In Attack on Titan, when Ymir inquires "What's with the giant monkey?", asking if Reiner and Bertholdt are familiar with the Beast Titan, Eren's response implies he is entirely unfamiliar with the word "monkey", which makes sense as Paradisians post-memory wipe should have no knowledge of wildlife from outside the Walls. By contrast, Eren's response in the English dub implies he does know what a monkey is.
Earlier Assassination Classroom scanlations had one related to Nagisa's family. Nagisa says that his mom became highly controlling and overbearing after his father left them. In reality Nagisa's father left them because of the highly controlling and overbearing nature of his wife. This explains why Nagisa is still in friendly terms with his dad as shown on his first school day.
Inverted in Episode 3 of Asteroid in Love. When Misa sets up a shrine for Mira's banded stone, she says "Still, an asteroid, huh? Mira's set a big dream for herself." This indicates Misa never knew Mira takes asteroid discovery as the latter's Goal in Life. However, the same chapter also establishes that Misa knows well about the past between Mira and Ao, which is why the asteroid thing exists in the first place. Funimation's dub changes that line to "[Mira] still wants an asteroid", meaning Misa knows it all along, thus fixing the hole.
In the English dub of Bakugan New Vestroia, Ingram is changed to a girl for the first half, despite clearly looking like a boy. That's not much of a problem until she evolves to Master Ingram and gets a gender change out of nowhere.
This crops up a few times in Keith Giffen's adaptation of the Battle Royale manga, due to his refusal to even attempt to keep his script anywhere near the translation.
In Giffen's version, the Program is a reality TV show, based on the logic that if you're going to do something like make kids kill each other you might as well make money off it. A number of times it's alluded to that multiple cameras are on most if not all of the kids around the clock no matter where they are. This breaks the climax of the story, when Kawada fakes killing Noriko and Shuya by staging it in a heavily forested area so that they can't be seen by satellite imaging. You have to do some mental gymnastics to justify the lack of normal cameras in the area.
The concept that the Program is being televised also causes other plot holes. Shinji's first attempt to shut the Program down by hacking into the computer systems is foiled because he doesn't realise the students' collars are wired for sound; in the English translation, this goes from being a foolish oversight on his part to making no sense whatsoever that he didn't think of it.
Giffen also managed to contradict an element that he himself had invented in the first place. When Kiriyama is shot in the head, his brain damage is partially reversed, causing him to feel emotions for the first time since he was a kid. In the English manga, he also regains his ability to see colors, having been completely colorblind up until then. Previously in the English version, Kiriyama made an off-hand reference to the redness of his victims' blood.
Every official translation translates 鷹 (taka) as "hawk", which is a perfectly reasonable translation. The phrase is a heavy motif in the story, and thus, you have the Band of the Hawk, led by Griffith, the White Hawk, and prophecies speaking of the Hawk of Darkness and people having dreams of the Hawk of Light. Thing is, while Miura was okay with the translation, the meaning he was going for was "falcon", as a Shout-Out to Star Wars. This makes it rather incongruous when Griffith founds a nation and names it "Falconia", and an arc focusing on how he got this nation is named "Falcon of the Millennium Empire," both of which actually write out "Falcon" in Gratuitous English as their names. (Maybe Griffith just thought "Hawkia" sounded a bit dumb?)
In the dub of Berserk (2016), a line is added where Farnese seemingly acknowledges Serpico as her brother. This never happens in the original—they are indeed half-siblings, but this is something Farnese isn't supposed to know. One might assume this simply means she does know in the dub's continuity, except that not only would their backstory be shown in detail in the second season (which establishes that Farnese doesn't know), but a lot of Farnese and Serpico's relationship is tied in the idea that she considers him to be nothing more than a commoner, and her disdain for him is on full display in the dub, which makes very little sense otherwise.
At the end of the Rescue arc, as the three traitor captains escaped to Hueco Mundo, Gin Ichimaru originally apologised to Rangiku Matsumoto for an unspecified reason. In the dub, this was changed into him saying 'maybe next time'. The apology turns out to be very important to Gin's character motivations in a later arc.
Before fighting Yumichika, Hisagi tells him "You'll die either way." A few episodes later, he has apparently defeated Yumichika, and when Yumichika insists on resuming the battle, Hisagi tells him he's beaten, and shows no desire to finish him off.
Yuu and Touko, the main couple, are initially on a Last-Name Basis; Yuu calls Touko "Nanami-sempai," while Touko calls Yuu "Koito-san" (or "Yuu" if she's in a playful/flirty mood). Early on in the series, Touko asks for permission to call Yuu by her first name, and Yuu nonchalantly says yes, resulting in Sayaka getting jealous when she notices Touko using Yuu's first name at a student council meeting. The dub has all the characters on a First-Name Basis with each other, except for those whose first names aren't used in the show (Maki, Doujima, Ichigaya), so Touko had always called Yuu by her first name, even around Sayaka.
Early on, Yuu overhears a conversation between two teachers about Touko's candidacy for Student Council President, and one of them says that "she" would likely be happy, strongly implying Touko's deceased sister Mio. In the dub, the teacher refers to "her friend," presumably implying Yuu or Sayaka and omitting a bit of Foreshadowing.
In the last chapter, Touko teases Yuu about her calling Touko "sempai" while eating at the cafe with Sayaka, since Yuu had switched to calling Touko by her first name after they started going out, and dropped the "sempai" after Their First Time. In a fan translation of the manga, Yuu never addressed Touko by name during that scene, so Touko's remark doesn't make much sense.
Due to episode shuffling, the Cardcaptors dub of Cardcaptor Sakura had Kero advising Sakura to use Windy, Fly, and Shadow to capture the Watery card because they were her oldest cards. In the actual anime, those were the only cards she had at the time. Even worse, an episode aired earlier showed Sakura as already possessing Watery.note The dub actually dubbed all the episodes in order; this error only appeared in Kids' WB's US broadcast, which was further edited from the already slightly bowdlerised Nelvana version.
The episode with Sakura's Doppelgänger had Sakura use her captured Clow Cards to identify its nature. The card symbolizing what it was seeking was The Flower. This was intended to refer to her brother Toya, whose name meant "peach blossom", but his Dub Name Change to Tori meant Sakura somehow deduced this from a mere screenshot of Tori standing among cherry blossoms.
The dub of Cardfight!! Vanguard completely skips the Legion Mate arc, and the movie Neon Messiah with it, jumping straight to Vanguard G. In addition to characters appearing out of nowhere that the old cast somehow knows (including Ibuki, the Big Bad of the movie who occasionally acts like an antagonistic mentor to new protagonist Chrono), the dub also makes no attempt to explain why random minor fighters can use the Link Joker clan without being corrupted.
An odd one occurs in Case Closed where Funimation inserted a line intended to fix an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole in the original Detective Conan anime by having Harley tip Jimmy off about Vodka and Gin's codenames, which Conan somehow knows in the original Japanese version a few episodes later despite never having a chance to learn this. By adding this line, Harley implies that he knows the truth about Jimmy being Conan. However, this line creates a plot hole in Harley's next appearance where he clearly has no idea that Conan is Jimmy until figuring it out during that case.
In an early arc, Light sends L three messages by having criminals write them down before dying, which add up into a single mockingly cryptic phrase (more or less, "L, did you know shinigami only eat apples?") as a means of taunting him. Later on, L gives Light the three messages and has him try to guess the order the messages were sent before giving an incorrect answer (swapping the second and third messages). He figures Light might be caught off-guard at the order being different from what he expected. The thing is, in Japanese, the sentence mostly makes sense either way, so someone latching onto a specific order would indeed be suspicious. In English, it's much harder to write a long sentence that can similarly be divided into thirds and swapped around while staying grammatically correct. Hence, the initial three messages in the official translation of the manga are "L Do You Know" "Gods of Death" "Love Apples", and there's an order that makes obvious sense there, making L's claim that the message was "L, do you know love apples? Gods of death" something that would surprise anybody.
Later on in the same conversation, L produces a fourth note (which is fake), and claims it completes the message: the final version reads as "L, did you know shinigami that only eat apples have red hands?" In the original, L's stated order was a bit of a sentence fragment, so Light latching onto the idea that there had to be three messages would indeed be somewhat suspicious. But in the English version, "L do you know love apples? Gods of death have red hands" is still a grammatical nightmare. While the sentence is meant to sound weird in both versions, in the original, it's because it's a casual claim about mythical monsters, while in the translation, it's because the grammar is bizarre.
In the Italian dub of the anime, Light Yagami mentions Kira before the name and its meaning are actually conceived by online communities.
The handling of the living situation of Matt and TK (divorced parents, Matt lives with their father, TK with their mother) is very inconsistent. At first, the dub claims that the two are "half-brothers". It later changed to them being full brothers whose parents were divorced (correct), but went on to add that Matt lived with their mother and TK with their father. Come their return to the real world, the inverse was proven to be true.
In an early episode of the dub, Mimi says that she's starting to miss her little brother. Later on when they get home, she is shown to be an only child.
In the original version, Wizardmon and Tailmon sneak into Vamdemon's hideout to recover the Crest of Light from his coffin, with Wizardmon stashing it in his clothes when Vamdemon returns, realizes what they're doing, and crushes the fake Crest that he was holding in anger. In the dub, Myotismon suggests that the Crest in the coffin is another fake, which is the conclusion Wizardmon comes to when Myotismon produces another Crest, and that he kept the real one on him, rhetorically asking if they thought he was foolish enough to leave the Crest alone to be stolen. Despite the dub suggesting that this is an apparent attempt at a Batman Gambit to catch would-be thieves without putting the real crest in danger, the Crest in the coffin is later proven to be the real one. This might make Myotismon seem more cunning by attempting to trick Wizardmon into thinking that he failed in his plan, but he still crushes the Crest he's holding, and Wizardmon stills pockets the same Crest he just declared a fake.
Another one involving Myotismon is that the dub removed the reason he was attacking women at night and leaving them with a case of anemia was because he was gathering enough energy to fight the DigiDestined, making it look like he was attacking girls for no reason except for the fun of it. Which wouldn't necessarily be out-of-character for him, mind...
