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alt title(s): Power Rangers Universe
Long-running children's action franchise composed largely of Stock Footage from its Japanese counterpart, Super Sentai.
In 1993, Haim Saban decided to do an American adaptation of the enormously popular Zyuranger. This was after being unable to adapt Jetman (the prior year's sentai) to appeal to American children. In a style not dissimilar to Macek's treatment of Robotech, the action sequences from Zyuranger were intercut with new footage and a new storyline, producing Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the first entry in the franchise's history.
The original story followed the adventures of five "teenagers with attitude", selected by an alien being called Zordon to fight his eternal enemy Rita Repulsa who was recently released from containment. Naturally, she came with her own army of Monsters of the Week. Zordon gave each teenager a Transformation Trinket to "morph" into costume as well as powerful Humongous Mecha shaped like dinosaurs, called "Zords."
Starting with the second season, Rita was replaced by her superior, Lord Zedd, who also took with him most of her minions. To keep up with Zedd the Rangers upgraded their Zords. This was because the Zyu footage was running out and was replaced with the Dairanger zords. To keep continuity while keeping the same uniforms, Saban commissioned new footage from Toei, Super Sentai's production company, to fill in the gaps. The new footage, featuring actors in Zyuranger costumes fighting new monsters, is collectively called Zyu2 by Sentai fans.
After another Zord change, by the end of the third season it was becoming difficult to contrive enough Zyuranger footage- and Toei had charged them through the roof for it- so the decision was made to begin following the Super Sentai tradition of changing costumes each year. The last quarter of season three ran under the title Mighty Morphin' Alien Rangers, and had the regular cast temporarily replaced by an alien team, using footage from Kakuranger. Beginning in the fourth season they changed the title to Power Rangers Zeo (No more "Mighty Morphin") and with that the Rangers began changing the name, costumes and villains each season, while only doing a progressive rotation of actors.
It was not until the seventh season ( Power Rangers Lost Galaxy) that they took the final step to replacing the entire cast (both heroes and villains) each year. Henceforth, each season would end with the entire team retiring, and the next season would begin with an unrelated group in a different city with a different set of powers with no direct conection to the previous series. In addition to keeping the show "fresh", this excused the writers to recycle Very Special Episodes. ("Red Ranger learns how to be a good leader," for example, is a plot which occurs around the third or fourth episode of every season.)
In most seasons, the Humongous Mecha consists of five vehicles of similar design (Such as Dinosaurs, megaliths, rescue vehicles, etc.) that combine into a single "Megazord," often supplemented with additional auxilliary Zords. Expect the obligatory Blazing Sword. Due to time and footage constraints, a mecha battle will often consist of no more than "Zords summoned, Zords combined, finishing move." (Particularly in season 2, where footage from two different sources was being combined, and thus it was often impossible to show the Monster Of The Week and the Megazord at the same time.)
Sometimes, American made fight footage would be made. Either the "Zyu 2" footage ran out or it didn't feature certain monsters. In this footage, the Rangers fought putties or monsters originally featured in "Dairanger." The White Ranger, a character from "Dairanger," was introduced in the second season. The only way to show the core 5 Rangers and the White Ranger together was through new American footage.
While ratings dropped sharply after the third season, income from merchandising and the inherently low expense of composing a show from so much stock footage (though, these days, as much as half the action sequences are original) has kept the series alive for sixteen seasons with no end in sight.
While the available Super Sentai footage does constrain the show somewhat, massive changes can still be made: in Lightspeed Rescue, an entirely US-made "Titanium Ranger" was added to the team, to follow the US franchise's tradition of adding a sixth ranger halfway through the season, since its counterpart, GoGoV did not include one. But the effects of this were obvious: MMPR's Green Ranger (whose counterpart was killed off), PRLR's Titanium Ranger, and Dino Thunder's White Ranger (whose counterpart was a villain until the end of the series) were constantly finding excuses not to be on-screen during fight scenes due to footage constraints.
As the years went on, more and more of the footage was US-produced. However, the first US-made mecha footage occurred in season 3, and was achieved using off-the-shelf Power Rangers toys - any child who has ever been disappointed by how little their toy resembles its television counterpart will know exactly how convincing this was. This trend changed in Power Rangers SPD, whose final episode featured an entirely original zord battle, though the visual style was considerably different from the footage in the rest of the series.
The extent to which each Power Rangers incarnation resembles its Super Sentai counterpart varies from season to season. In most cases, the general premise is preserved, but its interpretation is greatly changed. However, some series have closely followed the plots of their counterparts, even borrowing entire episodes ( Time Force, and especially Wild Force). In other cases, the original premise is all but discarded ( Lost Galaxy's setting was changed from a Lost World-style forest to a space station. Though the season fared poorly in the US, when retranslated into Japanese, the series actually outperformed its counterpart Gingaman in Japan.)
