Trivia / Power Rangers Megaforce

• California Doubling: Set in the Southern California city of Harwood, but filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Orion's actor, Cameron Jebo, originally tried out for the part of Troy.
  • Emma's actress Christina Masterson auditioned for the role of Gia, while Gia's actress Ciara Hanna auditioned for the role of Emma. Ciara had also apparently been the top choice for Emily in Samurai, but turned it down.
• Channel Hop:
  • The extended "Legendary Battle" premiered on Nicktoons days after the regular version aired on Nickelodeon.
  • A couple in the UK:
    • On digital satellite, Nickelodeon chose to have Megaforce premiere on Nicktoons, rather than the main Nickelodeon channel.
    • Starting with Super Megaforce, the show premiered on the channel Pop. Its sister channel Kix (now named Pop Max) had previously aired older seasons of Power Rangers.
• Creator Backlash: Cameron Jebo (Silver Ranger Orion) has stated some of his negative feelings towards the season on Twitter - namely, he points out how Orion is barely there, and the show's writing issues. Ciara Hanna has also expressed similar feelings towards the season's writing.
  • Once their contracts to Saban expired, the rest of the cast were free to openly express their own criticisms of the show. The biggest one being that they practically begged to do more than fight scenes but were shot down every time.
• Creator's Apathy:
  • Ciara Hanna (Yellow Ranger Gia) and Cameron Jebo revealed in their No Pink Spandex interview that this was a pervading thought from the producers. Whenever an actor or writer brought up something they felt didn't make sense, they would be told "Who cares? The audience is five years old."
  • Ciara Hanna also has stated how lacking her season was and was actually glad that Dino Charge seems to be doing good. As evident by her return in Dimensions in Danger, it's likely she's at least okay with playing a ranger, it's just she doesn't have fond memories of the season she debuted in.
  • This interview with Ciara and Cameron cuts pretty deep into their feelings on the season. Even they were immensely disappointed with the Legendary War, with Cameron saying "it does not deserve to belong on a Power Rangers boxset".
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • According to a podcast interview with Ciara Hanna (Gia's actress), the Filler episode The Perfect Storm, where Tensou was wandering around the city was "Tzachor's Baby" and had the most effort put into it, a contrast to the Creator's Apathy that otherwise was usually taken in regards to the show. This is especially odd when you consider that Tzachor favored the Shot-for-Shot Remake approach, yet outside of the fight footage, the entire episode was completely original.
  • Ciara Hanna’s favourite episode was “United We Stand”.
• Creator's Pest: In a variant, the reason the second season removes the pirate motif from the Sentai is down to Haim Saban’s personal disdain for pirates leading to him personally insisting that they never be portrayed as good guys in his shows.
• Dawson Casting: Not a single actor whose age is known were teenagers during their tenure; Ciara Hanna (Gia) and John Loudermilk (Noah) were 21, Andrew Gray (Troy) 25, and Christina Masterson (Emma) 23. Azim Rizk (Jake) was also 23, but he's the only one who looks like he could pass for a teenager.
• Development Gag: Mr. Burley is named after Lee Burley, aka DarkBlaze, a longtime fan and member of the show's "Power Force" (a group of fans who functioned at the time as combination consultants/street team.) Confirmed by him on Twitter during the premiere.
• Executive Meddling: A large amount of the problems this show faced can ultimately be traced back to this - the writers recognized that Goseiger, the first show to be adapted, was largely considered a dull show, and wanted to get to the elements in the much more desirable Gokaiger. However, Saban's contract with Toei strictly forbade them from outright skipping Goseiger (which became extremely ironic given what happened in the next series)^note while the contract didn't require them to use all the footage, it did require them to use some, so Saban would've had to have adapted the Goseiger Megazord footage or the suit footage at the bare minimum if they had wanted to adapt Gokaiger; since pulling a Thunderzords with the Samurai rangers and switching over to the Goseiger mechs in Super Samurai wasn't an option due to Shinkenger having a Green ranger but Goseiger having a Black Ranger, they had no choice but to use the Goseiger fight scenes and mech footage in the first half, and producer Jonathan Tzachor forbade the writers from expanding upon the characters, and outright rejected many of the ideas listed below in What Could Have Been^note as shown in Wild Force, where he had direct control, Tzachor seems to favor the idea of shot-for-shot remakes as opposed to pragmatic adaptations; while this idea works fine when adapting a sci-fi Sentai like Timeranger, Goseiger, a fantasy-themed Sentai, wouldn't be as easy to pull this off with, and while Gokaiger was more tech-heavy, that series was heavily rooted in Sentai mythology, which wouldn't have been a problem if it wasn't for the fact that it featured transformations/tributes to 16 Sentai series that had never been adapted (counting Dairanger on the grounds that the core 5 were never adapted) into Power Rangers. The decision to adapt Gokaiger in the second half as opposed to stretching Goseiger out over 2 years (like what happened in Samurai, and what would happen in Dino Charge and Ninja Steel) and adapting Gokaiger