Actor-Shared Background: The character of Chairman Kaga is quite different from the actor Takeshi Kaga, but both were born in Kanazawa.
Edited for Syndication: There was a lot cut from the final episode to get it to fit sixty minutes and the loads of commercials Food Network aired. Namely, a procession of all the challengers, a speech of thanks from Sakai, a farewell speech from Chen on behalf of all the Iron Chefs, Kaga bidding his Iron Chefs to now 'sleep' as their podiums are lowered, a farewell speech from Kaga, him biting one last yellow bell pepper as the camera zooms out on the challengers holding bell peppers, led by Hattori, Kandagawa, and Shu Tomitoku, one of the earliest challengers, and an epilogue by Kaga that hinted at the Millennium Cup's existence (though that last cut is understandable, as Food Network never dubbed it).
Milestone Celebration: The 2000th/2001st Dish Battle. Two Iron Chef-led teams compete in a French vs Chinese battle.
Missing Episode: Due to a combination of Food Network not licensing all the episodes, no official DVD or archive of the episodes, and Fuji Television being very vigilant about their copyright prior to it being acquired by FilmRise, many episodes are considered missing, including, tragically enough, a few of the specials. There is a website dedicated to finding as many of the missing episodes as possible from old VCR recordings, but per the Keep Circulating the Tapes rules, it can't be linked.
No Export for You: Most Nakamura-era and Ishinabe-era battles, with only a handful of the former and one of the latter dubbed.
Tropes common to IC (Western)
Bad Export for You: The UK version used a confusing 4-vs.-1, two-round, multi-day formatnote From Monday to Thursday, each Iron Chef took a turn facing off against four challengers. Two challengers cooked starters while the other two cooked mains and the Iron Chef of the day cooked two entries for each course. The best-scoring challenger from each day would come back on Friday to face off against the best-scoring Iron Chef of the week in another 4-vs.-1 contest to see which of the five will come out on top. Someone described it as 'MasterChef with the Iron Chef label slapped on'.
Creator Backlash: Hiroyuki Sakai expressed distaste at IC America's Kitchen Stadium, believing it to be a cold and sterile design.
Development Hell: Season 13 of Iron Chef America has been stuck in "will they or won't they" for two years.
With a retool, it finally began airing in Fall 2017 as Iron Chef Showdown.
Promoted Fanboy: Michael Symon is clearly a big fan of his fellow Iron Chefs. On both ICA and Cook Like An Iron Chef he makes regular references to their habits and styles (e.g. he mentions Morimoto every time he's chopping up a lot of ingredients).
Tropes common to all versions
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Sadly, due to length/licensing issues, Iron Chef will likely never make it to DVD, leaving people to keep their old recorded tapes or search the net.
Peculiarly enough, ditto for Iron Chef America: only the Battle of the Masters is out on DVD.
Averted in Australia: You Can Buy DVD's of the Dubbed Japanese version from SBS.
Iron Chef Ishinabe, who served as Iron Chef French for the first season before leaving, to be replaced by Sakai. note Though the Title Sequence was never updated to account for new Iron Chefs so Ishinabe's portrait as Iron Chef French remains visible right up to the end.
For American audiences, Nakamura (Iron Chef Japanese II) — very few of his episodes were dubbed, so American fans saw much more of his predecessor Michiba and successor Morimoto.
In ICA, Wolfgang Puck — featured only in the pilot "Battle of the Masters" episodes, but had to decline further appearances and was replaced with Morimoto for the show proper.