In its eleventh season, the show was sold to Village Roadshow Productions, a Disney-owned company, which has produced the show ever since.
To date, the franchise has had the following incarnations:
(Seasons produced by Saban)
(Seasons produced by Village Roadshow)
Beginning with Lost Galaxy's "To The Tenth Power" and lasting through SPD's "History" and "Wormhole", it has been traditional to feature a "team-up" episode where the previous team is temporarily recommissioned to join forces with the current team. Within this timeframe, only Power Rangers Ninja Storm lacks such an episode. Also, Zeo had their own teamup in "Rangers of Two Worlds", and thanks to four of the characters being held over from Turbo, In Space's "True Blue To The Rescue" features the fifth Turbo Ranger joining up with the current team. The tenth and fifteenth anniversary episodes also had their own teamups; "Forever Red" united the Red Wild Force Ranger with nine previous Red Rangers and "Once A Ranger" brought back several popular non-Red Rangers. Whether or not "Forever Red" is part of the "official" continuity is a hotly-debated topic among fans (so much so that many relevant forums have an explicit ban on the topic).
The franchise spawned two feature films. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie was a big-budget affair with entirely US-produced footage and extensive CGI, set in an Alternate Continuity between seasons 2 and 3. The second film, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie had simply better production values than the TV series, and is within the regular continuity, setting up the premise of the Turbo season.
A list of deceased cast members can be found here .
It has been announced that production of the series is to be brought to an end, for real it seems this time. Suspected reasons are the continued decline in profits and the impossibility of de-Japan-ifying the stock footage and themes of what would be the next season ( samurai with kanji on their helmets who use caligraphy to activate all their powers, in case you were wondering). Then again, Bandai has been circulating an email that the rumors of the Rangers' death have been highly exaggerated. No one is quite sure at this point.
Tropes Named:
- Make My Monster Grow (Every season except SPD (the criminals had Humongous Mecha in that season).)
- The Psycho Rangers (from In Space)
- Sealed Evil In A Can (used in Mighty Morphin, Lightspeed Rescue, Wild Force, Mystic Force, Operation Overdrive, and Jungle Fury)
- Sixth Ranger (Happens at least once, sometimes multiple times every season. In order: Green Ranger/White Ranger, Gold Ranger, Silver Ranger, Magna Defender, Titanium Ranger, Quantum Ranger, Lunar Wolf Ranger, Thunder Rangers and Samurai Ranger, White Dino Ranger and Triassic Ranger, Shadow Ranger and Omega Ranger, Solaris Knight, Mercury Ranger, Wolf Ranger and Rhino Ranger)
This show provides examples of the following tropes:
- The Ace (Phantom Ranger, Shadow Ranger, most Sixth Rangers before the footage runs out)
- Aborted Arc (The implied relationship between Dimitria and Divatox, the Phantom Ranger, Kendrix and Leo's relationship in Lost Galaxy, due to Valerie Vernon's leukemia, and Devin being the Triassic Ranger, once the writers realized there was no away around the fact that Triassic Ranger was a Red Ranger power-up, rather than a separate Sixth Ranger)
- Acting For Two (Carol Hoyt as Divatox and Dimitria, Jason Faunt as Wes and Alex, Grant MacFarland as Sensei and Lothor. The first pair are hinted to be twin sisters, the second pair are assumed by fandom to be a situation of Identical Grandson, though this was disputed by Word Of God, and the third pair are 100% confirmed to be identical twin brothers.)
- Also James Napier, who played Conner in Dino Thunder, appears in the Ninja Storm finale as new student Eric. During the "Legacy of Power" retrospective, Conner mentions that Eric is his twin brother (and had already flunked out).
- Also, Katrina Devine. Having portrayed Marah, the bumbling niece of Lothor in Ninja Storm, Devine returned in Dino Thunder as Cassidy Cornell. In the team-up between Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder, Devine did double duty as both Marah and Cassidy, leading to the hilarious line, "Did you see that girl, she was so stunning. But I'm much prettier", uttered by both of them.
- Action Girl (Jen, Katie, Taylor, Tori, Z, Syd, Vida. Technically, all of the girls fall under this, as they're all talented martial artists, either by training, Applied Phlebotinum or magic, but these are some stand-outs.)
- Adaptation Decay and/or Adaptation Distillation (Despite what some people think, Super Sentai is actually less serious then Power Rangers. Super Sentai is at its best when it was comical, Power Rangers when they are being dramatic.)
- This troper believes that it has something to do with pre-Zyuranger Sentai. Jetman is considered to be the best Super Sentai show, and it clearly has a dark, serious tone despite having some humor.
