Trivia / He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983)

• Alan Smithee: Voice cast member Eric Gunden and underscore composer Erika Lane are both Filmation head Lou Scheimer (his children are called Erika and Lane).
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: New fans who have caught on to the original Filmation series after Robot Chicken and HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA may be disappointed to find that one of Skeletor's most famous lines (er, noises), "Myah!" is only from the What's Up video and not from the actual series.
• Creator Backlash: While not the specific creators - they were more like hired guns - Paul Dini and J. Michael Straczynski both disliked working on this series, citing Executive Meddling constantly forcing them to put in new characters or vehicles at random, depending on what toy or toys were coming, while not being given a lot of room to develop the characters (allegedly they were told not to do anything interesting with Skeletor characterization-wise, since he was only meant to be the villain). Ironically, they wrote some of the most beloved episodes of the series and still regard it as Old Shame anyway.
• Creator's Favorite: Orko was Lou Scheimer's favorite character, he even did his voice himself.
• Descended Creator: Filmation head Lou Scheimer, under the pseudonym Eric Gunden, provided a large amount of voices for the show, such as Orko, King Randor, and Trap Jaw.
• Dueling Dubs: The Swedish version of the show got no less than three separate dubs, each with new actors playing the characters each time.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The first action figures were based upon early concepts of the characters that were changed by the time the Filmation cartoon series aired.
• Hey, It's That Sound!:
  • One of the "alarm" sound effects used in the series is the "monster" sound effect from the original Pac-Man.
  • Some of the laser sound effects were taken from the original Battlestar Galactica. You can also recognize the sound of photon torpedoes from Star Trek: The Original Series.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The complete series is available in the US, the UK, Australia, and various other countries. ^note But they all use the PAL prints because Hallmark Entertainment (supposedly) threw away the original NTSC masters for the program, and only kept the PAL ones.
  • There are some Region 1 VHS tapes with the NTSC Prints, but they are out of print and hard to find.
• No Budget: It wouldn't be a Filmation title if it had one now would it?
• No Export for You: For whatever reason, despite the toys of the show being sold worldwide, this cartoon seems to lack a legitimate release in several countries, namely Japan, Korea, Hungary, Czech Republic and Albania.
• The Other Darrin: The Italian dub replaced the entire voice cast after season 1.
• Real-Life Relative: The Brazilian dub has two cases:
  • Adam/He-Man's VA Garcia Junior is the son of Beast Man's VA Garcia Neto.
  • While Man-At-Arms and Teela are father and daughter on-screen, their respective voice actors Marcos Miranda and Vera Miranda are siblings (Marcos being the eldest). Their voices and their talent make the characters' age difference look credible, though.
• Referenced by...: Ghostbusters II, at a party where Ray and Winston are performing. When they asked the kids Who You Gonna Call?, the kids answered, "He-Man!"
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: Filmation often used early character concept art from Mattel, mixed with just doing whatever they wanted. Duncan's mustache and symmetrical armor (the toy only had one arm guard) was only one of many examples; Skeletor and Beast Man gained normal boots, Trap Jaw had a lot more pink than the toy did with a stubbier arm, Teela abandoned the snake armor, Evil-Lyn's colors were changed, Stratos went from being a hairy winged monkey man to a man in a gray suit, Clawful looked NOTHING like the toy^note Notably, his right claw is supposed to be much bigger than his left claw., and the Attack Trak was vastly redesigned, among many other changes.
  • Any changes that have to do with character symmetry, such as Duncan and Clawful, were for budgetary reasons; a symmetrical character can have their animation cels flipped without anything being different (this is why Orko was renamed from "Gorpo" in earlier drafts, so he could have an "O" on his chest instead of a "G").
