History Trivia / SailorMoon

** A majority of the licensed games based on the anime never left Japan and were never re-released in any form since. Since they were made during the show's prime in Japan in the early-mid 90s.

* NetworkToTheRescue: In 2014, Creator/VIZMedia picked up the license to the series and re-dubbed it with a more faithful localization.

** Creator/DaisukeSakaguchi, in his voice-acting debut, played some one-off roles for the first four seasons. He eventually returned as supporting character Itto Asanuma in ''Crystal''.

** Creator/WakanaYamazaki originally played Janelyn in episode 39 of the first series and returned to play Koan, one of the four Spectre Sisters in ''R'', as well as the younger Nehellenia in ''Sailor Stars''.

* DevelopmentHell: During the few years Disney owned DIC, they were in talks of adapting their shows into live-action movies, which included Sailor Moon. Stanley Tong was attached to direct, with possible choices for the Sailor Scouts being Creator/WynonaRyder and Creator/ElizabethShue, and Creator/GeenaDavis also possibly being tapped for a role, which was rumored to be Queen Beryl. Ultimately, Disney and DIC parted ways, with the only movie made under their ownership being ''Film/InspectorGadget1999''.

* CreatorCouple: In the '90s anime, Creator/SanaeTakagi voiced Ikuko Tsukino and her husband Creator/NaokiTatsuta voiced minor roles in ''[=SuperS=]''.

* OfferVoidInNebraska: While the Viz Media's English dub of the 1990s version ''Sailor Moon'' is available in the United Arab Emirates, ''Sailor Moon'' is not available to the country's citizens or citizens of other Gulf Cooperation Council countries (such as Bahrain), hence they do not feature Arabic subtitles.

** Disney briefly considered creating a live action ''Sailor Moon'' film around 1997 that was apparently going to star Creator/MelissaJoanHart as Sailor Moon and Creator/GeenaDavis as Queen Baryl. It was scrapped early in development.

* StreisandEffect: Despite (or perhaps because of) the 90's [=DiC=]/Cloverway Dub being effectively locked away in obscurity, it has seen a ''major'' resurgence of interest in TheNewTwenties. With more fans becoming more vocal in wanting it re-released. Some have even went the extra mile in preserving the old dub by finishing [=DiC=]'s UnfinishedDub by fandubbing missing episodes from the first season, creating a [=DiC=]-styled ''Stars'' season, and remastering the old dub by themselves.

** ''Sailor Stars'' wasn't released in North America until 2014, 17 years after its Japanese release.

* LateExportForYou: The franchise lacked an official release in Norway until 2020 when all five seasons, and all three TV specials were released (but in Viz Media's English dub, with Norwegian subtitles) to coincide with the Netflix release of ''Anime/SailorMoonEternal''.

* CreatorsPest: Director Creator/KunihikoIkuhara had an infamously lukewarm stance towards Usagi's LoveInterest, Mamoru, which coincidentally coincided with [[DemotedToExtra a downplayed role in the story]], despite heavily tying the character's backstory into the series' first film. Ikuhara later clarified he was simply not a fan of the archetypal hyper-idealized prince-like boyfriend that was so common in shoujo, an opinion that would become directly explored later in ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena''.

** Most of the male child characters are voiced by women, although there are exceptions like Creator/DaisukeSakaguchi voicing Kyusuke Sarashina [[note]] who was initially voiced by the female Kazumi Okushima in episode 81 [[/note]] and Creator/TsutomuKashiwakura still voices Saphir as a child in flashbacks as their voices are high enough to voice kids convincingly.

* DisownedAdaptation: Naoko Takeuchi herself didn't like the end result of the '90s anime much, due to Creator/ToeiAnimation changing several elements of her stories. She actively tried to fight some of the changes for ''Sailor Stars'' herself, but she found she had very little, if any, influence on the anime's production.

** Creator/PatriciaAcevedo, Sailor Moon's voice actress in Latin American Spanish dub, replaced Gloria Rocha as ADR Director from episodes 66 onwards.

** The manga also has this, with no less than three translations. First one came from Creator/{{Tokyopop}}, and it was very liberal with the material. The second translation was one of Kodansha USA's earliest titles, and was more faithful to the original Japanese version, but again, was overly literal. Unusually, the third translation ''also'' came from Kodansha USA, but in the Eternal Editions, which eliminated nearly all the problems of the previous efforts.

** When Creator/NaokoTakeuchi was trying to think of a new series, it was her editor Fumio Osano who suggested the heroines wear sailor suits (he had a thing for them) and thus began ''Manga/CodenameSailorV''. However, they had a fight over the length of the skirts -- Osano wanted longer skirts, but Takeuchi fought for the short length they have today.

