Top 10 Things You Never Noticed In Mean Girls

Let’s start near the end…sort of. The Plastics clique and the primary source of the film’s title is run by Regina George, at least initially. She dictates not only to the school at large, but also to her hangers on, Karen Smith and Gretchen Wieners. This includes forbidding them from wearing articles of clothing, like hoop earrings, because they’re “her thing,” despite Gretchen receiving a pair of them from her parents as a Hanukkah gift. However, once the Plastics have broken up at the film’s end, Gretchen can be seen sporting a pair after all.

Regina is hardly an intellectual, but she’s still quite a cunning, if cruel, girl. She also is oddly disparaging and dismissive of homeschooling and those who experience it. Why is this odd? Because one of the books in her room, “The Lively Art of Writing,” is one often favored by homeschoolers and their parents and/or teachers. Whether the book’s presence in her room is a hint that Regina has hidden depths, an interest in writing beyond a Burn Book, or just a fun Easter Egg from the set dressers, we can only guess.

Cady Heron is the protagonist and is dropped into high school life after being homeschooled while living in Africa. She naturally has trouble adjusting , but she does make friends that have positive and negative influences on her. Cady also develops a crush on Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron. When she shows Aaron around her room, a picture is seen of Cady riding an elephant. Despite Cady growing up in Africa, the elephant seen in the photo is an Asian one. While we’ll grant that it could have been rehabitated back from a zoo or something, it still seems far more likely that it was intended to be an African one and this was just a mistake.

“Mean Girls” features a famed talent show sequence, featuring a rapping performance and a risqué performance of “Jingle Bell Rock” by the Plastics. This in itself is fairly obvious, but what’s really odd about the talent show is when it takes place. According to a poster in the girls’ bathroom, the date the event was held on was November 27, 2003. Not only is the month a little premature for something Christmas related (you heard us retailers!), but the 27th was also that year’s Thanksgiving! You’re telling us that kids attended an event at school on a U.S. national holiday? As if!

We mentioned Regina George’s poison pen earlier. The main evidence is her Burn Book, a journal filled with hurtful gossip about everyone in school, students and teachers included. To get back at Cady and the other Plastics after she’s ousted from the group, Regina omits their names from the book and includes some dirt on herself to make it seem like they were responsible for writing it; making them social pariahs. Except…it’s all handwritten. And no one thinks to check Karen, Gretchen, or Cady’s handwriting against the writing in the Burn Book? Seems like it’d be pretty easy to exonerate them.

One of the fan favorite scenes of the film is another Christmas related moment. In this moment, candy canes are delivered to students, on this occasion by Damian. This leads to a much loved quote “Glen Coco? Four for you Glen Coco! You go, Glen Coco!” While most are probably paying more attention to Damian’s admittedly hilarious delivery, the background of the scene contains a classical Easter Egg related to the film’s plot. The Shakespeare quote on the blackboard is from “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” which features three queens asking for revenge for the deaths of their husbands. Three queens fits well with the three queen bees (or four) of the Plastics yes?

During the aforementioned talent show, the Plastics nearly face disaster during their performance after losing their CD player and the music they’d prepared. However, Cady begins singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” and is joined by the others, with Ms. Norbury joining them on piano. Now, in case you didn’t know, playing by ear can be quite difficult, even for professionals. So Ms. Norbury is not only an overworked, underpaid high school teacher/bartender (Who drives a Trans Am? Whaaat?), but she’s also an amazing piano player! Maybe her third job is as a music teacher or a lounge player…

In her attempts to take Regina and the rest of the Plastics down from within the group, Cady inadvertently becomes more like Regina over time. While this can easily be seen after she’s already taken Regina’s place, given that Cady starts wearing hoop earrings, there are some signs beforehand too. One of the more prominent indicators is the necklace with the letter “C” on the end that Cady begins wearing, in imitation of the “R” one that Regina wears. Subtle foreshadowing is always fun to find no matter the film.

Although generally pretty intelligent, Cady makes a surprisingly dumb and racist mistake early on in the film. While trying to get to know students in the cafeteria, she attempts to speak Swahili to black kids in the cafeteria. Trying to fit in and falling back on something familiar is one thing, but did Cady honestly believe that the students were from Africa? Did she, someone who grew up in there, not realize that Swahili is just one of literally thousands of languages spoken on the continent? Is she unaware of American history and that most black people in the U.S. had ancestors who were African slaves who lost much of their culture? Like, what the actual hell Cady?

When she first arrives at North Shore High, Cady is completely ignorant of the social hierarchy of the school. Thankfully, her new friends Janis and Damian manage to fill her in on everything she needs to know. Part of their education includes a map of the cafeteria and the surrounding environs. This map contains plenty of “blink and you’ll miss it” details, including where each clique sits in the lunchroom, the typical menu items served, as well as a warning that the nearby woods are prone to makeout sessions and sexual activity. Useful info indeed.