- While this troper thinks that's a bit of a generalisation when you consider that no Sentai or Power Rangers series is exactly the same. Each series has a different tone and feel, as well as different strengths and weaknesses (some do drama better than comedy and vice versa). Although I'd definitely agree that the way Power Rangers-haters paint Sentai as being very grimdark and serious all the time is most certainly incorrect.
- After The End (RPM especially. Implied in Lost Galaxy before it was retconned to the present day. The year 3000 of Time Force was also revealed to be this during its crossover with Wild Force.)
- All Your Base Are Belong To Us (Nearly every Grand Finale, with only Zeo and Jungle Fury being spared some form of it - the latter because they went for an epic Storming The Castle instead.)
- All Your Colors Combined (Various attacks that use all five Rangers firing at once)
- An Aesop
- Angel Grove Is The Center Of The Universe (As are its later series counterparts.)
- Arson Murder And Jaywalking (During The Movie, Ivan Ooze mentions several horrific things he missed while he was imprisoned, ending with "The Brady Bunch Reunion!")
- Ascended Fanboy (crops up from time to time since Ninja Storm, though Justin of Turbo was the first)
- Ass Kicking Pose
- Attack Of The Fifty Foot Whatever (Once An Episode)
- Authors Saving Throw (The entirety of Power Rangers in Space, a fan-favorite considered one of the franchise's best, which followed Turbo, which... isn't. RPM looks to be following in In Space's footsteps.)
- Autobots, Rock Out!
- Bad Guy Bar (The Onyx Tavern, Piggy's)
- Bar Brawl (Both Andros and Karone get into one. Like brother, like sister.)
- Berserk Button (Don't refer to the Ranger suits as "spandex" in front of Dr. K - they're bio-armor. Also, the Season 3 running gag of Rito calling Zedd "Ed.")
- Big Bad (In order, Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, Master Vile, King Mondo, Prince Gasket, Divatox, Astronema, Scorpius, Trakeena, Captain Mutiny, Queen Bansheera, Ransik, Master Org, Mandilok, Lothor, Mesogog, Emperor Grumm, Dai Shi, Venjix. Mystic Force and Operation Overdrive replaced a single Big Bad with a small group of primary villains.)
- Big Damn Heroes
- Black And White Morality
- By The Power Of Greyskull
- California Doubling (Later, New Zealand doubling.)
- New Zealand doubling for California, no less.
- Calling Your Attacks (Gets increasingly more ridiculous with each series; sometimes you wonder if the writers are just incapable of coming up with decent attack names.)
- Card Carrying Villain (Many villains described themselves as being 'evil' and against 'good,' and served evil itself.)
- Cell Phone (In Space was the first legitimate usage of a cell phone as a morpher, but more recent seasons use this more often)
- Character Magnetic Team (There's always at least one Sixth Ranger, but they've really been piling them on since Ninja Storm. Partly because a lot of seasons start with reduced Power Trios and have more room to expand.)
- City Of Adventure
- Cloudcuckoolander (Trip, Bridge, Dax, and Ziggy)
- Also, to an extent, Bulk and Skull
- Compressed Vice
- Conservation Of Ninjitsu
- Continuity Creep (seasons are still mostly self-contained, but compare Mighty Morphin's interchangeable Monsters of the Week to, say, Operation Overdrive's ongoing treasure hunt)
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome
- Crowning Music Of Awesome (The score (as well as the theme) by Ron Wasserman during Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers is still fondly remembered.)
- Creator Provincialism (Most of the Cities Of Adventure are based in California, and the rest also appear to be in the western US, and Corinth being an stand-in for Boston (RPM's first EP's Eddie Guzelian's hometown.))
- Dark Action Girl (Scorpina, Archerina, Trakeena, Vypra, Toxica, Elsa, Morgana, Leelee, Miratrix, Camille, Tenaya 7)
- Dark Magical Girl (Astronema, Nadira, Marah & Kapri)
- Darker And Edgier / Lighter And Softer (When compared to Sentai. Which depends on the season.)
- ... except for the fact that Super Sentai has actual deaths in it at times (most notably compare how Burai left Zyuranger vs how Tommy lost his Green Ranger powers in MMPR).
- RPM seems to be the darkest season in recent years, especially when compared with Go-Onger, one of the most Lighter And Softer seasons of Super Sentai, which it happens to be based on.
- Discard And Draw (For the first few seasons of the American Power Rangers, the heroes would lose their powers and get new ones at the beginning of each series.)
- Discontinuity (People would argue this about entire seasons like Turbo, or individual episodes like Forever Red. But the one that most seem to agree was a Flash Forward episode in Zeo that depicted Tommy and Kat married. It wasn't ever brought up in any later installments and it seemed like it never happened.)
