Power Rangers/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Power Rangers are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

Pages by series:

Cross-series tropes:

  • Adaptation Distillation: Power Rangers has a pretty good track record on creating memorable Big Bads. Lord Zedd, Astronema, Trakeena, Ransik, Lothor, Mesogog, Emperor Gruumm and Venjix make up for some of the lackluster rogues galleries of the original Sentai.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: At the news that Saban has taken the rights to the series back from Disney and is bringing it back to Nick AND will be rearing every episode from every series on Nicktoons. Many dreams came true that day....
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: TV Executives. See Saved From Development Hell and Uncancelled on the main page.
  • Archive Panic: The RPM finale marked a solid 700 episodes, and with new episodes still come out that number is now outdated; it would take you quite a while to watch them all.
  • Broken Base: Primarily over which seasons are the best/good/bad/crap.
  • Complete Monster: Has its own page.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Of course it has its own page!
  • Deconstruction Fic: A great deal of Power Rangers fanfic (especially with the original characters) portrays the characters as if the constant power losses, mind hijackings, and secrecy actually had the profound psychological effects one would expect these sort of things to have on a teenager. One of the more well known Mighty Morphin era fics, Personality Conflicts, starts with Tommy entering psychotherapy.
  • Dork Age: Turbo and Bruce Kalish's run on the show, SPD through Jungle Fury, tend to be considered this. Also a specific period during season 2 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers after Jason, Zack and Trini's actors left the show, before their characters leave (Power Transfer II), because their characters were in the show but only using stock footage and while morphed using bad dubbers for their dialog.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Tommy wasn't even slated to return because his actor was set to star in his own show, VR Troopers. But the character's popularity made the producers decide to bring him back as the White Ranger AND the leader of the Power Rangers, eventually being considered the greatest Ranger by the fandom.
    • The reunion/team-up special "Once A Ranger" embodied this with it's usage of fan favorite characters Bridge Carson and Adam Park. Bridge was given a color upgrade to Red SPD Ranger to justify his character's return (since the two-parter also had the Mystic Force Green Ranger and the Ninja Storm Blue Ranger) while Adam (the Black Ranger) was appointed team leader of the group of inactive Rangers summoned to help out the Overdrive Rangers.
      • Another possible reason for Bridge's color upgrade would be that Brandon Jay McLaren, who played Jack in SPD, refused to show up in the special due to Emma Lahana (who played the Yellow Dino Thunder Ranger, and whom Brandon was having a relationship with) being there as well.
    • Bulk and Skull could probably qualify. They were entirely one-dimensional in the first season but got personalities and more screen time from the second season onward, culminating in them leading an "I am Spartacus" charge against the In Space big bad when she demanded that the people of Earth turn over the Power Rangers to her to kill.
    • Heck, the first Power Morphicon had a panel called "Unsung Heroes", which was nothing but Ensemble Darkhorses and featured many of the above characters.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Played with in the earlier seasons, but it wasn't until In Space's Astronema that it took complete hold. Now every season there is at least one attractive humanoid evil female who most of the time fights the good guys.
  • Fan Nickname: The Japanese recorded action sequences from the end of the first season (every episode after "Doomsday") and the first half of the second season (until "Missing Green", before they began using Dairanger monsters on the show) is dubbed Zyu2 in fan circles, due to the fact that they were recorded specifically for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and were not from any actual Zyuranger episodes.
    • Also, the United Alliance of Evil, the term used to describe the organization of villains seen in Power Rangers in Space. The name was given due to an offhand remark by Zordon in Zeo, explaining how King Mondo broke away from them.
  • First Installment Wins: Mighty Morphin' was an instant hit, and became a major phenomenon, on par with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a few years earlier and Pokémon a few years later. The sequel series couldn't possibly keep up that momentum, and Mighty Morphin' is far and away the best remembered installment, and the one that the average person is referring to when they say simply Power Rangers.
  • Follow the Leader: Many, some of which are Saban's own attempts to repeat the same concept: VR Troopers, Big Bad Beetleborgs and Masked Rider.
  • Growing the Beard: Starting with Power Rangers in Space, the stories grew much more well-developed.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight / Funny Aneurysm Moment: Reacting to the violence in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, New Zealand banned the show. Yet that didn't prevent Disney (and now Saban) from shooting the series there since Ninja Storm. It appears that the ban has been lifted recently as episodes of Power Rangers Samurai began airing on Nickelodeon in mid-2011.
  • It Gets Better: Most Power Rangers series start off with filler (often Aesop Of The Week type episodes), but pretty much all seasons hit their stride a few episodes in, once the first major story arc occurs.
  • Macekre: While chopping up the Sentai episodes is common, season 3 of the original show really has to take the cake. In Kakuranger, the robots which would become the Shogunzords appeared first, with the proto-Ninjazords as the Mid-Season Upgrade. Saban flipped it around since the larger, humanoid Shogunzords would seem more natural as upgrades. The best example: the first Monster of the Week in season 3, Vampirus, comes from episode 36 of Kakuranger. And let's not get into Zyu2 and Dairanger...
  • Magic Franchise Word: "Morph" and "Morphenominal!"