The dub also paved the way to break some future Theme Naming, though they couldn't necessarily have seen it coming at the time. Omegamon, the Jogressed form of Taichi and Yamato's partners WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon, was dubbed as "Omnimon" in the second Digimon Adventure film when he appeared. A couple of years later, Alphamon was introduced (as in "the alpha and the omega"), and both he and Omegamon were added to the Royal Knights group. They appeared together in Digimon World Dawn/Dusk, where in reference to the Theme Naming they were always Finishing Each Other's Sentences. Obviously it makes sense with "Alphamon" and "Omegamon", but with "Alphamon" and "Omnimon"... not so much. Later, in Digimon Fusion, Omegamon is partially responsible for enabling Shoutmon to be able to evolve to OmegaShoutmon, who has a clear omega theme going on. The American dub changes Omegamon to Omnimon as usual, and ends up calling Shoutmon's new form OmniShoutmon, which unfortunately renders the omega symbols meaningless.
Adventure has a doozy in Episode 28, where Koushiro/Izzy is trying to open a gateway to another world by finding the right order to place Digimon cards in. Not only does he classify the evolutionary levels wrong (calling them In-Training, Rookie and Champion instead of Rookie, Champion and Ultimate), he completely mixes up the classification (Data, Virus and Vaccine, as represented by respective pictures of Centarumon, Etemon and Leomon – he calls Centarumon a Virus, Etemon a Vaccine and Leomon a Data).
After Gatomon de-Digivolves for the first time into Salamon, Kari laments that they don't allow pets in their apartment building. Despite the fact that Tai and Kari already own a cat, which had been seen several times in the dub already and played a key role in one episode by taking Kari's Digivice.
One instance of this trope also happened due to Bowdlerisation. Towards the end of the Myotismon arc, Sora uses a recording of the mantra "Bakemon, lose your power" to weaken a bunch of Bakemon enough that a planned escape attempt by her and a few other people succeeds. This scene is a Call-Back to an earlier scene where Joe used the same mantra to weaken a King Mook version of Bakemon enough to be able to be defeated. The Dub-Induced Plot Hole comes into play since Joe chanted Buddhist sutras in the original, which might be able to also work via recording if the words themselves hold power even without the speaker's faith behind them.
Several early episodes have the kids refer to their digivices by name before they find out what they're called. Likewise, later on the kids refer to their specific crests several episodes before they find out what they are.
The dub accidentally turned Jou's two brothers, Shin and Shuu, into Joe's one brother, Jim. After the writing staff were replaced, both brothers appeared in the same scene and no reference was made.
The dub's Previously on… segments referred to Arukenimon (originally Archnemon) by name several episodes before her name was used in the actual episodes, also revealing that she was in fact a Digimon and not a human. The heroes also use her name for a bit before they even met her in person when she told them her name.
Digitamamon's restaurant. The original dub makes it very clear that the main DigiDestined are Japanese, and so are unable to pay because Digitamamon wants US dollars and won't accept Japanese yen in payment. However, Michael, a recurring American character, does have dollars and is able to pay. The English dub leaves nationality much more vague and ambiguous, and so has Digitamamon demand 'digidollars' to explain why the kids can't pay - but Michael is still able to pay, without any explanation of how he acquired these digidollars.
Another plothole is created as in Digitamamon's previous appearance in season 1, Joe attempted to pay in Digidollars (which, again, is never explained how he got that currency, or why a resident of the DigiWorld like Digitamamon wouldn't accept his own world's currency) but only real world money was accepted. Suddenly, the policy is flipped with no explanation.
Digmon refers to himself as "The Drill of Power" after Armor Digivolving, even though he uses the DigiEgg of Knowledge. The dub later catches this and attempts an Author's Saving Throw by later having Digmon change his epitaph to "The Drill of Knowledge" and say, "I used to say 'The Drill of Power', but I think this makes me sound smarter!"
When Leomon dies, he tells Juri that maybe his death was his "destiny". This leads Juri to become traumatized (and somewhat obsessed, after the D-Reaper thing) by the word "destiny". In the dub, Leomon's last line is telling Jeri that she has a lion's heart to reassure her. Since most of the later episodes were written by different people, Jeri still mentions multiple times "when Leomon told me about how that was his destiny", even though it also repeatedly flashes back to the scene and replays the "lion's heart" quote unmodified. Unless you assume that took place offscreen (which is a pretty cheap way to introduce a plot point), the whole thing was kinda messy.
The German dub gave Renamon a male voice. Initially, it's not much of a problem, since Digimon have technically no gender. Ruki's comment about Renamon being beautiful can be interpreted as innocent, but it makes it a bit flamboyant. However, since Renamon's Ultimate/Mega Level looks definitely female, Sakuyamon gets a separate voice actress. And later in a dinner scene, when Ruki's mother asks Renamon about the genders of Digimon, Renamon answers that only a few exceptions have something like a gender, and Ruki's mother comments that Renamon appears to be female, despite its obvious male voice.
Midway through the series, the two characters Porlyusica and Grandeeney are revealed to be counterparts to each other from parallel worlds, evidenced by their shared Japanese actors in the anime. However, due to the English dub's policy to avoid reusing actors more than the Japanese version, where Acting for Two between unrelated characters is more common, the dub mistakenly cast two distinctly different actors for each part, which poses a problem when Wendy recognizes their shared voices. From that point on, one of the parts was recast to match the other.
Narrowly avoided in the case of King Faust, originally played by a different actor who recorded dialogue that was included in a DVD trailer for episodes containing his debut. Due to a twist in the next set of episodes revealing Faust to be Makarov's counterpart, however, all of his lines were re-recorded by R. Bruce Elliott at the last minute.
In the Grand Magic Games arc, a female time traveler is introduced in the same scene where Princess Hisui reveals she was forewarned of impending doom by a mysterious adviser from the future. The Japanese language doesn't employ gender-specific pronouns as frequently as other languages, so most official manga translations and anime subtitles could be forgiven for calling Hisui's adviser a "she", if not for the twist that the time traveler Hisui met was not only a different person, but a man. The anime's English dub tries working around this by using the gender-neutral "they", but that in itself only raises the question of why the specific pronoun wasn't used outright other than to preserve the twist.
The official localization of the manga initially calls the demons of the book of Zeref "Aetherious" rather than "Etherious". This caused problems at the end of the arc, where it's revealed that E.N.D., the name for the strongest demon Zeref ever created, contains the initial for "Etherious", which obviously makes no sense if it's spelled with an A.
The English dub of Zeref and Mavis's first conversation seen in the series makes it seem as though they've been mortal enemies for some time when Mavis was alive, if not for as long as they've known each other. However, later chapters and the prequel series Fairy Tail Zero show that any true contention between them only began after Mavis died and became a spirit Zeref could neither see nor hear, because they were good friends right down to Mavis's final moments, and also made love shortly beforehand, which is what caused her death in the first place.
In Viz's translation of Fist of the North Star in the 1990s, Shin's martial art style of Nanto Seiken (South Dipper Holy Fist) was renamed the "Sacred Fist of the Southern Cross". This creates a plot hole when Kenshiro infiltrates the Kingsmen's hideout of Southern Cross. It shouldn't take him that long to deduce the identity of the Kingsmen's leader when he named his own city after his martial art school. This is rectified in the 2021 omnibus rerelease, referring to Shin's martial art as "Nanto Seiken", or "The Holy Fist of the South Star".
In Episode 44 of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Bido recognizes the reincarnated Greed by his voice. In the original Japanese, both Greeds have identical voices, but in the dub, the second Greed has a different voice actor than the first and the two sound almost nothing alike.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has an important line in the finale: in Funimation's subtitles Al proclaims that Ed "hasn't been dead for long" before attempting to bring him back; in the actual Japanese dialogue, Al says that Ed "isn't dead yet", as his soul has not passed through the Gate. Therefore, what Al does to bring Ed back is not human transmutation, but rather the equivalent of Ed's retrieval and binding of Al's soul after they failed to transmute their mother. The difference in phrasing may seem minor, but considering the series has just spent the past 50 episodes establishing that bringing back the dead is not only a very bad idea, but not even possible, it's a pretty important distinction to make. Misinterpretation of this scene has led some viewers to conclude that the final episode contains a Broken Aesop. Oddly enough, the second part of the same line contains what appears to be a plot hole in the subtitle translation, but was fixed in the dub; Al determines that Ed isn't dead yet because "he's still warm", even though it has already been well established that Al is incapable of tactile sensation. In the dub, he says that "there's still some color in his face", which makes more sense. Whether this is an error in Funimation's subtitle translation or an oversight in the original script is unclear.
The English dub of Gigantor has the series take place in the 21st century instead of just after World War 2, probably to explain the giant robot. There are no attempts to explain why everything looks like the 1940s.
The Scandinavian dubs of Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin contain massive plotholes because a lot of the violence was cut (mostly character deaths), as well as numerous plot-important scenes with no violence whatsoever.
In the final episode, Akakabuto dies from being shot by Gohei. Gin's father is seen being completely OK all this time, even watching over now dead Akakabuto. Suddenly, he's dying from massive wounds...
Smith changes his voice AND sex midway through the dub.
Then there's Benizakura, who was introduced as the strongest dog in the world and whose recruitment to the cause was a big deal. His death, a heroic sacrifice in which he ensured the death of one of the Big Bad's strongest underlings, and the fight leading to it were completely cut. However, they left in a bit later where another dog's thoughts briefly turn to Benizakura not being with them any longer, but doesn't go into detail about what happened to him. Such an important warrior just vanishing without a trace was confusing to say the least.
The last episode of Hamtaro to be dubbed ("Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games") and aired onto North American television was ACTUALLY a special from at least two seasons ahead of where the series currently was. The special was dubbed to go along with the 2004 Olympics. However this didn't change the fact that there were a TON of new characters that the Ham-Hams just seemed to "know."
The Spanish translation for the Hayate the Combat Butler manga removes all mentions of White Day (Or of there being a holiday like that) on the White Day arc, making it go from a standard High School plot to a random "let's return the St. Valentine chocolate for no reason" story. It becomes frustrating when you consider the same translator added a long explanation on Teru Teru Bouzu on another manga... where they get a 2-panel appearance for a quick joke. Those are some strange priorities.
