Trivia / Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

• Anime First: There is a manga adaptation and a novelization, but both were created after the anime started airing.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • Video games that include Wing Zero love to do this, but all through Wing Heero never pulls apart the Twin Buster Rifles, fires, and starts spinning. Yes, it would be a wave of devastation, but by the time he gets Wing Zero he actually gives a damn about civilian casualties, and the Buster Rifles sure as HELL don't discriminate.
    
    To clarify, that scene happens in the series, but Heero wasn't the one in the mecha at the time. In fact, out of the seven people who pilot the Wing Zero, six execute this little trick—Heero is the only one who doesn't.
  • Possibly a justified usage. In the video games, there is no risk of civilian casualties to speak of; it's giant robots only. And it is quite the powerful attack, so there's no reason for him NOT to do it. Just because his progression through the anime makes him more... Heeroic... it doesn't mean he wouldn't use the attack if he could get away with the whole "no innocents" thing. Furthermore splitting the rifle and going to town simply isn't Heero's combat style, notably enough he only seems to fire the rifle when it counts.
• Blooper:
  • When Quatre is logging into the computer to start building a new Gundam (which would eventually be Wing Zero), there are a number of mis-spellings on the computer screen, such as "electorical" and "pnopellant."
  • The eyecatch jingle is a second behind the visuals in every single episode. The title screen music is also late in many of the early episodes.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Heero Yuy's Voice Actor, Mark Hildreth, is a well known TV and voice actor. Unfortunately, he hasn't been asked to return to the role (or, more likely, he doesn't want to) due to some reception issues. Though in later interviews, Mark said that he wasn't told to return back to do his lines.
• Cross-Dressing Voice: In Japan, Quatre was voiced by a woman. Pretty much averted in everywhere else except for the Filipino and Taiwanese dubs. Also, Duo is voiced by a woman in the Taiwanese dub.
• The Danza: Catherine Bloom is voiced by Cathy Weseluck in English, her full name's Catherine. This won't be her last.
• Demand Overload: When the show first aired in the US on Cartoon Network, Bandai's supply of Wing model kits got exhausted.
• Enforced Method Acting: In the English dub, Scott McNeil's Big "NO!" was achieved when he thought back to the most painful moment in his life, when his wife accidentally knocked over his motorcycle with the family minivan.
• Fountain of Expies:
  • Relena would later serve as the inspiration for Dianna Soreil, Lacus Clyne, Cagalli Yula Athha (who was also based on also a Gender Flip of Quatre), Princess Rele, Marina Ismail, and Kudelia Aina Bernstein, and outside of Gundam, Nunnally Lamperouge and Euphemia Li Britannia, and Asseylum Vers Allusia.
  • Heero himself will later get his expies like Sousuke Sagara, Athrun Zala (with elements of Char Aznable and Garma Zabi), Sven Cal Bayan, Setsuna F. Seiei, Inaho Kaizuka, Mikazuki Augus, and Hiroto Kuga.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The edited daytime Toonami version of the dub has never been released on DVD and has never aired since the block lost the rights a few years after airing, not that there's much demand for it.
  • The manga adaptation, Episode Zero, Blind Target, Ground Zero, and Battlefield of Pacifists manga went out of print over a decade ago, and that was before Tokyopop folded. None of them have been re-licensed.
  • The series itself was this for a few years, but Nozomi Entertainment re-licensed the title in 2017, along with Endless Waltz.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • Wing's airdate of April 7th coincided with the 26th anniversary of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series.
  • In 2024, the 45th Anniversary of the Gundam franchise, Gundam Wing will be celebrated as part of the "Gundam GWX 30th Anniversary Project", which also celebrates the 30th anniversary of Mobile Fighter G Gundam (2024) and After War Gundam X (2026), for the next three years.
• Newbie Boom: North America was finally able to get into the wider Gundam franchise thanks to this series airing on Toonami in 2000.
• No Export for You:
  • While the manga adaptation made it over, the novelization didn't.
  • The four-part Operation Meteor recap OAV was missing on all English-language releases until Nozomi's Blu-ray.
  • Frozen Teardrop has not been released in the US legally.
  • Surprisingly averted for Glory of the Losers, which was released starting in 2017.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Sally Po and Catherine Bloom were both originally voiced by Moneca Stori in the English dub, but she left after the first 13 episodes, and Po was recast with Samantha Ferris while Bloom was recast with Cathy Weseluck in their further appearances.
  • Doctor J was usually voiced by Don Brown in the English dub, but Ward Perry took over for the last 3 episodes.
