Yu-Gi-Oh! (Tabletop Game)/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Bad Export for You:
    • The European releases of the first few booster packs were missing several cards. Fortunately, these were restored in later releases.
    • The Duelist Pack sets Jaden Yuki 3 and Jesse Anderson contained five less cards in their TCG releases.
    • Many of the later Structure Decks are like this, either being edited to remove high-rarity cards, or in at least two cases scrapping the deck altogether and importing the new cards in them as add-ons to normal sets or as their own mini-sets.
    • The TCG once missed out on the chance to get Dark Magician Girl as drawn by Kazuki Takahashi himself in the 10th Anniversary Pack because they deemed the artwork to be too mature for the TCG, and demanded Takahashi to draw a censored version. Takahashi refused to bow to Executive Meddling, and thus the artwork stayed in the OCG territory. Thankfully, the art finally came to the TCG as-is many years later as part of the Lost Art promotion.
  • Defictionalization:
    • The card game itself, which was initially intended as a one-shot game in the manga.
    • There are a huge amount of cards that started out in the anime or manga, and would later get imported to the real game.
  • Homage/Shout-Out: The game started off as a homage to Magic: The Gathering for the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. From there, it's amassed so many examples that they could fill a page all their own - which you can find here.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: There are some cards that just can't be bought normally, first-hand as in the way they were meant to be; the most famous example is the first edition of the 3 Egyptian God Cards: foiled, shiny and Color-Coded for Your Convenience, these were packed with the GBA game Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction; people went crazy for this game just to get the cards. A great deal of the copies sold for this game was due to fans wanting the cards, that eventually many retailers would need to put a reminder for used copies, exclaiming that the product "Does Not Contain The Limited Edition Cards!". People on EBay followed suit as gullible fans also thought that buying a $20 used copy of the game would grant them shiny and exclusive cards that were sold for about $100 separately, and were duped out.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast:
    • Anything with "Assault Mode" in its name
    • Anything called an "Earthbound Immortal"
    • Armageddon Knight
    • The Beginning of The End
    • Black Luster Soldier - Envoy Of The Beginning
    • Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy Of The End
    • Chaos End
    • Dark Armed Dragon
    • Dark Strike Fighter
    • Dark Magician of Chaos
    • Dark Master - Zorc
    • Demise, King of Armageddon
    • Destiny End Dragoon
    • Doomsday Horror
    • Dreadscythe Harvester
    • Exodia the Forbidden One
    • Final Countdown
    • Final Destiny
    • Five-Headed Dragon
    • Gandora the Dragon of Destruction
    • Garlandolf, King of Destruction
    • Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder
    • Hundred Eyes Dragon
    • Infernity Doom Dragon
    • Judgment Dragon
    • Anything with "Monarch" in its name
    • Obelisk the Tormentor
    • Raviel, Lord of Phantams
    • Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
    • Red Nova Dragon
    • Relinquished
    • Reshef, the Dark Being
    • Ruin, Queen of Oblivion
    • Shooting Quasar Dragon
    • The Wicked Avatar
    • The Wicked Eraser
    • Thousand-Eyes Restrict
    • Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
    • Uria, Lord of Searing Flames
    • Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes
    • Yubel's "evolved" forms, "Yubel - Terror Incarnate" and "Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare"
  • No Export for You:
    • Sometimes, some of the earlier cards released in the OCG could take literal years before they finally appeared in the TCG. Later TCG sets have included more cards than the corresponding OCG set; some of these are cards that were previously OCG only, while others are cards that are exclusive to the TCG. In turn, TCG only cards have begun to be released in the OCG through their Extra Pack sets. Eventually the two card pools may become equal...
    • The Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon was released as a promo for the movie in 2004. The card required to summon it, the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, wasn't released until over a year-and-a-half later. Though both were available in Japanese, OCG cards are not allowed when playing the TCG, at least officially speaking.
    • Sometimes this applies to the video games as well. Tag Force 6, hotly anticipated as the first video game to feature Xyz Monsters, was not released outside of Japan. Its successor Tag Force Special would also suffer the same fate.
  • The Wiki Rule:
    • Yu-Gi-Oh Wikia, which can be found here.
    • Yugipedia, which was forked from the Yu-Gi-Oh Wikia in 2018 as a result of discontent with Wikia's newly-implemented (and often forced) changes. It can be found here.
  • Word of God: Two, as a matter of fact; until 2008, card rulings were given by both Konami and UDE, and they didn't always agree with each other. Many cards actually have different rulings for the TCG and OCG versions of the game because of this. After UDE's departure from the game, Konami handled the rules for both sides, and starting in the late 2010's had made efforts to converge some of the previous ruling differences between them.