Trivia / The Powerpuff Girls (1998)

For Trivia tropes pertaining to the movie, go here.

For Trivia tropes pertaining to the 2016 series, go here.

Trivia tropes for The Powerpuff Girls

Trivia with Their Own Pages

• The Other Darrin
• What Could Have Been

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• Acting for Two:
  • Tom Kenny voices the Mayor, the Narrator, Mitch Mitchelson, and Snake and Lil' Arturo of the Gangreen Gang.
  • Jeff Bennett voices Ace, Grubber, Big Billy, and Dick Hardly.
  • Tom Kane voices the Professor and HIM.
  • Roger L. Jackson voices Mojo Jojo and Butch of the Rowdyruff Boys.
  • Jennifer Hale voices Ms. Keane, Princess Morbucks and Sedusa.
  • Chuck McCann voices all three Amoeba Boys.
  • Rob Paulsen voices both Brick and Boomer.
  • Kath Soucie supplied the voices for Harold Smith's wife Marianne and daughter Julie.
  • The three actresses for the girls also voiced one each of the three criminal animals from "Sweet 'N Sour."
• In the Dutch dub, the series only used seven voice actors. Out of these, Bram Bart (Mojo Jojo) was the only person to voice only one character:
  • Hetty Heyting voiced Blossom, Ms. Keane and Sedusa.
  • Marlies Somers voiced Bubbles and Princess Morbucks, the former of which she'd reprise in the 2016 series.
  • Ingeborg Wieten voiced Buttercup and Ms. Bellum.
  • Fred Meijer voiced Professor Utonium, Fuzzy Lumpkins and Lil' Arturo.
  • Ruud Drupsteen voiced HIM and the Amoeba Boys.
  • Olaf Wijnants voiced the Mayor and Snake.
    • It's unknown who did the voices of the Rowdyruff Boys or the rest of the Gangreen Gang, although some of the male actors probably did.
  • In the Polish dub, Robert Czebotar voices both the Professor and the Narrator.
• Adored by the Network: Along with Dexter's Laboratory, it was Cartoon Network's flagship series during the "Cartoon Cartoons" era of Cartoon Network that was rerun daily until 2002.
• Author's Saving Throw: Many fans did not like Rainbow the Clown's fate at the end of the Season One episode "Mime For A Change", wherein the girls beat him up and send him to jail after he was reformed. To rectify this, he is seen again at the girls' birthday party in the season two episode "Birthday Bash" as a free and happy clown. What helps is that Craig McCracken regretted doing the ending.
• Banned Episode: The Season 5 episode "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" was rumored to be banned in the US for several possible reasons, including the heavy use of strobe effects that could have triggered epileptic seizures in more sensitive viewers, much like the notorious Pokémon episode "Electric Soldier Porygon", or the episode allegedly having Communist undertones. The official reason for the episode being skipped in the US, according to Craig McCracken himself is because "[the network] claimed that the metal beams in the destroyed buildings looked too much like crosses and one of the hippies looked like Jesus. That was never our intention at all, we were really surprised that they banned it." The episode can be seen on the complete series DVD set and was available when it was on Netflix and Hulu, though it is not on HBO Max. It aired in Canada on March 18, 2004.
• Box Office Bomb: Warner Bros' marketing for the movie was quite lousy, as stated in the main page, but CN did their part and promoted it to heck and back to the point where even [adult swim] got involved. Outside the channel, however, there was barely any mention of it. Not helping was it was pitted against Men in Black II on the opening weekend, was overshadowed by the surprise hit Like Mike and Warner Bros focusing their campaign on the Scooby-Doo live-action movie. As such it performed poorly. Because of this, feature films for Ed, Edd n Eddy and Codename: Kids Next Door were scaled back to made-for-TV fare rather than made into feature films and the Samurai Jack movie was stuck in Development Hell for decades before being abandoned in favor of the 10-episode revival.
• Channel Hop: Averted, as the show was always a Cartoon Network program. However, "Members Only", "Superfriends" and "All Chalked Up" premiered on Kids' WB! first after the AOL Time Warner merger moved operational duties for the The WB network to Turner Broadcasting and forced them to "play nice" with the Turner networks.
• The Character Ice Cream Bar: Blue Bunny released a cherry-flavored ice of Bubbles' face and upper body.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • A Russian magazine credited Genndy Tartakovsky as the creator of the series.
  • On several Dutch websites, Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, is said to have worked on the series.
• Creator's Apathy: Animation director Randy Myers admitted that, when Craig McCracken left production, him and the remaining staff were just simply trying to meet the series quota because they were aware that the show was jumping the shark at that point.
• Creator Backlash:
