Trivia / Helloween

• Better Export for You: The Japanese editions of their albums tend to contain one or two bonuses:
  • Walls of Jericho (1989 edition): "Don't Run for Cover".
  • Pink Bubbles Go Ape: "Shit and Lobster".
  • Master of the Rings: "Can't Fight Your Desire" and "Grapowski's Malmsuite 1001 (in D-Doll)".
  • The Time Of The Oath: "Still I Don't Know" and "Take It To The Limit".
  • Metal Jukebox: "Rat Bat Blue".
  • The Dark Ride: "The Madness Of The Crowds".
  • Rabbit Don't Come Easy: "Fast As A Shark".
  • Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy: "Revolution".
  • Gambling With The Devil: "We Unite".
  • 7 Sinners: "Faster We Fall", and a code for downloading "Aiming High".
  • Straight Out of Hell: "No Eternity" and a Hammond version of "Burning Sun" dedicated to Jon Lord.
  • My God-Given Right: "I Wish I Were There", 'Wicked Game' and "Free World".
• Canon Discontinuity: With a few exceptions, the band isn't exactly proud of Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon:
  • Setlists for shows after the supporting tour for The Time Of The Oath haven't included songs from those albums.
  • Compilations after Treasure Chest don't include any material from these albums.
• Creative Differences:
  • Kai Hansen quit the band after being unable to stomach Michael Kiske's Lighter and Softer direction.
  • Kiske himself was thrown out after the rest of the band got fed up with his ever-increasing ego, with Chameleon being the last straw.
  • Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch wanted to continue in a Darker and Edgier direction after The Dark Ride, and were promptly shown the door. They went on to form Masterplan after being fired from their former band.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Michael Kiske, one of the most iconic voices in the Power Metal scene, is irritated by the metal scene and prefers to not be completely involved in it, although he said in interviews that he doesn't hate the genre per se.
  • The band denied the existence of Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon for being too light and soft. The latter album is the main reason Michael Kiske was kicked out of the band.
  • Despite the fact that it includes one of their more popular songs ("If I Could Fly"), the band also hates The Dark Ride, because of lack of creative control and positive themes, among other reasons.
• In Memoriam: The Time of the Oath was dedicated to the memory of Ingo Schwichtenberg, former drummer who committed suicide.
• Meaningful Release Date: Some of their albums were released in October 31st. Namely, Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. II (1988) and 7 Sinners. (2010)
• Milestone Celebration: Unarmed was recorded in order to celebrate the band's 20th. anniversary.
• Multi-Disc Work:
  • Some editions of Keeper of the Seven Keys have both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 in two discs each.
  • High Live! is a two-disc work.
  • Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy is a two-disc work.
• The Pete Best: The band was formed in 1978 by Kai Hansen and Piet Sielck, who left afterwards. Nowadays Piet is known as a musical productor and the leading force behind Iron Savior. As for Kai? He took part on the most celebrated era of the band, left citing Creative Differences, and went on to form Gamma Ray. It took nearly 25 years before he returned to the band.
• Real-Time Timeskip: "Who is Mr. Madman?", from 2010's 7 Sinners, acts as a sequel song to "Perfect Gentleman", from 1994's Master of the Rings, acknowledging that "16 years have passed".
• Referenced by...:
  • Wrestler Chris Jericho took his stage name and the name of his main finisher from the album Walls of Jericho.
  • Guilty Gear:
    • The character Ky Kiske was named after both Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske.
    • The character Jack-O Valentine takes a lot of her mannerisms from the band, starting from the pumpkin-headed servants to her finisher in Guilty Gear Xrd being named "I Want Out".
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • Pink Bubbles Go Ape: "Number One", was a song from Weiki's old band, Powerfool.
  • Chameleon: "Windmill" was going to be included in Pink Bubbles Go Ape.
  • The Time of the Oath: "If I Knew" comes from the Chameleon era; Weikath composed it for a solo album which never materialized, in a time where he was seriously doubting about the future of his band.
