For the Card game Trivia, see Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game.
- Dan Green once said in an interview that he used to push for less overblown voice acting because "if everything is at volume ten nothing stands out", but he was always just made to do the scene again.
- Acting for Two:
- David Wills voices both Gozaburo Kaiba and the nameless Rare Hunter in the English dub. Coincidentally, both characters use an Exodia deck (though different versions) and both suffer from the weakness of thinking that having Exodia (or Exodia Necross in Gozaburo's case) is all they need to win.
- Yugi and Dark Yugi are usually voiced by the same actors. Averted in the European Spanish, German, and Tagalog dubs.
- Same with Ryo Bakura and Dark Bakura.
- Marc Thompson, who plays Valon and Rafael (who are best buds and almost always seen together) as well as Duke Devlin.
- Adaptation First: The dubbed anime came out in the west before the manga did, so it's more well-known than the English manga for the most part.
- Adored by the Network: Kids' WB! aired two episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! on Saturday morning for the entirety of 2003. They'd frequently air two episodes of weekdays, from late 2004 to early 2005, plus the "Weekday Shift" promo in late 2002.
- Bad Export for You: The localized version of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL World Duel Carnival was severely watered down from its Japanese version. 28 playable characters, a database mode, duel profiles, ending pictures, device mode, and selectable music were removed, seemingly for no reason.
- When the anime aired on ITV in the UK, a large number of episodes would be skipped over, leaving incredibly glaring plotholes. One of the worst examples was in 2005, when there was a jump from midway between the Virtual World arc all the way to the final episode of Season 3 (30 episodes skipped!). Made worse by the fact that ITV was the only freeview channel to show the series in the UK at the time. In addition, the finale of Yugi vs Pegasus, arguably most important episode of Season 1, had major sound problems when it aired on ITV in 2004, although the channel did issue an apology the following week.
- Bonus Material:
- In the early manga volumes, Kazuki Takahashi would have a small paragraph explaining either how he got started on the story itself (he wanted a shounen hero who never hits anyone, hence games), how a certain character was conceived (Kaiba started from him overhearing about an arrogant card player and Marik from a fear of having a cellphone, which meant his publishers would annoy him in his free time), or random observations as the story progressed.
- For at least the first two dozen volumes up until the Battle City arc, Kazuki Takahashi would occasionally include bonus games he made himself for the readers to try out, usually requiring readers to photocopy the pages for use.
- Cash-Cow Franchise: During the peak of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s popularity in the 2000s, it rivaled Pokémon in popularity, since for much of the time that franchise was seen as too kiddy and a fad gone by. While Pokémon ultimately won out overall thanks to its broader, more universal appeal, Yu-Gi-Oh! still remains a money maker to this day, generating over $20 billion USD globally.
- Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese version, both Yugis were voiced by Shunsuke Kazama, an Idol Singer trainee in Johnnys Entertainment who has achieved some commercial success in dramas.
- The Character Ice Cream Bar: Popsicle released a blue raspberry and cherry flavoured ice of Yugi's Millennium Puzzle. It was discontinued some time ago.
- Creator Breakdown: The manga's ending was influenced by Takahashi's very poor health at the time, and had to take a break when he was hospitalized by a stomach ulcer that caused him to vomit up a great deal of blood. This caused him to decide to end Millennium World somewhat earlier than he'd hoped. He claims that at points, he was in something of a haze, which may have influenced Zorc's rather silly character design.
- Creator's Favorite: Kazuki Takahashi has claimed that Katsuya Jounouchi is one of his favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! characters.
- Creator Killer: Ironically, the franchise ended up being one for 4Kids Entertainment because of the legal troubles.
- Creator's Oddball: In Latin America, the broadcast rights of Yu-Gi-Oh were adquired by Nickelodeon, which caught everybody by surprise because the channel had NEVER aired an anime series before (They mostly focus on their oiginal productions and imported Canadian cartoons). Needles to say, Nickelodeon caught lighting in a bottle because Yu-Gi-Oh quickly became their most popular show. Yes, even more popular than SpongeBob SquarePants, the network's Cash-Cow Franchise.
- Crossdressing Voices: In the Japanese version, Bakura was voiced at first by You Inoue then by Rica Matsumoto.
