Trivia / Hercules: The Animated Series

• All-Star Cast: The question isn't finding characters voiced by known/famous actors, but finding characters who aren't. Look up a voice actor's list. It's just oozing with famous titles. It all came up to be because James Woods wanted to return and thus most of the original cast jumped along, and others got interested.
• Adored by the Network: The series premiered new episodes both in weekday syndication (on the remnants of The Disney Afternoon) and on One Saturday Morning during the 1998-1999 season.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: One VHS tape, "Zero to Hero", was released. It is basically an expanded version of the episode "Hercules and the Yearbook", with roughly three full episodes to fill out the time. It served as a pilot for the series. The rest of the series has not been released on any home video format. It was finally rescued when the whole series was made available on Disney+.
• Missing Episode: At least four episodes were removed from rotation following 9/11, most notably "Hercules and the Hostage Crisis" which involved terrorists taking over Prometheus Academy, which was almost identical to the Columbine High School massacre. All four were restored for the Disney+ release.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Most of the movie's cast did return for the series, except for Charlton Heston, Rip Torn, and Danny DeVito.
  • An unusual, marginal example: Tate Donovan returns as Hercules, but he portrays the younger version of the character, who was voiced by Josh Keaton in the movie.
  • Amanda Plummer (the voice of Clotho, one of the Fates) was replaced by Tress MacNeille.
  • Pep Antón Muñoz was the voice of Hades in the European Spanish dub for a few episodes of the TV Series but was replaced for the rest of the series by Jordi Ribes. However, Muñoz returned to voice him in House of Mouse.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, José Gilberto Vilchis replaced Ricky Martin as Hercules and Humberto Solórzano replaced Ruben Trujillo as Hades. Oddly enough, Tatiana reprised her role as Megara.
  • While the Brazilian Portuguese dub kept the film's cast, Zeus has a different voice for half the episodes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Persephone was originally meant to have a more prominent role in the series as the daughter of Demeter and Hades, with a running subplot where her parents were embroiled in a bitter custody battle over her. The idea was ultimately scrapped, and Persephone was relegated to a background extra.
  • The earliest iteration of the series picked up right where an abandoned project for a direct to VHS sequel left off, and thus would have had a more overarching narrative. Yet another would have had Echidna and family take over as the primary antagonist so that the series had better continuity with the movie... but that was before they were able to get James Woods back to play Hades. There is still some evidence of this treatment in Hercules and the First Day of School (which would have been the original pilot) which introduces Echidna but Hades is absent.
  • According to Greg Weisman, he had written premises for episodes, ultimately rejected, including one where Hercules would meet and clash with Samson, Goliath, and the Phillistines and another featuring Hephaestus changing his name to Vulcan and focusing on Cassandra and Pollyandra clashing as future seers.

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