Trivia / Gladiators (1992)

• Edited for Syndication: For a time, the American diginet Charge! (half-owned by MGM, who owns the franchise) aired reruns of this version for the first time in the US. In addition to the expected edits for time, extraneous music (including "Another One Bites the Dust", "We Are Family", and "The Boys are Back in Town") was edited out, more commercial breaks were put in, and the closing credits were dramatically shortened.
• On-Set Injury: Nightshade, Jet, Zodiac, and Amazon all left the show after injury.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • Shadow was sacked after it emerged that he took steroids.
  • Warrior was ousted after he was found guilty of a firearms offence.
• Romance on the Set: Dating couple Michael Lewis and Chrissie Mullings both auditioned for the show together when it first started. Mullings would end up as a contender on the show (losing to eventual champion Vanda Fairchild), while Lewis would become Gladiator Saracen, one of four to appear on the show for its entire run. The two eventually married.
  • Gladiators Trojan and Zodiac had a child together.
  • Gladiator Vogue would eventually marry Series 6 quarter-finalist Mark Roberts.
  • And, of course, let's not forget about Ulrika Jonsson's affair with Hunter.
  • Hunter also dated Jet for a time.
  • A couple of examples from the Australian version as well. Gladiators Taipan and Fury were dating at the time of the show and eventually married. Also, Series 3 quarter-finalist James Lenehan was engaged to Gladiator Delta when he appeared on the show (they eventually married), and after he won his preliminary heat, she came out and gave her fiancé a congratulatory hug and kiss. 28 years later, their son Kalani won the 2024 Australian revival, and Delta and James were there cheering him on.
• Screwed by the Network: The 2008-09 revival was axed simply because a new controller had been hired by Sky One and he was cleaning house schedule-wise.
• Short Run in Peru: The final series was originally seen only on pay-TV, via the then ITV-owned DTT service ONdigital, before it actually aired on ITV itself.
• What Could Have Been: There were at least two unused events. One was Breakthrough & Conquer from the American version; it was used in the 1993 Wembley live shows, and clips even appeared in the 1993 opening show, but never got used on the actual show for some reason. The other was Cyclotron, intended for the 1997 series. From what people have gathered, a Gladiator and contender would've been put on cycles on a rotating track, and the Gladiator would've been chasing the contender, trying to catch them. It got so far as testing before being scrapped; the Gladiators themselves have said it was too difficult to play and too hard for the audience to follow, while it's been rumored there were technical issues with the event. Despite this, a CGI version still appeared in that series' opening credits.
  • A third International Gladiators event was planned for 1996, but thanks to LWT refusing to finance another event (it was rather costly), Australia's Gladiators being itself cancelled (they were supposed to be taping it there) and no other country wanting to host it, it was scrapped. In addition to the usual suspects (US, UK, Australia, Russia and Germany), New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, South Africa and a joint Scandinavian team consisting of Sweden, Finland and Norway were interested in competing.