Trivia / Kamen Rider Blade

• Acting for Two: Ryoji Morimoto portrays Chalice, his lookalike Ryo Mikami, and the Human Undead.
• Amateur Cast: Even by the standards of Rider, Blade is noted for its generally newbie cast, with none of the four lead Riders having had much if any acting experience prior to the series. This, combined with the staff encouraging them to "act with emotion", is usually credited with leading to the infamously shaky acting that permeated the series' first half.
• Bonus Episode: The first Hyper Battle DVD, Kamen Rider Blade: Blade vs. Blade was released with an issue of Televi-Kun Magazine.
• Contractual Purity: Around the time Blade first aired, there was a flap over the fact that Takayuki Tsubaki, who plays Kenzaki, had previously appeared in a gay porn film. For a while some fans speculated that he would get quietly shuffled out of existence, but the fact that Tsubaki returned to play Kenzaki in the final episodes of Kamen Rider Decade and for voiceover of Kamen Rider Climax Heroes, the special Kamen Sentai Gorider and the Blade tribute arc in Kamen Rider Zi-O proved the fears were baseless.
• Friendship on the Set: The four main cast members continued to be close friends and keep in contact even after the series ended (and Mutsuki's actor retired from the acting business). In particular, Takayuki Tsubaki (Kenzaki) and Kousei Amano (Tachibana) are so close that when Tsubaki was inflicted with a severe injury in 2016 and needed to have surgery, Amano would regularly go to visit him in the hospital.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Hajime's actor Ryoji Morimoto is known to be a cheery guy with a temperament completely opposite from his character's, to the point his Identical Stranger Ryo Mikami is a much more accurate reflection of his actual personality. Meanwhile, Kenzaki's actor Takayuki Tsubaki is very shy and reserved in public whenever he's not scripted, whereas Tachibana's actor Kousei Amano is an infamous Cloudcuckoolander to the point his airheadedness is referred to as "the legend of Kousei Amano".
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: A minor case. The aging of the Blade helmet's transparent plastic exterior over time had caused it to turn yellow; this combined with the silver underlayer produces a golden-like hue. Due to the fact it can't be amended (via CGI or with the actual suit) or replaced without it getting really expensive, future Blade appearances have had to retain it, but luckily the "golden" look resembling King Form's gold works well with the idea of Kenzaki having become an Undead from his high fusion coefficient, so fans and staff alike have unofficially rolled with this explanation.
• What Could Have Been: There were plans to have a torch passing between Blade and Blade's predecessor, Faiz, similar to the one done in Super Sentai, which was reportedly filmed, as proved by the few screenshots of it that are floating around the internet, but for whatever reason, the passing was never aired.
• You Look Familiar: Yuki Kurota (Junichi/Glaive in The Movie) makes a cameo in the penultimate episode of the TV series as a police officer whose life is saved by Blade.

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