Trivia / Kamen Rider Drive

• Acting for Two:
  • Chris Peppler portrays not only Krim Steinbelt, but also provides the voice of his creation, the Drive Driver. This turns out to be Significant Double Casting.
  • Both Mashin Chaser and Proto-Drive are voiced by Taiko Katono, hinting a similar connection. Significant Double Casting strikes again!
• Actor Allusion:
  • Subverted in episode 15. We are led to believe that the roidmude from episode 15 copied a fortune teller played by BoukenBlue because the people it attacked turned blue. How wrong we were.
  • Professor Harley Hendrickson's actor played Professor Henry in Kamen Rider Super-1.
  • Drive Saga: Heart & Mach ends with a slow reprise of the original OP Surprise Drive, named Eternity- (from Surprise Drive), still performed by Mitsuru Matsuoka - who was previously Kamen Rider Eternal.
• Bonus Episode: The Drive Secret Missions, special episodes given out as promotional material or DVD Extras. Type ZERO is a prologue to the series, while type TV-KUN is a Sequel Episode to type ZERO as well as a tie-in to Movie War Full Throttle. Type TOKUJO is a four episode miniseries that reveals more of the backstory. Type HIGH SPEED introduces a new form for Drive. Type Lupin is a Sequel Episode to the Drive portion of Movie War Full Throttle.
• The Cast Showoff: During the pursuit of Volt's lackeys in episode 9, they allowed Rio Uchida's running and leaping skills to really shine here.
• The Danza:
  • Kenta Hamada plays Kyuu Saijou, whose real name is Kenta Imai.
  • Also, Kenta Uchino plays Kenta Takasugi during the Scooper Roidmude episodes.
• Irony as She Is Cast: One of Chase's major character arcs was him getting a driver's license, which ends up as part of a tragic keepsake for Gou. In a 2018 interview for another car-themed drama however, Chase's actor, Taiko Katono, admits he had never gotten an actual driver's license, despite the multiple times the character is shown driving motorbikes, cars, and even a truck in the series.
• Playing Against Type: Masakazu Morita, most famous for his roles as Tidus and Ichigo Kurosaki, plays Banno /Gold Drive.
• Promoted Fanboy: Ryoma Takeuchi was a Kamen Rider fan before he was cast as Shinnosuke Tomari, in particular being a fan of Kamen Rider Double; in fact, the reason Ryu Terui appears in the Chaser movie is because Takeuchi was allowed to pick which past Rider they would bring back. He's also a fan of American comics and got to meet Stan Lee at Tokyo Comic Con, where he expressed interest in portraying a Marvel superhero.
• Prop Recycling:
  • The old Drive looks almost exactly like the new Drive, only colored black and missing the iconic Tire across his chest and the back spoiler piece on his helmet. Justified, as he's Drive's prototype.
  • When Drive first tries Dream Vegas, he only gets one coin out of it - and that one coin was a Cell Medal colored gold.
  • Drive Type High Speed is a silver recolor of the Type Speed suit. The Type High Speed Shift Car is also a repainted of the Shift Speed car.
    • Mega Max Flare is a retool of the Max Flare car and tire.
  • In Movie War Full Throttle: Drive gains access to Type Fruits, a Gaim-based form that allows him to use the Daidaimaru and Musou saber. His suit is a Type Speed suit painted orange and blue, with the tire composing similar armor and adds a gasa hat to the helmet.
  • The Dead Heat suit appears to be kitbashed out of Mach's undersuit and Drive's chestplate. Both Riders sport new helmets in the form, but for the toy version at least it's the same helmet in two different configurations. Much later on, Chaser Mach is a similar kitbash of Chaser's undersuit and Mach's chestplate and helmet.
    • In Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Mach, Go gains a new form called Mach Chaser, which is essentially a purple and gray repaint of Chaser Mach, with Chaser’s eyes.
  • The main weapon of Kamen Rider Lupin, the villain of Drive's segment in Movie War Full Throttle, is a recolored and extensively remolded Brake Gunner, Mashin Chaser' weapon, aptly named the Lupin Gunner. The Break Gunner was reused again in the summer movie with the Dark Drive using it as the Blade Gunner.
    • Speaking of the summer movie Surprise Future, one of Drive's two movie-exclusive forms, Cho Deadheat, is a red repaint of Mashin Chaser's armor with an altered Type Speed Helmet. He also uses the Mach Driver and the Tridoron Key.
    • The other movie-exclusive form, Type Special, uses a yellow version Dark Drive’s under suit, and reuses the armor, but gains a new head.