  • While she stands behinds its message, Lauren Faust has said that she wasn't happy with how "Equal Fights" turned out, feeling that feminism was too dense a subject to depict in a lighthearted cartoon. It didn't help that she'd had to endure complaints from every side of the argument, from misandrists who thought she was being too soft to men accusing her of male-bashing.
  • Craig McCracken has admitted to not liking the ending to "Mime For A Change" where Rainbow the Clown is beaten up by the girls and thrown in jail despite not being in control of his actions as Mr. Mime. He states that he wouldn't do that kind of ending today.
• Defictionalization: The PPG waffle iron◊ from "Collect Her." Ironically, the writers put that in because they thought it was too absurd to feel like Product Placement for actual PPG stuff.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Since most European feeds of Cartoon Network seem to believe the reboot was the first entry in the franchise (although Italy, UK and Turkey don't anymore), it's very unlikely the show will ever be saved from this in Europe.
  • However, this is averted in France and Germany, as Season 1 has been made available on Apple TV in those countries.
  • Likely to soon be rescued in countries that have HBO Max, as Cartoon Network isn't in charge of it.
  • Netflix in Turkey added the series on September 26, 2023
• Descended Creator:
  • During Seasons 5 and 6, storyboard artists Don Shank and Charlie Bean lent their voices to their caricatures. Shank had the most appearances, including the fourth season premiere "Film Flam".
  • Earlier, Craig McCracken voiced the narrator on the Whoopass Stew shorts. Lou Romano voiced the Amoeba Boys, and the father bird on "A Very Special Blossom" during Season 2, on said short.
• Development Gag: The designs of the Run-of-the-Mill Girls from "Oops, I Did It Again" were based on redesigns Craig McCracken came up with after the early pilot received negative test audience reactions due to the girls' bug-like designs.
• Franchise Zombie: The executives at Cartoon Network asked Craig McCracken if they wanted to make a seventh season, but the new showrunner Chris Savino shot down the idea after agreeing with McCracken to end the series on Season 6, as they thought it had run its course. A decade later, Cartoon Network aired a new series for three seasons without any involvement from McCracken or Savino whatsoever.
• God Does Not Own This World: Craig McCracken, creator of The Powerpuff Girls, occasionally has to remind fans that Cartoon Network can do whatever they want with the franchise, and that he had no involvement in the the anime adaptation or the 2016 series.
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • Subway sold toys of Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, and Mojo Jojo in 2000.
  • Dairy Queen sold six different toys in 2001.
  • Burger King sold toys of Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, and Mojo Jojo in 2002. These were paired alongside Dragon Ball Z.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The Dutch dub of the series was aired for sixteen years, with at least one episode aired on almost every day, but episodes have become really hard to get since it ceased airing in 2015. Cartoon Network's Dutch feed also seems to have forgotten the original series even existed for a while, as they hadn't even referenced it ever since the reboot came out, until September 26, 2023, when the first two seasons were released in Dutch on Netflix (the dub isn't available on US Netflix though). They went as far privating all videos of the original series on their Youtube channel!
• Late Export for You:
  • The final two seasons managed to get an European Portuguese dub in 2014, nine years after the final new episode aired, and two years before the reboot premiered, resulting in these seasons having hardly any airings.
  • The series didn't premiere in France until December 2000, despite Cartoon Network getting a seperate feed for France 16 months earlier.
• Milestone Celebration: The 50th issue of the comic book, Deja View.
• No Export for You: Never aired in Albania. The show would finally see the light of day in Albania in 2023 on Netflix, but it still isn't dubbed.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Tom Kane as Him.
  • Jennifer Hale as Spoiled Brat Princess Morbucks.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • The ending of the episode "Mime for a Change" is commonly believed to have been mandated by Executive Meddling, with executives demanding that Rainbow the Clown be punished for his actions, while the crew preferred an original ending where he was not. Creator Craig McCracken has debunked this rumor on his Twitter.
  • It is widely believed that the Rowdyruff Boys were left out of the "The Powerpuff Girls Rule!" because Craig McCracken hates them. This is not true, and Craig McCracken has stated that he has nothing against the characters themselves and is even thinking of bringing them back for the show's second reboot, but saw them more as one-off villains. The real reason why they weren't in "The Powerpuff Girls Rule!" was because he felt that they weren't independent villains, but simply extensions of Mojo Jojo, which would have caused problems with the story he wanted to tell.