** Takeuchi originally only planned the manga to last one year, and the anime was also intended to only be a 46 episode series, ending with the deaths of the main characters at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc. The popularity of the franchise led to the anime getting more series and naturally, Takeuchi being required to keep stretching out her storyline from series to series.
** When Creator/DiCEntertainment licensed ''Sailor Moon'' for a North American release, they decided to jumble up the episode sequence a bit, by airing the original season, then jumping to episodes 60-72 of ''Sailor Moon R'' (Japanese numbering) before heading back to episodes 47-59 as a mini-series called "The Doom Tree Saga". This created problems because "The Doom Tree Saga", despite being filler, ''explained how everyone returned to normal after the end of the first season''. This only lasted one run before the "The Doom Tree Saga" was restored to its rightful position. According to the dub's producer, Janice Sonski, [=DiC=] wanted to save the episodes and run them on a network (such as Fox Kids) to promote the series, but no deal could be reached in time, so the episodes were run when the dub's original syndication run ran out of episodes.

** In the later prints of the manga, Takeuchi added some {{Yonkoma}} at the end of every volume, explaining how she came with some of the ideas that made it into the final version, some of them are about how [[WhatCouldHaveBeen she originally intended things to be drastically different]] until Osano told her to do some changes. For example, the manga was going to be even DarkerAndEdgier than it is, compared to the [[LighterAndSofter anime adaptation]], as she planed to get the Sailor Senshi killed [[KilledOffForReal permanently]] at the end of the first act, including an early and graphic death for Sailor Mercury. Also, Sailor Mercury was going to be an android or a cyborg, something that was later used for Hotaru/Sailor Saturn.
** Takeuchi herself invoked executive meddling when it came to creating a new English dub from Creator/VizMedia. She had to personally approve the new voice cast in order for the project to be given the final greenlight.
** In a clear case of [[TropesAreTools Tropes Are Not Bad]], Toei forced Viz to use their masters for all home video releases starting with [=SuperS=], including the complete season reissues.

** The final season, ''Sailor Stars'' was never licensed in the US before the licensing issues kicked in, so it was never legally available in any format until Viz picked up the franchise. Viz's streams finally reached the season in December 2015, marking the very first time the season has been available legally in English. The same can be said for the ''Sailor Moon R'' movie short, the ''Sailor Moon [=SuperS=]'' movie short, and the ''[=SuperS=]'' TV special (which was comprised of three more shorts). Italy was the only foreign country to get those until Viz and Madman respectively confirmed they were included in their licensing deals.

** In the 90s, Creator/DiCEntertainment licensed ''Sailor Moon'' after a bidding war with Toon Makers who wanted to remake the show entirely. Once they did finally get it, they didn't know what to do with it since they mistakenly assumed they were only distributing it in North America and that an English-language adaptation was already produced. Creator/CarlMacek was hired to write the adaptation but was fired early on due to CreativeDifferences with [=DiC=]'s CEO Andy Heyward. Fred Ladd took his place.

* BreakthroughHit: This series earned Creator/NaokoTakeuchi fame as one of the popular manga-ka in Japan.
* BuryYourArt: Due to the extensive CreatorBacklash and among other issues, the original 90s English Dub of the series was pulled from television and never re-broadcast, and has [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes never seen re-release]] in any form since. Though there is also some speculation that the old dub may be [[ScrewedByTheLawyers drowning in legal issues]] anyway, which if true, isn't helping the dub's odds of a re-release.

** As for the original English dub by [=DiC=]/Cloverway, it has never been re-issued since the early 2000s or released digitally. According to Viz, the original cinetape materials for that dub no longer exist or are in very poor shape.
** On top of the original 90s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Well…the edited versions of these seasons and movies received a near-complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least. There are a total of 17 episodes from the Super S season that were omitted from Pioneer’s edited VHS releases. For those episodes, good luck scouring your VHS tape collection for old Toonami and YTV airings!

* MarthDebutedInSmashBros: In the United States the three movies were released in between ''R'' and ''S''. Thus Neptune and Uranus made their debut in the ''S'' movie for English dub watchers. Their silhouetted cameo appearance in the final episode of ''R'' not withstanding.

** Despite Creator/VizMedia streaming the re-dub on Hulu, they were unable to stream it in Canada until September 18th, 2020 when Bell Media acquired the Canadian streaming rights to the Viz dub and released it on their streaming service CRAVE (under their youth-oriented WOW!WORLD Brand).

** ''Sailor Stars'' (the final season of ''Sailor Moon''). While other countries managed to receive that series (with edits to the Sailor Starlights to cover up the fact that they're men who transform into women), it was never licensed in North America (that was until Creator/VizMedia got it licensed along with the first four seasons) due to legal reasons, nor had it ever aired in France (until Kazé [[note]] who happens to be Viz's European distributor [[/note]] rescue licensed the entire series in France), Hungary (since it is based on the French version), Sweden and Holland (both of the latter that ended at the R season).

** The franchise also lacked an official release in Norway until 2020 when all five seasons, and all three TV specials were released (but in Viz Media's English dub, with Norwegian subtitles) to co-incide with the release of ''Anime/SailorMoonEternal'' in the country's Neflix.

** Loretta Jafelice dubbed the MonsterOfTheWeek 'Four Face', who switched voices depending on which emotion was showing at a time. According to WordOfGod, Jafelice swapped between the four voices on cue perfectly on every take.

** Usagi/Sailor Moon's regular actress Creator/KotonoMitsuishi was replaced by Creator/KaeAraki for the final two episodes of the first season and the first four episodes of ''R''. Mitsuishi returned to voice the character once she recovered from her operation.