- Dork Age / Seasonal Rot (Turbo, which dropped every single character except Bulk, Skull and Lt. Stone by the mid-way point, replaced one with a Cousin Oliver and another with a Totally Radical Jonas Quinn, and suffered massive Mood Whiplash because the writers were trying for suspenseful story lines about Dimitria's missing twin and the Phantom Ranger, but the Super Sentai source footage was one big anniversary-special parody. Bruce Kalish's run on the show (SPD through Jungle Fury) is considered one as well)
- The Dragon (In order: Goldar and Scorpina, Rito Revolto, Elgar and Rygog (though, actually, the Turbo villains may qualify as a Quirky Miniboss Squad), Ecliptor, Villamax, Barbarax, Diabolico, Olympius, Frax, Zen-aku, Zurgane, Motodrone, Elsa and Zeltrax, Morgana, Koragg and Necrolai, Miratrix, Camille, and Scorch.)
- Easily Conquered World (The world was ended by the Venjix computer virus)
- Elaborate Underground Base (Zeo, Turbo, Dino Thunder, and Operation Overdrive. Lightspeed Rescue was underwater, but that's probably close enough.)
- Ensemble Darkhorse (Tommy wasn't even slated to return because his actor was set to star in his own show, VR Troopers. But the character's popularity made the producers decide to bring him back as the White Ranger AND the leader of the Power Rangers, eventually being considered the greatest ranger by the fandom).
- Everything Fades ("Destroyed" villains explode, dissolve, etc. and on the very rare occasions that someone we're supposed to like is Killed Off For Real, it looks rather sparkly.)
- Evil Counterpart
- Evil Is Sexy (Played with in the earlier seasons, it wasn't until In Space's Astronema that it took complete hold. Now every season there is at least one Sexy Evil Female who fights the good guys.)
- Evil Twin
- Executive Meddling (Most famously in Power Rangers SPD, where a gross mismanagement of budget- and executives not wanting a second Sixth Ranger despite him already being in the source footage- resulted in the Omega Ranger being a floating orb of light with a voice when unmorphed.)
- Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie was apparently almost three hours long in its original cut, and had better plotting such as an actual fight with Zeo Ranger powers to prove that the Rangers needed to upgrade to Turbo.
- Expository Theme Tune (Less common in the early seasons)
- Fake American (From Ninja Storm onward, production took place in New Zealand, with mostly local actors trying their darnedest to pretend they didn't have Kiwi accents.)
- Falling Into The
Cockpit Spandex Ranger Suit (Ziggy in RPM)
- Fan Convention: 2007's Power Morphicon
- Fan Nickname (iMack, for Mack Hartford of Operation Overdrive, due to his nature as an Artificial Human)
- Fanon (After sixteen years and Loads And Loads Of Characters, tons! One of the most "popular" in fanfiction is that original Yellow Ranger Trini, like the actress who portrayed her, died in a car crash.)
- Fanservice (Of the non-sexual kind; it's the only reason for the anniversary episodes "Forever Red" and "Once a Ranger".)
- Meanwhile, the exceptional number of Beach Episodes in both Mighty Morphin and Ninja Storm count in the normal way (at least Ninja Storm had an excuse, as Tori was a surfer). Lost Galaxy's Yellow Ranger, Maya, also had a rather fanservicey outfit.
- And Karone, the reformed Astronema, who had suddenly turned all simple and demure after missing out on her own childhood, is always wrapped up in a tight black leather outfit for no apparent reason.
- Speaking of tight black leather, Jen in "Reinforcements From the Future". Oh my.
- For the ladies or some guys, a Shirtless Scene with Jason or Tommy (or both) was a common occurrence.
- Fetish Fuel: Enough to warrant its own entry.
- First Installment Wins (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is by far the best remembered of all the incarnations, and is usually what comes to mind when one thinks of the Power Rangers.)
- Five Bad Band (Every few seasons would have something similar)
- Five Man Band (And ethnically balanced at that!)
- Giant Mook (recent series' Mooks have had 'captain' versions that are stronger and a bit brighter.)
- Good Is Dumb
- Grand Finale (Despite not being the actual finale for the show, Countdown to Destruction did manage to finish the storyline for the first six seasons. It probably would've been the finale had In Space not been a success.)
- Gratuitous English (In the Super Sentai footage)
- Green Lantern Corps (The growing number of Rangers eventually meant there were teams all over the place with different duties, although in this case "the place" is for the most part California, which may run out of Muggles in a few years at this rate. Or large metropolitan areas that haven't been used yet for bad guys to attack.)
- Growing The Beard (Starting with Power Rangers in Space, the stories grew much more well-developed.)
- Guilty Pleasure (It's not all bad! Really! Honest! Truly! Cross my heart!)
- Head Bob
- Heel Face Turn (Most Sixth Rangers are not aligned with the good guys at first, if not outright evil. A few Big Bads have also made the turn.)