- Humorously, in Toei's anime version, Yugi and Dark Yugi were voiced by Megumi Ogata while both Ryou Bakura and Dark Bakura was voiced by a man until it was reversed.
- In the original Japanese version, Dartz was voiced by a woman, Yū Emao. Averted in the 4Kids English dub, which Dartz was voiced by Wayne Grayson.
- Defictionalization:
- The card game was originally just intended to be the topic of a single plot arc with no real world equivalent, and originally, the card game didn't even have any real rules. Now it is the highest-selling trading card game in the world.
- Also applies to a few other Yu-Gi-Oh! games from the manga, particularly Dungeon Dice Monsters and Capsule Monster Chess. Unfortunately, they failed to be as popular as the OCG and eventually died on the wayside, quietly. Although they were turned into video games which did decently.
- Many cards were created specifically for the manga or anime, but were never initially released in the OCG/TCG. The explicit purpose of the Dragons of Legend (and later, Battles of Legend) series of booster packs is to give an OCG/TCG release to cards from the various anime series that appeared over the years but were never printed as real cards until then.
- Many of the game's preconstructed decks are based on decks used by the main characters in the anime series- some more faithfully than others.
- Fans have defictionalized the series's use of AR using HoloLens
.
- Development Gag: As revealed by Kazuki Takahashi in the opening of one of the later volumes, back during the development stages, Dark Yugi was originally going to have the skull-faced appearance Kozuka ultimately received.
- Executive Meddling: Kazuki Takahashi's editor told him to hurry it up during the Millennium World arc because of the declining reader interest due to the long Battle City arc. A lot of plot threads that were originally intended to be expanded upon didn't see the light of day, such as Seto waging war against the Pharaoh and Akhenaden as revenge for Kisara's death.
- Fake Brit: Bakura has a British accent in the dub.
- Fan Community Nickname: "Yugiboomer" is a term often used to describe people who grew up on the original Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and associated Trading Card Game products but fell off at some point. Similar to the term "Genwunner" from the Pokémon fandom, it's most often used with a derogatory connotation against people who complain about the modern card game being too hard and confusing while having nostalgia for "playground" Yu-Gi-Oh! that never really existed and ignoring that the real classic Yu-Gi-Oh! had just as many faults of its own.
- Feelies:
- Back in the day, it was very common for the video games to come bundled with promotional cards that would not be otherwise available until later down the line. The manga based on the later anime series started bundling promo cards as well once the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga ended. Even some merchandise and toys came with free cards. This practice slowly faded out in the mid 2010s when the video games started moving to digital and the rate of new games slowed down, but the SEVENS era brought it back with Dawn of the Battle Royale!! and its sequel coming packaged with Rush Duel cards in their physical editions.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Duel Transer came with a very bizarre and unique accessory: the Duel Scanner, a box-shaped scanner with a cavity and card slot that could be hooked up to your Wii via a USB cable and used to scan real Yu-Gi-Oh! cards for use in the game. This is in contrast to previous games where you could get the cards by punching in the 8-digit passcode at the bottom of the real card. For technical reasons the Duel Scanner did not work with an unfortunately wide pool of cards, including prize cards, magazine promo cards, and cards with too much holographic foil.
- Foreign Dub as Basis:
- The Italian dub of Yu-Gi-Oh is based on the English dub by 4Kids. Though they changed Yugi Moto's name back to Yugi Muto, like it was in the original Japanese.
- The Latin American Spanish dub is also based on the 4Kids dub. This is despite the fact that the content of the original Japanese would have been deemed mostly fine by Latin American censors.
- God Never Said That: A persistent rumor about the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga said that Yugi has diabetes, allegedly from Word of God at an American convention. Not only did Kazuki Takahashi not go to any American conventions, a line implying Yugi did have diabetes was added by a Viz translator for no apparent reason and didn't exist at all in the original version.