Hello! Sandybell: For budget reasons, the Swedish dub had to cut 7 episodes near the end of the show to fit 40 episodes across 10 VHS tapes with 4 episodes each. This lead to a major whiplash for Swedish audiences as tape 10 opens with the characters in situations that weren't even remotely similar to what was going on at the end of tape 9.
The Hellsing manga states that nobody knows where Church Militant Alexander Anderson is from. The English translations of the anime and manga opened a hole by giving him a very obvious Scottish accent (his anime voice actor was from Dundee and only slightly exaggerated his natural brogue), making it sound like those who say this never met anyone who hadn't grown up more than ten miles away from them.
The English dub of the High School D×D anime has Issei routinely calling Rias by her name, instead of Buchou (or "Prez", as in President of the Occult Research Club) as he does in the novels and other adaptations. The problem is that Issei's refusal to use her name is the cornerstone of their character arc heading into the third season.
In Higurashi: When They Cry, the game club members often play Old Geezer. The English dub changes this to Old Maid, presumably because Western audiences are more likely to be familiar with the rules. It is unfortunate, then, that an important part of the climax of the second season is a speech about why it's so metaphorically significant that they play Old Geezer rather than Old Maid. One wonders how the dubbers will deal with that if Higurashi Kai is ever brought over.
The Yorknew arc has a small one in the translation Crunchyroll uses. In the translation, Kurapika tells Pakunoda she "may not speak a single word" about him, while the original phrasing forbade her to give any information in any way. The distinction is important, as she later dies after using her Memory Bomb to deliver the information to the other Troupe members.
The Chimera Ant arc has another minor one from the same translation. Pitou, upon seeing Gon's transformed state, proclaims that his power is now "equal to that of the King", which is significantly more confident and conrete than the original phrasing, "his fangs may reach the king" (which Pitou also used in an earlier occasion), a more general and metaphorical comment about Gon potentially being a threat to Meruem. While not a huge difference in the context of the scene, it inadvertently sparked quite a lot of powerlevel-related arguments.
In the English dub of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Battle Tendency, Wamuu uses the word "dynamite" during his first fight with Joseph, even though he shouldn't have had the chance to learn that word since he just woke up after thousands of years. The manga and Japanese anime have him refer to the stick of dynamite with vaguer terms instead (a "thing" or an "explosive").
In the Viz translation of the manga, Kaguya refers to Shirogane by his last name instead of "President" and is on a First-Name Basis with Fujiwara. Both of these lead plot holes in Volume 6, since Kaguya mentions in Chapter 52 that Kei was the first person she was ever on a First-Name Basis with, and her inability to call Shirogane anything other that "president" in Chapter 60 set the entire re-election arc in motion. The official subs for the first episode of anime had the same issue, but fan outcry resulted in it being changed to be closer to the original script. This is, additional to the fact that Japanese customs denote the level of formality in addressing a peer, the person's title being the most formal form of address, followed by the last name, while the least formal would be the first-name basis. Kaguya never addresses Shirogane by either his first or last name, as it would denote a level of fondness for him that she does not want to either admit or relent.
In the English localization of the first chapter of the manga, the narrator says that Kaguya is "Born to the son of Ganan Shinomiya, leader of the conglomerate." In actuality, Kaguya is Gan'an's daughter, not his granddaughter.
Another one occurs in Volume 9: When Otomo shows up at the sports festival to berate Ishigami, he ends up telling her off by responding "Shut up, stupid." This leads to a follow-up joke where one of Otomo's friends admits that she IS kind of an idiot, and Otomo herself reluctantly agrees on the basis that she failed the advancement exam to get into Shuchi'in's high school. The English translation changes Ishigami's retort to "Go to hell, jerk,"note The phrase in Japanese is "Urusai baka." The most common interpretation of "baka" is "idiot," it can sometimes be translated as "jerk." but retains the follow-up jokes, making it sound like Otomo's friend agrees that she's a jerk, and that Otomo failed her exams because she's a jerk, effectively ruining the whole bit. To make it even worse, the line was a Meaningful Echo of something he had said back in Volume 4 (a line they had properly translated), so that extra meaning is also lost.
Medabots suffered an awful reshuffle of episodes. For the first "season", the company skipped the episodes that it considered uninteresting, only to insert them as the first episodes of "season 2". The problem here is that at the end of season 1 Ikki and Metabee only have a week before the International Robattle Championship, but it only starts 14 episodes after said announcement. The dub could have solved the matter by simply saying that it was delayed, but it didn't.
In the same reshuffling, Rokusho shows up in many of the first episodes of "Season 2", regardless of the fact that he had a dramatic goodbye in "Season 1" to find his reason of living. No one seems to be even a little surprised to see him again, or that he is suddenly wearing his old cape again despite receiving a new one from Karin.
Two different episodes have Ikki battling a member of the Rubberobo Gang under the latter's true identity. The first match ended up being cut while the second has him mention that they'd already battled once.
Another plot hole created by the reshuffle is the upgrade of Spike's Medabot from Cyandog to Bluesdog/Krosserdog. Spike starts out with Cyandog, who is then suddenly replaced with Krosserdog without any explanation, then goes back to being Cyandog, and then gets an episode dedicated to him receiving his upgrade to Krosserdog.
A more straightforward and non-related to episode shuffling case is Metabee's naming. In the first episode, after getting his Medabot, Ikki names him Metabee. Some 50 episodes later, someone comments that the Medabot responsible for a horrible incident was also named Metabee — then Ikki rushes to the store saying that it was Henry, a co-worker in said store, who named Metabee (cue a flashback with altered dialogue).
Medabots Spirits likewise had some hiccups:
A common complaint with international fans is that Henry/Hikaru, a core character from the previous series, doesn't appear at all. While Spirits did randomly drop major characters of the previous show with no explanation, Henry was not a case of it: the previous series had special ending credits for the final episode which, among other things, showed Henry closing up shop and skipping town after his identity as the Phantom Renegade was exposed. Since this was cut from the international dubs of the previous, western fans have no context for Henry's dissapearance.
The episode "The Truth About Charlie" is, in the Japanese script, about Ms. Nae going on a reunion with an old friend, which Ikki mistakes as a prelude to an arranged marriage and gets very upset about. The localizers were concerned, in one actor's words, about the appearances of a "younger girl going with an older guy" and rewrote it into a story about Nae closing up shop to get a "summer job" as a Medabots researcher. The rewrite (which includes multiple scenes of the grade-schooler protagonists talking about being inspired to get jobs because Nae is so driven) just doesn't make a lot of sense and is contradicted in future episodes where Nae just goes back to operating her repair shop fulltime.
The German Dub of Megaman NT Warrior only dubbed 43 episodes out of the 56 the first "season" consists of. While a few of the undubbed episodes are just filler and don't affect the season's plotline one way or the other, others are quite important, like the episode that introduced Tory Froid (Iceman's operator) to the cast, the episode where Lan spends a day with an incognito Princess Pride (who later appears in another episode, leaving viewers to wonder how she knows Lan), or the episode where Rush appeared in the real world for the first time (something that occurs regularly from that point on, leaving viewers to wonder why everyone accepts it as normal).
Kyoji Kashu is given a Dyb Name Change to George despite the series already having George de Sand. The latter was renamed Joraque as a result.
Master Asia's surprised reaction to Schwartz's first Dramatic Unmask in Episode 23 was completed with him saying his name out loud ("Ikaw si... George Kashu...!" note "While you're...! George Kashu...!" Kyoji went through a Dub Name Change to George.), thus spoiling the twist way before The Reveal in both Episodes 40 and 44. In both the English and original Japanese, Master Asia simply gave a startled reaction ("While you're...! It can't be...!").
A minor one occurs at the end of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, when Char's ghost briefly appears before crossing over into the afterlife. In the original Japanese, both Char and Full Frontal were always voiced by Shūichi Ikeda, but in English Frontal was played by Keith Silverstein, not any of the three other men who had portrayed Char in previous Gundam dubs.note Steve Blum in the Compilation Movies, Michael Kopsa in the original series, and Tom Edwards in Zeta. Despite this, Silverstein still played Char's ghost in Unicorn, which made the scene a bit confusing, seeming like it was Full Frontal's ghost, when the Japanese version seems to imply he doesn't have a soul, instead of this being an allusion to Full Frontal being a clone of Char with part of Char's soul stitched into him as the light novel and manga versions of Unicorn explained... but which the anime did not at Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino's insistence. This has since in-part been addressed retroactively by casting Silverstein as Char in the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin movie dubs.
When their Iron Bird starts running out of fuel, Tiger uses his Blizzard attack to try and power it. In the original Japanese, this fails because they need hot air, not cold — forcing Hare to use his Gas Attack. The English dub cut out all instances of the latter move, so Tiger's works without explanation as to how.
In the dub, Rio claims that Sophie has been a ghost for 500 years, when in fact, she was only a ghost for 50 years. Since the series takes place in the 21st century, it's obvious that the flashback to Sophie's life is more likely to be the middle of the 20th century, rather than the 16th century.
Akira of My-HiME is actually a cross dressing female. This fact isn't revealed until much later in the series. Someone didn't tell the German dubbers this, as they left her with a distinctly male voice, which made the reveal a tad complicated.
When Naruto defeats Neji in the English dub, he tells Neji that he could never get the shadow clone jutsu right in order to graduate from the academy. This is a mistake; academy students had to perform the clone jutsu to pass, not the shadow clone jutsu. Besides, the shadow clone jutsu is a jonin-level technique, and when he learned it, Naruto complained about it being a harder version of the jutsu he couldn't master.
A minor one occurs early in the series. The main village Konohagakure (or "Konoha" for short) had its name changed to "The Village Hidden in the Leaves" (or "Hidden Leaf Village", or just "Hidden Leaf" for short), which is a more-or-less direct translation of the name. It works for the most part, except for one thing: The character Konohamaru, grandson of Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi, was explicitly named after the village in honor of it. When explaining this to Naruto in the second episode, it remains unchanged in the dub. This makes it a little confusing for viewers unfamiliar with the original.
There's a more noticeable one in a filler episode special. Sakura says it's celebrating the show's fourth anniversary, which she also says in the dub... but because the dub aired episodes slightly faster (for a long time there were two episodes dubbed a week) it had only been just over three years since it began American broadcast.