  • Ace's full name has long been thought of as "Ace D. Copular" to the point where even the 2016 reboot, which had no involvement from the original show's creators, acknowledged it in the credits of one episode, though McCracken also debunked this, saying that Ace was never intended to have a full name. No one is quite sure where "D. Copular" came from.
  • Another rumor has stated that the show had a UK dub on Channel 5's Milkshake block in 2001, with Maria Darling, Emma Tate and Jo Wyatt as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup respectively. This so-called "fact" came from an audio reel on Jo Wyatt's website, which featured Wyatt voicing all three girls, and surprisingly, these do not use a British accent, but an American one instead, just like the original voices. However, there was no UK dub for the series; it's generally believed that Jo Wyatt alone was hired to be a sound-alike for all three characters for either the UK branch of Cartoon Network or Channel 5's promos and ad bumpers, which isn't an uncommon practice (for example, Marc Silk served as one for Johnny Bravo, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo on various CN UK promos in the early 2000's, replacing Jeff Glen Bennett, Casey Kasem and Frank Welker respectively).
  • Perhaps the most infamous rumor is the "fact" that the episode "City of Frownsville" was meant to be dedicated to the victims of 9/11, with their "proof" being a memoriam card that looks like this.◊ However, many fans have stated that they didn't recall seeing any memoriam card; not on TV recordings, not on the DVD, or even on any contemporary sources. As it turns out, that piece of trivia was made up by a fan of the show that edited various wikis, even including the aforementioned memoriam card, which is littered with spelling and grammar errors, is in the wrong aspect ratio, and has a R.I.P. to the World Trade Center, with the card using the British-English spelling "centre" instead of the American-English "center". The fact that the episode (along with "Sun Scream") was produced in 2004, three years after 9/11 occurred, should be another red flag, since 9/11 wasn't as tragic of an event as it was back in 2001; at this time it was merely a talking point instead of a massive catastrophe.
• Quietly Cancelled: Craig McCracken left the series after Season 4 to work on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, leaving it to Chris Savino to run it. After two more seasons, the show just stopped completely, with no finale or news from Cartoon Network on what happened, and it was clear the show was cancelled by then. It only briefly came back for its 10th anniversary special, "The Powerpuff Girls Rule!!!", which Craig stated was the proper closeout of the original series.
• Romance on the Set: Husband and wife Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust met and fell in love while working on this show as creator/director and storyboard artist, respectively.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The writers and artists on the DC comic book stories did not get royalties for IDW's reprints of them.
  • Most European feeds of Cartoon Network basically buried the show following the release of the reboot. However, this might be dying down, as clips from Buttercrush and The Powerpuff Girls' Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever were released in Italian by Cartoon Network Italy's Youtube channel, and the official Youtube channel of the Powerpuff Girls, managed by Cartoon Network UK, has been uploading clips of the original series on Saturdays since July 22, 2023. Further proof of this came on September 26, when Netflix added the original series in Turkey.
  • German channel KIKA commisioned a dub in 2000, but the channel just left it behind like moldy bread and never aired it. Super RTL would later air this dub in 2001.
• Throw It In!: A lot of the narrator's closing lines were improvised by Tom Kenny.
• Unisex Series, Gendered Merchandise: Word of God is that the series was aimed at a unisex audience. Despite this, almost all merchandise is aimed at girls and women. While Powerpuff Girls Z had an Audience Shift geared towards girls due to its Magical Girl take on the series (though still not without the original series' signature action sequences), the extreme culmination of this mentality was the short-lived "Dream In Style" promotion, where the main girls got an Age Lift to becoming teenagers giving out fashion and life tips instead of fighting crime. Reportedly, Craig McCracken was not happy when he found out about it.
  • The case of the reboot was slightly averted since it still had merchandise aimed at both genders.

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