History Trivia / IronChef

* MilestoneCelebration: The 2000th Dish Battle. Two teams of Iron Chefs compete in a French vs Chinese battle.
* MissingEpisode: Due to a combination of Food Network not licensing all the episodes and no official DVD or archive of the episodes, many episodes are considered missing, including, tragically enough, a few of the specials. There is a website dedicated to finding as many of the missing episodes as possible from old VCR recordings, but per the KeepCirculatingTheTapes rules, it can't be linked.
* NoExportForYou: Most Nakamura-era and Ishinabe-era battles.

** Iron Chef Ishinabe, who served as Iron Chef French for the first season before leaving, to be repleaced by Sakai. [[note]]Though the TitleSequence was never updated to account for new Iron Chefs so Ishinabe's portrait as Iron Chef French remains visible right up to the end.[[/note]]

** In ICA, Wolfgang Puck -- featured only in the pilot "Battle of the Masters" episodes, but had to decline further apearances and was replaced with Morimoto for the show proper.

* ThePeteBest: Iron Chef Ishinabe. [[note]]Though the TitleSequence was never updated to account for new Iron Chefs so Ishinabe's portrait as Iron Chef French remains visible right up to the end.[[/note]]
** And for American audiences, Nakamura.
** In ICA, Wolfgang Puck.

* BadExportForYou: The UK version used a confusing 4-vs.-1, two-round, multi-day format[[note]]From from Monday to Thursday, each Iron Chef took a turn facing off against four challengers. Two challengers cooked starters while the other two cooked mains and the Iron Chef of the day cooked two entries for each course. The best-scoring challenger from each day would come back on Friday to face off against the best-scoring Iron Chef of the week in another 4-vs.-1 contest to see which of the five will come out on top[[/note]]. Someone described it as '[=MasterChef=] with the Iron Chef label slapped on'.

* BadExportForYou: The UK version used a confusing 4 vs 1 two-round format.
** Someone described it as '[=MasterChef=] with the Iron Chef label slapped on'.

* FanNickname: Bimbo du Jour (for the younger female guests), The East German Judge (Hosoki or Kishi - whoever's in the fourth seat that day and Jeffery Steingarten in that role in ICA)
** Chairman Mark is also one, as ICA generally refers to him as just [[NoNameGiven the Chairman]], and the fanbase needs a way to differentiate between the two Chairmen.
** A bit of an in-universe example, but some of the Iron Chefs have monikers of their own: Sakai is known as "Fish Sakai" or the "Delacroix of French cuisine", Kobe's the "Prince of Pasta", and Chen is the "Szechuan Sage".

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: In the 1996 scallop battle between Iron Chef Sakai and Senji Osada, "vacuum cooking" is presented as a revolutionary cooking technique that few chefs are familiar with. Since then, sous vide cooking is so commonplace that machines can be found in the kitchens of many home cooks.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
** The reason the boycott subplot was written in 'Battle Piglet' was because Kaga (the actor) was also in a stage production at the time, and there was a scheduling conflict with taping of the battle and one rehearsal that could not be resolved.
** And, of course, Michiba's hospitalization.
** In ICA, Chairman Mark was missing from several episodes in the most recent season, only showing up in pre-taped video to announce the theme ingredient. In each of the episodes they gave a different excuse. In reality, the actor playing him was on ''Series/DancingWithTheStars'' at the time.

* RetroactiveRecognition: For a lot of non-Japanese--and even Japanese!--viewers of reruns and the like, the appearance as judges of then-Lower House Member Yukio Hatoyama and his wife in 1998's Shanghai Cabbage battle can be quite surprising, as Hatoyama ended up Prime Minister for a short but highly consequential time in 2009-10.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: In the 1996 scallop battle between Iron Chef Sakai and Senji Osada, "vacuum cooking" is presented as a revolutionary cooking technique that few chefs are familiar with. Since then, sous vide cooking is so commonplace that they can be found in the kitchens of many home cooks.

* ThePeteBest: Iron Chef Ishinabe.