The 2013 MTV Video Music Awards provided us with plenty of memorable on-screen moments — Miley, we're looking at you — but, as is often the case with a show this massive, some of the best moments actually happen off camera, when the stars let their guard down and prove that, yes, they're just like you and I (except for Gaga, of course ... she's basically from another dimension entirely).

As luck would have it, MTV News had reporters stashed all over Brooklyn on Sunday night, from the red carpet corner of Dean Street and Sixth Ave to the very VIP Vault hidden deep beneath Barclays Center, where the night's biggest acts kicked back, relaxed and drank from an open bar (beer, wine and champagne only). Seriously, if a star stepped off stage, ducked around a corner, or even tried to hide in a dressing room, our intrepid team of writers was there, and now, we've compiled their notes to bring you the behind-the-scenes moments that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

This is the VMAs You Didn't See.

Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus certainly dominated discussions following the show, but, from the moment they rolled onto the red carpet (and we do mean rolled), they let it be known that the VMAs were definitely their show. Gaga arrived in the back of a vintage Rolls Royce, one that was supposed to stop feet before the carpet began ... only the Mother Monster decided she was going to step out in style, and had her driver take the luxury car ...

Since it came at the tail end of his epic, career-spanning Video Music Awards performance — and subsequent 'NSync reunion (!!!) — it's kind of difficult to remember that Justin Timberlake also won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at Sunday night's show.

Which is saying something, considering it's the VMAs highest honor, an award given out to music-video innovators like its namesake, not to mention Madonna, U2, R.E.M. and the Beastie Boys.

And as you could tell by his humble, slightly self-effacing acceptance speech, Timberlake doesn't quite consider himself to be in the same company of those legends ... sentiments he echoed earlier in the day, when he sat down with MTV News' Sway Calloway to discuss his upcoming VMA performance, and the Video Vanguard Award.

"This is the 'You got old award,'" he joked. "No, in all seriousness, when you look at the people I'm included with [in] receiving this award, I don't feel like I'm worthy of it, but I'm not going to pass it up."

He also added that the award had him in a nostalgic mood ... and not just because he's made so many iconic videos over the past two decades. As it turns out, he was also giving us a sly bit of foreshadowing to Sunday night's onstage reunion with his former 'NSync bandmates.

"To come here and perform again, there's a little bit of nostalgia for me," he said. "It feels like a good time to be back at the VMAs"

And after everything we witnessed at last night's show, we'd have to agree ...

The 2013 MTV Video Music Awards brought out the biggest stars in the business ... and one of the biggest audiences in the show's history.

Sunday night's show garnered a total audience of 10.1 million viewers — a 66-percent increase over last year's show — making it cable's top-rated entertainment telecast of the year among viewers aged 12-34, and earned a 7.8 rating in the same demo, a 47-percent compared to last year's show.

The encore presentation of the VMAs earned an additional 2.8 million viewers, bringing the grand total to 12.9 million total viewers across both airings on MTV. Ratings for the MTV Video Music Awards Pre Show" had 4.6 million viewers, and earned a 3.6 rating in the 12-34 demo.

Digitally, things were equally as big. During the two-hour telecast, social media exploded, as fans reacted to VMA performances and winners in ways we never thought possible. The show generated 120 national and worldwide trending topics on Twitter and 1.2 million Instagram likes. And during one particular performance — that would be the combo of Miley Cyrus' twerk-tastic "We Can't Stop" and Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" — you actually set a record for most tweets per minute: an astounding 360,000, shattering the previous record holder, Beyoncé's Super Bowl performance.

And both VMA performers and winners benefitted from all that exposure. Justin Timberlake — who took home the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and delivered a career-spanning performance (and bonus 'NSync reunion!) — posted a 1,876 percent increase in sales on iTunes, while Bruno Mars' first-time-on-TV performance of Read More →

It's hard to imagine a world in which MTV viewers didn't know who 'NSYNC is, but it's even harder to imagine a world in which iPhones don't exist. But an iPhone-less world was indeed reality back in 1999 when 'NSYNC first took the VMA stage in their debut performance.

Picture it: August 1999. The dawn of a new millennium was nigh. The Y2K bug was a thing -- watch out, or your elevators might plummet through their shafts, and all ATMs may spew forth cash at exactly January 1, 2000. (Stupid metric system K!) Hawaii was barely a state! Anyway, it was a really long time ago, and most people's phone still plugged into the wall, meaning you could only talk on the phone as far as its cord stretched. Yes, phones had cords.

