Trivia / Fate/Zero

• All-Star Cast: The English dub of the series featured a radically different dub cast compared to what we previously know in the original series, featuring a few cast of actors that fans of either Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Code Geass or Attack on Titan might find familiar.
• Breakthrough Hit: The first opening theme, 'oath sign' pretty much kickstarted LiSA's career as a solo artist, and she would later find further success with Sword Art Online, The Irregular at Magic High School, My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
• Contractual Immortality: Everyone that doesn't get killed off is present in Fate/stay night.
• Creator's Favorite: Urobuchi has stated in interviews that his favorite characters are Gilgamesh and Kirei, and that he wrote Fate/Zero mainly for Kirei.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Played straight in the English dub where young Kiritsugu is voiced by Marin Miller, but averted in the original Japanese version where he is voiced by Miyu Irino.
• Defictionalization: Thought it would be cool to play a game of chess with Gilgamesh' chess set? You can now.
  • Though you can't actually play chess with that set because, as in the anime, it doesn't fit a proper chess board.
• The Other Darrin: Completely averted in the Japanese version. All the cast members from the drama CDs reprise their roles for the anime series.
  • For the English dub, this trope is played straight for almost every character that appears both here and in the anime of Fate/stay night, due to the dubs being handled by entirely different companies. This is especially notable in the cases of Gilgamesh, Kiritsugu, and Kotomine, since the actors who played them in Fate/stay night are also in the dub of Fate/Zero, but they play different characters. The voices of Archer, Assassin (who interestingly enough plays Gilgamesh instead), Shinji, Rider and Kuzuki in the Deen dub also appear in Zero as different characters and their original roles were later Darrined in the Unlimited Blade Works TV series. The sole exceptions are Mela Lee and Stephanie Sheh, reprising the roles of Rin and Ilyasviel respectively and would later reprise their roles again in UBW and Heaven's Feel.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Johnny Yong Bosch is best well-known for his Hot-Blooded hammy hero roles like Ichigo Kurosaki, Vash The Stampede, and Yukimura Sanada. Here, he is voicing Ryuunosuke Uryuu, an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild villain who enjoys killing children for his entertainment. The very fact that he voiced a similar villain, but a bit tamer makes this a little Creepy Awesome.
  • In the similar way, Cristina Vee plays energetic sweet girls, now she's playing a tortured little girl.
  • Michael Donovan for playing Zouken Matou. Yes, THAT Michael Donovan.
  • Kyle Hebert as Berserker.
• Role Reprise: Mela Lee returns as Rin and Stephanie Sheh also reprises her role as Illya. They are the only voice actors to reprise the same character from the Stay Night series dub.
  • Also note the union issues involved. The Fate/stay night anime and movie adaption aren't contracted to the unions (which is one of the main reasons why Kate Higgins wasn't able to reprise her role as Saber). In this dub, this is obviously a union dub since Kari Wahlgren and Crispin Freeman are well known to strictly work in union-only environment ^note Jamieson Price is known to work in non-union voice work under the pseudonym "Taylor Henry".
• What Could Have Been:
  • There would've been a subplot where one of Assassin's personalities, a little girl, got separated from the others and forgot her identity. After mistaking her for one of Caster and Ryuunosuke's kidnapped victims, Waver takes her in. Rider knows what she really is, but keeps quiet out of respect for Waver's chivalry. Waver and the girl bond, but when Kotomine uses a Command Spell to make all the Assassins attack Rider's Feast of Kings, she regains her memory and joins the attack. Waver is devastated by her death, but toughens up and moves on, as the subplot was meant to be a step in his growing up. Gen Urobuchi cancelled the subplot because he thought it gave too much focus on Waver, and would confuse the reader about who the real main character is.
  • Berserker's original design made him look emaciated. The idea was that his thin, sickly appearance would make his opponents underestimate him, only to shock them when he demonstrates incredible strength and speed.
  • Before Gilles de Rais was chosen as Caster, Gen Urobuchi wanted to use a Chinese Xian. The reason he didn't was because Nasu ruled that Eastern heroes can't be summoned in Fuyuki's system (fake Assassin in stay night was explicitly a case of the rules being broken by Caster).
  • Toshiyuki Shirai, an animation director, said the original plan for Lancer's death scene was that he would turn into particles of light and fade away. Then he decided it would make his Dying Curse more dramatic if his body crumbled away while releasing a black mist.
  • Originally, Kariya's brother Byakuya would either not appear or be a brief background character. The scene where Kiritsugu raids the Matou mansion was going to have him simply conclude no one was home and move on. Then Urobuchi thought "there isn't enough violence today", so they had Kiritsugu run into Byakuya and interrogate him.
• Word of Gay:
  • While it's not exactly a surprise to anyone familiar with Alexander the Great and his widely speculated bisexuality, Gen Urobuchi confirmed the orientation for his Fate/zero counterpart when discussing how events would have turned out if Kayneth summoned Rider as he intended instead of Lancer (Answer: Rider would have attempted to bed Sola-Ui and Kayneth).
  • The historical Gilles de Rais is widely speculated to have been gay or bisexual; likewise Caster is described as being attracted to both tomboyish women and feminine men.
  • Played for Laughs with other characters in the Afterword/Author's Comments sections in the novels, in which Gilgamesh is jokingly declared a Sasoi-Uke while Kiritsugu is said to be the bottom to Kotomine.
• Word of God: Nasu said if he wrote the series, he would have made Rider very similar to Red Saber.