Dub Induced Plot Hole / Sailor Moon

The former Trope Namer Sailor Moon regularly fell victim to this, which is not surprising given the amounts of censorship and changes usually done to its foreign adaptations.

• One particularly infamous instance, which used to name this trope ("My Name is Prince Darien"), occurs in the DiC dub of the first season where Mamoru is brainwashed and falls into an Evil Costume Switch version of his alter-ego Endymion. For some reason, the English dub decided to keep his past name the same as his reborn name, which got to be very awkward when he didn't recognize the name "Darien" even though he called himself Prince Darien.
  • They did it again when the gang gets transported to Crystal Tokyo by Darien's future self, King Endymion. Apparently, "Endymion" was too hard for the dubbers to pronounce, because he introduces himself to the Sailor Guardians with the not-at-all-awkward "Call me... 'King of the Earth'." Serena, surprisingly, is still referred to as Neo-Queen Serenity here.
  • The opposite issue cropped up when the dub was continued by Cloverway. One of the later episodes of SuperS finally mentioned the name "Endymion", which would be fine if not for that the dub had never used that name before, so anyone who was unfamiliar with the original version was not going to know where this name came from all of a sudden.
• Several plotholes popped up because Episode 42, the episode that covered Minako's backstory, was dropped. This episode showed the team desperately searching for an entrance in their area to the Dark Kingdom, as well as establishing that the sun was slowly being covered by sunspots, heralding the return of Queen Metaria. They find the entrance at the end of the episode, leading directly to their first assault in Episode 44. Since all of this is missing from DiC's dub, the Sailor Scouts are just running into the Negaverse with no explanation, making one wonder why they didn't do this before considering how just one episode earlier, they were willing to make a Deal with the Devil to get Serena inside.
  • There was also another scene of Mamoru being brainwashed and Metaria actually possessing his body, thus explaining why it was so hard to get through to him when he fought with Sailor Moon in the last episode. Therefore, there is no explanation for why Sailor Moon's abilities don't work on Mamoru anymore, though Beryl makes a remark that she put a better spell on him (creating a new plot hole — why didn't she just use that spell from the start?). Also, as a side note, why would she demand the crystal if she placed the spell that undermined its power?
    • Sailor Moon Abridged makes a jab at this.
    Queen Beryl: (Actual dialogue from the English dub) It's no use, you can't heal him. Not even your crystal can break the spell I cast!
    Sailor Moon: Then why do you want the crystal if you're more powerful than it, anyway?
    Queen Beryl: Err...Um...(stammers) SILENCE!!!
  • There are also numerous shots of the sun in the last episode of the dub (all shots from the combined 45-46) that show the progression of the sunspots. These are left as random, unexplained images in the dub — they never bothered to explain why they were showing images of the sun getting blacked out.
  • Another confusing moment is the English dub's awkward explanation for how they found the entrance with Episode 42 cut out. They tried to fix that with the claim that 'Central Control' gave Luna and Artemis the information. The problem with that? It was made clear several episodes earlier that Central Control was really just Artemis with a computer.
• Sailor Mercury's death in Episode 45 originally showed her breaking the illusion device the DD Girls had been using to attack the Guardians. Because Episodes 45-46 were heavily edited to cover up the deaths of the main characters, the DiC dub cut almost the entire sequence, so it appears that the Doom and Gloom Girls just stop using the illusions that had helped them take out two of the Scouts effortlessly because it was unfair. Also, the deaths of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Mars were censored as having them held prisoner in the Negaverse. Except Mars being "held prisoner" makes no sense since she apparently kills the last two Doom and Gloom Girls by herself (even if the scene where she uses the last of her strength to eradicate the final two was cut) so there was no one to take her to the Negaverse.
  • On top of that, if the deaths of the Sailor Guardians are cut out, then it is implied that they just stopped after Sailor Mars, and thus don't capture Sailor Moon.
• Another instance cropped up when somebody forgot that the final two episodes of the first season had such alterations made to it. The Japanese version of Episode 46 had a brief scene in the middle of the episode where Mamoru's mental conflict of trying to undo Metaria's brainwashing was shown in his mind as himself in a hospital bed struggling to remember who he was (mirroring his original amnesia over his past before he lost his parents). Usagi, in her school uniform (not as Sailor Moon) appeared and promised she would help him. This scene was, in the DiC dub, used at the end of the episode instead and presented as an event that actually happened, which caused any number of plot holes, such as, "Why was Darien in the hospital and everyone else from the same fight okay despite everyone suffering grave injury?"
• The DiC dub also provides absolutely no reason why the girls and Darien lose their memories after the climactic battle. This was because they were trying to once again hide the deaths of the main characters, as they had all died after the fight but were resurrected without the memories of the conflict by Usagi's wish to return to a life without war.