• Troubled Production: According to Will Finn in a (now-private) comment on John K. Stuff, the initial model sheets for the character Ram-Man had his thumbs on the wrong side of his hands, but the animators were told to follow what was on the model sheets until they could approve the new, fixed model sheets (however that makes sense). When the new model sheets arrived, however, all of Ram-Man's animation had to be redone with the new sheets instead of simply erasing and redrawing his hands properly.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the episode "The Problem With Power", He-Man would have actually killed an innocent bystander by accident. Filmation felt that this idea was far too extreme for a kids' cartoon, so the plot was changed to have a villain in disguise pretending to have been killed.
  • Paul Dini, the writer for "The Shaping Staff", says that he wanted to have Faker reappear, with his skin tone changed (presumably closer to the toy).
  • In "Dawn of Dragoon", Dragoon was originally going to actually fall into the Bottomless Pit and be Killed Off for Real, with Battle Cat and He-Man discussing his death after escaping. In the finished episode, He-Man pulls a Save the Villain.
    • In the same episode, they were originally going to reveal Orko's face, but then they decided to keep it a mystery and just show his silhouette.
  • Orko was originally going to be called "Gorpo", but because of the show's Limited Animation techniques^note Which include mirroring., a backwards "G" on his robe would have been easily noticeable, unlike the letter "O", which is the same forwards and backwards. Slightly averted on some foreign dubs of the show, where he is actually called "Gorpo".
  • Reportedly Prince Adam was originally meant to have a different character design from He-Man that depicted him as younger and thinner but the animation budget couldn't allow for it, so Adam looks like He-Man with fair skin, more clothes and a higher pitched voice (good thing for Adam/He-Man that Eternia seems to be crawling with large muscular men, so his own physique doesn't stand out as much). Later animated versions would utilize different character designs for He-Man and Adam.
  • According to the series bible, Evil-lyn, Beastman, and Tri-Klops were supposed to have been crew members on Queen Marlena's ship (named respectively: "Evelyn Powers", "Biff Beastman", and "Dr. T.E. Scope") who all got mutated into their current forms after crash landing on Eternia. This never came up in the show, reportedly because the showrunners didn't like it, and later continuities gave them different origins as native Eternians.
  • In the Brazilian dub, Garcia Junior would voice only Adam, while He-Man would have a different voice actor. As said voice actor refused the role, Garcia was cast to voice He-Man too, using a slightly higher pitch for Adam and a slightly lower pitch for He-Man, his natural voice being in the middle.
  • If the Filmation animated segment of the Castle Grayskull toy commercial is any indication, the animation quality had potential to be much better, but this was reported to have cost as much to animate as a standard episode of the cartoon. This documentary details how the 35 second segment came to be & how it landed Filmation the job of animating the series afterwards.
  • In the episode A Tale of Two Cities, villain of the hour Queen Balina was supposed to have a pet leopard named Sultar. As the episode was heavily based off of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle's Tarzan and the City of Gold, this would have made Sultar the equivalent of Nemone's lion Belthar.
• Working Title: It was originally supposed to just be called He-Man but the executives wanted a longer title so He-Man and The Lords Of Power was suggested. They thought this might have religious connotations so they changed it to Masters of The Universe.
• You Sound Familiar:
  • In the Brazilian dub, some voice actors voiced different characters in different episodes. It includes a few from the recurring roles, as Garcia Neto (Beast Man) as an one-shot villain in an episode which Skeletor's crew didn't appear and, most remarkably, Sonia Ferreira, the VA of Queen Marlena, also voiced the evil witch Shokoti. Marlena didn't appear in that episode, but, even if she did, Sonia's voice for Shokoti was so different from her voice for Marlena (rapsy and really scary for the former, soft and sweet– and also the actress' natural voice– for the latter) that no one would associate the voices, anyway.
  • Counting She-Ra: Princess of Power, Marlene Costa voiced Kitrina in He-Man episode "The Cat and the Spider" and also recurring villain Catra in She-Ra.^note Considering that she voiced Catwoman in Batman: The Animated Series, she seems to be a case of Typecasting for feline-themed characters

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