Mobile Suit Gundam/Trivia


 * Enforced Method Acting: There's a rumor that during production for the remake movie, Toru Furuya was beaten up to prepare him for the scene where Bright slaps Amuro for refusing to pilot the Gundam. As a result, his lines have much more emotion behind them than they did in the original TV show.
 * Fan Nickname: The Bright Slap for the one-two that Bright gave Amuro to snap him out of his Wangst funk. Ironically, for all its claims to make "men of destiny", the very first one... didn't work out.
 * Life Imitates Art: Two months after the Colony Drop episode aired, parts of Skylab fell on Australia... though the results were thankfully nowhere near as devastating.
 * No Export for You:
 * Depending on whether Madman licenses by the series or franchise, this could be the case in Australia. Their staff seem to find it too dated to be worth releasing. Which rings more than a little hypocritical considering that they have released series from the 60's.
 * Bandai of America has had fun with this: the movie compilations are only available in Japanese with subtitles. Meanwhile, due to Bandai of Japan not wanting the US DVDs imported into Japan (where Mobile Suit Gundam had not come out yet on DVD) refusing to give Bandai of America the Japanese audio tracks, resulting in a English dub only release in the states. Only later did the series is get a bilingual release, though are now out-of-print.
 * Screwed by the Network:
 * In it's original run in Japan, low ratings got the show's episode numbers cut from 52 to 43 episodes. And the production staff was lucky to get four more episodes to close up the series.
 * In America, it didn't do too much better on Toonami. Low ratings (and 9/11) also led to early cancellation.
 * What Could Have Been: The legendary "Tomino Memo", published in a 1980 book, details the original 52-episode plan for the series. Hitting the high notes: Kycilia attempts to take over Luna 2, but gets killed as Solomon falls. There are a lot more Newtype pilots who end up getting slaughtered (including one who kills Lalah for "consorting with the enemy"). Bright gets the hots for Degwin's Sexy Secretary, who turns out to be a spy and whom he ends up killing. Amuro personally guns down Gihren, and Char refuses to leave A Baoa Qu as it self-destructs, apparently dying. There were also a bunch of new mobile suits, most of which were drawn up and became part of the rejected sequel proposal MS-X.