  • Heero Yui was voiced by Mark Hildreth in the anime franchise, but Louis Chirillo took over for the first two Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games and Brian Drummond, the voice of Zechs, took over for the third (after Chirillo moved to Brazil). Hildreth says he was never asked to reprise the role.
  • Treize Khushrenada was voiced by David Kaye in the anime franchise and by Michael Daingerfield in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3, due to Kaye having moved to Los Angeles.^note Daingerfield had also replaced him as Sesshomaru in InuYasha: The Final Act.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Noin is voiced by Chisa Yokoyama. Yes, THAT Chisa Yokoyama.
  • Dorothy Catalonia's English VA, Cathy Weseluck, is better known for using her calm, gentle voice to portray kind, motherly characters such as the original Mobile Suit Gundam's Mirai Yashima. Her Japanese VA, Naoko Matsui, tends to voice heroic Action Girls or sassy Plucky Girls with few to hide, rather than sneaky Ladies of War.
• Prop Recycling: Yes, it can happen in anime; the laser gun used by OZ's Taurus units to defend Barge was originally an Earth Federation 90mm "bullpup" machinegun that pops up in Gundam 0080, Gundam 0083, and The 08th MS Team.
• Star-Making Role: This show pretty much launched the careers for Hikaru Midorikawa (Heero), Toshihiko Seki (Duo) and Ryōtarō Okiayu (Treize) into great stardom-to-legend status.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the original draft, Episodes 27 and 28 would have been flashbacks, revealing important moments from the Gundam pilots' and Relena's pasts. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts arose which lead to head writer Katsuyuki Sumisawa quitting the series. The episodes were turned into recap episodes, and the backstories were archived in the manga Episode Zero.
  • The designs of the Gundams went through some odd evolutions. Some versions of Wing don't even have wings, Sandrock at one point had an "eagle claw" similar to Shenlong's dragon fang, and Deathscythe was supposed to be piloted by Trowa instead of Duo, resulting in early Deathscythes with very European gothic elements. And Heavyarms was, at one point, a flamethrowing clown giant robot^note The "nationalities" element comes in here too, since the clown theme was changed to the US military, which yielded the Heavyarms we know and love. In his mecha design artbook, Kunio Okawara admits that he was still in a G Gundam mindset at the time (especially with Clowny-Arms) and had to get away from that before he could work in earnest.
  • The character design notes at the end of Episode Zero reveal that Father Maxwell was originally conceived as much younger before he was changed to an elderly man. In contrast, Sister Helen was originally designed to be older but was changed to a young woman.
  • Meilan's original character was designed with a more "stereotypical Chinese girl" look with Odango Hair before it was changed to look more tomboyish.
  • A few character tidbits:
    • At various points in the production, Wufei was envisioned as Ethiopian rather than Chinese, and was actually a Newtype (with the power to sense evil); the latter one was nixed late enough in production that a few rare pieces of merchandise like pencilboards actually still list him as a Newtype. Additionally, it seems Wataru Takagi was originally cast to play Wufei before being replaced by Ryuzou Ishino; Takagi would turn up as the hero of next year's Gundam.
    • Toshihiko Seki, Duo's voice actor in Japanese, actually auditioned for Zechs. Hilarious in Hindsight when he later voiced another Char Clone in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.
    • Everyone knows that Zechs is a Char Clone, but few know that Noin was originally envisioned as a Garma Clone. The only vestige of this in the final anime is the design of the Taurus, which was always intended to be her personal mobile suit, and was designed with the keywords "sleek" and "spiky" in mind.
    • Lady Une was originally conceived as a naive country girl who fell in love with Treize; additionally, Treize's early character designs made him look a lot like Gihren Zabi.
• Word of God:
  • invoked Director Masashi Ikeda, in an interview with Animerica, said that he didn't intend on a romantic relationship between Heero and Relena because he thought that the political and symbolic relationships between the two were much more important. Yaoi Fangirls love to cite this interview as proof that Heero's gay, Quote Mining it (accidentally or intentionally) to remove the other things Ikeda said. Like the fact that he didn't intend on any romance (straight, gay, or whatever), or him saying that the lack of romance is because of his own inability to write "boy-girl romance", or him saying that that doesn't mean Heero and Relena will never ever become a couple (he even admitted he could see it happening somewhere down the line, and for better or worse, it canonically did in Frozen Teardrop, which ends in Heero and Relena's marriage).
  • Naoko Matsui explained her involvement in Wing in an interview for the Series Bible books: After Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ^note where Matsui played Roux Louka wrapped, the staff asked her "Say, if Gundam is still going in ten years, would you be willing to come back?" Matsui replied "Sure, why not?" and the rest is history.

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