The objective of this essay is to introduce some of the broad theory involving toric varieties, and fit into it some recent advances about toric orbifolds. We first introduce the geometric-combinatorial objects the theory of toric varieties is built upon, and pursue the toric variety of a lattice polytope. Once we are familiar with the basics about toric varieties, we introduce topological orbifolds, a generalization of manifolds that appear naturally when studying toric varieties. Finally, we alter the construction of the toric variety defined by a fan in order to create new orbifolds from non-orbifold toric varieties.