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Trivia / Dragon Ball GT

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  • Acting for Two: When General Blue attempts to fight Piccolo in Hell, as they are both voiced by Toshio Furukawa in the Japanese version. He also voices Taro from Doctor Slump, and during the crossover episodes there's a scene with Taro attempting to arrest Blue.
  • Approval of God: Akira Toriyama has stated in the Japanese DVD Box's interview he likes the series and considers it a "grand side-story of the original Dragon Ball". Whatever he meant by that regarding GT's place in the franchise is up to interpretation.
  • B-Team Sequel: Although he did all the initial designs, came up with the name and logo, consulted on the episode storylines, and was present during all the meetings determining the scenario and setup of the series, once it got going, Toriyama largely left the series in the hands of the Toei staff.
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Some websites, like ComicBook.com, have stated that "Dragon Ball GT is bringing its manga back for another round!". GT never had a manga as it's an exclusive anime sequel of Dragon Ball Z.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Steve Blum said that he thinks his voice for Goku in Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout wasn't that good compared to Sean Schemmel's.
    • Likewise, in response to a tweet from a fan suggesting he be cast as Copy-Vegeta in a hypothetical Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Super, Roger Rhodes, who voiced Vegeta in the Blue Water dub of GT, had this to say:
      "I think we all know I was a horrible Vegeta. LOL. However in my defense I’ve grown a lot since then."
    • Tiffany Vollmer, who voiced Bulma in the Funimation English dub, doesn’t think highly of this series. She admits to forgetting even working on it.
    • Kozo Morishita admitted in an interview that the staff didn't enjoy the show's early direction, which was much of what prompted its retool later on. He described the mood around the office as "these travel episodes aren’t going to be interesting no matter how long we keep doing them, are they?"
  • Crossdressing Voices:
    • Masako Nozawa, once again, reprises her role of both kid and adult Goku.
    • Stephanie Nadolny also returns to voice kid Goku for the first time since the Funimation Dragon Ball dub.
    • Laura Torres returns to voice kid Goku in the Latin American dub.
  • Dueling Dubs:
    • The first English dub was recorded by The Ocean Group's then-new Blue Water Studios in Calgary, Alberta in early 2003, and broadcast in Canada, the UK, and other parts of Europe, under distribution from AB Groupe. It was the very first project recorded at the non-union Blue Water, after Ken Morrison (producer at Ocean) decided to save money and record outside ACTRA. This dub was somewhat faithful to the original Japanese version and used the original score, but also used the established localized character names.
    • Funimation produced their own dub with their established in-house cast beginning later that year, airing from 2003-2005. It began with episode 16, following an American-only Clip Show episode summarizing the events of the previous episodes. It also featured an original score from Mark Menza and an original rap theme song called "Step Into the Grand Tour." Episodes 1-15 were finally dubbed and aired after the rest of the series had finished, and the original musical score was restored on the 2009-2010 DVD boxsets, with new English covers of the vocal songs.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: The Blue Water dub has never been released on home video. Rips of tapings of the series have circulated, though often in very poor quality.
  • Missing Episode: When "The Lost Episodes" started airing on Toonami, "Giru's Checkered Past" still did not air on the block because the episode "A Grand Problem" replaced that episode in rotation. "Giru's Checkered Past" eventually premiered over half a decade later on Nicktoons.
  • Non-Singing Voice: Zigzagged with Bon Para in the Funimation dub. In "Dance and Attack", his singing (technically rapping) voice was provided by another actor, who was credited as playing "DJ Para" (Funimation staff member Chas Naylor) but his speaking actor, Brad Jackson, did his own singing in subsequent episodes.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Japanese version:
      • Hiroshi Masuoka continued on as Kamesen'nin for his brief appearances in the place of Kouhei Miyauchi, who passed away in 1995 while DBZ was still airing.note 
      • Atsushi Kisaichi took over as Oob from Megumi Urawa. Now since this was after a Time Skip where Oob had become a teenager, this would normally not be too jarring, but aside from Dende and Oopa, having a character's actor switch after such had almost been unheard of.