- Ho Yay (So many red and sixth rangers especially in the earlier seasons. Three that stand out are: Tommy and Jason, who even had several "breakup" episodes; Andros and Zhane, where Andros treats the then-comatose Zhane in a manner suspiciously similar to how Victor Fries did his comatose wife; and Wes and Eric, who acted like they had broken up a while back and were still bitter about it.)
- Human Aliens (all over the universe)
- Humongous Mecha
- Hypnotize The Princess
- Identical Grandson (Very nearly every Time Travel story ever, becoming a plot point in Time Force.)
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming (between SPD and Jungle Fury; every title had a specific number of words depending on the season)
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy
- Improbable Age (Tommy "swiss cheese memory" Oliver is implied to have gotten an 8 year PhD in 6 or less. Dana is a paramedic at age 18, and a full-fledged doctor less than a year later. Rose is a college professor at a similar age, but at least she's a genius! Dr. K created the RPM Ranger powers and is no older than 19...and then we find out her past, and suddenly her immense technological skills make more sense.)
- Instant Expert / Upgrade Artifact (Nearly every Ranger knows how to fight and pilot Humongous Mecha once they use a morpher; though the fighting ability is often justified by training for some time before. Subverted by Billy, who could only fight while morphed, and Ziggy, where not even morphing helps.)
- Invisible To Normals
- Invocation (The transformation Catch Phrase, generally known as the "morphing call". May be By The Power Of Greyskull depending on the season, and often accompanied by In The Name Of The Moon and/or I Am Hero Hear Me Roar.)
- Jonas Quinn (Mostly the early seasons when they would rotate actors mid-season. Katherine was a reformed mole and was much different then Kimberly, but when she became the second pink ranger she took over as a Romantic Interest for Tommy. Others did manage to stand out, most notably Adam when he came on board.)
- Jumping the Shark (The moment in Mighty Morphin season 2 when Lord Zedd got married is typically cited. Other moments at which fans and ex-fans often say the show was Ruined FOREVER or truly ended included the arrival of Katherine (Late season three), the end of the Zordon era (end of In Space), the move to New Zealand (after Wild Force), and the arrival of producer Bruce Kalish (SPD).)
- Keep Circulating The Tapes (All of the seasons has been pulled from American television with the exception of RPM (after that it's no longer on) and even RPM is constantly pre-empted for half of the country. Not to mention that unless you are willing to buy foreign, the chances of buying Region 1 season boxsets are between zilch and none.)
- The Kobayashi Maru
- Large Ham
- Loads And Loads Of Characters (considering they assemble an entirely new cast every season...)
- Luke I Am Your Father (often the Long Lost Sibling version: Andros and Astronema, Leo and Magna Defender - sort of, Dana and Ryan, Cam and Lothor, Trent and Mesogog, and Nick and both Koragg and Udonna. Fans are currently taking bets on Dillon and Tenaya.)
- Magic A Is Magic A (You can breathe in space and the moon has a temperate environment. People will scream Did Not Do The Research, but at least they are consistent.)
- Male Gaze
- Memetic Badass (Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger/White Ranger/Red Zeo Ranger/Red Turbo Ranger/Black Dino Ranger/you get the idea)
- Memetic Mutation ("Who's Madison?", Ronny and her love of drills, Conner's excessive power-ups, "buttery", and of course "It's not spandex!". Each season gives at least one new meme to the fandom.)
- Mentors: (In order: Zordon, Dimitria, Captain Mitchell, Princess Shayla, Sensei Kanoi Watanabe, Tommy, Doggie Cruger, Udonna, Andrew Hartford, R.J.)
- Merchandise Driven (In addition to the action figures and mecha, each season now adds motorcycles, a "battlizer" armor, and, in a couple seasons, a semi truck "mobile command center" not present in the Japanese version to justify additional toys. Jungle Fury and RPM take it a step further, creating new Rangers based on extra zords and giving them as many toys as the original Rangers.)
- Arctic Action (Makes up the majority of the toyline; only a small sample makes it to the show. The new Rangers all get their own Arctic Action toys, of course, but the girls get shafted in this department.)
- Meta Origin (The Morphin' Grid: hinted at in Mighty Morphin, Dino Thunder and SPD, confirmed in Operation Overdrive. They finally define what it actually is in RPM.)
- Milestone Celebration ("Forever Red" (10 years), "Legacy of Power" (500 episodes), "Once A Ranger" (15 years))
- Misplaced Wildlife (from the non-dinosaur Mastodon, Pterodactyl, Saber-Toothed Tiger and Dragonzord to sharks, penguins, and rhinos in the jungle)
- Monster of the Aesop (Some monsters had a tendency to be directly linked with whatever Aesop the rangers were learning)
- Monster of the Week
- Mooks and Mecha Mooks (In order: Putties, Tengas, Cogs, Piranhatrons, General Havoc's robotic guard, Quantrons, Stingwingers, Swabbies, Batlings, Cyclobots, Putrids, Kelzaks, Tyrannodrones and Triptoids, Krybots, Hideacs and Styxoids, Chillers and Lava Lizards, Rin Shi, and Grinders.)