Anyway, it was the 1999 VMAs, Eminem was still a fresh-faced young potty mouth from Detroit. Freaking Smashmouth opened the VMA Pre-Show. Sugar Ray was nominated for things! And NSYNC was already a pop powerhouse, having dropped their eponymous album the year before, but they weren't like "Bye Bye Bye" big, global juggernaut/ Bieber big. Hard to imagine such a world where NSYNC might've elicited a "who" rather than an "OMFG JUSTIN! JOEY!

But it's a world worth examining. Mainly so we can learn from history and never return to this NSYNC-less world. So let's take a look at things that did not exist in the year 1999, when NYSNC first took the VMA stage.

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BROOKLYN, New York — Apparently Juicy J can't say no to ratchet performances either. Miley Cyrus' 2013 MTV VMA performance of started out cute — oversize teddy bears and party favors for fans — but it quickly turned into an all-out twerk fest on Sunday night.

While some fans were shocked, Juicy thoroughly enjoyed the former Disney star's show.

"Miley Cyrus is super seeeeeeexy," Juicy J told MTV News excitedly as he was getting ready to exit the Barclays Center.

Things got even crazier when Miley's ditty ended and Robin Thicke strutted out onstage to his own summer hit, "Blurred Lines." Cyrus, who was scheduled to share the bill with Thicke, quickly stripped to flesh-colored, latex underwear and fondled herself with a foam finger, the kind typically found at sporting events. Miley trended on Twitter and Google throughout the night and by the time the sun rose, fans were still raging and critics were, well, critical.

But Juicy J famously welcomed Miley to twerk onstage during one of his concerts back in June, and he was definitely among the fans.

"Man, Miley Cyrus did a great job man. Robin Thicke, salute," he said. "It was crazy. When she took those clothes off? Whoa."

Future, who has a collaboration with Miley in the works, also praised the pop princess, even if his reaction was more subdued than Juicy's. After all, he was holding hands with girlfriend Ciara when we caught up with him. "Miley's performance? It was breathtaking," he said. "Miley always come with it. It was exciting, it was ...

The album cover for Drake's Nothing was the Same means a lot to the OVO star — so much so that he incorporated the Kadir Nelson design into his 2013 VMA performance.

When Drizzy opened "Hold On, We're Going Home," he did so sitting against a blue sky, speckled with white clouds. The televised shot was a live-action mimic of the album cover that the rapper dropped on Wednesday. "It's a child version of myself starring at myself now," Drake explained to MTV News on Friday after a scheduled rehearsal in the Barclays. "When I try to think back through this journey, it's so hard to pinpoint all these moments and it gets foggy."

For the rapper, Nothing was the Same is his most focused work and the art represents the way he will musically tell the story of how he went from a boy into the man. "Even on past albums when I been trying to tell this story, I've got there, but maybe not got there all the way," he said. "What that album art is to me is that this is my most clear, concise thoughts from now and my best recollection of then."

"Started from the Bottom" is one of those recollections of then that Drake references, it was also the second song he performed last night. The pounding Mike Zombie-produced beat and firework display onstage got stars like Will Smith, Wiz Khalifa and YMCMB affiliates like DJ Khaled and Birdman out of their seats.

"Man, I was excited man. When he dropped that ...

From the way she, literally, used her face as a canvas to a shout out to conceptual artist Jeff Koons' gazing balls, Lady Gaga filled her performance? at Sunday night's 2013 MTV Video Music Awards with multiple nods to her ARTPOP collaborators and inspirations.

With a set and lighting fashioned by famed playwright and stage design artist Robert Wilson, Gaga's tour de force opening act took her through a whirlwind of costume changes and moods. The visual spectacle was exactly the kind of rich experience that one of Gaga's art world mentors, performance art legend Marina Abramović?, expected from her charge.

"Lady Gaga is a force," said Abramović, who spent time in her upstate New York studio space last month with Gaga filming videos? in support of her Marina Abramović Institute. "In our workshop together I witnessed her tenacity, her passion, her discipline and her impulse to take risks. I saw all of those same qualities in her performancelast night. She challenged herself technically and pushed her limits physically. Her performance was so unexpected! This is what I like."

Abramović was also impressed? with how Gaga moved in the space created by Wilson, which included a kind of shimmering forest with the letters of her single, ? hanging from tree branches.

"I admire her desire to collaborate with visual artists to bring a unique vision to her new album ARTPOP," Abramović wrote to MTV News in an exclusive email review of Gaga's performance sent from Oslo, Norway.

Abramović wasn't the only one who was blown away by Gaga's ...