Trivia / Code Geass

• Acting for Two:
  • Lelouch- Touga Tenkuji of all people in Super Robot Wars Z 2.
  • In the English dub, Laura Bailey voiced Rakshata, Chiba, and young Suzaku. Likewise, Michelle Ruff voices Euphy, one of the Ikaruga Bridge Bunnies in R2, and young Lelouch.
• Anime First: The manga that followed can be considered AU, at best.
• Ascended Fanon: Sayoko being a Ninja Maid.
• Banned in China: China specifically for: A) Portraying the Chinese leadership as manipulative eunuchs, B) exemplifying the dignity of conquered peoples going hand-in-hand with striking back against the government, and C) having Tibet as an independent nation (reference is made to the Tibet Convention.) Something about nudity as well.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: No, Suzaku didn't try to buy clothes from the soup store. That bit came from Code MENT, an abridged parody.
• Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer:
  • An article from a Scandinavian country advertised Code Geass as a comedy series about a delightful youth named Rerouch who became the King of Britannia through use of his mystical Geass, which allowed him to gain control over any individual whose name he had written down in a black note book. Unfortunately Rerouch is countered by a revolutionary named Jeremiah Suzaku who fights him by using a mecha named EVA. At some point, you have to wonder if they actually deliberately made this crap up because no sane human being could possibly get this much wrong if they had seen even 30 seconds of the show. To make matters worse, it spelled the series' name as "Code Geese: Rerouch of the Reberrion", even although the "rebellion" part isn't even Gratuitous English in the Japanese original (the title uses the actual Japanese word for "rebellion", hangyaku, leaving the misspelling just plain inexplicable).
  • Upon the release of R2, several Spanish-speaking sites, all probably echoing the same source, gave it a synopsis that had little to do with its real plot: according to them, the season featured a new, mysterious Zero played by an unknown character and it forced Lelouch to return to action to defeat him. This mistake, possibly stemming from a mistranslation or an uncorrected urban legend, proved so popular that it found his way into the Spanish article of The Other Wiki and is still there nowadays, even although the real plot is well known and has become pop culture since.
• Creator's Favorite: Several members of the show's staff surprisingly considered Cornelia to be the most just person in the series. Additionally, many of the Japanese voice actors found themselves more sympathetic to Suzaku over Lelouch early on, but admitted that his actions become worse in the second season, his own voice actor, Takahiro Sakurai, jokingly saying the fans should apologize to him for all the hatred thrown at Suzaku. Lelouch's own voice, Jun Fukuyama, has gone on record saying he couldn't believe it when Lelouch accused Suzaku of betraying him in Turn 17, considering the number of times Lelouch had betrayed Suzaku's trust and that of others.
• Creator's Pest: According to director Goro Taniguchi, many of the Japanese voice actors enjoyed it whenever Lelouch suffers (he partly attributed this to them being really into character), with the voice actors of Kallen and Nunnally admitting that he does terrible things, and doubting whether his final actions sufficiently atoned for them in the end. When recording the first scene between Lelouch and Nunnally, Jun Fukuyama, Lelouch's own voice, had to consult Taniguchi on how sincere Lelouch was in his love for Nunnally, prompting Taniguchi to tell him explicitly that he had to play Lelouch as loving Nunnally from the bottom of his heart. Taniguchi also had to give Lelouch an additional monologue to makes his feelings more clear. However, Fukuyama and Taniguchi at one point even agreed in thinking Lelouch was completely evil and Beyond Redemption.
• The Danza: Kento Sugiyama is voiced by Noriaki Sugiyama, Inoue is voiced by Kikuko Inoue and Nagisa Chiba is voiced by Saeko Chiba.
• Defictionalization: On a less cheerful note, some users on the web (especially on 4chan) started to use "Elevens" as a real-life ethnophaulism for the Japanese.
• Denied Parody: When the series first came out, a lot of fans believed it was a parody-slash-critique of the Bush administration and The War on Terror. When asked about this in an interview, director Goro Taniguchi denied that there was any political motivation behind the plot and said that his goal was just to make an entertaining TV show.
• Dueling Works: With the anime adaptation of Death Note, as both started airing in Fall of 2006, both have a charming, intelligent Villain Protagonist with a special power that involves mind control in some form or another, and both place emphasis on mind games and strategy.
• DVD Commentary: With the Japanese producers and cast. (Includes subtitles.)
• Edited for Syndication: For the show's [adult swim] airing, there were expected alterations and censorships made to tone down certain content for its' intended demographic, but some content was reworked and/or censored all together:
  • In episode 10 of R2, "When Shen Hu Wins Glory", a photo on Anya's phone of Milly groping Shirley is replaced with another image from earlier in the set, which makes Suzaku's comment about the picture's presence on her phone to begin with seem rather confusing.
  • There were also cases of nudity being pixelated or blurred out, namely in Kallen's shower scene in episode 3, and the scene of Villetta waking up in Ohgi's apartment in episode 15.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The original plans for R2 were changed when it was announced that the series would be moved to an earlier, primetime slot. Fans believe that this mainly affected the first half of R2, for the purposes of re-introducing the show to a new audience instead of picking up right after the first season's cliffhanger like the staff had intended. As a general rule, how much a fan thinks was changed is inversely proportionate to said fan's opinion of R2's quality.
  • It's known that the Time Skip itself was a result of Executive Meddling. Other elements that are commonly suspected or assumed to fall under this include introducing the character of Rolo and removing aspects of C.C.'s and Suzaku's backgrounds without a full explanation.
  • The level of mecha use seen in R2 may be considered a product of the aforementioned round of meddling, with the show becoming closer to Gundam as a result (and with all the attendant flashy mecha that can be used to sell model kits that implies).