- Mook Chivalry
- More Dakka
- Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls
- My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours
- My New Gift Is Lame (Adam in The Movie)
- Mythology Gag (The RPM Big Bad shares his name with the "Forever Red" baddie (possible connections between the two were ultimately Jossed).)
- Also: Dino Thunder's "Lost and Found in Translation" consisted of our heroes watching an episode of Abaranger, rewritten as a Japanese series based on their own adventures; and "The Missing Bone" showed a returning veteran's belongings as including props from various Super Sentai series. In SPD, Sky's photos of his father in uniform are actually publicity shots from pre-PR Super Sentai series.
- Narm
- Neck Lift
- Needs More Love (Lightspeed Rescue)
- Never Bring A Knife To A Fist Fight
- Never Say Die
- Nightmare Fuel (Season 2's Lord Zedd was an American creation and was much more intimidating compared to Rita. He had a voice and faceplate vaguely reminiscient of Darth Vader and you could see his muscle tone because he had no skin, with various tubes moving some sort of fluid. He was so scary that after the first dozen episodes, they toned down his Evil Overlord personality into something more harmless.)
- Also the Fridge Logic of the whole plot, really brought to a head by the premise of RPM. It doesn't matter how hard you try, how long you fight, how many Big Bads you take down. Within a few months, another will take its place. Earth is doomed, no matter what you do- all the heroes can do is prolong the inevitable fall of man. Even if they survive, which isn't guaranteed, it'll take more than nine hundred years to come even close to rebuilding.
- Ninja (Mighty Morphin season 3 and Ninja Storm)
- No Hugging No Kissing
- Non Serial Movie (The first movie is out of continuity, as episodes 4-7 of Season 3 were designed to completely replace it. The second movie, however, is in continuity just fine, and slots in right before Turbo's first episode)
- Noodle Incident (done with wars. Throughout the various series extremely numerous references are made by various unrelated characters in unrelated seaons to significant battles 10,000 years ago and 3,000 years ago. Other than that, we got nothin' on 'em)
- Not Quite Dead (a few major villains have had several "final" encounters. Bonus points if the villain is someone who resurfaced after having been thought dead before the season began.)
- Oddly Named Sequel
- Official Couple (Tommy and Kimberly, Tommy and Kat, Andros and Ashley, Joel and Ms. Fairweather, Jen and Wes, Tori and Blake, Cassidy and Devin, Leelee and Phineas, Udonna and Leanbow, Nick and Madison, Theo and Lily.)
- One Steve Limit: Averted, maybe. It's how this whole Venjix thing got started anyway.
- Only So Many Equity Members (Repeatedly since the move to New Zealand. Notably, Kelson Henderson has played or voiced the Plucky Comic Relief character in every season between SPD and Jungle Fury. Ironically, one reason the show features so many Fake Brits is to avoid hiring SAG actors.)
- Ooh Me Accents Slipping (Like children running on a freshly waxed linoleum floor in stocking feet, from Ninja Storm on.)
- People In Rubber Suits
- Plug N Play Friends
- Portal Network (The Invisiportals in Dino Thunder, and the wormholes in Turbo, Lost Galaxy and SPD.)
- Power Crystal
- Power Gives You Wings (Various Zords get wings from allies or once upgraded)
- The Problem With Licensed Games (With 37 video games on various consoles/handhelds, PR surprisingly does a good job at averting this trope, but a few of those games definitely were stinkers)
- Product Placement (RPM has - in addition to the usual - licensed◊ Toyota◊ toys.)
- Promoted Fanboy (Blake Foster as Justin in Turbo. As noted above, his character is himself an ascended fanboy.)
- Puny Earthlings
- Put On A Bus (Technically, everyone! But more traditional examples include Tommy (returned as a starring cast member for seasons 2-5 and season 12, guest spot in season 10), Trini, Zack and Jason (Jason returned midway through season 4, and had guest spots in the second movie and season 10), Kimberly (guest spot in second movie), Aisha, Billy, Rocky (guest spot in season five), Tommy (again...), Tanya, Kat and Adam (Adam has guest spots in seasons 6 and 15), Justin (guest spot in season six), Ryan (returns for finale). Kendrix is something between this and a Disney Death.)
- Ranger: Pretty inevitable for obvious reasons, though whether they really do suffer Badass Decay or not varies by season.