• Not to mention that Usagi/Serena's objecting to become a warrior again while having her memory restored by Luna is more or less meaningless in the dub (true, DiC made it a lot less dramatic, but still), because the events of the first season's last two episodes wouldn't have left such an impact on her if her companions were merely kidnapped and everyone in general survived the battle. Also, during that scene, DiC removed the memories of the Sailor Guardians being killed, but somehow left in Endymion being impaled by Beryl's crystal and Sailor Moon crying over his dead body.
• In the Makai Tree Arc, DiC changed Ali (Alan) and En's (Ann's) backstory so they were affiliated with the Negaverse and knew Queen Beryl (and that it was apparently her who "advised" them to go after Earth), because apparently having more than one villainous group was too confusing for viewers. That makes little sense when we learn their actual backstories, but even before that is headscratching — in Episode 49 (43 in the DiC dub), Serena shows Darien some pictures of the battle with Beryl to help him regain his memories... and Ann is right next to them. The fact that this mere earthling knows about her acquaintance/workmate/something doesn't really seem to bother her, or come up when she's trying to uncover Sailor Moon's secret identity.
  • Sailor Moon Abridged plays with this a bit here:
    Ali: Queen Beryl was right about Earth.
    En: Who the f*honk* is Queen Beryl?
  • And in a similar situation to Endymion/Darien mentioned above, DiC decided that the two aliens would be Ann and Alan in both their alien and civilian forms. Yet it took the Scouts an entire story arc to piece together they're the same people.
• A particularly amusing plothole involves Kaolinite's alias, Kaori. In the DiC dub, when Serena/Usagi visits Dr. Tomoe, she is surprised to see Kaolinite (Kaori Night in the dub) there. In the original, Tomoe says that she is his assistant, Kaori, so Usagi is relieved. In the dub, however, the assistant is also named Kaori Night, prompting Serena to say "I thought she was the evil Kaori Night, but she must be someone else!". Epic Clark Kenting.
• A smaller example is that in the S season, Amara and Michelle are always calling Usagi "Serena-moon-face-girl", which is not only a stupid insult but it was long before they actually knew Serena was indeed, Sailor Moon.
• On a related note, the Cloverway dub tried very hard to rub that "cousins" thing in the audience's face; they did that by having at least one line per episode announcing that (ex. "Oh, she's my cousin, Michelle"; "They're both girls, and cousins too!"). But then Kaolinite at one point mentions Michelle being Amara's cousin, which makes no sense as Kaolinite couldn't know Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus' identities and, therefore, couldn't know they were related.
  • A particularly noticeable example comes in the DiC dub of Episode 96 ("Lita Borrows Trouble"). Lita is riding in a car with Amara and Michelle and this conversation comes up:
    Lita: How'd you guys meet then?
    Michelle: We're cousins. We grew up together.
    Lita: [lets out a confused expression] Huh?
    Amara: We've been inseparable since we were born. We can almost read each other's minds!
  • ... Then comes Episode 106 ("Related by Destiny"), where the two are revealed to be cousins who "grew apart." "Inseparable since we were born", you say, eh?
• In the episode where we find out Hotaru is Sailor Saturn, the Cloverway dub makes Uranus, Neptune and Pluto aware that Saturn will appear, when they originally weren't. This wasn't a major change by itself, but the dub also stated the Sovereign of Silence would appear when Saturn eclipses the other planets. Not only could Saturn not eclipse all the other planets, but it was Sailor Saturn that was revealed, not the Messiah of Silence. The dub still tried to make it happen, though, which included giving the Monster of the Week additional "magnetic" powers to pull Saturn into position (which wouldn't work anyway, considering the distance from Saturn and the fact that it's a gas giant).
• The Cloverway dub's tendency to have Pegasus randomly call Rini by name (the original had him calling her "Maiden") backfired near the end of the season, ruining a scene where in the Japanese version Helios finally calls her "Chibiusa". The dub had to use "Minimoon" instead, which is not her name — yet her reaction is pretty much the same as in the original.
• Fisheye, a very feminine man whose gender is usually changed due to his obvious homosexuality and his habit of physically changing to a female form in his civilian disguises, has a shirtless scene in one episode that was intended to make sure viewers knew he really was a man. Most dubs that swapped his gender cut the scene for obvious reasons. Emphasis on most. The French dub kept this intact with no explanation. The Russian dub did as well, though a bystander calls "her" an uncouth woman. The English dub on Toonami's run tried to fix the camera angles to keep most of the scene anyway, but this made the scene even racier because they framed every shot as if Fisheye was a topless woman who was flashing everyone around her. The DVD release kept the video footage unaltered, and thus have a clearly male Fisheye being referred to as a girl.
• Given the overall quality of the Russian SuperS dub, a number of fans actually blame the entire case of Fisheye's gender change on the new translators simply not having done the research rather than censorship (nobody seemed to have problems with Zoisite or Haruka crossdressing before that point, with all the homosexual relationships barely toned down). Notably, it wasn't until a few episodes into the season when it became clear Fisheye was indeed male. Did we mention that the Starlights occasionally retained male voices even in the Sailor Guardian forms?