Another minor one occurs during the final battle of the Wave Country Arc: Haku has Naruto and Sasuke trapped in the Demonic Ice Mirrors and turns both of them into living pin cushions. Some of the needles sticking out of their bodies were edited out for the TV version, including all the ones in their necks. However, when Sasuke wakes up from his Disney Death, there's still a scene of his pulling a needle out of his neck.
In the German version, nobody is allowed to say "tot". Because of this the viewers never learn that Sasuke's clan was killed, which makes his whole character development and motivation impossible to understand.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The English translation of The End of Evangelion has Misato explain her findings on the Second Impact to Shinji when she transports him to Unit-01, saying how humans were spawned from the progenitor entity Lilith. However, the translation has her incorrectly state that Adam was also born from Lilith, where Adam and Lilith were actually unrelated, having been two separate progenitor entities that happened to land on the same planet. It's still no easier to grasp the concept, though, and this mistranslation is present in both the subbed and dubbed versions of the film.
A minor case in New Game!. When Naru first meets Nene, they hit it off well, and call each other "Nenecchi" and "Narucchi". After Naru learns that Nene mainly got hired due to connections with their boss, she ends the conversation by emphatically calling Nene "Sakura-san," which, while polite, signifies that she doesn't want to be friends with Nene, until she later apologizes and starts using Nene's nickname again at the latter's request. While the English dub has Naru call Nene "Sakura" between that conversation and their reconciliation, it omits the first time Naru switched modes of address.
One of the most infamous edits-by-omission 4Kids made is their decision to cut out the first leg of the Grand Line – Laboon and Little Garden – in order to more quickly reach the point where a cute, highly marketable new crew member (i.e. Chopper) is introduced. This had several ramifications.
4Kids's decision came back to haunt them even before the Alabasta Arc ended. They had to completely rewrite the "Rain Dinners" scene† (partway through the Alabasta Arc, which is the final part of the Baroque Works Over-Arc) after Mr. 3 comes in, because removing Little Garden means Mr. 3 was never introduced, let alone defeated, and thus Sanji never impersonated him while taking a call from Crocodile, thus Crocodile never had any reason to feed Mr. 3 to the banana-gator (except just to show he's a bad guy). This also produced another plot hole, because if Mr. 3 was following the Straw Hats, Crocodile would have been aware of Sanji. This is a huge plot hole and gives Crocodile a bad case of Bond Villain Stupidity. The only reason Crocodile leaves the Straw Hats to die later on is because he thought he had captured the whole crew and he physically cannot be in the same room due to his Devil Fruit Powers.
Luffy refusing to take Miss All-Sunday's Eternal pose to Alabasta becomes a non-issue, because Vivi somehow happens to have one (in all other versions, Sanji steals the eternal pose from Mr. 3 on Little Garden).
Nami contracts her near-fatal disease – the treatment of which ultimately results in Chopper joining the Straw Hats – on Little Garden. The dub tries to explain it away by saying it's a case of "Grand Line Flu" from the fluctuating temperatures, but then Chopper and Kureha mention the bug that bit her on Little Garden.
4Kids's editing during the Arlong Arc also creates some facepalm-worthy plot holes.
Belle Mere's death is cut and instead it's said that she was imprisoned by Arlong. This raises the awkward question of where the hell Arlong imprisoned her when Arlong Park hasn't been built yet.
Partway through the arc, when Usopp is taken to Arlong Park and sees Nami. In the original version of this sequence, Arlong gives Nami a knife to prove her loyalty by stabbing Usopp. She decides to fake it, putting her hand in front of Usopp and stabbing through it, allowing a shocked Usopp to fall into the pool behind him, drenched in her blood. In the 4Kids version, through very cheap copy-pasting of scenes, Nami elaborates an impossibly convenient plan to Usopp while preparing to "stab" him – Usopp had to replace Nami's knife with a rubber knife (that he conveniently had with him, and that conveniently looked exactly the same as Arlong's knife), Nami hits him with it, and the rest of the scene is played largely the same.† Well, aside from the fact that in the 4Kids version, Nami continues to coach Usopp by gently guiding him into the pool behind him; whereas in the original version, though she's acting, Nami harshly tells Usopp (who is in shock from watching Nami stab herself to save him) to go and die. But in the next episode, Nami's hand is just suddenly injured for absolutely no reason.
They cut out the arc's denouement almost in its entirety, skipping straight from Luffy beating Arlong to the crew leaving Cocoyashi Village, leaving no explanation as to why Johnny and Yosaku are suddenly gone or why Nami suddenly has a different tattoo. In the original version, Johnny and Yosaku explain that they have to go back to their jobs as bounty hunters, and Nami – who tries to remove the Arlong tattoo on her shoulder by stabbing it repeatedly with her knife – asks to have the remains of it drawn over to make a pinwheel and tangerine.
In the Buggy Arc of the 4kids dub, Zoro calls Nami by name at a point when he would have no reason to know it, as neither she nor Luffy had told him yet.
In the Alabasta Arc, at the end of Luffy's first fight with Crocodile, the latter impales the former, bursting a hole in his water barrel, and causing Luffy to identify Crocodile's weakness. This entire scene is cut from the dub to Crocodile attacking Luffy otherwise (how or what he did is not explained) and him simply hanging Luffy with his hook... but before the second fight begins, Luffy explains to Crocodile what we did not see happen.
The Straw Hats' knowing the giant whale Laboon turns out to be the primary reason Brook decides to join them; the 4kids dub ended before he had the chance to appear.
Meeting the Elbaf Giants, Dorry and Broggy, on Little Garden provided the motivation for Usopp to finally start improving himself. It's also how he convinced the Gatekeeper Giants of Enies Lobby (Season 5) to turn on the World Government and briefly team up with the Straw Hatsnote The giants were former members of the Elbaf Pirate crew. When they were caught by the Marines, the Marines lied that Dorry and Broggy had been caught too, but if the Giants served as Gatekeepers for 100 years, the Marines would let them all go. Learning via Usopp that Dorry and Broggy were just fine and they'd wasted over half a century of their lives made them instant and very angry allies., that later scene didn't show up in the 4kids dub.
Even the far more faithful FUNimation uncut redub falls prey to this a couple of times.
First and foremost, when FUNimation got the One Piece license, Toei's broadcast contract with Cartoon Network was still in effect, meaning they had to start dubbing right where 4Kids stopped – the beginning of Season 3. The reason this was a problem is because Cartoon Network forced FUNimation to keep to 4Kids's established continuity to avoid confusion. CN either didn't know or didn't care how problematic this could have become later on, although it didn't matter because CN cancelled the show due to ratings not improving quickly enough. FUNimation, to their credit, responded to this by making two complete dubs for Season 3: a TV dub that kept continuity with the 4Kids version, and the uncut dub that appeared on the DVD sets.
In Episode 68, Monkey D. Garp is referred to as an Admiral rather than his correct rank of Vice-Admiral. This becomes a major inconsistency when you learn later that Garp has turned down getting promoted to Admiral several times in the past. However, in every subsequent appearance, FUNimation's dub does refer to Garp by his proper rank.
In Chapter 217 of the manga, Smoker states that Zoro defeated Daz Bones, Baroque Works's "Mr.1" – he specifically says "defeated", which leaves Mr. 1's fate ambiguous for a time. Later on, the cover page of Chapter 361 reveals that he is still alive and he later appears during the last few Arcs before the Time Skip. However, FUNimation's dub of Episode 130 has Smoker say that Mr.1 was outright killed by Zoro.
An unavoidable one given that the contradiction only happened decades afterwards, but the official translation of the manga consistently choose to translate the name of Zoro's hometown of Shimotsuki Village literally as "Frost Moon Village". This causes problems as it's revealed in Wano that the town was founded by members of the Shimotsuki Clan, with Zoro's master in fact being a direct descendent of one of the town's founders. The removal of the name connection causes the entire plotline to make far less sense.
The German dub made Satori and his brothers all female. This became a problem later on when Sanji lost to Kalifa because of his refusal to attack women. Given the brutal way of how he finished of Satori, this makes you wonder if Sanji only had a problem with attacking beautiful women.
Outlaw Star doesn't have these in its uncut dub. In the heavily edited Toonami broadcast, however...
In Episode 7, "Creeping Evil": Near the end of the episode, Gene gets hit in the back by a Pirate's "blaster". Back on board the Outlaw Star, Jim puts his hand on Gene's back and (originally) exclaims "What the hell is this?!" at the sight of blood on his hand. Lots of it. But the Toonami edit digitally removed the blood, turning the "Oh shit! Gene's bleeding to death!" moment into "Oh shit! I have a hand!" Equally inexplicably, Jim clearly says "hell"; future reruns changed it to "heck", but Jim's still freaked out by his palm. There's really no way the folks in charge of the Toonami edit could not have realized how nonsensical the edits worked out short of somehow editing it without actually watching it.
Due to an excessive amount of fanservice and other questionable material, they removed the Hot Springs Episode from the Toonami run (editing it to what Standards and Practices required of them would have resulted in an episode clocking in at under 15 minutes, and a lot of digital paint; suffice to say it wasn't cost effective to even try). The problem is that the episode in question isn't filler; it involves Gene collecting difficult-to-find Caster shells, including some exceptionally rare ones that nobody knows actually still exist. The following episode opens with Gene sorting the shells out and mentioning off-hand how he got them, but the whole thing becomes a Noodle Incident with how they acquired this major Chekhov's Gun for the final episodes.
In Overlord (2012), the English dub of the first season refers to E-Rantel as the capital of the Re-Estize Kingdom, instead of being a large fortress city - still a major territory, but not exactly necessary for the Kingdom's existence. The dubs for later seasons do fix this error, though, just in time for Nazarick's annexation of E-Rantel from the Kingdom.
In the manga adaptation of Persona 4, when the Investigation Team is confronting the killer, Naoto brings up how Adachi had said that Namatame's diary, which contained the names of everyone who'd been thrown into the TV, not just those who'd died, was decisive evidence. Naoto then says, "At the time, the police couldn't have known about the attempted murders... Odd, no? And all those times we didn't see any sign of you for days at a time." In the original game, Naoto's point is that it isn't unusual for people to go missing for a few days, so Adachi shouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that the Investigation Team (except Soji, Yosuke, Chie and Teddie) had been abducted by Namatame if Adachi hadn't known more about the crimes than he was letting on. As such, the remark about Adachi going missing for days doesn't make any sense, since that didn't actually happen.