      • Kibitoshin had a change going from Yūji Mitsuya to Shinichiro Ohta here, likely due to Mitsuya dividing his time between voice work and voice direction. Mitsuya eventually returned for the refreshed Final Chapters of Dragon Ball Z Kai and in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, but later in Super, Ohta has seemingly become a permanent replacement.
      • Yukimasa Kishino voiced the World Tournament Announcer in his one appearance here instead of either Hirotaka Suzuoki or Kenji Utsumi.
      • In the Super 17 Saga, where almost every villain from the past returns from Hell, there were changes. Pui Pui went from Tomohisa Aso to Shinobu Satouchi, the latter also voiced him in DBZ: Sparking! METEOR, and Nappa was voiced by General Rilld's actor Kiyoyuki Yanada instead of Shōzō Iizuka. In addition, Android #19's scream was provided by Tetsu Inada in place of Yukitoshi Hori.
      • Shen Long's appearance in the Grand Finale was handled by Daisuke Gōri in place of his most consistent performer, Kenji Utsumi. Utsumi had long since departed from the series in DBZ with the conclusion of the Freeza Saga. What is bizarre is that Gōri had provided the dialogue of the corrupted Black Smoke Shen Long which began the final arc, giving his voicing the good Shen Long in the finale as a peculiar book end.
      • Some of the characters in GT, particularly the villains, ended up being recast years later for their appearances in video games, due to their original performer passing away:
      • Both San Xing Long and Si Xing Long's original voices, Kaneto Shiozawa and Ken Yamaguchi, died in the intervening years following GT's conclusion. Shiozawa tragically passed falling down a flight of stairs in 2000, which later resulted in a cerebral contusion. Ryōtarō Okiayu would take Shiozawa's place from the Xenoverse series and onward. Yamaguchi was able to reprise Si Xing Long for the game Sparking! METEOR in 2007, but sadly, he died in 2011 from acute heart failure, leaving the fire-wielding dragon's future game appearances to be handled by Yasunori Masutani.
      • Masutani would also replace Kazuyuki Sogabe as Dr. Myuu in Dragon Ball Heroes. Sogabe retired at the turn of the millennium after his voice had become strained, and later died from esophageal cancer in 2006.
      • Wu Xing Long had to be recast in Dragon Ball Heroes after Hirotaka Suzuoki passed in 2006 from lung cancer. Mitsuaki Madono picked up the slack. Funnily enough, Madono had before succeeded Suzuoki in his main role of Tenshinhan in some earlier games, though the former was ultimately not given the chance to voice Ten in any proper DB animation.
      • Daisuke Gōri tragically committed suicide in 2010, leaving Ultimate Shen Long and Black Smoke Shen Long's appearance in Heroes to be covered by Ryūzaburō Ōtomo and Tetsu Inada respectively.
      • Takeshi Watabe, Mutchy Mutchy and Mutchy's actor, died in December 2010 from pneumonia. Their appearance in Heroes would be voiced by Mitsuaki Hoshino.
    • English dubs:
      • The video game Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout was dubbed in November 1997, back when Funimation was still outsourcing the voice work of DBZ to the Ocean Group. However, this game was dubbed in Los Angeles by Animaze using actors from that area. Goku himself was voiced by Steve Blum as an adult and by Brianne Siddall as a child. Pan and Trunks were voiced by Dyanne DiRosario and Skip Stellrecht, respectively. Baby only appeared in the game in his Great Ape state and was voiced by Joe Romersa. Gohan was voiced by Lex Lang, Piccolo by Dan Woren, and Vegeta by Milton James while Cell's voice was done by Jonathan David Cook. ADR director Kevin Seymour provided the voices for Frieza and Majin Buu, the first time that the former would be voiced by a male actor in English and wouldn't be again until Dragon Ball Z Kai in 2010.note  Vegito would be shared by both Blum and James for his appearance in the game.
      • In the Funimation dub, Andrew Chandler voiced the narrator instead of Kyle Hebert or Brice Armstrong. This was intentional on Funimation's part in order to give each show its own distinct feel.
