El-Hazard: The Magnificent World/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Trivia about El-Hazard: The Magnificent World includes:

  • Arabrish: "El-Hazard" is an idiosyncratic transliteration of the Arabic al-azzahr ("die" -- the kind you roll, not the verb form of "death"; colloquially, it can mean "chance" or "fortune"). "El-" is a variation on al-, the Arabic definite article, but it's actually redundant -- az- is already a form of the definite article and the actual noun is zahr. (The English word "hazard", by the way, is this word, picked up in the Holy Land and brought back to Europe by Provençal crusaders and then carried along through Middle Dutch, Old French and Middle English, and slowly mutating to mean "danger" rather than "random chance".) "El-Hazard" is probably intended to draw on both meanings to denote a land where one encounters fortune or opportunity amidst danger.
  • Franchise Killer: The Alternative World.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Shout-Out: In the English version Jinnai nicknames his personal squad of Bugrom Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Groucho...
    • ...And Margaret (After the Marx Brother's foil, Margaret Dumont).
    • Ura, upon doing his job as a living armor, exclaims "It's a job...", much like the dinosaurs-as-living-appliances would in The Flintstones