In the dub of the first episode "Pokémon I Choose You!" Ash interacts with Gary and Professor Oak like strangers, with the former even saying “You must be Ash” when they bump into each other. However, the series would later establish Ash has known the two practically his whole life, and was in fact best friends with Gary until a falling out they had shortly before this episode.
The English dub sometimes has Pokémon using moves they can't legitimately learn. One notorious instance comes from the Koga episode, where Ash tells his Bulbasaur to blow away a Stun Spore unleashed by Aya's Venonat; since the Japanese name for Whirlwind is "Blow Away", the dubbers got confused and had Bulbasaur use Whirlwind.
The end of Season 1 has Ash temporarily release Pidgeot but promises to come back for it once they deliver the GS Ball. Except, in the Japanese version the line "stay here for a while" was not present with it being clear that Pidgeot's release was permanent with Ash's goodbye being more wistful thinking than an outright promise to return. This resulted in many English-speaking fans feeling confused and hurt when Ash didn't return for Pidgeot after the Orange Islands arc. Though 4Kids' rewrite ended up having some belated accuracy to it, as the final episode of Pokémon Journeys: The Series has Ash reunite with Pidgeot and recapture them.
The Latin American dub of Pokémon 2000 runs into this problem partly due to basing itself off of 4kids' English version. In the English dub, a prophecy ends with the phrase "and the world will turn to... ash." The problem is, some Latin American viewers might not know enough English to know that Ash Ketchum's first name means "ceniza", requiring the Latin American voices to explain this to the audience. The Finnish dub, also dubbed from the 4Kids version, does the same thing, but the bigger problem was that the prophecy's ambiguity could not be preserved in the Finnish language; the world will either become ash, or look to Ash for help, and there's no way to construct a sentence that can be read both ways. The dubbers went with "become ash", and just acted as though the second meaning was still there.
The Italian dub refers to all Pokémon with male pronouns. Then some Pokémon are stated to be female. The result is that Ash's Snivy becomes a female when using Attract, and is referred as a male every other time. Same for Iris's Emolga.
Ever wondered why Jessie's Wobbuffet kept popping up and saying its name? Well, Wobbuffet is originally partly based on Japanese comedian Hayashiya Sanpei I, whose catchphrase was "so nansu," meaning roughly "that's how it is." This was reflected in its original name, "Sonans." So every time someone said something, it would pop up and say "That's how it is!" Since they didn't try to translate the pun, Wobbuffet's main joke became a complete non sequitur. Learning their lesson, they did translate its pre-evolution's name correctly (Sonano, whose name means "Is that so?" became Wynaut). This led to an odd scene where the two talk to each other ("Is that so?" "That's how it is!" "Is that so?") and half the pun is preserved, but the other half isn't.
The episode where Ash catches Squirtle contains an obvious one. It's stated that the Squirtle Gang named themselves... Except they can only say "Squirtle." In the Japanese version the humans named their gang.
When Ash returned to Viridian City for his eighth Kanto Badge, it's stated in the English dub that it had been a year since he was there last. In the short accompanying Spell of the Unown, Ash celebrates the first anniversary of him and Pikachu meeting.
As much of the series aired before South Korea eased its restrictions on Japanese imports, a number of overtly Japanese culture-focused episodes were removed from the South Korean dub, several of which included Ash obtaining League Badges and the earliest of which features his Metapod evolving into Butterfree (cut because the character-of-the-day from the episode dresses and acts like a samurai), leaving these unexplained to viewers.
In "Alola, Kanto!", Misty describes herself as an "internationally known beauty." In the Japanese version of the anime, one of Misty's Catch Phrases was to talk about how she was the World's Most Beautiful Woman. The 4Kids dub toned down her haughtiness. TPCi'sTruer to the Text dub, however, decided to stay true to the Japanese script instead of the 4Kids script. Thus the Call-Back is lost by most English-speaking fans. This continues into the following episode, "When Regions Collide!", which has her refer to her Pokémon as her "beauties" and "steadies" in battle, likely confusing some viewers who are unfamiliar with the Japanese version as Misty never addressed her Pokémon as such in the 4Kids dub.
The English dub does not include the omake portions where Professor Oak recites poetry. This thus makes Oak's poetic nature in the anime itself come out of nowhere.
Why are the Pokémon League championships called Pokémon League Conferences? It's thanks to a mistranslation. In Japanese, they're called Pokémon League Tournaments. However, the last word can also be translated as "conference", depending on the context. Given that the event is question is a tournament in which league participants battle each other, it's clear that that's not the intended meaning here. Unfortunately, the dubbers couldn't be bothered to apply some context, so they translated it as Pokémon League Conference, and never bothered correcting it in later seasons.
As early as Hoenn, Japanese interviews have made it clear that Ash is eternally 10 years old. The English dub ignored this for years. Characters refer to years going by but no time passes. Ash's secondvoice actress also has a noticeably deeper voice than his first, giving off the image that Ash hit puberty. Eventually, however, the dub had to mention Ash's age in the first episode of Black and White. Since then, the dub has stopped referring to the timespan of Ash's journey.
A minor one compared to the rest of the page, but worth noting anyway, as it's often overlooked: In "Holiday Hi-Jynx", Ash and co. are taken to the North Pole on the back of a Lapras, and appear to make it there and back in about a day. Yet the next season, they are traveling through the Orange Archipelago on a Lapras, and take the entire season to do so. The sun is shown to rise and set numerous times across the season, so clearly it's not happening in just one day, and the islands are clearly much closer to one another than the North Pole is from Kanto. So why is there a discrepancy? In the original Japanese of "Holiday Hi-Jynx", they don't go to the North Pole, but to "Santa's island" note This is not some Japanese tradition; the writers made it up because apparently even the group responsible for the famously strange first season recognized that reaching the North Pole from the Kanto region on a seagoing creature in just a day was unbelievable instead, which is at an undisclosed distance. It could be as near the Kanto region as necessary for the plot.
Much like in the games, the Sun and Moon series renames the Island Kings and Queens to the more ambiguous Island Kahunas; which wasn't a problem until the series reached the Poni Island arc, which has a major plot point surrounding Hapu trying to be recognized by Tapu-Fini after taking the reins from her grandfather Sofu, who died before the events of the story.
According to Pocket Monsters: The Animation, "Junsar" and "Joy" are surnames. This means that all of Officer Jennys and Nurse Joys share a family name, which makes more sense than all ofthem sharing the same first name. The English-speaking fandom seems to have largely caught on by the Diamond and Pearl era. "Drifloon On the Wind!" (DP028) features a Nurse Joy with two daughters (who resemble her as opposed to their father); they not only have different first names (firmly establishing Joy as a family name) but elaborate full names at that. Then, "Luxray Vision!" (DP059) introduces a young Officer Jenny named Marble. Unlike the young Joys, it's not explicitly said that her full name is "Marble Jenny" (nor is her exact relation to that episode's Officer Jenny clarified beyond Marble being "Jenny Trainee #1"), but most fans assume it is.
In Pokémon Special, it is far more common to give your Pokémon nicknames than in other adaptations. In the first arc of Pokémon Adventures, nicknames were all but ignored. This made a problem in the second arc, as Red's Pikachu, Pika, now with an expanded role, seems to have suddenly gotten one out of nowhere and everyone acted like it always had one. What more, Inconsistent Dub is in full effect, as Red's other Pokémon still aren't called by their nicknames and Yellow keeps switching from using her Pokémon's real names and nicknames. Even Pika.
In the first Johto arc of Pokémon Special, Crys is slapped across the face by her mother after breaking down because she can't capture like she used to. Pokémon Adventures changes this to a firm glare, yet leaves in the shocked expressions on the faces of Crys's Pokemon, Crys's shaking, and her holding her face a few panels later. It does not attempt to explain why she is holding her cheek after being glared at.
Great Balls have a tiny "S" stamped on them, while Ultra Balls have a large yellow "H". This is because the items are called "Super" and "Hyper" respectively in the original Japanese games.
The day the Sinnoh Trio start their journey together is September 28th, the day the Diamond and Pearl games were released in Japan. The Viz translators caught on the reference and changed the date to April 22nd, the day the games were released in America. Unfortunately, winter is approaching Sinnoh, necessitating the change into the Platinum outfits. Apparently in Sinnoh, it starts snowing in May. Hokkaido, which is what Sinnoh is based off of, does have absurdly long winters, but May is still pushing it.
The titular girls' Dub Name Change to their original counterparts' names in the English version. Unlike the source material, the anime version of the girls have secret identities and their original names were just their superhero names. This made the scenes of them having to sneak off class to fight monsters rather pointless.
The dub versions of both episodes featuring Miyako/Bubbles' boyfriend Takaaki. The original Japanese version established that Takaaki was in the hospital for 7 years because of a critical heart condition, but the English dub (which also changes his name to Cody) changes it so that he was sent to the hospital recently because of a broken ankle. The change is contradicted in the dubbed version of the character's second appearance, which ignores the broken ankle change to follow the heart condition established in the Japanese version.
Futari wa Pretty Cure had a very well done dub that unfortunately still ran into plotholes that could have gotten worse had the second series, Max Heart been dubbed. The first is turning Akane's Takoyaki stand into Alex's Donut Hole stand in the dub, this was not problem until Max Heart showed Akane asking the girls to buy Octopus for the Takoyaki which are made ouf of octupus unlike Donuts.
The second one is a bit more serious, a World War 2 flashback was changed into being about surviving an earthquake. This was okay... until Otona Precure showed the bombings explicitly and it was most certainly not an earthquake.
The Italian dub of Pretty Cure All Stars DX 2 was released after HeartCatch Pretty Cure! was finished being aired, thus they tossed in a throwaway line stating that Itsuki and Yuri (whom neither was fully introduced when DX 2 was released in Japan) couldn't show up due to other commitments (Itsuki had a karate tournament and Yuri was sick). Except, well... they have a cameo appearance.
