George says almost exactly this line to Cady in Mean Girls. Nick Cannon, Carey's now ex-husband later revealed that the song was in fact inspired by the movie. Yeah, we can definitely see Mariah Carey as something of a Regina George type. She's pretty sassy and snarky to say the least. When she said "I don't know her" about J-Lo, it was such a Mean Girls moment.

8 YOU CAN'T SIT WITH US

We're pretty used to TV and movie-inspired food and beauty products. Mean Girls is no exception to this trend.A UK-based beauty brand called Radioactive Unicorn created a Mean Girls-themed bathbomb with the apt name, "You Can't Sit With Us". It's diamond-shaped and glittery, but when you throw it in the bath it fizzes a hot pink color, oh and apparently it smells like a cherry cake. Sounds delicious! Unfortunately, it was only available for a limited time. Similarly, Radioactive Unicorn offered a Mean Girls-themed matte pink lipstick called "You Go, Glen Coco" for a limited time. It's a shame that you can't get these gems anymore, maybe you were one of the lucky fans that got them while they were hot. We're sure there are other Mean Girls-inspired items out there however. There are certainly lots of cute Mean Girls-related things on Etsy.

7 Your Mom's Chest Hair

The movie Mean Girls is actually based on a book. You're probably thinking, oh that's cool, I'd like to read the book! But it's not based on a novel as you might expect it's actually based on a self-help book called "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence" by Rosalind Wiseman. Tina Fey read the book and rang up SNL producer Lorne Michaels to propose the idea that it could be made into a film. We're so glad she had that light bulb moment. Obviously the book was nonfiction so didn't have a narrative to base the film on. Thus Tina Fey wrote the script from scratch using some of the experiences she had at high school. It resonated so much with audiences because we can all relate to that cliquey, drama-filled high school experience.

6 It's Like I Have ESPN Or Something

One of the many things that makes Mean Girls such an amazing film is the score. You know you downloaded many of those songs for your iPod back in the day like Pink's "God Is a DJ" and "Fire" by Joe Budden and Busta Rhymes. Another song that features prominently in the movie is "Built This Way". It's featured several times throughout, including key moments in Cady and Aaron's love story. The weird thing about this song is that it was actually written by British singer-songwriter / DJ Samantha Ronson. Lohan went on to have a romantic relationship with Ronson a few years after Mean Girls. Their relationship was much publicized as Lohan had seemingly only dated men up until that point. It's as if the song in the movie foreshadows their relationship - how odd!

5 Don't Let The Haters Stop You From Doing Your Thang

Kevin G was the rapping Mathlete we all came to love in Mean Girls. In real life he was played by actor Rajiv Surendra. Since the movie he has Neville Longbottomed in such a big way. Just look at him! Phwoar! Surendra now pursues his talents as an artist which he showcases on his Instagram account @lettersinink, and he is brilliant. He never gave up on acting though, he was just unable to land a role after his success in Mean Girls, he said in an interview:"As the popularity of Mean Girls was growing over the years, I was interested in pursuing a career in acting, but it was just very, very hard to actually land roles. People would often stop me and say, 'Oh, what else have you done?' and the answer was always nothing. And they're like, 'Why, you were so good in Mean Girls?' and the answer was, 'Well, it wasn't for lack of trying. Trust me, I've been trying.' All the while, I continued to do my other hobbies."

4 Don't Look At Me

The character of Damian is also much-loved among Mean Girls fans because he's so sharp and so funny. We got to see him sing Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" at the talent show in the movie and it was beaut from the moment he says "Don't look at me." Something we didn't get to see though was his audition for American Idol. Say whaa? The actor Daniel Franzese who played Damian said in an interview, 'There's actually a deleted scene from Mean Girls - the original ending shows what happened to Damian after [junior year], and he was going to audition for American Idol. Simon Cowell was going to call him chubby and then he was going to run up on the stage and punch him.' That would have been a great moment to watch, shame it didn't make the cut.

3 Who Here Has Ever Been Called… ?

Mean Girls in its essence is all about female empowerment. It's amazing that Tina Fey brought such an important message to young women through this movie. Her speech about not calling each other names because it makes it okay for guys to call us such names says it all. Even down to the smaller details she wanted to share the message of female empowerment. That's why she made her character Mrs Norbury, a math teacher to beat the stereotype that girls can't do math. Though she did admit that she personally didn't understand the math she was talking about in the movie, she used her friend's boyfriend's lesson plans to get the lines for the movie (he was a calculus teacher). So, Fey didn't make it easy on herself when writing the script, all in the name of empowering young women!

2 Your Hair Looks Sexy Pushed Back

Other famous actors were originally set to play the roles of our most beloved Mean Girls characters. Aaron Samuels, Cady's mega crush in the movie was a role that James Franco was considered for, but Tina Fey chose the actor Jonathan Bennett instead because he looked like her friend Jimmy Fallon. On his twitter account Bennett has as his bio, 'I get it… my hair looks sexy pushed back' in reference to the Mean Girls quote. If you're wondering where Bennett is now he's hosting the reality competition Cake Wars on the Food Network. As for other actors who nearly featured in Mean Girls, Scarlett Johansson and Ashley Tisdale were both considered for the role of Karen. The movie would look very different if that had happened, and so would Amanda Seyfried's career for that matter.

1 You Go, Glen Coco!

Obviously, the line "You go, Glen Coco!" is one of the most memorable from the movie. Years later people got a little obsessed with Glen Coco and a BuzzFeed reporter decided to do some research on him. She found that his role isn't credited in the movie but you can see his face. Glen Coco was played by a Canadian actor called David Reale who has appeared in Suits, Queer as Folk and the U.S. version of Skins. Reale was interviewed by Dazed about his Mean Girls experience ten years after the film was released. He explained that he had auditioned for a part in the film but didn't get it. His apartment in Toronto was across the street from where they were filming and he wandered over one day to try and get some free food. The director took pity on him that day and put him in the movie as Glen Coco and the rest was history…