Trivia / Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always

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• Approval of God: Sentai actors including Yasuhisa Furuhara, Reiko Chiba, and Shiro Izumi have publicly acknowledged the special.
• The Cast Showoff: Charlie Kersh is a world martial arts champion and gets to show her moves in this special.
• The Character Died With Her: Trini dies in battle with Robo-Rita. Trini's actress, Thuy Trang, was killed in a car accident in 2001.
• Character Outlives Actor:
  • Trini's death occurs when she and the rest of the Rangers are well into adulthood, with Trini having a teenage daughter. This means that Trini lived over two decades past her actress.
  • Tommy is still alive and well at the end of the special. His actor, Jason David Frank, passed away in late 2022.
• Deleted Scene: A flashback of a younger Minh watching her mother Trini was filmed, but omitted from the final cut. Charlie Kersh herself actually portrayed Trini in this scene (evoking a Strong Family Resemblance), though we would only see her shadow.
• In Memoriam: The special closes on a tribute to Thuy Trang and Jason David Frank.
• Milestone Celebration: Created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original series and the franchise as a whole.
• On-Set Injury: Walter Emanuel Jones injured his ankle early on in filming performing a backflip, but was able to heal enough to perform the rest of his stunts.
• The Original Darrin: In the Italian dub, Giorgio Ginex returns as the voice of Alpha after being replaced by Daniele Demma in Power Rangers Turbo, an unknown voice actor in Power Rangers Wild Force and Stefano Onofri in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Mighty Minotaur and Snizzard serve as the only returning characters not voiced by their original actors (without using archival audio; the latter being voiced by both Bryan Cranston, someone well outside of this movie's budget, and Bob Papenbrook, who died in 2006, might have something to do with it. In addition to continuing to film in New Zealand). They are instead voiced by Ryan Cooper and Daniel Watterson respectively.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub replaced many voice actors:
    • Manuel Campuzano replace Jorge Roig Jr. and Sergio Bonilla as Rocky.
    • Alfonso Obregón Inclán replaces the late Carlos Íñigo as Billy, through he already voiced him before in the first live-action movie.
    • Mexican voice actress Mariana Ortiz became the sixth Latin American voice actress to voice Rita Repulsa, after being previously voiced by her late mother, Araceli de León, along with the Mexicans Ada Morales, Rebeca Patiño, the Argentinians Kavin Zavala and Maria Elena Molina, and the American Latina Marcela Bordes.
  • In the European Spanish dub, Aisha, Rita Repulsa, and Alpha 5's voice actors were all replaced.
  • In the Italian dub, Renato Novara replaces Nicola Bartolini Carrassi (who retired from voice acting in 2005) as Zack, while Jacopo Calatroni replaces Patrizio Prata as Adam.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Rita Repulsa is voiced by Rebeca Zadra instead of Maria da Penha.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The lack of studio space or the money for a Megazord suit led to the Megazord battle being rendered entirely in CGI.
• Role Reprise:
  • Walter Emanuel Jones, David Yost, Richard Steven Horvitz, Barbara Goodson, Steve Cardenas, Karan Ashley, Johnny Yong Bosch, and Catherine Sutherland all reprise their roles from Mighty Morphin, that being Zack, Billy, Alpha, Rita, Rocky, Aisha, Adam, and Kat respectively.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Benjamín Rivera, Laura Torres, Rubén León and Rocío Prado reprise their roles as Zack, Kat, Adam, and Alpha respectively.
    • Alfonso Obregón Inclán reprises his role as Billy Cranston from the first film.
    • José Gilberto Vilchis reprises his role as Tommy Oliver after previously voicing him in the remastered version of Mighty Morphin.
  • In the French dub, Aurélia Bruno reprises her role as Aisha Campbell.
  • In the Italian dub, Claudio Ridolfo, Giorgio Ginex, Gualtiero Scola, Elisabetta Spinelli, Emanuela Pacotto and Caterina Rochira reprise their respective roles as Billy, Alpha, Rocky, Kat, Aisha and Rita Repulsa.
• What Could Have Been:
  • David Yost first pitched an eight-episode series to Hasbro titled Power Rangers: Quantum Continuum, described as "Riverdale meets Star Trek meets Power Rangers", and intending to reunite all of the original cast and pay tribute to Trini. It wasn't picked up due to "legal issues", but the special resulted as a compromise. Word of God is that the storylines were very different, and he shared the first three episode scripts-plans are to release the full 8 scripts over time.
  • Amy Jo Johnson and Jason David Frank (before he passed) were offered a chance to reprise their roles, but both declined. According to rumors, when Jason David Frank was approached, Hasbro presented a storyline where Tommy was reunited with the surviving members of his old team to recover his White Tiger powers. The plot was so similar to his Legend Of The White Dragon indie film, he refused to take part. Additionally, it wouldn't have even made sense narratively, as he already got all of his old powers back as shown in Dimensions In Danger, back in the Ninja Steel season. Amy Jo, however, had been long out of acting practice in favor of other angles of film production (she had directed her first episode in season 2 of Superman & Lois). She would later begin work on her own Power Rangers comic for Boom! Studios.
  • Austin St. John was initially to be invited back too, but this never went anywhere after he was put on probation for his connection to a crypto scam several months before filming began, preventing him from going to New Zealand.
  • Trini's death was originally going to be more graphic, according to Simon Bennett but was scaled back during edits. Another version of the script had the Rangers finding Trini's body on the beach below the cliff she was blasted off of.
  • One of the proposals that got thrown around for this and the Robert Entwistle reboot was the team traveling back in time to the 90's in order to stop Rita from killing the Rangers before they were summoned by Zordon. While this was alluded to in Rita's plan, the Rangers stop her before she can go through with it and no time travel actually happens.
  • Earlier drafts when Tommy was still slated to appear would have had the trauma from Trini's death resulting in him and Kat being estranged, but still sharing custody of JJ.
  • Catherine Sutherland recalls a scene that was filmed but deleted - where Minh would have a flashback to her childhood watching Trini practice martial arts in the garden. Charlie Kersh wore a wig and was filmed from afar to double for Trini in this event.
  • It was initially planned for an original villain to be the Big Bad of the special, but the character didn't make it past the design phase, with Robo-Rita being conceived in their place.

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