Somehow, the English Dub of Doki Doki! PreCure by Saban Brands managed to turn this into its bread-and-butter, with multiple episodes being spliced and removed with little care on how it might affect the grand plotline of the season. While you can somewhat follow along with the first half, the second half starts to become nigh-incomprehensible, having two whole arcs removed with the characters referencing events that never happened in the dub because of it. It gets worse in the final episodes, where the Cures uses a new set of abilities that makes it come across as New Powers as the Plot Demands when they were properly introduced in the original Japanese version.
The English translation of Ranma ½ has the character Pantyhose Taro. The character's whole driving arc is how much he hates his name and wants it changed, but by the laws of his village, only Happosai, the Dirty Old Manwho named him that in the first place, can change it. And Happosai refuses. At this point, most English readers/viewers start thinking "well, why doesn't he just not use his first name?" This is because, in the original Japanese, the "Pantyhose" part of his name is a prefix, not a seperate word in its own right, but that can't be accurately conveyed in the language translation. So in the original Japanese, trying to leave it out would be like having the name "Bob" but asking people to call him "ob".
In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Nanami spends one episode proudly wearing a cowbell, thinking it's some hip new kind of jewelry because the word "cowbell" in Japanese is simply the English word (kaoberu). The English dub just keeps it that way, and since everyone's speaking English it seems pretty odd that Nanami has to have explained to her "It's a cowbell, as in a bell a cow wears!"
In the second Ronin Warriors series, there's a scene where one of the main cast wins the lottery. Events transpire such that this member has to spend all of the lottery money buying implements for the cast, and bailing people out of jail. The problem comes in the dub, where it's implied that the person won millions of dollars, and went broke buying a few plane tickets. In the captioning, the situation becomes more clear, as the person only won 3000 or so dollars.
Episode 7 of Rosario + Vampire has Mizore attacking the gym teacher, Kotsubo, which causes her to be suspended. When the Newspaper Club asks how they know it was her, Kagome-sensei explains that Mizore herself said she did it. The dub changes this to Kotsubo saying she did it, which leads the audience to wonder how they know he's not lying.
In the Spanish dub, the translators made some really random changes to the names of characters and places. This includes changing the location of the whole Tokyo Arc to Kyoto, making for some really confusing moments (in the expository voiceover that opens the Steam Locomotive episode, Kaoru's voice actress explains the train run from Tokyo to Yokohama. They proceed to take the train... even though we've been told they were in Kyoto). When later in the series the action moves to Kyoto, they decided to call it "Edo", despite that just being an older name for Tokyo.
It's made even more confusing by the fact that they seemed to forget to change the names of the places once in a while, and as a result, when Kaoru and Yahiko leave in the steam boat, they mention they're leaving for Kyoto. Despite supposedly being there already.
They changed the names of the little girls from Suzume and Ayame to "Suzi" (pronounced in a weird, distinctively non-Spanish way) and "Yumi". Later on, they had to rename Yumi Komagata "Ayumi".
In the Brazilian dub, Tokyo, Edo, Kyoto and "Ayoya" (originally Aoi-ya) are used randomly, often being treated as if they were same thing (even the last one, which isn't even a city).
In the first English adaptation of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, known as Battle of the Planets, the producers were sent episodes of the anime Out of Order and decided to dub and translate them as they went. This produced quite a number of plot holes, especially when it came time for them to adapt certain other episodes. Whether you watch this version in Sandy Frank's suggested order or the original Gatchaman order, things just do not add up either way. Especially if you're Mark's "friend"/mentor/father Colonel Cronus and they can't decide if you're alive, dead, or the circumstances of your death.
Saban's attempt at dubbing both Gatchaman sequels as Eagle Riders created its own plot hole. The villain "Mallanox" (originally the female Gel Sadra) was said to be a man and an alien specifically created/summoned by the Big Bad "Cybercon" (Leader X), with their original backstory cut due to the violence involved in it. Then it was said that he was the son of an alien named "Lukan" (originally Gatchaman's Berg Katse) and a human woman. Then, as Saban realized that cutting Gel Sadra's backstory was coming back to bite them, they attempted to reinstate it and Hand Wave Mallanox as actually being a woman with a manly voice when in costume (and the daughter of a female professor and her husband, the latter who was killed in the ship bombing she was kidnapped in). Then when it came time for Gel Sadra to die and Go Out with a Smile, Saban instead changed the dialogue of the scene to suggest that Cybercon still had control over Mallanox and was transforming him/her for their failure... into the villain of Gatchaman Fighter (Count Egobossler). Who they proceeded to rename Happy Boy.
In the dub, when Eggman's base explodes as a result of Chaos Control, Amy asks, "What is that?" leading Knuckles to reply, "It used to be Chaos Control." In the original Japanese, he just says "Chaos Control...". The original is referring to Chaos Control as a phenomenon caused by the power of the emeralds, but the dub seems to misinterpret it as the name of Eggman's base, leading to issues and confusion when the phenomenon is addressed in later episodes. This mistake pops up again - when Eggman tries to convince Knuckles that Sonic is evil, during a flashback, he talks about how Sonic attacked, invaded, and destroyed Chaos Control, as his base goes by on-screen. The first instance of this mistake can be excused by having it be the effects of a warped/subverted form of Chaos Control; this makes much less sense. To make matters worse, the mistake carried over to the comic tie-in, despite the fact Archie should have known better, having prior experience with adapting the games where the name referred to the phenomenon.
This also pops up during the Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation arc. In the Japanese script, it's clearly stated Maria was killed. Whilst she's still killed in the dub, they insist on using the words "taken away" and "lost" to refer her death. This means viewers can be easily confused if they aren't paying close attention to details like character referring to her in past tense. Taking the dialogue at face value would also raise the question of why Shadow isn't trying to find her if she meant so much to him.
After Cosmos dies, Tails cries in despair and starts pouncing Sonic's chest while blaming him for failing to save her. As to not make the situation worse, Sonic stays silent and lets Tails take it out on him. The dub changed it so that Tails simply cries over Cosmo's death without blaming him, making it look as though Sonic is being inexplicably callous and ignoring Tails' suffering.
The English dub of Stitch! attempted to explain Lilo's absence by inserting its own explanation: Stitch left out of jealousy when she got a boyfriend, which flies in the face of the concept of Ohana. Much later, the series turned into a full Time Skip, revealing that he left after Lilo went off to college, and the two reunite years later when she's become a mother with an identical-looking child.
The fan translation of Take Responsibility For My Stomach says that Ritsu's goal is to get down to 40 kg (88 pounds), resulting in many people finding that to be unrealistically light for a woman. The actual goal is between 40 and 49kg (108 pounds), meaning that 40 kg was the low end of Ritsu's desired weight range. Ritsu celebrates when she gets down to 48.9 kg
The protagonist of Tekkaman Blade is called by three names in Japan, his earth name, Aiba Takaya (Nick Carter in the dub, hardly ever used), his Tekkaman name, Blade, used mostly by evil Tekkamen, and In-Universe Nickname D-Boy, used by Space Knights. In dub he has only two, as both Space Knights and villains call him Blade. For the most part it's not a problem, but late in the series Blade starts losing memories, and forgets that Space Knights call him D-Boy, insisting on being called Takaya. In the dub he forgets that he's called Blade, which leads to weird situations; when being called that by his girlfriend he acts confused, yet a few scenes later he's called that by villains with no problem.
Late into the first half of the series, Evil is joined by three Tekkamen, Axe, Lance, and Sword. Blade's sister Miyuki also shows up as Tekkaman Rapier. In the U.S. dub, Lance and Sword were renamed Rapier and Lance respectively. Miyuki's counterpart Shara was not given a name for her Tekkaman form. The plot hole comes with Lance. He clearly introduces himself as "Teknoman Lance", but in the original Sword was a woman who featured quite prominently in the second half of the series. The U.S. dub ended at Episode 26, however, so it never became a problem.
In the first series of OVAs, Ridiculously Cute Critter Ryo-Ohki is referred to as male in both the dubs and subtitles (no gender-specific pronouns are actually used in the Japanese dialogue, however). In the second series, she acquires a humanoid body which is clearly female, so the dub and subs shift to referring to her as female. There is also a mistake in the early episodes, again in both the dub and subtitles, where Tenchi refers to a woman as "grandma", who is later revealed to be his mother (the audio is not very clear in the scene in question, the woman has grey hair, and given that the Japanese words for "mother" and "grandmother" are very similar-sounding, it's understandable how this error occurred). None of these errors were corrected in later releases of the show, despite the voice cast being hired again to re-record some lines for the censored TV version.
The Toonami broadcast has a (quite minor) plot hole in Episode 7 as we're shown where everyone is that isn't the dinner table with Sasami's hard-cooked meal... except for Mihoshi. A cut scene revealed Mihoshi's location — dropping in on Tenchi and Washu "playing" "nurse". Against his will.
Somewhere between Volumes 4 and 5 of the Tokyopop edition of the Togainu no Chi manga, the translators noticed that the character they'd been calling "Nicole Prumier" was actually supposed to be "Nicole Premier". Since this was plot-relevant, they had to change it midstory.
In Tokyo Mew Mew, Masaya chases Ichigo, who is running away in fear that her Secret Identity has been exposed. He finally stops her by calling her by her first name instead of her last. In the dub, however, he'd always called her by her first name, so she just stops for no apparent reason.
And Bu-ling/Pudding/Kikkilives in a shelter now because she can't live alone... until they show an episode with her house. Even though it is explained in the dub by Minto/Mint/Corina that they had made a mistake in thinking that she lives in a shelter, it was still blatantly obvious that the writers only saw a few episodes at a time and didn't sit down and watch the entire show.
In the episode Zakuro joins the team, Quiche demanded that she and Ichigo fought, and the winner would be allowed to join him and maybe save the other Mew Mews. In the dub, Dren only says that if they fought the other girls would be saved, omitting the "joining him" thing. Which wouldn't be a problem, except later in the episode he references that proposal anyway.
In Headmasters, Scorponok manages to blow up both Mars and Cybertron. In the English dub of the final episode, Fortress Maximus mentions that they can rebuild Mars, a line which wasn't in the Japanese version. In Victory, which is set about 15 years later, Earth apparently has a massive mining operation on Mars — but nobody ever mentions rebuilding Cybertron if it was so easy to do the same with Mars.
