Skins/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: In Series 2 Episode 2, Anwar recites Hugh Grant's filmography since 1992 during sex so he'll last longer. Upon finishing, he says that he never can make it to About a Boy, the 2002 film starring Nicholas Hoult.
  • And there's even one with the guest stars.

T Love (Will Young): Don't you think you should be leaving?
Freddie: Right now?

• • • For those who don't get it, "Leave Right Now" is probably Will Young's most successful song.
  • Anthea cheats on Jim with his line manager, played by David Baddiel, Banks' real life partner.
  • Franky coming from Oxford is a possible allusion to The Golden Compass.
    • It goes further than that: she's an orphan from Oxford whose (male) best friend disappeared.
• The Danza: Josie Long playing Chris' career counselor Josie.
  • Humorously averted with the Fitches. Katherine Prescott plays Emily while Megan Prescott plays Katie.
• Dawson Casting: Averted with the main cast. Played (justifiably) straight in Series 6 with Poppy, the 14-year-old Alo has sex with without realizing she's underage, who's played by a 19-year-old.
  • The American version found out the hard way why so many teen dramas employ this trope -- Moral Guardians accused the show of being child pornography for putting its 17-year-old actors in risque situations.
• Directed by Cast Member: Harry Enfield directed two episodes of Series 2. Daniel Kaluuya, aka "Posh Kenneth", also wrote Jal's Series 2 episode and Thomas's Series 3 episode.
• Dueling Shows: The Inbetweeners.
  • Especially with Series 3 Episode 2 of The Inbetweeners. Skins has taken years to try and give drug culture a positive image, The Inbetweeners successfully ruins that image in 25 minutes.
  • Misfits has also been a contender, with some critics and fans calling it "Skins meets Heroes".
• Enforced Method Acting: When JJ blows fire in his Series 3 episode, when he's in the shed with Freddie, Effy and Cook. While Ollie Barbieri was learning the trick, Luke, Kaya and Jack were put under the impression that the fire would be added in with special effects, so their shock when it happened was completely genuine.
• Fake Nationality: The Polish student from the pilot episode. It's obvious from even from her pretty much "niezrozumiale" (incomprehensible) "Ostatnio! Prawdziwa chłop przybywa." that Polish is not the first language of the actress. Judging from her actual skill (Or So I Heard) in Italian, it's not her second either.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Very common. For starters, the show has a tradition of casting well-known British comics and comic actors as the parents; of 18 main characters in the first two series (well, 16 if you note the two pairs of siblings), 15 (13) have at least one comic for a parent.
  • A couple of the main characters are this too; more than a few people know Tony as "him from About a Boy", and Dev Patel is now far better known for Slumdog Millionaire than for being Anwar.
  • Geeks are about to get this with Luke Pasqualino (Freddie), given that he's been cast as a young Bill Frakkin' Adama.
  • More than a few people recognized Dakota Blue Richards from The Golden Compass when Generation 3 was revealed.
  • Fans of The Vicar of Dibley will recognize Sid's dad as Tristan, the handsome BBC director who Geraldine fell for in "Songs of Praise". Others will know him as angry, foul-mouthed, political spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It.
    • Now Peter Capaldi has been confirmed by Word of God as the Twelfth Doctor, expect this to be taken to a whole new level. Up to Eleven... or is that Twelve?
  • Speaking of Dibley, in Pandora's episode, Hugo Horton (or John Dashwood for Austen fans) appears in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as the cranky neighbor who is revealed to be in a sex tape with Pandora's mum when Effy and Cook fall into the house next door.
  • Daniel Kaluuya (Posh Kenneth) would later play Tealeaf in Psychoville.
  • Johnny White is Ragetti.
  • David Blood was Ollie in The Thick of It.
• Lying Creator:
  • Matty DOES have ties to a character in Series 5, Nick (his brother).
  • The writers said in an interview toward the beginning of Series 3 that Naomi was not gay.
  • Many lesbian fans saw all the hyping of Tea as a super-confident lesbian, after she started sleeping with Tony, repeatedly, as this trope.
  • Jamie Brittain said that the pattern of having a kind of light season followed by a Darker and Edgier season wouldn't happen for Generation 3. Series 6 is probably the darkest season yet, with a main character in a coma as of the first episode, and dying in the second, a character that ran away and is wanted by the cops, a pregnant girl who really doesn't know what to do and can't even admit to herself that she's pregnant, problems with Russian mafia, and most of the characters being troubled psychologically by grief. And from what we've seen from the previews, it's not going better to be better in the last 2 episodes.
  • It doesn't.
• Name's the Same: The second generation featured a James Cook and a Naomi Campbell. The latter is briefly given a little Lampshade Hanging when she becomes angry on her first appearance on the show. Averted in Real Life in that the twin who played Katie was Megan Prescott, rather than her sister, Kathryn, who played Emily.
• Reality Subtext: Ironically, while at the end of Series 2, Anwar is the only member of the main cast who isn't 'going somewhere' with his life--but immediately after leaving the show, Dev Patel was cast as the lead in Slumdog Millionaire. Not bad.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The US version almost had this, when Moral Guardians started asserting that the show violated child pornography laws and threatened to get law enforcement involved. The show didn't actually violate any laws, though, so all it resulted in was the loss of some gullible advertisers.
• Screwed by the Network: E4 cut the budget for Series 4, resulting in there only being eight episodes. For nine characters. Series 5 was also limited to eight episodes, although at least the creators were prepared that time. It was fixed with the upcoming Series 6, which has been confirmed for ten episodes.