      • Elise Baughman voiced Pan instead of Susan Huber from the last episodes of DBZ. For brief flashbacks to a toddler Pan, Kate Bristol provided her voice. Parisa Fakhri voiced Bulla in place of Megan Woodall, and Meredith McCoy replaced Melodee Lenz as Marron. Brina Palencia filled in as Bulla for Budokai Tenkaichi 2 since Parisa moved on with her stage and live-action work.
      • Susan Huber voiced Videl instead of Kara Edwards, due to the latter living in North Carolina at the time.
      • Crossing over with The Nth Doctor, Goku's golden great ape form's vocals were provided by Shane Ray, who voiced Gohan's ape form, instead of Justin Cook, who provided the roars in the original Dragon Ball.
      • The Blue Water dub infamously replaced everyone from Ocean's DBZ dub. Uub's voice changed from Scott Roberts at the beginning of the show to Brendan Hunter when he reappears to confront Baby.
    • French dub:
      • A more extreme example is the French dub, which recast all returning characters, except those voiced by Brigitte Lecordier and Céline Monsarrat. All other voice actors were replaced, mostly because a good portion of them had gone on strike a few years before, leading the dubbing studio to dismiss them entirely.
      • Thierry Mercier voiced adult Son Goku instead of Patrick Borg. The latter confirmed that he was never approached for a possible role reprise.
      • Luc Boulad voiced Vegeta and Dende instead of Eric Legrand, who only voiced Vegeta on episode 2 before being replaced.
      • Sébastien Desjours voiced Son Gohan instead of Mark Lesser.
      • Vincent Barazzoni voiced Son Goten and C-17 instead of David Lesser and Thierry Bourdon, respectively.
      • Antoine Nouel voiced Trunks instead of Mark Lesser, who left after voicing him on the first two episodes. That same Antoine Nouel also picked up the role of Mister Satan from Frédéric Bouraly.
      • Kame Sennin and Freezer were voiced by Gérard Surugue instead of respectively Pierre Trabaud and Philippe Arrioti.
      • Marc Bretonnière picked up the roles of Piccolo and Boo from, respectively, Philippe Arrioti and Patrick Borg.
  • Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Oceanus Shenron is not "secretly male" in the original version, despite her true form having a masculine voice in most dubs. This was all over fansites back in the day, leading to many debates about her character.
  • Recycled Script:
    • The story of Zoonama, a minor villain from episodes 7 and 8, is very similar to Oolong's origin story from the original Dragon Ball.
    • The lead-up to Baby is somewhat similar to the 1993 OVA, Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, about an evil alien scientist with a vendetta against the Saiyans for killing the Tuffles who created a fearsome monster to destroy the remaining Saiyans. In addition, Baby taking over the Earth by possessing all of Goku's friends and turning them against him is somewhat similar to the setup of the Garlic Jr. Saga.
    • The Super 17 arc takes a lot of its ideas from the Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn movie, with an enemy in Hell opening rifts between realities that releases past villains and other bad people from Hell unto the living, Goku fights some of the bad guys in Hell, and the rest of the main and secondary cast have to fight the remaining ones on Earth.
  • Sequel First: Sort of; When GT first aired in America, Funimation had yet to dub some of the non-serial movies (namely Bojack Unbound and every film released after it). This had the side effect of Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta debuting before the regular Super Saiyan Gogeta in the U.S. (not counting his game appearances in Buu's Fury and Budokai 3).
  • Torch the Franchise and Run: The ending certainly has this feeling: the Dragon Balls and Shenron vanish from existence after lecturing the cast on how they shouldn't have used their powers so frivolously, Goku chooses to go with him, there's a massive sendoff, and it's confirmed that neither come back until nearly every other character is long dead. Given GT's Post-Script Season status, it's not hard to imagine why the creators would want to end the franchise as conclusively as possible.
  • Uncredited Role: The English singer of the second ending theme, “Don’t You See?” is unknown.
  • What Could Have Been: Has its own page.

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