  • Memetic Badass: Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger/White Ranger/Red Zeo Ranger/Red Turbo Ranger/Black Dino Ranger/you get the idea.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Who's Madison?", Ronny and her love of drills, Conner's excessive power-ups, "buttery", and of course "THAT IS NOT SPANDEX!". Each season gives at least one new meme to the fandom.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Season 2's Lord Zedd was an American creation and was much more intimidating compared to Rita. He had a voice and faceplate vaguely reminiscient of Darth Vader and you could see his muscle tone because he had no skin, with various tubes moving some sort of fluid. His brain was also exposed, and it pulsated in the movie. He was so scary that after the first dozen episodes, they toned down his Evil Overlord personality into something more harmless.
  • Nostalgia Filter: Comes in many flavors:
    1. The first three seasons of Power Rangers are the best Power Rangers shows.
    2. The seasons with Tommy are the best Power Ranger shows.
    3. The seasons up to in Space are the best Power Ranger shows.
    4. Only Power Rangers of the Saban era (anything up until Time Force) are the best Power Rangers shows.
    5. Only Power Rangers made by the original production team (until Wild Force) are the best Power Rangers shows. Notable because the current executive producer, Johnathan Tzachor (who held the same title with MMPR Productions), is a member of this camp.
    6. Only Power Rangers before Bruce Kalish became Executive Producer (up to and including Dino Thunder) are the best Power Ranger shows.
    7. Same as above but including Bruce Kalish's first season (SPD) are the best Power Ranger shows.
    8. Same as above but including the final Disney season, and the first without Bruce Kalish (RPM) are the best Power Ranger shows.
  • Periphery Demographic: The show has a staggering amount of adult fans for a kids' show. This is probably because most of the current adult fans were children when it first ran.
  • Recycled Script
  • Retroactive Recognition: As a result of its longevity and literally several hundred actors involved with the franchise. An obscenely complete list can be found at After the Power Blogspot. Of particular note is the following:
    • Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly, the first Pink Ranger) has had several roles, including ones on Felicity and Flashpoint.
    • Johnny Yong Bosch (Adam, the second Black Ranger and Green Zeo Ranger) is very well known in the anime dubbing community, especially as Vash from Trigun, Ichigo from Bleach, and Lelouch from Code Geass.
    • Archie Kao (Kai, the Blue Galaxy Ranger) is the AV tech guy on CSI.
    • Cerina Vincent (Maya, the Yellow Galaxy Ranger) played Areola the foreign exchange nudist in Not Another Teen Movie.
    • Keith Robinson (Joel, the Green Lightspeed Ranger) played C.C. in Dreamgirls.
    • Rose McIver (Summer Landsdown, RPM's Ranger Operator Series Yellow) played Lindsey Salmon in the movie adaptation of The Lovely Bones.
  • Scenery Gorn: Common to most finales, and all of RPM
  • The Scrappy: Justin Stewart is said to be the cause of Turbo‍'‍s unpopularity. Cole Evans from Wild Force. Sam, SPD‍'‍s Sixth Ranger, is generally considered a distant third for biggest franchise Scrappy.
  • Seasonal Rot: Turbo, Wild Force, and the seasons under Bruce Kalish (SPD through Jungle Fury) are considered the franchise's weaker entries to varying degrees.
  • Snark Bait: One of the reasons to watch the show after you leave the target demographic.There's even a website for it.
  • So Bad It's Good
  • Special Effects Failure: As a whole, this trope is pretty much a beloved staple of the series, what with the Stock Footage, scale models, green screening, and everything else. Nobody minds.
    • Conversely, when the Jungle Fury finale used the animal costumes from Gekiranger wholesale without any changes whatsoever, many fans cried foul then too.
  • Subbing Versus Dubbing: In this case, "subbing" means cleaving as closely as possible to the source material[1] and "dubbing" equals Pragmatic Adaptation[2]. Notably, this debate only applies to the franchise's internal politics; "dubbed" series tend to be better received by the fans than "subbed" series (with the exception of Time Force)
  • The Problem with Licensed Games/No Problem With Licensed Games: With 37 video games on various consoles/handhelds, there have been games in both categories:
  • They Just Didn't Care: Disney's perceived attitude towards the series, at least during the later Disney seasons.
    • This is actually why Saban bought the rights back. Disney didn't really embrace the Power Rangers franchise due to the perceived violence... then they went and purchased Marvel Comics, which has far more violent characters.
    • Under Disney, the toyline also fell from the top Boys Toys spot for the first time in literally a decade. While the Transformers film toyline was a major cause, cost-cutting measures meant new, cheaper and often inferior Megazord toys, which are the main drive of the toyline. Half of the RPM toyline never even reached America!
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: A case could be made for the early seasons, as the show went from an almost plotless beat-em-up to... well, having plot.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The original Black Ranger was black, and the original Yellow Ranger was Asian. (To be fair, the producers did not realize what they had accidentally done until several episodes in, when it was too late to change anything.) Their replacements' races were flipped to fix this while preserving the Five-Token Band, and the franchise didn't cast another black Black Ranger until Operation Overdrive's Will. While we're on the subject, Will was a professional thief.
    • Then there was the writers' later decision to stress Tommy's Native American heritage. Anyone remember what color he was in Zeo and Turbo?
      • No one brings up Dominic and Udonna who were Caucasian White Rangers.
    • Parodied in this College Humor video.
    • The casting sheet for Samurai originally listed that the characters can be of any ethnicity...except for the Red Ranger, who had to be white. Um... (They changed it to "all ethnicities", but cast a white guy as Red anyway.)
      • and, as has been confirmed the actress that will be the second Red samurai Ranger is also white, well...
      • And considering that the Red Rangers are likely siblings, keeping the race consistent is kind of important.
  • What an Idiot!: Enough examples that they have their own page.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Both in Space and RPM, fan-favorites considered some of the franchise's best, which followed Turbo and Bruce Kalish's run, respectively, which... aren't.
Back to Power Rangers
  1. ↑ best exemplified by Wild Force and Samurai
  2. ↑ best exemplified by In Space and RPM
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