separately was made so that Saban could catch up with Sentai^note had it not been for Nickelodeon requiring them to limit each season to 20 episodes, or had Saban taken Rangers to another network, Saban would only have been 2 years behind at most, and it's possible that the adaptation of Gokaiger would have aired at the same time as Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger aired in Japan; however, due to the aforementioned rule, Megaforce began airing right before Kyoryuger, which was adapted into Dino Charge, began airing, meaning that Power Rangers was 3 sentai behind by the time Super Megaforce aired it's last episode; had it not been for Kyoryuger being seen as more marketable than Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters and Saban opting to skip the latter for the former, Saban would've possibly wound up being even further behind. Of course, this was somewhat problematic - aside from the fact that not all of the Goseiger plot threads that had been adapted into Megaforce had been resolved (hence the reason why midway through Super Megaforce, they go back to using Goseiger footage to resolve the plot revolving Robo Knight and Vrak, despite the fact that the season had pretty much abandoned using Goseiger footage in favor of Gokaiger footage at that point), tone-wise, Goseiger and Gokaiger were two vastly different series, the core 5 didn't use the same colors, resulting in one of the rangers (Jake) changing color (going from a black ranger in Megaforce to a green ranger in Super Megaforce) when the footage changed^note ironically, there was a green ranger in Goseiger, but due to the fact that he was a Posthumous Character in that series, he was not adapted in Megaforce, and the apparent need to burn up as much sentai footage as possible^note combined, Goseiger and Gokaiger had 101 episodes, 2 30-minute movies, and 3 crossovers (the Goseiger VS Shinkenger crossover, Goseiger VS Gokaiger, and Gokaiger VS Gavan) worth of footage that could've been adapted - if Saban had given the 50 episodes of Goseiger, and the 51 episodes of Gokaiger the treatment they gave Samurai, Megaforce would've ended in 2016, so some episodes had to be dropped regardless. Of the two, Gokaiger was seemingly made to be as easy to adapt as possible, due to many of the tribute episodes being for seasons that were adapted into Power Rangers seasons, and many of the mech configurations the Gokaigers obtained from said tribute episodes were the ones that got the most use, whereas ones from tribute episodes to unadapted series like Choujuu Sentai Liveman or Hikari Sentai Maskman weren't present in adapted series tributes, and as for the few unadapted series that were featured outside of their tribute episodes (i.e., Choujin Sentai Jetman, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger), they had very minimal screentime, not to mention that there were more transformations into teams that had corresponding Rangers teams; the majority of Goseiger, which was made when no future adaptations had been announced due to Saban not being able to immediately buy the franchise back from Disney right away after RPM, on the other hand, wasn't, not only having more of it's episodes themed in Japanese culture (i.e., having an entire plot focused on trains, which aren't as big in the US as they are in Japan or Europe) on top of having a theme (angels) that, had it been directly adapted, would've caused an outrage with moral guardians.
• Fandom Nod: The main five dressing as Ranger-civilians at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014.
• God Never Said That: Does Bigs have a power-up called "Ultra Scmultra" [sic]? No, it was actually an error made by FANDOM. In reality, that was actually an insult Bigs made, and the misspelling came from a Morphin Legacy video title.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The series marks the first appearance of the Gosei Sentai Dairanger, Hikari Sentai Maskman, Choushinsei Flashman, Dengeki Sentai Changeman and Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman suits; more precisely: the core Dairanger team outside of the White Ranger, Yellow Mask, Blue Mask, Green Flash, Pink Flash, Five Yellow and the entire Changeman team. Averted in countries such as Brazil and France where some of those shows aired previously.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The series is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Power Rangers franchise. Thus, there are several references to all seasons, such as "It's Morphin' Time!" and Samurai's "Go Go Samurai" as "Go Go Megaforce".
  • Speaking of Samurai, the season's theme is similar to the Samurai theme. But proven different with a scene from "Who's Crying Now" when Troy activates the Ultra Gosei Great Megazord's Victory Charge, part of the theme is playing in the background and is similar to In Space's theme.
• Orphaned Reference: In the first episode, Gosei tells Troy that he is fit to be a Ranger due to having "endured hardship", but never explains what those hardships were. This is because Troy was originally supposed to be a New Transfer Student with a father away in the military, hence his somewhat aloof behaviour early in the series, but it and all direct references were deleted, making Gosei's line nonsensical.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In Italian, Gia is voiced by Giuliana Atepi in Megaforce and by Benedetta Ponticelli in Super Megaforce.
  • Done also with the two tie-in video games, with none of the actors returning, instead played by actors based out of Los Angeles, many of them franchise veterans and voicing multiple roles.