- Real Life Writes The Plot (Lost Galaxy: When Valerie Vernon, Kendrix's actress, had to quit the show in order to undergo treatment for leukemia, Patricia Ja Lee was hired to reprise her role as Cassie to fill the Pink Ranger position. Then she quit over a contractual dispute, and Melody Perkins was hired to reprise her role as Karone and fill out the team. Three episodes were needed to shift the cast around, and two more establish Karone's place in the status quo. Rumor has it that one very high-budget episode was filmed before Lee's departure and had to be scrapped.)
- Recap Episode (Generally 2 per season. The only noteworthy one being Dino Thunder's "Legacy of Power", which featured a compilation of clips from the entire franchise in honor of the show's 500th episode.)
- Recycled IN SPACE! (Power Rangers IN SPACE, obviously, but most seasons amount to this)
- Recycled Script
- Redemption Equals Death
- Reinventing The Telephone (it's there, but justified or averted a surprising amount of the time if you think about it - earlier seasons were before cell phones were common, and in many later ones the morphers are phones)
- Reunion Show (a yearly tradition between Lost Galaxy and SPD (with the sole exception of Ninja Storm), plus the Milestone episodes and a couple scattered ones in Zeo and in Space.)
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand (Sometimes the Rangers survive only because of bickering and backstabbing on the villains front.)
- Scapegoat Creator (Bruce Kalish, who headed up SPD through Jungle Fury)
- The Scrappy (Justin Stewart is said to be the cause of Turbo's unpopularity. Cole Evans from Wild Force.)
- Screaming Warrior (When they really feel like adapting the Super Sentai look and feel)
- Screwed By The Parent Company The show's gradual disappearance from cable, scheduling RPM where it can constantly be pre-empted and timeshifted. and the lack of full-season DVD sets in the US.
- At least it isn't on FOX anymore.
- Secret Identity (in most series, but averted when the team is officially sponsored by the government (or in Operation Overdrive, a private corporation))
- Sculpted Physique (The various series' monsters)
- Sentai (considering the source material is titled Super Sentai...)
- Seven Year Rule (the seasonal themes; recycled ones include dinosaurs, ninjas, animals and Cool Cars)
- She's A Man In Japan (The Yellow Ranger up to Wild Force; occurrences of Yellow Ranger gender synchronicity prior to Wild Force was because it was a rare case of the Super Sentai show having two girls as well)
- Shonen Upgrade (of course)
- Shoot The Shaggy Dog: (The basic premise of Power Rangers RPM made all the previous seasons successes, accompishments, and technological advances null and void.)
- The Smurfette Principle (The show itself is not so bad about this, but good luck finding an action figure of one of the girls.)
- Snark Bait (One of the reasons to watch the show after you leave the target demographic. There's even a website for it. )
- So Bad Its Good / So Bad Its Horrible (Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is currently rated 2.2 on the IMDb and holds #65 on the Bottom 100 list as of March 31st, 2008. The other film also held a position on the list at one time, but has crept up into the 3.x range over time. Both were heavily panned by critics)
- The movies did manage to entertain this troper as a kid. Now, not so much.
- This troper thinks the MMPR movie is quite good...if you watch the Nostalgia critic video before it...
- Sorting Algorithm Of Evil
- Spandex Latex Or Leather (Spandex - no matter what Dr. K tells you.)
- Special Effects Failure (The controversial change in design of the alien SPD members in Power Rangers SPD from their Super Sentai counterparts was heavily decried by fans as being inappropriate and too "Muppet-like" for the show.)
- Spotlight Stealing Squad (most Red Rangers and some Sixth Rangers; RPM sees Dillon and Ziggy taking time from the Power Trio)
- Stock Footage
- Storming The Castle (on occasion, most notably Jungle Fury's Grand Finale)
- Strictly Formula (it's gradually become less formulaic and more complex, but man, those early episodes...)
- Stuff Blowing Up (always there, but taken to extremes during Bruce Kalish's time on the series)
- Super Robot
- Super Sentai Stance (considering this show comes from Super Sentai, usage of the Stance is inevitable in most episodes)
- Taste The Rainbow (Multicolored spandex jokes aside; there's a Ranger team for just about every category that could fall under a young boy's Rule Of Cool: dinosaur Rangers, ninja Rangers, car Rangers, beast Rangers, wizard Rangers, and so on and so on...)
- Taught By Experience (almost ALL Power Rangers, but expecially the 'Red Rookies'.)
- Theme Naming (Probably unintentional, but the first five Pink Rangers are, in order: Kimberly, Katherine, Cassie, Kendrix and Karone, although it seems the writers noticed this and have avoided K-or-C names since: the next Pinks were Dana, Jen, Syd, Vida and Rose. Of course, later Yellow Rangers include Katie, Kelsey, and Kira, while Kat Manx had brief stint as a ranger, too.)
- Those Two Guys (Bulk & Skull, who incidently are the longest lasting cast members from Season 1 to Season 7, longer then any individual Power Ranger. Cassidy & Devin in Dino Thunder also fit this trope.)