  • Rabbit Don't Come Easy:
    • "Do You Feel Good?", "Back Against The Wall" and "Nothing To Say" were leftovers from the sessions for The Dark Ride.
    • "Never Be A Star" was a leftover from the sessions for Master Of The Rings.
  • Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 3: The Legacy: "Do You Know What You're Fighting For?" has a similar story to "If I Knew".
  • B Sides: "Les Hamburgueois Walkways", released as a bonus track for several editions of Pink Bubbles Go Ape and as part of the "Number One" single, belongs to the Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 1 era. Weiki wanted the song, but Hansen refused.
  • Others:
    • Masterplan's "Into The Light" was originally written for The Dark Ride. Roland and Uli were able to use it when they were sacked from Helloween.
    • Roland Grapow wrote "Hidden Answer" for Better Than Raw, but it was passed over and ended up on his solo album Kaleidoscope.
• Self-Remake: 2009's compilation Unarmed is composed of non-Power Metal rearrangements of songs from their entire catalog by the band itself.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: It's been said that Ralf Scheepers was offered by Kai, Markus and Weiki the singer position before Kiske's arrival. This was denied by both Weiki and Ralf himself.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Several songs weren't included over the production or recording stage for the albums:
    • In a case of "What Couldn't Have Been", "Dr. Stein", from Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2, was originally going to be just a B-Side. The inverse happened with "Livin' Ain't No Crime", which was thought to be a single, but it ended as a B-Side.
    • "Heavy Metal Hamsters", was going to be left of Pink Bubbles Go Ape and be demoted to B-Side. In the inverse of this case, "I Don't Care, You Don't Care" was cut from Pink Bubbles... because of the way Kiske sung it. The songs "City Cries" and (according to Ingo) "Happy Song" was also recorded during the production of the album, but was never mixed nor released on any album.
    • Metal Jukebox was supposed to have Herman Brood's "Saturday Night," but the band decided later to replace it with Faith No More's "From Out Of Nowhere," the only song of the album originally from the early '90s.
    • The B-Side "Deliver Us From Temptation" was one of the first songs they recorded or even wrote during the sessions for The Dark Ride. Unfortunately, management and record company did not pick the track.
  • The band wanted to choose "Eagle Fly Free" as the first single for High Live!.
  • The Cover Album Metal Jukebox was originally going to be titled Dream Concert.
  • Henjo Richter was offered the guitarist job after the departure of Roland Grapow. He also tried to get the job in the past, with the departure of Kai Hansen from the band.
  • The band wanted to re-record "Windmill", from Chameleon, with Andi's voice, for the Treasure Chest compilation, but by the time the album was supposed to go into production, the master tapes were lost, and the band was in no shape to record a song together. They also wanted to add "Oernst Of Life" from the Death Metal compilation to the tracklist, but the master tapes had been deleted.
  • Mark Cross was going to drum in Rabbit Don't Come Easy after the departure of Uli Kusch, until he became ill and was replaced by Stefan Schwarzmann (on tour) and Mikkey Dee (on studio) for the album. The only leftover from his participation is heard in the tracks "Don't Stop Being Crazy" and "Listen to the Flies".
  • The original concept of the band for the album cover of Rabbit Don't Come Easy had the magician's left hand to be the mechanized one but this was changed by the studio to a more in-the-face approach on their own accord. Through an oversight, Schmidtdesign had worked on a hand-drawn version of the cover, despite the band's wishes for a digital composition and the change to digital occurred on very short notice.
  • Amy Lee, Sharon Del Adel and Helena Iren Michaelsen, from Angel, were considered for the female spot on "Light The Universe", from Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 3: The Legacy, before Candice Night took the place. There was also a consideration of Michael Kiske taking this place and the song being a duo between Michi and Andi, 12 years before Kiske's return to the band.
• Working Title:
  • Pink Bubbles Go Ape had Pink Bubbles, Pink Bubbles Go Wild and Pink Bubbles Go Nuts.
  • The Dark Ride had The Last Testament.

---