• In the German dub, Fish Eye has a female voice, even though it is even stated that he's male. But if you compare to the Japanese version, Fish Eye sounds very female there despite having a male voice actor.
• An oddly inverted example happened in the Russian-dubbed filler episode of S involving Tamasaburou. The character in question is known to have been changed into a girl in the DiC dub, presumably because he crossdressed at the end of the episode. In the Russian dub, Chibiusa identifies the character as a "young man" when she first sees him, but after a proper introduction the character is consistently referred to as female, with no explanation.
• A much worse case is the Russian dub of the Stars season, where Haruka basically was turned into another Starlight — they gave her a really bad man's voice in civilian form. This, despite the fact that the character was acknowledged as female in S, which was translated by another company. The fact that the change was done to cover up the infamous lesbian relationship (left unchanged by the previous translators) is pretty obvious from the dialogue.
• Because the Swedish network TV4 didn't want the audience to be confused by Japanese songs, they asked the dubbing company to remove any song — and, when that was impossible, to skip the episode altogether. This led to several plot holes in the R season, the biggest being the Sailor Guardians suddenly knowing all about the Black Moon and Crystal Tokyo because we weren't shown Episode 68.
• An early episode in the show concerned Ami befriending the caretaker of a park that was about to be demolished for office space. The Green Aesop turns dark when Nephrite plants a youma in the old man's hat and he causes the park's animals to destroy the construction equipment. Now, in the Japanese version, this causes the construction project to end due to the construction crews being afraid of returning to the park, resolving the subplot. In the DiC dub, the exact same scene where the old man is given this information is instead changed to the Corrupt Corporate Executive rejecting him once again and vowing to destroy the park. The dub never mentions the park subplot again, so it's up in the air whether the park is saved or not (especially since the CEO was still attacked by bloodthirsty squirrels in both versions).
• In the very first episode, Naru's ("Molly" in the English dub) mother is replaced by a Shapeshifting youma. In the manga and anime, the youma states that she left Naru's mother Bound and Gagged in the basement after stealing her form (both the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal even show her tied up), and that she plans on killing her right after she does so to Naru. This line is completely cut out of the DiC dub, with the only reference to her fate being a line from Tuxedo Mask about how Naru's mom had been freed along with the women who had been drained of their energy by the Youma. This makes no sense, as Naru's mother wasn't shown among the youma's victims who turned into her zombie-like vassals.
• The Hungarian dub, besides carrying the faults of the French translation it had been adapted from, had a very messy script in general because the translator, who has admitted to not being very good at French, only understood an odd word here and there. So, you have things like characters shouting angrily when they're obviously happy, telling others to change into their Sailor gear when they already have, and a "Blind Idiot" Translation in general.
• While Poland never dubbed the series and used a Voiceover Translation instead, there were still a few plot holes. The biggest ones were caused by leaving Episodes 45, 46 and 133 unaired. The first two were most likely banned due to the violence and deaths (though Polsat claims they never received the episodes in the first place), which resulted in fans never getting to see the defeat of Dark Kingdom and the Sailor Guardians and Mamoru suddenly losing their memory. Not to mention that some scenes from those two episodes appeared in the following episode. As for the latter, it was banned to avoid offending Catholics, however that episode marked Diana's debut, making her popping out of nowhere in the Polish version.
• There are also a few minor but consistent ones across most dubs that are lost due referring to specific things of Japanese culture:
  • Makoto justifies her maintaining the uniform of her old school by saying the school didn't have one in her size. This is the earliest hint she's an orphan with a reduced income: in Japan the students have to buy their uniforms, and at relatively high prices, though some older students leave to the school their uniform as charity for low-income students, so Makoto's quip that the school didn't have a uniform her size indicated the charity bin didn't have one and she couldn't buy one the right size at the school shop.
  • Minako shows a penchant for mangling proverbs, a good knowledge of spoken English while also having poor grades in it, experience with how airports work (and poor tolerance for her parents' habit of splurging at airport shops), a tendency to miss some social cues, and generally a far more open and hammier character, with her father in the manga being known to work for a trading company. To a Japanese viewer all of this makes clear she spent an unspecified amount of her childhood abroad due her father being transferred abroad and taking the family with him (a common practice in Japan), but the only hint most foreign viewers get is when in the anime Minako states her days as Sailor V in London weren't the first time she had been there.
• The end of season 1 claims that Queen Beryl was just banished back to the Negaverse, even though we very clearly see her completely disintegrated, and she's the ruler of the Negaverse, so banishing her there shouldn't hurt her at all. The writers seem to have realized how little sense this makes at some point, as later episodes would say that she was indeed Killed Off for Real.