In Galaxy Force, a mysterious black hole appears next to Cybertron and sucks the planet in; however, in later episodes, characters walk around on the surface without difficulty. When it was redubbed into Cybertron, the situation was changed to Cybertron just being perilously close to the black hole. Unfortunately, the translators also decided that the black hole was formed from the death of Unicron at the end of Energon, making Cybertron a sequel, while in the Japanese continuity it was unconnected to any previous seriesnote Takara has since declared that Galaxy Force is in continuity with Super Link. It's best not to think too hard about Transformerscontinuity. This meant a lot of canonically dead characters suddenly appeared alive and well (explained as a result of the Unicron Singularity messing with the space-time continuum) and the Autobots not being familiar with combination, despite the fact that this was a frequent occurrence in Energon.
A particularly oddball one from the Unicron Trilogy-era stuff: in the original version of Transformers: Armada, Megatron gets a power boost that also changes his colors, and calls it "Megatron Super Mode." The English dub changed it to Galvatron, as a Continuity Nod to the original series. Then in the sequel series, Megatron was resurrected, and changed his name to Galvatron (even gaining a G1 Galvatron-esque body). Out of a desire to maintain the trademark and the more marketable name, the English dub had him instead change his name back to Megatron, and then had his later upgrade to Galvatron General being him going back to Galvatron again. Add in the problems inherent in folding Galaxy Force into being a sequel, and you have it going from "Megatron>Megatron Super Mode>Galvatron>Galvatron General" and the different character "Master Megatron>Master Galvatron" to "Megatron>Galvatron>Megatron>Galvatron>Megatron>Galvatron." Apparently, in American continuity, Megatron just alternates names whenever he gets an upgrade.
In the English dub of the fifth episode of Trigun, while running from a mob trying to capture him for his bounty, Vash says "Until I find this man you're looking for, I have no choice but to keep moving!" This response makes no sense in any context, considering that Vash is the man they're looking for. The official subtitles (and Dark Horse's translation of the manga) render this as "Until I see HIM again...", having Vash referring to his brother and series Big Bad, Knives. Vash's line can also be translated as, "Until I find the man I'm looking for..."
The English dub of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend was heavily cut to secure an NC-17 rating. In one cut scene, the protagonist learned that ingesting the blood or any other bodily fluid of a demon would bring out his hidden power. So in the dub, when he gobbles a demon's man chowder, he seems to do it for no reason.
The dub of Vision of Escaflowne has a character mention in the second episode that Zaibach are the ones attacking Fanelia. However, we aren't supposed to know it's them until Episode 3, and everyone still acts surprised when they find out Zaibach did it.
In the English dub of the first episode, Whisper mentions that Yo-kai Watches can never be removed. This is despite it frequently being shown off of Nate.
The English dub skips over an episode introducing the Song Medals (likely so they didn't have to dub the songs for a product that wasn't being sold in stores). However, additional song medals would show up in episodes that did air.
In Yotsuba&!, when Fuuka asks what Yotsuba's adoptive father does, Yotsuba goes and asks him. He says he's a honyakuka, or translator. Yotsuba comes back and calls him a konnyakuka, someone who makes konjac gel. In ADV Manga's version, however, she says he's a "trainspotter". This is all well and good... until 17 chapters later, when Fuuka seems to be under the impression that he knows a lot about konjac for what looks, to readers of ADV's otherwise high quality English translation, to be no apparent reason.
There's the matter of the name of Yugi's alter-ego. In the original, he was called "Yami no Yugi" (among other nicknames), meaning "Dark Yugi". Most dub media referred to him as the shortened version "Yami Yugi", and at the end of the first season, he mentions that his name is Yami. In the second season of the dub, he states he's not sure about his real name—then Ishizu outright calls him "King Yami", and he responds, effectively, with "huh, okay then, good to know." Then in later seasons, it becomes a major plot point that he doesn't know his real name, and the story has them searching for his true name, "Atem". They attempted an Author's Saving Throw and failed miserably by removing all mention of "Yami" as his name in the third season and having them go back to saying they don't know who he really is. In season three he's mostly just called "pharaoh" or "Yugi" for the sake of convenience.
When Yami Yugi first says his name to be "Yami", he also says "I've been called many names. Pharaoh, Yu-Gi-Oh, Yami..." Notice "Pharaoh" as one of the names he gave. Then in the next season, he is shocked to learn that he's the spirit of an ancient pharaoh!
In the original version, Insector Haga/Weevil Underwood was pretty polite and friendly when talking to Yugi, openly giving advice and compliments. This meant it made sense when Yugi let him see Exodia and he responded by chucking the cards into the ocean. In the dub, his dialogue was made far more obviously rude and condescending, making Yugi look like a huge idiot for handing off rare cards to a future rival who is also a huge jerk.
In the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yugi duels somebody claiming to be Seto Kaiba's ghost, but who's later revealed to be someone working for Pegasus who merely impersonated Kaiba. For some reason, the 4kids dub changes this to him actually being Kaiba... or more specifically, his evil side, which was brought to life as a result of Yami's "Mind Crush" penalty game, whom Pegasus brought back from the Shadow Realm. This creates several plot holes that are never answered or explained. If the whole point of Yami's Mind Crush on Kaiba was to destroy his evil side, he shouldn't have come to life in the first place; he shouldn't have been sent to the Shadow Realm if he was just some aspect of Kaiba's mind rather than a complete person in his own right; nothing like this ever happens any of the other times Yami uses Mind Crush; and there's no reason given why he should even have a separate form, let alone one that looks nothing like Kaiba.
The dub changed the Duelist Kingdom prize from three million yen (about 30,000 dollars) to three million dollars. In both versions, Jounouchi/Joey is in the tournament to win off enough money to pay his sister's medical bill, and it's shown that he isn't much more well-off after doing so, implying that paying for it blew through most or all of the money. While there are a lot of medical procedures that could crack the low five digits in cost, there aren't nearly as many that crack seven, raising the question of how his sister's eye operation could possibly cost more than twice as much as a heart transplant.
Rebecca's character makes a bit more sense when you realize she's supposed to be twelve-going-on-thirteen and not eight-going-on-nine.
In the Virtual World filler arc, 4Kids added an idea in Téa's Duel with Crump of the Big Five that she is an utterly inexperienced and inept Duelist, with Crump claiming she's only played the game five times in her life (largely rewriting a plot about her fascination with the Dark Magician Girl). This is rather baffling, as previous episodes showed that Téa does play the game—she'd Dueled twice onscreen, held her own against Mai, outright crushed an inexperienced Joey in the second episode, and has no problem keeping up with Duels when acting as a Combat Commentator. She does seem to be a much more casual player than her tournament-playing friends, but she's hardly at the point of being a complete novice.
In the same Duel, it's claimed that the card Sage's Stone allows the user to summon a Dark Magician from any nearby player's Deck, even if it's not from your own (to explain why Téa can summon it without having a copy). Why anyone would print a card with that kind of bizarre ruling is never explained. The original version simply claims that it lets you summon a Dark Magician for one turn, with a close reading of the onscreen card suggesting that Sage's Stone itself becomes treated as the Dark Magician, suggesting the scene of it being summoned from Yugi's deck to be just visual flair.
Although ridiculous, 4Kids' death cover ups were usually convincing (at least enough so that someone who didn't know about the original version could be fooled). There were exceptions though; the most egregious was Alister's (Amelda) little brother's fate. In the original version, he was killed in a war, and so Amelda blamed the Kaiba Corp, who created the tank that killed him, so he's out for revenge. In the dub, his brother was merely "captured" by the KC. Now, that generates a number of plot holes: 1) Despite being merely "captured", his ghost shows up in the season finale.note You could say that his brother had his soul taken by the Orichalcos, like the rest, but then that doesn't explain why his spirit enters Alister's body soon after. 2) Alister treats his brother as if he's gone forever when he also acts as if he's still alive, and Alister's organization should be able to track him down fairly easily. 3) It's never explained where the boy is now. Almost any viewer paying the slightest attention could see through the attempts at sugarcoating what actually happened.
To a lesser extent, Raphael's backstory in both versions is that he was in a shipwreck, lived alone on an island for years with nothing but his cards, and eventually returned to society to become a loner and a Stranger in a Familiar Land. In the original, the rest of his family perished in said wreck. In the dub, they survived, but never tried to get back in contact with him. While this actually made more sense to some people (being rejected outright by your family for no good reason would probably be a better motivator for Raphael's Humans Are Bastards outlook than them simply dying in an accident), they didn't remove the many scenes where Raphael has a flashback to him being separated from his siblings in the wreck and seems clearly torn-up about it. Makes sense when they died right after that event, less so when they're still alive, he could meet with them whenever he wanted to, and he hates their guts. For that matter, one wonders why he never flashes back to being rejected by his family, when that would surely be more traumatic (the answer being because that scene doesn't actually exist). Oh, and like Alister, he also has an encounter with what are clearly the ghosts of his siblings, and he seems very happy to see them!
Kaiba and Yugi's tag-team duel with Masks of Light and Darkness takes place on top of a giant glass building, with explosives at the side to break the glass the players are standing on as soon as their life points reach 0. In the dub, however, this is altered to have a portal to the Shadow Realm just below the glass roof. Apart from being a very thin case of Bowdlerization as it is, it looks even more ridiculous when Umbra/Mask of Darkness falls through and, rather than suddenly becoming a soulless zombie, is able to activate a parachute with which he floats to safety.
In the dub, Marik needs the Millennium Puzzle along with the Egyptian God Cards to obtain the power of the Pharaoh. The problem is that his puppets get their hands on it at several occasions, and the dub tries to hand wave this by claiming that Marik "has to win it properly in a duel", otherwise, he won't get the Pharaoh's power. In the original, Malik doesn't need the Millennium Puzzle at all and only wants the Pharaoh dead (or rather, deader than he already is). This also makes it ridiculous that, when Yami Bakura interferes with the duel against the brainwashed Bandit Keith, Marik's response is to have Keith smash the puzzle to pieces, failing to account for what would happen had Yugi either A) died in the fire Keith started or B) not managed to put it back together before having to get out.