- He Also Did: Episode 15 of the anime's storyboard artist, Gorō Taniguchi, would also go on to direct anime for other animation studios, including Sunrise anime like Scryed and Code Geass.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Because of legal issues surrounding Shunsuke Kazama's (the voice actor of Yugi/Dark Yugi) contract note , it's impossible outside Japan to find any official release of the anime other than the edited dub version. 4Kids released three unedited DVDs of the show, and later put subtitled episodes directly on YouTube, but both of these releases were cancelled, leaving people who don't want to endure 4Kids' edits, voice cast, and script rewrites out of luck if they want to be legitimate customers. As of 2015 this is gradually being averted, as the original version is being released on a monthly schedule on the streaming site Crunchyroll.
- LittleKuriboh has noted that he doesn't abridge "Season 0" because good quality, unsubtitled episodes, are nearly impossible to find, but of course they have to exist somewhere out there because new fansubs of it keep popping up.
- For the original U.S. television broadcast, episodes 4-5 and 14-15 were both cut down to one episode each, with each episode cutting time by splicing footage into a music video with a song from the "Music to Duel By" soundtrack. All home releases of the episodes have had them at their natural 2-episode length, and all modern repeats of the episodes also have them as 2-parters. As a result, these two special edited "music video" episodes have begun to be hard to locate for anyone who didn't record them when they initially aired, and the Panik episode's song was never released on CD.
- Kids' Meal Toy:
- At Burger King, it got collectible pyramid boxes with figures inside.
- At McDonald's, it got trading cards and soundtrack CDs.
- Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories was released before the English dub of the anime reached Battle City and before the manga was localized, and thus for English players, this would be their first exposure to Marik, Ishizu, Espa Roba, and the Rare Hunters.
- Meme Acknowledgment:
- Wayne Grayson, voice of Joey in the dub, has said "Brooklyn Rage!!" several times at a 2008 convention. He referred to it as "his favorite line" even though:"It's not even a line my character says, but I've been saying it all weekend".
- The English release of the Joey's World mega-pack has nine different monsters' flavor texts written in the style of Joey's Brooklyn accent. Special mention goes to Anthrosaurus, which even includes his "Nyaah!" Verbal Tic from the Abridged Series.
- Dan Green once read a dialogue between Yami Yugi and Yugi from the Abridged Series. It has to be seen to be believed.
- Wayne Grayson, voice of Joey in the dub, has said "Brooklyn Rage!!" several times at a 2008 convention. He referred to it as "his favorite line" even though:
- Missing Episode: When Pluto TV began airing their Yu-Gi-Oh! Channel, some episodes of the original series and GX were missing. For the original series, Episodes 56, 57, and 58 are skipped, along with strangely the entirety of Seasons 3 and 5 (Season 4 IS included, oddly enough). For GX, meanwhile, episodes 11, 16, 19, 23, 29, 30, 36, 39, 46, 49, 56, 57, 59, 66, 105, and 150-155 are all skipped. Keep in mind that several of these episodes are parts of multi-part Duels, several are plot relevant, and for GX, it includes the Season 3 premiere AND the final six episodes of the dub! The other three series (5D's, ZEXAL, and ARC-V) avert this, as Pluto acquired the rights to those three seasons years ago.
- No Export for You: The Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters series has never been aired in Finland but the Pyramid of Light movie and the spin-off Yu-Gi-Oh! GX were aired on Finnish TV, the latter being even dubbed in Finnish. The original manga has also been translated to Finnish.
- Tag Force 6, hotly anticipated by some as the first video game to feature Xyz cards, was not released outside of Japan.
- A lot of cards and archetypes that have appeared throughout the anime franchise as far back as the first series have never gotten their own official releases into the OCG or TCG, and likely never will. Reasons for this may vary, such as some of them being considered too overpowered for the game unless their effects were seriously tweaked or nerfed, their unique abilities would be too impractical, situational, or hard to translate into physical card form, or that there was no intention of ever making them for the OCG/TCG in the first place. Some anime-only cards have however, been made playable in games like Duel Links, such as Toy Soldier and Emperor, Centaur Mina, and Playmaker, so it wouldn't actually be that hard to put some of them into the real-world game if the creators desired to do so.
- Official Cosplay Gear:
- During the Duelist Kingdom arc, and for years after, party and costume stores had foam Millennium Puzzles and star chip gloves as costume accessories.
- Duel Disk props were released as merchandise for the first anime series. The 5Ds version was only released in Japan and goes for a hefty sum on the second hand market now.