• Follow the Leader: Contrary to popular opinion, Code Geass is not this to Death Note, but rather to its older Sunrise sibling, Gundam. Massive mecha battles? Check. Anyone Can Die? Check. Uprisings against a corrupt regime? Check. A pretty boy wearing a mask? Check. Energy wings on mecha? Check. Imouto character close to the protagonist gets abducted by the villains? Checkmate. There are simply so many similarities to various Gundam series that more experienced mecha fans have immediately called the show a more FAAAABULOUS version of Gundam, only with fujobait, hot chicks and random school scenes.
• He Also Did: Takahiro Kimura, the character designer who did the final look of the characters (CLAMP only did the early sketches and the costume designs) also designed characters for several other mecha anime which are considered cult classics: GaoGaiGar, Betterman, GUN×SWORD and Godannar. If you haven't noticed by now, his defining characteristics are noodly men and ridiculously sexy women.
• Hostility on the Set: Taniguchi admitted that he wondered whether Jun Fukuyama and Nunnally's voice actress were having issues, due to Fukuyama's apparent inability to play an early scene between them as Taniguchi had instructed him to.
• Invisible Advertising:
  • On [adult swim], the show began with very little promotion: Being so continuity driven, it was hard to pick up new viewers [not helped by the fact that it was at one point moved all the way down to to 5 a.m., see Screwed by the Network below].
  • This is even worse in Latin America with Netflix, as this series, along with Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, were brought to that region without any promotion or even warning, in a very stark contrast with Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan, which was heavily promoted.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Johnny Yong Bosch being casted as Lelouch, who's not that athletic and gets into trouble during physical confrontations. JYB is a known and experienced martial artist.
• No Dub for You:
  • A very infuriating example in the Latin American Spanish version in Netflix: The TV series lacks a dub in that region. This is especially worse by the fact the Spanish release of the TV came along with Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, another Sunrise series who also come dubless there and, to make the things even more annoying for Latin American viewers, both series were released along with Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan, an anime series which interest with the region's fandom was minimum, at best, but unlike those series, it was heavily promoted by Netflix and it did include a dub.
  • The compilation movies don't have an English dub; however, the Resurrection has one.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Because of Kazunari Tanaka's death in 2016, Shinichirou Tamaki will be voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama for the compilation movies and subsequent materials.
  • Hidenosuke Kawashiro voiced V.V. in the compilation movies, replacing Kazato Tomizawa who voiced the character in the TV series. This is understandable given that Tomizawa voiced V.V. when he was a child back then and was already in his 20s when the movies came out, making him too old to reprise his role.
  • After Norihiro Inoue passed away in 2022, Kōichi Yamadera took over the role of Schneizel in the subsequent materials.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Johnny Yong Bosch is more often known for straight-up action heroes, not chessmasters like Lelouch. Jamieson Price on the other hand, often does badass or The Chessmaster, but Diethard's more of a Smug Snake.
  • This was the entire point of the Japanese casting of Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch and Takahiro Sakurai as Suzaku.
  • This has also became apparent with the recasting of Tamaki; as Director Taniguchi mentioned how he deliberately reminded Nobuyuki Hiyama to "play small fry," and lampshades how much of a luxury Tamaki has "to receive the voice of Hiyama given his low IQ." Hiyama himself also admitted "Kazunari's shoes are very tough for him to fit in, since nobody (in their industry) can portray The Everyman as well as that guy does."
• Popularity Redo: The second season was completely reworked because, being very popular, it was moved from the midnight slot to a much more mainstream time, and a lot of the edgy stuff had to be removed. This is arguably the main reason why R2 had such hectic pacing.
• Promoted Fanboy: Akazawa Ryotaro, a big fan of the series and of Suzaku in particular, got to play Suzaku in the 2023 stage musical (and threw the first pitch at a baseball game in character), and then got to voice a new character in Lost Stories.
• Prop Recycling: In R2, Zero often seems to use the same detonator/trigger prop when he wants to make something cool happen.
• Reality Subtext: The whole Honorary Britannian thing seems to be taken off from the Honorary White policy applied by Apartheid-era South Africa towards Japanese (and also Koreans and Taiwanese, but not continental Chinese) possibly to avoid South Africa to suffer a trade embargo from both Japan and South Korea, especially in the 1980s when both countries had the quasi-monopoly in advanced electronics and the Apartheid-era government needed that technology badly.
• Real-Life Relative: Liam 'O Brien and Amy Kincaid ('O Brien) are husband and wife, playing Lloyd and Shirley.
• Screwed by the Network: Code Geass' run on [adult swim] is infamous for how poorly the show was treated by the network. It started with little promotion from the network, but had an okay timeslot of 1:30 a.m., right after the other three premieres at the time. It only got worse from there though, as after episode 18, the show (with zero announcement) was kicked all the way down to 5 a.m. and with no reruns. When R2 premiered, it would move back to its original timeslot, but still had little to no promotion. The show's rights would later end up expiring with only the first season having been completely reran. Considering this all happened during Cartoon Network's first Audience-Alienating Era, it isn't really all that surprising, if unfortunate.
• Star-Making Role:
  • The Japanese version served as this for Jun Fukuyama and Ami Koshimizu.
  • The English dub served as this for Karen Strassman.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Other Wiki states that Lelouch was originally going to have white hair along with a Cool Mask. Blond Anti-Hero rival with great plans. Does this remind you of anyone?
  • The Collector's Edition Blu-Ray for Season 2 had a draft for the original first episode of R2 where fallout between Lelouch and Suzaku turned out to be completely different.
• Word of Dante: Many fans believe that Lamperouge was Marianne's maiden name, despite the fact that she's only ever referred to as "Marianne vi Britannia", even in media depicting her pre-marriage (such as the novel where a teenage Marianne helps prevent one of Charles' uncles from taking over the throne).

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