Trivia / Super Hero Taisen GP: Kamen Rider #3

• Box Office Bomb: Of a sort. Super Hero Taisen GP debuted at #6 at the Japanese box office, making it the lowest-ranked entry in the Super Hero Taisen franchise. To put it next to its predecessors, Super Hero Taisen debuted at #1 while Super Hero Taisen Z and Kamen Rider Taisen both managed #3 despite major stiff competition with Disney juggernauts Iron Man 3 (opened at #2) and Frozen (2013) (#1) respectively. Comparatively, Super Hero Taisen GP's main competitior was the Live-Action Adaptation of Assassination Classroom (debuted at #1), a series that, while fairly popular and loved, is but David next to Disney's Goliath that are the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Frozen. (And the trend of Disney beating Super Hero Taisen still continues regardless, with the lower-key release Into the Woods managing to slip in between Assassination Classroom and Super Hero Taisen GP at #4.)
• Franchise Killer: The combination of the poor box office returns and increasingly negative fan response led to this being the last of the regular Super Hero Taisen films.
• Promoted Fanboy: Kamen Rider 3's actor Mitsuhiro Oikawa grew up being a fan of Kamen Rider. He finally got to live his dream after he got the role to play Kyoichiro Kuroi and sing the movie's theme song.
• Role Reprise: In addition to the contemporary casts of Kamen Rider Drive and Shuriken Sentai Ninninger, there's Yuto and Deneb, Takumi Inui and Kotaro Minami. The four Blade Riders are also all played by their original actors, though only Sakuya Tachibana (Kamen Rider Garren) appears in the flesh.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Tomokazu Seki plays the Great Leader in this film, as well as the Generalissmo of Badan, who was revealed in his original appearance in the ZX film to also be an incarnation of the Great Leader. As such, it seems that the role of the Great Leader has found a permanent, worthy successor after the death of Gorō Naya.
  • It seemes General Black was cast with only one criterion: make him look as little like he did in "Let's Go Kamen Riders" as possible. We're talking forty years younger, facial hair, and a much rounder face, to the point that even with that elaborate costume it'll strain your Willing Suspension of Disbelief very hard to try to think of him as the same guy.
• What Could Have Been
  • There were a couple of ideas for the concept of the 2015 spring film before Kamen Rider 3, both nixed by Shinichiro Shirakura. One was a confrontation between the train-themed heroes of Ressha Sentai ToQger and Kamen Rider Den-O, whom had previously appeared together in Kamen Rider Taisen, to acknowledge the unofficial 40th anniversary^note That is counted by year as opposed to the official anniversaries which are done by series number, a year later. of Super Sentai, another was a gathering of police/detective characters to reflect Kamen Rider Drive.
  • There was a plan for original series character Kazuya Taki to become Kamen Rider 3 before the character of Kyoichiro Kuroi was created.
  • Screenwriter Shoji Yonemura wrote a backstory for Kuroi which established that he had a wife and child who were murdered by Shocker and he was led to believe that Kamen Rider 1 was responsible.
  • References to Gel-Shocker were omitted so as not to confuse the audience, though elements remain in the form of General Black and Cheetahkatatsumuri.
  • Garren was supposed to have a bigger role as one of Drive's allies in the film alongside Zeronos as well as carry over into in the follow up Kamen Rider 4 special but Kousei Amano's schedule was limited. Hence Tachibana only appears briefly early on before vanishing until the final battle.

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