- The Other Darrin:
- In Japanese:
- Honda was originally voiced by Takayuki Kondō for the first 51 episodes, but would later be played by Hidehiro Kikuchi from Episode 53 onwards.
- You Inoue was Bakura's Japanese voice actress before she died of lung cancer in 2003. She was then replaced by Rica Matsumoto.
- Ryuzaki was voiced by Kin Fuji from Episodes 2 to 59. From Episode 131 onwards, Yūichi Nakamura was given the role.
- In English:
- Tristan's original voice (the one that gives him super-strength) was Sam Riegel. He was then replaced by Greg Abbey (credited as Frank Frankson) starting with episode 11 for the rest of the series. Abbey also redubbed Tristan for the Uncut DVDs (though episode 10 was never given this treatment leaving it as the only episode where Riegel’s original performance is untouched).
- Mai Valentine: Megan Hollingshead —> Erica Schroeder (credited as Bella Hudson). (because Hollinghead moved to L.A. to do voice work there) Later she was recast yet again to Kathleen Delaney (credited as Caren Manuel) for the short-lived uncut DVDs.
- Mokuba Kaiba: Tara Jayne —> Carrie Keranen (credited as Caroline Lawson). (because the former quit all of her voiceover jobs in New York to also do voice work in L.A.) Keranen later voiced Mokuba in the short-lived uncut DVDs. Tara later returned to play Mokuba in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions.
- Rex Raptor’s original voice was Sam Riegel in seasons 1, 2 and 3; then he was voiced by Sebastian Arcelus in season 4 and finally Anthony Salerno in Season 5. Salerno redubbed Rex’s voice in for short-lived uncut DVDs.
- In Japanese:
- The Other Marty: Greg Abbey was originally cast in both Yugis, and even recorded the characters for a promotional video, but he moved to Los Angeles briefly and rejected the roles. Abbey would later return to 4Kids to voice Tristan Taylor instead, and got his shot at a protagonist role as Yusei in 5D's.
- Outlived Its Creator: Kazuki Takahashi died on July 4, 2022, while trying to save two people from drowning. However, the franchise would continue on without him.
- Overtook the Manga: The Virtual World, Doma, and KC Grand Prix arcs were made because of this trope; the anime overtook the manga and had to create original content while they waited to catch up.
- Playing Against Type: Rica Matsumoto did double time by doing Ryo Bakura and Dark Bakura when she normally plays outgoing characters like Satoshi from Pokemon.
- Recycled Script: The basic plot of the Doma Arc (evil cult leader brainwashes duelists with the darkness in their heart) gets reused for Season 2 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, the Dark Signers arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, and Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL II. All of these were written by Shin Yoshida.
- Referenced by...: Click here.
- Serial Numbers Filed Off: The original manga wore the card game's Magic: The Gathering influence on its sleeve explicitly stating it to be an American card game called "Magic and Wizards". To avoid any potential legal trouble because of this when the card game was adapted to the real world, its in-universe name was retconned to "Duel Monsters" and eventually the name of Magic Cards was changed to Spell Cards.
- Shrug of God: Takahashi was asked in an interview if Yugi and Anzu got together post-series. He answered that maybe they get married when Anzu returns from America. The Dark Side of Dimensions, despite being continuity from the manga, also leaves things ambiguous on that front.
- Spoiled by the Merchandise: The anime often runs into this problem, due to the timing of their sets compared to episodes of the anime. The cover card of a main set is invariably a major monster card used in the anime. As most such monsters are printed fairly quickly after their use in the anime, this leads to occasional sets spoiling upcoming surprises due to the lead time required to advertise the next set.
- Some examples of this during the run of Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS include the reveals of Ritual, Fusion and Synchro monsters for some of the main cast, when there was previously no indication that those summon methods would appear in the series at all.
- Star-Making Role: The Duel Monsters anime gave both Kenjiro Tsuda and Hiroki Takahashi their breakout roles as Seto Kaiba and Katsuya Jounouchi respectively.
- What Could Have Been: There were plans to localize the Ultimate Card Battle 3DS game. However, there was never any followup on this, even long after the planned release date came and went.
