Hey, It's That Voice!: Masashi Ebara does the voice for the Big Bad in the first Bleach movie. Of course, it's hard to take him seriously once you realize that same voice actor is shouting about the Glorious Springtime of Youth as Maito Gai in Naruto.
Shinichiro Miki, who voices Urahara Kisuke, did the voice of Mizuki in Naruto, the man who revealed the Kyuubi secret to Naruto in episode 1.
Ikakku is Edward Elric IN AMERICA (even complete with an "arm and a leg" joke in a filler dub episode) while Hitsugaya can commiserate with the oft-belittled, but overall badass alchemist in Japan.
Hitsugaya is the Master Mage of Cephiro.
Several Princeof Tennis Characters; Byakuya Kuchiki is Tezuka, Grimmjow is Atobe, Zommari is Sanada, and Hirako is Momoshiro.
Ichigo gathers a ragtag group of friends from his school to enter another world and fight unsurmountable odds to rescue a friend, continually getting stronger after each opponent up to a climactic clash that ends with an Anticlimax. The Soul Society arc, or the Hueco Mundo arc?
Even the details are similar. It all starts when two uniformed baddies, one rowdy and one emotionless, show up in the human world. Defeated by them, Ichigo goes through Training from Hell to gain new power. Once on the other side Ichigo gains a small, friendly tagalong, while one of his True Companions gets to defeat the murderer of their mentor.
Ichigo fights the stoic guy who kidnapped the damsel in distress. He is temporarily defeated, only to launch into a new Hollowfied form and temporarily curb stomp them. The next fight is him and others being manhandled by Aizen as he explains how weak they are.
In order to put an end to a Complete Monster, the hero must use a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that will make him lose his powers forever. Supposedly. The badguy survives and heals anyway, but is taken out of the story for now. As the comic still has not ended, it may recycle the story about regaining powers one more time as well.
As a matter of fact, Ichigo did get his powers back, in the very same way he got them in the first place. Only this time, the recycling was intentional. And it was epic.
A White-Haired Pretty Boy wants to take over Soul Society because he and his kind were exiled long ago. The Bount arc (Jin Kariya, Bounts), or Memories of Nobody (Ganryu, Dark Ones)? The English dub even uses Troy Baker as the same voice actor for both characters.
The Third movie, Fade to Black, is intentionally filled with deja vu to repeat lots of older scenes throughout the series. Though the Hollow parasite that takes over Rukia's old friend is just simply recycled.
Lampshaded and combined with an OmakeBrick Joke in Episode 287.
The Hero is confronted by a group of superpowered humans who continuously trick him, but after the final battle, it's revealed that the hero's Trickster Mentor was behind it the whole time. His intention was to make the hero think about how he couldn't always use power to win fights. Am I talking about the beginning of the Bount arc, or Chapter Black from Yu Yu Hakusho?
While the latter example is much more dramatic, both the Zanpakto Rebellion arc and the Hell Chapter movie involve the villain tricking Ichigo into using his Hollow powers to break through a seemingly indestructable prison.
The Other Darrin: In the American dub, Chad's and Ikkaku's voices were replaced only temporarily, but Kaien, Kenpachi, and Urahara each have a permanent Other Darrin for any particular reason. This is not helped by the fact that nearly no one in the course of the show in Japan had any voice replaced except for temporary occasions.
What Could Have Been: The first draft for Bleach was very decisively different than Bleach is as we know it today: Shinigami shrunk when exerting too much power. This happens to Rukia in "chapter zero" where she is then washing herself with Ichigo's toothbrush in a coffee cup. Ichigo seems far more interested in girls, especially Inoue (he denies it of course). Orihime dies at the beginning, being killed by her hollowified father, but instead of going to Soul Society decides to stay with Ichigo to cheer him on. This version was shot down by the publishers.
Other changes mentioned by Kubo include that Rukia was meant to be a more central character, as in the lead character, that most shinigami used firearm themed zanpakuto rather than swords whereas Rukia used a scythe. This character sketch was the one used as a base for the "Dark Rukia" in the third movie, Fade to Black I Call Your Name.
The Menos Forest mini-arc would have been in the manga had it not been for time constraints, thus forcing Kubo to take it out.
There are claims that Token Evil Teammate Mayuri Kurotsuchi was originally conceived as Ishida's personal villain, whom he would ultimately kill after a series of battles to avenge his grandfather. However some fans saw him as an Ensemble Dark Horse and saw him as one of the most brilliant strategist, leading to an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech to his Evil Counterpart.
When in an interview about Shinji, Kubo mentioned that he wanted to do stories for Ichigo's classmates as well, directly implying story lines for Keigo, Tatsuki, and Mizuiro before the executives told him to move up the schedule and get to the Shinigami.