** On the Japanese side, Usagi was voiced by Creator/KaeAraki (who would later play Chibi-Usa[[note]]And is best known to video game fans as the voice of [[VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}} Felicia]] in most of her appearances[[/note]]) from #44-50, due to her regular VA, Creator/KotonoMitsuishi, having to leave to get her appendix removed.
** In Sweden the voice actor for Ali is changed for no apparent reason in the last episode he appears. What makes it weirder is that the original voice actor later appears in the series voicing Rubeus. Sailor Mars' voice changed about 58 episodes into the show.

* OvertookTheManga: The Makaiju/Doom Tree arc is a product of this, mainly because they didn't expect either to go beyond a single series.

** In another Viz dub example, normally, Creator/SandyFox voices [[TokenMiniMoe Token Mini Moes]] due to her high pitched, little girl-sounding voice. While it is usually played straight when Chibi-Usa is Chibi-Usa, when she becomes Black Lady near the end of Season 2, Sandy Fox actually lowers her voice (without synthesizers or audio edits) to sound more like a late teen's voice to accommodate her PlotRelevantAgeUp.

** On top of the original 90s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Well…the edited versions of these seasons and movies received a near-complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least. In regards to the edited versions of the last 9 episodes of Super S, good luck scouring your VHS tape collection for old Toonami and YTV airings!

** On top of the original 90s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Well…the edited versions of these seasons and movies received a near-complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least. As for the edited versions of the last 9 episodes of Super S, good luck scouring your VHS tape collection for old Toonami and YTV airings!

** On top of the original 90s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Good luck scouring your VHS collection for old Toonami and YTV airings! The edited versions of these seasons and movies received a complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least.

* BuryYourArt: Due to the extensive CreatorBacklash and among other issues, the original 90s English Dub of the series was pulled from television and never re-broadcast, and has [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes never seen re-release]] in any form since.

** On top of the original 90s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Good luck scouring your VHS collection for old Toonami and YTV airings! The edited versions of these seasons and movies received a complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least. As for [=DVDs=], Blu-rays, and streaming services? Nope, nada, zilch.
*** Pssst…Archive.org may be able to help you if you’re looking for the edited version of Cloverway’s dubbed seasons/movies, ripped directly from the Pioneer VHS tapes themselves. But if you’re looking to watch the edited version in decent quality, you’re sadly out of luck…

** On top of the original 90’s dub not getting re-released (in favor of the Viz dub), there exists ''two'' different versions of the content dubbed over by Cloverway. This includes the Sailor Moon S season, the Sailor Moon Super S season, and the Sailor Moon R/S/Super S movies. One version was edited to include the DIC background music, and the footage was edited to censor out things that were unfit for television airing, such as character’s breasts being nerfed/removed/covered up. This was the version aired on Toonami (in the USA) and YTV (in Canada). The other version was presented in an unedited form…more or less. It matched up the Cloverway dub’s dialogue to the show’s original Japanese musical soundtrack, and featured unedited footage (no censored visuals). Both versions received home media releases, but only the ''unedited'' version received DVD releases, which allows the episodes to be circulated with nice visual quality. As for the ''edited'' version, with the DIC music? Good luck scouring your VHS collection for old Toonami and YTV airings! The edited versions of these seasons and movies received a complete VHS release (from Pioneer), at least. As for DVD’s, Blu-rays, and streaming services? Nope, nada, zilch.

* TheCastShowoff: In the Creator/VizMedia dub of the 54th episode, Cristina Vee actually provided Rei's singing voice for when she sang "Eternal Melody". Not so shocking from the Japanese cast, where any singing was done by the character's voice actress.

* CreatorBacklash: Despite its popularity, some people affiliated with ''Sailor Moon'' grew to resent their time with the franchise for various reasons.

* CreatorBacklash: Despite its popularity, quite a few people affiliated with ''Sailor Moon'' have grown to resent some of the franchise's aspects over the years.
** A minor example, but Creator/MegumiOgata didn't like her character’s ImageSong for ''Sailor Stars'', to the point where she not only didn't perform it, but she went off and wrote and performed her own SuspiciouslySimilarSong.
** Another minor one, but according to Naoko Takeuchi's commentary in art book volume IV, she gave Helios easy to draw clothes because she didn’t have much time to work on him. She apparently thinks that the design is ugly.

* CreatorBacklash:

* CharacterOutlivesActor: Quite a few characters have lost their original voice actors by the time ''Anime/SailorMoonCrystal'' premiered, including Kunzite (he was voiced by Creator/KazuyukiSogabe in the original and Eiji Takemoto in Crystal) and Demande (originally voiced by Creator/KanetoShiozawa in the '90s anime, the character was voiced by Creator/MamoruMiyano in ''Crystal'').

*** The Viz dub averted this by having a man (Creator/NicolasRoye) play Shingo (Sammy), who was originally played by a woman in Japanese (Creator/ChiyokoKawashima) and in the first English dub (Julie Lemieux).

* ReferencedBy: "One Week" by the Music/BarenakedLadies tells us that Sailor Moon has the "boom anime babes that make me think the wrong thing".