At one point in the series, Yugi is playing a duel using some of Kaiba's cards, and he shows off one particular card (namely, Cyber Jar). In both versions, he describes it as one of Kaiba's cards, but the English dub adds a note of him claiming it's one of Kaiba's favorites. While Cyber Jar does indeed seem to be a card in his deck, it was only seen in a Duel where a computer played one of his older decks; Kaiba himself never played it at any point in the series and certainly never expressed any kind of fondness for it, making the claim that it was one of his favorites rather baffling.
Odion/Rishid's internal monologue in the dub has him thinking at one point that he has to do something blatantly suicidal because "Master Marik always knows best." This proved rather problematic when later appearances by the guy had him saying that he thinks everything Marik is doing is horrible and wrong, he's known this for years, and he's only sticking with Marik because he thinks letting Marik go unsupervised would be even worse.
During the Duelist Kingdom arc, in the original Japanese, the main characters know Mai is in trouble (due to her having been abducted by the Player Killer of Darkness) after hearing her scream. The Singapore dub removes the scream, but Yugi and friends still somehow suddenly realize she's in danger.
When the anime premiered in Poland, Episode 49 note (the last one of the first season, which was the only one dubbed in Poland) was unaired for unknown reasons, meaning that Polish viewers never got to see how Yugi's duel with Duke ended.
In the Italian dub, during the duel between Joey and Odion at a certain point the former calls the latter by his actual name, even though at that point, everyone (including Joey) believed that he was Marik.
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a tendency to make dialogue changes while leaving any corresponding original visuals completely unaltered, so this is probably Executive Meddling:
The constant rain motif in Ed's flashbacks in the second season is always seen at his father's grave, and thus was edited out. Thus the re-use of the motif in Ed's mental conversation with Saiou while he's dueling him seems a little random.
When the cast is sent to the world of Duel Monsters in Season 3, they find out that anyone who loses a duel there dies. However, 4Kids replaced death with a vague description about how the loser was "sent to the stars". This makes the reveal at the end of the season (everyone was trapped in a pocket dimension) pointless.
Blair's age was lowered from twelve to eight, an age she definitely didn't look — especially when she hit a growth spurt between appearances. It also made her crush on the teenage Jaden look even weirder and creepier, something 4Kids usually makes efforts to avoid. An Author's Saving Throw was attempted by not bringing up her age in the vain hope that nobody would remember what they said her age was if they didn't state it again.
In the Japanese version, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon's attack has always been called "Burst Stream of Destruction." In English, it was instead given the name "White Lightning." Not a big problem, until Judai faces Kaibaman, and he uses the card called Burst Stream of Destruction. In both languages, a mention of the card having the same name as the Blue-Eyes' attack is made as Kaibaman uses the card, which seems completely out of the blue in the English translation, since the Blue-Eyes' attack is still being called "White Lightning."
A Monster of the Week character was, in the original, a cosplayer obsessed with kabuki theater. In a clumsy attempt at Woolseyism, the dub changed this to him being an actor on Broadway. The thing is, kabuki theatre and Broadway theatre aren't really known for being similar, so you have a man in a kimono and red-and-white facepaint, whose name is Orlando and whose dialogue constantly references Broadway productions like West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof, but who never talks about Kanjinchō, the play his entire deck is based around.
In Judai/Jaden's duel with Cobra/Viper, his dialogue at one point does not match the actual cards he's fusing and summoning.
Not dubbing the fourth season seemed like an acceptable idea at the time... until the tenth anniversary movie came along, and Judai was in it. They also didn't dub the episode where Judai returns—meaning in their version, he doesn't come back from the Dark World. They never address why Jaden is back, why his character design has changed, why he's Walking the Earth with Yubel, Pharaoh, and Banner, why he has darkness powers, or why he seems to know Yugi.
In one episode in the original, Yusei reflects on why he's a better duelist now and flashes back to his loss against Jack, where Jack explains that Yusei lost because he lacks heart and faith in his deck. This is treated as an important moment for Yusei that he took to heart. In the dub, this was changed to Jack explaining to Yusei that he lost because his deck needs a better balance of card types, and it's still treated as important. This conflicts with Yusei's general "All cards and decks are good as long as you believe" nature, particularly in the prison episode where he has to win with somebody else's awkward deck.
The dub treats Jack's current motorbike and the one he stole from Yusei as one and the same—but they eventually showed a flashback to the theft, completely ignoring the fact that the two bikes look nothing alike aside from being white. If it is the same bike, then it seems to have been rebuilt to ship-of-Theseus levels; one of them is a standard-for-the-setting two-wheel affair, and the other is a giant monowheel.
The dub has Rex Goodwin claim to be the fifth Signer, even before his identity had been revealed in the original. It later turns out that Rex's brother Rudger was originally the 5th Signer, and Rex doesn't become one until the end of the arc after he replaces his arm with Rudger's. In an attempt to fix this, as soon as the Dark Signer arc started, the dub had Rex Godwin backpedal and say "I don't know who the fifth Signer is, but..."
The dub identifies Yusei's Signer mark as the dragon's head (thus ruining the dramatic switch at the end of the season), and turns Jack's wings into the left wing (not explaining where the right would come from).
The second episode dub has Yusei's True Companions constantly remarking about how some crippling fear of bugs must be making him too scared to fight against his opponent's Insect Deck... all while The Stoic hero is facing said insect monsters as calm, silent and fearless as ever.
An episode flashing back to Aki's past showed her wearing a red school uniform and attacking a boy with a blue uniform. The dub used this to claim that Neo Domino's Duel Academy uses the same Obelisk Blue/Slifer Red/Ra Yellow hierarchy as the one in GX, with blues at the top, yellows in the middle, and reds at the bottom. But actually check the flashback more closely, and you realize that all the people wearing red uniforms are girls, all the people wearing blue are boys, and there aren't any people in yellow—because that ranking system is exclusive to the GX Academy. There's a red uniform and a blue uniform, sure, but they're just the girl's uniform and the boy's uniform, respectively, and aren't intended to indicate skill level. Then that Duel Academy was reintroduced later, and you had Aki in a red uniform being called the top scorer and teacher favorite, and Rua in a blue uniform being a Book Dumb slacker on the verge of expulsion, and still no yellows anywhere. Needless to say, the idea was quietly dropped.
The dub of Episode 26 manages to make a rather MAJOR one right at the start. The beginning of the episode is replaced by their "Now let's get up to speed with Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's!" recap. Said beginning of the episode in Japanese shows Red Demon's Dragon destroying Junk Warrior, Yusei's Life Points dropping to 1900 from the attack, and Jack placing 3 cards face down. The English episode starts from after the title card in the Japanese version, making confused viewers wonder where Yusei's monster went to, why he's down a few hundred LP and where Jack's face downs came from.
4Kids skipped a few episodes after the Yusei vs. Placido to get right into the 5Ds vs. Ragnarok team duel. Not too big of problem, except this means Jack's Scar Red Nova Dragon has NO explanation behind it and seemingly comes out of nowhere. These episodes are available subbed on Hulu, however.
4Kids skipped all of Season 5 (the Ark Cradle) in favor of starting ZEXAL, which means that viewers of the dub won't learn of Bruno's identity, history and everything that happens in the real final battle. Z-One's plot is also left hanging.
A minor one compared to the previous series; during Mizael's duel with Don Thousand, he plays the card Dragon King's Demise, forcing him (Mizael) to tribute all of his monsters and himself and Don Thousand would take damage equal to their ATK. Don Thousand uses Numeron Spell Revision to switch it with Treasure Cards of the Dragon King, which makes Mizael take draw one card for every monster he tributed, but only he (Mizael) would take the damage. In the dub, Mizar does not explain the card-drawing effect of Card of the Dragon King, which makes you wonder why he even has a card that only causes him damage.
In Yuri is My Job!, improperly translated pronouns make Kanoko and Sumika's motivations harder to understand. In Chapter 43, Kanoko remarks that Sumika is no longer trying to get Kanoko to give up on her unrequited love for Hime, but the localization has Kanoko imply that Sumika had previously tried to get Hime to quit the salon; Kanoko properly talks about Sumika's decision not to interfere in her love for Hime at a few other points in the localization. In Chapter 51, as Kanoko asks Sumika to become her girlfriend, she explains that she's doing so in order to help Sumika get over her "hatred" of romance. The localization implies that Kanoko wants to get over hating romance.
In the Filipino dub, Bishōnen Kurama was initially changed into a girl and called Denise. He was given a female voice actor and everything. This actually worked, up until an episode where Kurama has to take off his shirt. The dubbers handwaved this, saying that Denise was really a male demon named Dennis who was only pretending to be female on Earth. Oops.
Also, Genkai was a man in the dub, called Master Jeremiah, which caused a problem when she was deaged.
The English dub has a few smaller ones:
The name "Spirit Wave" is given to two different techniques—the chant used by the Masked Fighter to purify Dr. Ichigaki's brainwashed fighters, and the Reikodan, used by Yusuke against Jin.
During Kurama's fight against Ura Urashima, the character's false story is changed from him wanting to repent from a team formed by negative feelings involving the fairy tales they're based off of, to the team forcing him to fight by holding his grandmother hostage. But when he's spilling information to Yoko Kurama, he says "I'm not even Ura Urashima!" It's supposed to be him admitting his entire explanation was false and they were just hired goons, but with the changed story, the line makes no sense.
When Yusuke starts his fight against Sensui, Sensui admits that he doesn't really care about the portal to Demon Realm opening or not—all he wants is to fight Yusuke. This is Foreshadowing of his true desire. The dub changes this conversation to emphasize his comments about how Yusuke could become just like him. Later, however, Yusuke references the original line, echoing that all he cares about is fighting Sensui.
In Zombie Land Saga, Saki is said to have been the captain of the special attack unit of the motorcycle gang Dorami, which the subtitles somehow conflated into outright being the captain of Dorami. This became a major problem when, come her A Day in the Limelight, we meet the actual captain of Dorami, whose position is what the plot hinges on; specifically, the captain's daughter wants to inherit her mother's position. Whoops.
was edited up to her death (as 4Kids felt that Brock having both of his parents abandon him was too sad). Since the episode she appears in