- Three Amigos (Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, Jungle Fury, and RPM start with these instead of Five Man Bands. They can also qualify as Power Trios.)
- Throw The Dog A Bone (Bulk & Skull in "When is a Ranger Not a Ranger?")
- Title Theme Tune (you will never see a season whose theme song does not constantly say the words "Power Rangers" in its lyrics)
- Tomboy And Girly Girl (Just for starters: Daredevil Kelsey and paramedic Dana, abrasive Air Force sergeant Taylor and gentle, borderline Sueish Team Mom Alyssa, streetwise orphan Z and rich model/pop star Syd, outgoing Vida and shy Madison. Most seasons with this dynamic will have an episode where the girls, who are always best friends, disagree about something and get into an epic catfight before they learn An Aesop about how much they mean to each other. Wannabe rockstar Cassie and girly cheerleader Ashley, who started the "tradition," had two.)
- Totally Radical (the first season's "Morphenomenal!")
- Transformation Sequence (and how!)
- Transformation Trinket (the morphers)
- Trope Mobile (Even ignoring the zords, there's still the Rangers' personal motorcycles and the occasional car - and in Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder, Ranger-themed mack trucks. And a ton more in the toys that never make it to the show.)
- Twenty Minutes Into The Future (SPD and RPM. Lost Galaxy was supposed to be this, but it didn't stick.)
- Un Canceled (Twice, after Wild Force (which forced a change in shooting location and production companies) and after Jungle Fury)
- Unflinching Walk (Well, more like Unflinching Pose. Lots and lots of Unflinching Poses.)
- Unfortunate Implications (The original Black Ranger was black, and the original Yellow Ranger was Asian. Their replacements' races were flipped to preserve the Five Token Band, and the franchise didn't cast another black Black Ranger until Operation Overdrive's Will. While we're on the subject, Will was a professional thief.)
- The Verse
- Wake Up Go To School Save The World (most of the time. Averted in a few seasons when Ranger duties become part of a career)
- We Are As Mayflies (particularly noticable. Aliens keep pretty quiet about how old they actually are, but Shayla still looked young after a 3000 year nap, Zordon was an old fogey when he was sealed in a pocket dimension 10,000 years ago, and the Sentinel Knight was already active and powerful when the continents were one, roughly 250 million years ago. Things get even more unfair when we see Thrax, a member of whatever long-lived species Rita and Zedd belonged to (10,000 years did nothing to them, age-wise) grow to full maturity within nine years. Its so pervasive that it was rather jarring to see non-humans that didn't live for pretty much ever in Mystic Force, where they lived on a human timescale.)
- Wham Episode ("Chase Into Space," "The Secret of the Locket.")
- Where Did They Get Lasers (generally justified. Justifications include aliens, time travel, secret government programs, magic, and in at least one case, funding.)
- Where The Heck Is Angel Grove? (Subtly played with; Angel Grove, Mariner Bay, Blue Bay Harbor, Reefside, San Angeles, and Ocean Bluff are either confirmed or stated to be in California, Silver Hills in Washington state, Turtle Cove in Colorado, Newtech City and Briarwood are not known, but are somewhere in the west coast. Why Eric, who lives in Silver Hills, was able to write a speeding ticket for Taylor, who lives in Turtle Cove, is never addressed. Corinth, on the other hand, appears to be on an east coast - but coast of what, we don't know.)
- Fans have used the overhead shot of Corinth's location, combined with the coordinates given in the premiere, to determine that Corinth City is actually built where Boston is now.
- World Half Empty: Think about it. For the 16 years from 1992 to 2008, there was only one year (2005) where the planet was not being either besieged by alien invaders or besieged by rebel forces, either way resulting in millions of dollars in property damage and presumably deaths. Fast forward to 2025- the evil aliens aren't invading from the outside anymore, they're hiding among immigrants, and the bad ones are still up to their old tricks of trying to take over- they're just entrenched now thanks to liberal immigration practices. Fast forward an unknown length of time, and Earth has finally fallen. Pretty much anyone who survived the past 40-some-odd years of nonstop attacks is now dead, save one city.
- The rest of the galaxy isn't much better- once the leader of all good guys kills himself to destroy the evil empire-ish thinggy, the very next year a massive criminal syndicate crawls out of the woodwork to take its place. By 2025, there's already a new evil empire. Its pretty much stated outright that the bad guys control most of the known universe (they all own several galaxies), and given that their idea of "taking over" is often synonymous with "raze"...
- See also Nightmare Fuel; Fridge Logic.
- The World Is Always Doomed (Every week, every year, there WILL be a giant monster attack on a major metropolitan area on the West Coast of the United States. Guaranteed.)
- Xanatos Gambit
... And pretty much every other trope you see in kids' shows. This show has been on for a LONG time.
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