"Gorillas Will Be Missed" had Kwame (LeVar Burton) trying on a futuristic visor.
"You Bet Your Planet" had the Planeteers and the villains competing on a game show run by an alien; the announcer (a floating pair of lips) was voiced by GeneWood.
Channel Hop: The show ran first on TBS with additional reruns on TNT, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. It was also syndicated beginning in 1993, and also aired briefly on Kids' WB! in 1997-98 (in both cases to help TV stations meet their E/I quotas; in the latter case it was also due to the Turner-Time Warner merger of 1996).
Development Hell: The live-action movie has been in this since its announcement in 2011. The last anyone had heard of it was in 2018 when Leonardo DiCaprio was set to produce it and Glen Powell set to write, but since time nothing has been heard.
Inspiration for the Work: Ted Turner was genuinely angered by pollution and abuse of natural resources, and commissioned the series as his way of doing something about it.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: A few VHS tapes containing 1-2 episodes were released way back but they are now out of print and very hard to find. Shout! Factory did release season 1 on DVD but never released the rest of the series due to low sales.
The trope was finally averted in November 2017 when Madman Entertainment and Cartoon Network worked together to bring the complete series to availability on DVD, but only in Australia and New Zealand.
The entire series can now be bought off iTunes.
The comics, published by Marvel, are unlikely to ever be republished as the franchise is now in the hands of their major competitor Warner Bros./DC Comics. Even if the rights were ever transferred, Dr. Blight's robot dragon that looks like Fin Fang Foom would have to be completely replaced, if not the issue shelved.
David Rappaport was the voice of MAL for the first four episodes featuring him and Dr. Blight, but was replaced by Tim Curry for the rest of the series because Rappaport committed suicide by gunshot while the first season was still in production.
Sting was the original voice of Zarm until he was replaced in Season 3 by David Warner, who was subsequently replaced in Season 4 by Malcolm McDowell.
Also, Verminous Skumm is very different from Jeff Goldblum's usual roles.
Posthumous Credit: MAL's original actor David Rappaport died (suicide) while the first season was still in production and had only recorded dialogue for four episodes prior to his passing. In spite of this, the show's first season still acknowledges his involvement in the end credits until Tim Curry replaced Rappaport as the voice of MAL.
Prop Recycling: The first episode of had Hoggish Greedly attack Planet with a hose that spewed toxic waste; it looked very similar to the neutrona wands on the Ghostbusters' proton packs (both series were made by DiC, although Planet moved to Hanna-Barbera later on).
Screwed by the Lawyers: Captain Planet has an odd track record with this, and it may be why he's mostly shown up in parodies, with new projects involving the character getting stuck in Development Hell. Captain Planet was originally created for Turner by DIC (the show is copyrighted to both DIC and TBS Productions), but when Turner bought Hanna-Barbera, the rights were transferred over to them to produce new seasons (the end credits noted the original show being developed by TBS and DIC); but legally speaking, Captain Planet was never merged into their library. In 2001, when Time Warner abandoned the idea of merging Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros Animation into one entity, they split the Cartoon Network Studios off as its own entity under Turner. The rights to Captain Planet actually went with them instead of with the other HB and MGM brands (presumably because of it having been created by Turner prior to his byout of H-B). As a result, Warner Bros. has had to deal with Cartoon Network on any possible Captain Planet projects and CN has often soured on new ideas as they came out, as seen below. This is of course also why he was the only non-CN original character in Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion. It's not clear if this will be an issue going forward, in the wake of corporate reorganization at Warner Bros. Discovery during the AT&T era.
So My Kids Can Watch: Dean Stockwell played Duke Nukem for his kids, Austin and Sophia.
What Could Have Been: A live-action movie was in development in the mid-90s; titled Planet or Dark Planet, it would've taken place After the End and would've been significantly Darker and Edgier. However, the script "...fell through the cracks" during the Turner/Time-Warner merger and it didn't happen; they've been trying since, though they may have abandoned those efforts since Paramount is trying to pick up the rights, attaching Leonardo DiCaprio as producer.
The reason the titular character doesn't have a Celebrity Voice Actor? He was initially slated to be played by Tom Cruise, who backed out at the last minute.
According to the original showrunners, the exaggeration of the eco-villains to the point of cartoonish supervillainy as well as their role as the individual sources of all environmental problems in the show rather than the broader systemic forces of real life was intentionally done so that children watching the show would not be troubled by their parents if they worked in a polluting industry like logging or mining, as the parents in question were more than likely just trying to make ends meet and were just as much victims of the aforementioned broader forces themselves. The hope was that the villains would serve as good enough allegories that the viewers’ would be able to put the pieces together with the very much real-world problems being portrayed. Unfortunately, this largely backfired in practice, since the unrealistic and over-the-top nature of the villains has made them a frequent target for snark from older viewers and the genuine environmental threats and ethical problems the show tackled are often thrown out with the bathwater.
Miscellaneous trivia
A producer was unsatisfied with a number of facial designs for the Captain until one of the artists finally submitted the producer's face as a joke... and to make a longer story shorter, that is why Captain Planet looks like Mr. Boxer (though one would suspect the latter never had a green mullet or the superhero musculature).
. But Ted Turner rejected the idea, so the team attempted to find way to keep the Planeteers empowered while Captain Planet did the heavy lifting. One way they did this was having the kids rescue Captain Planet himself when he is downed from time to time by the villains. So in a way, while Captain Planet does do the heavy lifting and rescues the Planeteers, when Captain Planet is down, the Planeteers, without their powers, must work together and rescue him as well. So in a way, the producers attempted to avert a Broken Aesop.