Trivia / Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions

• Bad Export for You: Anchor Bay's US DVD release has no scene selections, dubtitles, replacing a credits song from the Japanese version with the English-version instrumental theme, and a confusing menu screen. Because of these complaints, 4K Media and Anchor Bay plan to give out DVDs with a more accurate translation for the Japanese version, correct any other mistakes on DVD and Blu-Ray, and honor requests for refunds or replacements with affected items. The song "To Believe in Something" by the Eden House however is still not in the new release, since it is a licensed song.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The Kudaragi gang members are voiced by famous Japanese comedians.
• Colbert Bump: The song played in the end credits of the Japanese version, To Believe in Something by The Eden House, gained a ton of recognition from fans who saw the Japanese cut. And the song's not even Japanese.
• Contest Winner Cameo: 4K Media held a voiceover contest for fans to voice very minor characters in the dub, each with only one line.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • Some promo descriptions on websites state 'Yami Yugi and Kaiba have a duel which bets their mutual experience...' The movie takes place after the Pharaoh has left, so this is a translation error.
  • In the second Japanese trailer, they include an old DM footage featuring Atem walking towards the afterlife. This wouldn't be a problem if the movie was only a sequel to the anime, but it is first and foremost based off of the events of the manga. Thus, while Kaiba can clearly be seen as one of the observers of Yami's passing, in the manga he wasn't present at all for the event. The movie itself fixes this by redoing the footage without the Kaibas.
• Executive Meddling:
  • According to the audio commentary the staff was told to add a scene where Kaiba and Atem duel, which was made into the Virtual Atem scene.
  • The movie itself would've been made regardless of whether Takahashi was involved or not, and the producer asked for him to have a hand in it.
• Fandom Nod:
  • The dub has Bakura's fangirls mention loving his accent specifically, which is common with his actual fangirls.
  • It's been noticed that a number of the jokes in the dub wouldn't be out of place in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. It make sense, seeing as a lot of 4K Media's staff worked at 4Kids when they were still a thing, and they admitted to liking the Abridged series.
• Follow the Leader:
  • After this movie was commissioned, several other franchise anniversary works began to crop up, such as the Cardcaptor Sakura sequel, Clear Card.
  • The movie itself follows in the footsteps of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, being a new animated film helmed by the creator of the original manga and set in the manga's continuity.
• The Other Darrin:
  • As with Bonds Beyond Time, Wayne Grayson voices Solomon in the English dub, as his original voice actress, Maddie Blaustein, died from a stomach virus in 2008. Likewise, Dark Magician is voiced by Daniel J. Edwards instead of Michael Sinterniklaas.
  • The Italian dub recasts most characters, since it was made in Rome instead of Milan:
    • Veronica Puccio replaces Debora Magnaghi as Tea.
    • Emanuele Ruzza replaces Gabriele Calindri as Tristan.
    • Lorenzo D'Agata replaces Irene Scalzo as Mokuba.
    • Davide Albano replaces Felice Invernici as Bakura.
    • Mauro Gravina replaces Diego Sabre as Shadi.
    • Silvio Anselmo replaces Enrico Bertorelli as Solomon.
    • Stefano Broccoletti replaces Gianluca Iacono as Duke.
• The Original Darrin:
  • After being replaced by Hidehiro Kikuchi in the TV series, Takayuki Kondō returns to voice Honda (Tristan).
  • Tara Sands returned to voice Mokuba Kaiba in the English dub after she was replaced with Carrie Keranen for the final season of the TV series and in the short-lived uncut DVDs due to Sands moving away.
• Recycled Script: The film treads a lot of same ground that Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light did. Kaiba is obsessed with beating Yami Yugi and seeks out a means to do it (counter to the God cards/way to bring him back), meanwhile a mysterious new villain (Anubis/Aigami) wielding a new Millennium Item appears (Pyramid of Light/Quantum Cube) and starts manipulating Kaiba. Kaiba challenges Yugi to a duel, but the duel is hijacked by the villain when he interrupts it and faces Yugi directly, and Yugi is able to defeat him with help from Kaiba's card. Both movies also feature Kaiba dueling a simulation of Atem to test out his deck, pursuing artifacts (Pyramid of Light card/Millennium Items) to help them in the final duel, and during the duel they summon powerful new variants of their trademark monsters.
• Role Reprise:
  • The characters are portrayed by most of their original voice actors from the NAS anime, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters^note Bakura's original voice actress, Yō Inoue, died and was replaced by Rica Matsumoto, who reprises the role in this movie.
  • Most of the original cast from the 4Kids version return as well for the English dub.^note The original voice of Yugi's grandfather, Maddie Blaustein, passed away in 2008, so the role went to Wayne Grayson, reprising the role from Bonds Beyond Time.
  • The Italian dub has Massimo Di Benedetto, Lorenzo Scattorin and Simone D'Andrea reprise their respective roles as Yugi, Kaiba and Joey.
• Self-Adaptation: This is the most involved Kazuki Takahashi has been in an animated installment of the franchise he started, providing not just the character designs as usual, but also serving as executive producer, story designer, and sole scriptwriter (plus key animation for a brief scene).
• Shrug of God: When asked about the movie's theme, Takahashi said that while he has one in mind, it's up to the viewer to decide what it is.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally there were plans for a movie in mind already, and it was going to be made with or without Takahashi's input, but the producer talked him into writing it. Takahashi himself then became the executive producer, story designer, character designer, and sole scriptwriter for the movie.
  • According to the Millennium Book, a supplementary material released the summer of 2015 that has preliminary information on the movie and various trivia on the original series, this movie was originally going to be a spin-off movie starring Seto Kaiba. Alone. Apparently, Yugi and his friends weren't even going to show up. However, it was decided that Yugi, being the star of DM, needed to be in the movie, and so he was added to the script, only for it to become too long leading to it being completely rewritten to better accommodate Yugi without being overly long. ^note As it is, the movie is about 2 hours long; before the rewrite, it would have been over 3 hours, instead.
  • This art by Kazuki Takahashi is of a scene from the early script where Anzu was annoyed at Yugi and Jonouchi going nuts over cards when they could be paying attention to her.

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