Trivia / Fantastic Four: The Animated Series

• All-Star Cast: Somewhat unusually for a Marvel cartoon at the time, the show featured a pretty big number of recognizable live-action actors in guest roles. These included Mark Hamill as Maximus, Michael Dorn as Gorgon, Ron Perlman as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk and the Wizard, Keith David as Black Panther, John Rhys-Davies as Thor, model Kathy Ireland as Crystal, Richard Grieco as Ghost Rider, Brad Garrett as Hydro-Man and Dick Clark as himself.
• Descended Creator: Ron Friedman voiced Annihilus’s enemy Blaastar.
• Disowned Adaptation: The then-current Fantastic Four writer Tom DeFalco very much hated this series. He ended up getting in trouble when he did a Take That! to the cartoon by having Ant-Man mock it◊ in an issue of the actual comic.
• Edited for Syndication: A rather unusual case. When the show was on Netflix for a while (albeit solely under Iron Man: The Animated Series; nothing in Netflix's listings indicated that the FF show was included), the show was, for the first time since its' original broadcast, presented with its' original Marvel Action Hour branding and Stan Lee intros! (The only thing changed in this case was removed the outdated Marvel and Genesis and/or Saban logos in favor of the current Marvel Animation logo.) However, season 2 was rather strange since the season 1 Marvel Action Hour intros were edited together with the season 2 intros, apparently to remove any trace of the Marvel Action Universe branding they used for that season (possibly because for said season, IM and FF were joined by another New World show, Biker Mice from Mars, which Disney also owns but not the characters and underlying IP); it was very obvious as the voiceover suddenly switched from Jim Cummings to Tom Kane.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: As with the concurrent Spider-Man: The Animated Series, they weren't able to use Sandman as part of the Frightful Four thanks to legal issues regarding the unmade James Cameron Spider-Man movie, so they replaced him with Hydro-Man.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Doctor Doom was voiced in the first season by Neil Ross and by Simon Templeman in the second season.
  • Brian Austin Green voiced Johnny Storm in the first season. By season two, he was instead voiced by Quinton Flynn.
  • Brad Garrett replaced Rob Paulsen (from Spider-Man: The Animated Series) as Hydro-Man.
• Playing Against Type: Mark Hamill as Triton counts, since Hamill usually plays villains. Also the Kree Sentry, which is an emotionless Anti-Villain.
• Playing with Character Type: Though Mark Hamill as Maximus seems a normal case of him playing villains, Maximus is confirmed in his second appearance to be severely mentally ill (most of Hamill's villains lack such an excuse) and actually capable of kindness when thinking clearly.
• Recycled Script: Both seasons end with Doctor Doom claiming the power of the Silver Surfer. The second season production team actually did this on purpose. They felt that the first season's take on the classic comic story was poorly handled and deserved a better adaptation.
• What Could Have Been: Plans for a third season included Sue's pregnancy (with She-Hulk or Medusa filling up the vacancy) and the return of the Sub-Mariner and Puppet Master.

---