  • Speaking of Movie War Full Throttle, Chase's Proto-Zero Roidmude form resembles Cyberoid ZZZ's suit, only with a lot more silver. Both of these are likely justified by the fact Krim made Cyberoid ZZZ and Chase is really Proto-Drive. It's likely the two are essentially "brothers".
  • The Gold Drive suit appears to be a repaint of Proto-Drive with an altered head.
  • Zerodrive from Super Movie Wars is simply a color-swapped Proto-Drive, with a black repaint of Type Speed's helmet.
  • During the events of Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser, Chase gets a new form called Super Mashin Chaser, a gold repaint of his Mashin Chaser form with new shoulder armor and an additional blade antenna on his helmet.
  • In Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Heart, Heart gains access to his own form called Kamen Rider Heart, which is a retool of Type Tridoron, but with elements from Heart’s Roidmude form, like a trench coat, similar shoulder armor, and a new helmet. He even uses Shift Hearton, which is a retool of the Shift Tridoron car.
    • Early in the film, Heart transformed into a kitbash Drive form called Type Speed Wild Technic, which uses the upper body of Type Speed, the lower half of Type Wild, and the head of Type Technic.
  • In Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Brain, Brain's suit is a retool of Proto-Drive while his motorcycle is Chase's, recolored and with the skull on front replaced with a brain. His sword is a green recolor of Kamen Rider Ghost's Sunglasslasher, which gets Lampshaded by Dark Ghost (who, ironically enough, is a recolor himself).
• Recycled Script: Drive's Hyper Battle DVD bears a pretty strong resemblance to Kamen Rider Blade's; both involve monsters copying the title character's belt and powers, both copies have incredibly obvious "tells" that nobody seems to acknowledge (Fake Blade wears a red scarf, Fake Drive has his Roidmude crest on his helmet), and the hero ends up getting attacked by his confused allies (Garren and Leangle because they guessed wrong, Mach because he fell for Fake Drive's lies).
• Throw It In!: In Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser, Shinnosuke accidentally calling Ryu Terui "Fukui" wasn't scripted; Ryoma Takeuchi legitimately flubbed his lines, but it was kept in because it reinforced how nervous Shinnosuke was over the whole situation.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In concept art, Heart's Roidmude form had golden wings attached to his back.
  • Hacks from the Drive Driver and the Shift Brace revealed five unreleased Formula-styled Tire Exchange Shift Cars: F00, F04, F05, F06, and F07. They were likely removed from production lines to preserve the Lucky Number Seven/Rule of Three standings for Type Tridoron.
  • The same can be said for the Mach Driver, where hacks found four unreleased Signal Bikes: Ittsu, Yukkuri, Tousan, and Kattobi. They were likely removed to preserve the Super-1 Mythology Gags that they compose around Mach.
  • Also, hacking the DX Drive Driver revealed, among other things, sound effects for shift cars of the Toqgers and Toqger Ressha, suggesting that at one point, a crossover might've been planned between Drive and Ressha Sentai ToQger. However, the idea was likely dropped due to Toqger already having crossed over with Drive's predecessor, Gaim. There's also a shift car sound effect for Super Sentai in general, suggesting that at one point, it was planned to have Tridoron combine with Shurikenjin using a Shift Car instead of an OtomoNin Shuriken, which is what ended up happening, similar to what happened with Wizard when he joined up with the Kyoryugers in Super Hero Taisen Z.
  • Not to mention some of the Shift Cars not getting used to show their Shift Tires and half of those that did only got names for their Type Tridoron fused combo Shift Tires.
  • Unused DX Drive Driver sounds indicate that all of Drive's forms and Heart/Type Miracle were supposed to receive individual upgrades. The soundbyte for Dead Heat's upgrade, Super Dead Heat, would later be used to refer to Drive's Clipped-Wing Angel movie form and Mach's One-Winged Angel novel form.
  • Kamen Rider Lupin was devised as a recurring adversary who would face Drive across his movies, which is why the Sequel Hook of him surviving his debut was added in the first place. However, future movies could not accomodate him, and so his story was wrapped up in a DVD Bonus Episode.
  • In-universe, Gou would've gotten an upgrade had he not declined after regaining his confidence. Also in a reverse way, Type Tridoron wasn't a planned upgrade form for Drive after Type Formula.
• Word of Gay: Brain, according to his actor in one of the "Ryoma's Top Gear" backstage videos on the Drive site. Considering his behavior towards Heart and his jealousy of Medic... Yeah, not too hard to imagine.
• Word of Saint Paul: Mitsuru Matsuoka headcanoned that the alternate timeline Kamen Rider 4 hails from is one where his previous character Katsumi Daido was converted into a cyborg and became Kamen Rider 4 instead of Kamen Rider Eternal, making his voicing of the former an instance of Significant Double Casting.

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