• Role Reprise:
  • "Samurai Surprise" had Alex Hartman and Rene Naufahu return as Jayden, the Red Samurai Ranger, and Mentor Ji respectively.
  • "Spirit of the Tiger" saw the return of Jason Smith as Casey Rhodes, the Red Jungle Fury Ranger. He also wrote several episodes of Super Megaforce.
  • Eleven previous Ranger actors will return to the series during the season finale of Super Megaforce, taking on their respective Ranger character and color. They are:
    • Brittany Anne Pirtle as Emily the Yellow Samurai Ranger
    • Hector David, Jr. as Mike the Green Samurai Ranger
    • Jason Faunt as Wesley Collins the Red Time Force Ranger
    • Alison MacInnis as Dana Mitchell the Pink Lightspeed Ranger
    • Sean Cw Johnson as Carter Grayson the Red Lightspeed Ranger
    • Reggie Rolle as Damon Henderson the Green Galaxy Ranger
    • Danny Slavin as Leo Corbett the Red Galaxy Ranger
    • Melody Perkins as Karone the second Pink Galaxy Ranger
    • Patricia Ja Lee as Cassie Chan the Pink Space Ranger
    • Selwyn Ward as T.J. Johnson the Blue Space Ranger
    • And finally, Jason David Frank as Tommy Oliver in both his Mighty Morphin Green Ranger and White Ranger incarnations
  • The Super Megaforce 3DS game saw Johnny Yong Bosch return to playing Adam Park, the 2nd Mighty Morphin Black Ranger.
• Schedule Slip: The tenth episode was scheduled to air on May 18th of 2013, but was pushed back to an unknown date for equally unknown reasons. It wasn't until mid-August that a new airdate of September 7th was announced.
• Troubled Production: The series was hit with major problems with almost everything but the actual filming.
  • After Power Rangers was canceled by Disney and bought back by Saban Brands, the show Channel Hopped over to Nickelodeon... who then slapped the show with a "20 episodes per season" limit that split each adaptation in half (Rangers is one of the few shows to exceed the typical 22-episode limits of American television, often having 32 to 40 episodes per season, which is still less than Super Sentai's typical 50), and a massive summer hiatus. This didn't affect Power Rangers Samurai too badly, but it created a cascade of problems that piled up and broke the back of Megaforce.
  • Power Rangers found itself slipping further and further behind the Sentai source material. Furthermore, the next seasons in line to be adapted were Tensou Sentai Goseiger, a rather mediocre season, and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, a 35th anniversary milestone celebration. Although Gokaiger's 35th anniversary would dovetail nicely with the 20th anniversary of Power Rangers, Saban was apparently not allowed to simply skip Goseiger and go straight to Gokaiger. In an attempt to square the circle and catch up to Sentai, Saban decided to fold together the two series, starting with Goseiger for Megaforce and moving to Gokaiger for the second half of the season, Super Megaforce to line up the respective anniversaries.
  • This created new problems, not helped by issues hitting the show hard. Taking 100 episodes of two different stories and condensing them down into a single 40 episode story arc resulted in massive pacing problems. Additionally, the two series varied widely in terms of tone and characterization, with Goseiger being more light and fun and Gokagier being a little more dark and complex. Combining stock footage from both created wildly inconsistent characterization, with characters bouncing back and forth from calm and stoic to hyper and energetic and vice versa (the Pink Ranger got the worst of this). Additionally, Gokaiger had a gimmick of being able to morph into past Rangers and using their powers. Super Megaforce kept this, along with several ranger teams that never actually made it to North America who simply appeared with no explanation outside of being "new powers" On top of all this, the anniversary aspect left the door open to cameos and appearances from past Rangers (as happened in Gokaiger). Of the hundred or so actors who played Rangers in the past 20 seasons, they brought back roughly 10, with actor after actor announcing they weren't returning either because they simply weren't asked or they declined the (apparently really bad) offer (Austin St. John said at a panel in 2022 after being asked that, not only was he serving as an army medic in Iraq at the time so he couldn't take part or else he'd be considered AWOL and be arrested for it, but the pay was only around $2,000 or so, which he felt wasn't worth it, making an earlier comment of his about the pay not even being worth the price of the plane ticket make more sense), some like Valerie Vernon would have liked to come back had the invitations not been sent out so late, and some of those that did return didn't even have speaking parts to show for it (it should be mentioned that these appearances were no small feat, as the show now films in New Zealand). Plus, some actors who did accept got turned down shortly thereafter for no explained reason. An anniversary season with an interesting theme and incredible Stock footage built right in has sadly turned into a massive case of What Could Have Been.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page
• Written By Former Cast Member: Jason Smith, the Red Jungle Fury Ranger, wrote a few Super Megaforce episodes (although not his own tribute episode, where he was temporary a cast member again).

---