Web Video / History of Power Rangers

The History of Power Rangers is a web series created by Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall as a fun side project. Being an older fan, he decided to review each season of Power Rangers and break down the elements of the story. It isn't a video review in the same style as many other web reviewers, but largely Linkara doing a voiceover of the footage while pointing out elements and features he feels are noteworthy, with the occasional Fun with Subtitles or messing with the conventions of the format. The videos have grown in running time due to how complicated the series became later on (as well as his lack of familiarity with later series going in), between three and four parts pushes into 2 hours of commentary. He acknowledges that even with more time, there is likely to be something he forgets to mention.

The video series started in April of 2010 and, partially due to Linkara's own familiarity with the early seasons, the early videos came out fairly regularly. He knows how intimidating the project is and has made it clear that there is no set schedule for the release of each installment as he also has to worry about his social life, his work on Atop the 4th Wall, conventions and crossovers with fellow reviewers on Channel Awesome ^note Least at the time he started, he's left the site past the Dino Charge review since then though occasionally does a collab with others (it started out about once a week, grew to about 3-4 months and the gap between Mystic Force and Overdrive was around a year and a half). And as he has not watched each season when it first aired, most of the later seasons have him reviewing it from a fresh perspective. Taking into account writing notes, selecting clips, editing, and doing the voice work, it's a colossal task indeed. But one he does out of a labour of love for the franchise.

It must be noted that he is not reviewing the series based on how well it adapts Super Sentai. It would not only require him to watch the Super Sentai counterpart, but he also feels that any season should be able to stand on its own accord. He does seek to research various topics like the origin of the Super Sentai footage and behind-the-scenes material, but such information is not always reliable, and he doesn't use it as a hard fact. He brought this up during Mystic Force, as fans kept asking.

The following lists are the tropes he uses in each series review, as well as tropes he points out that those series use.

The most current review thus far is of Power Rangers Cosmic Fury. Linkara has announced that since the series will be completely caught-up, new episodes will only be released after a new season has been released in its entirety (assuming seasons are normally split into two mini-seasons, a new episode about every two years). However, as the future of the original Power Rangers franchise is unclear after Cosmic Fury, Linkara has expressed the possibility of finally ending the HOPR series should the showrunners decide on a hard reboot of the entire franchise.^note Although maybe not, as Linkara also notes this series is his most popular by a large margin and that he 'likes making money'

There are also possible episodes depending on Patreon requests, and will likely focus more on Power Rangers "copycats" like Masked Rider, Beetleborgs, VR Troopers, and Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, although nothing has materialized yet. He's also going back and addressing the mistakes he'd made in earlier videos and has tentatively announced that he plans on remastering all the previous episodes of HOPR up to Operation Overdrive, as well as restoring any episodes that eventually get taken down should they need to be re-edited to fit updated guidelines regarding copyrights.

The video playlist for the entire series of reviews (totaling a whopping 35 videos, not counting the redone videos done after the Beast Morpher review) can be found here.

This page was so long it's now been split into a recap index.

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This work provides general examples of:

• Arbitrary Skepticism: It is a major pet peeve of his whenever a character doesn't know about the Power Rangers or doesn't believe in monsters or aliens.
  • Large-scale villain attacks happen all the time, and the Power Rangers fight them off, and this often happens in public. While he was slightly more lenient on this before In Space, where the villains tended to be more discrete and low-key and the Rangers kept their identities secret, he still notes that the original MMPR team were on a talk show, so clearly there was public knowledge of them. But after In Space, which featured a full-scale Alien Invasion of Earth, there's really no excuse unless the season is taking place in an alternate universe. When a woman in the crossover episode between Lost Galaxy and Lightspeed Rescue said, "there's no such thing as monsters," Lewis pointed out all of the previous points and that in this season, in particular, Lightspeed Rescue was a government organization fighting a force of demons attacking the city, and the Rangers didn't have secret identities and had morphed in full view of civilians — for this, Lewis declared her the "dumbest person in Power Rangers ever."
  • He zigzags on this when it comes to characters not knowing about past Ranger teams existing. While some teams are public figures who have appeared on television or operate in the open, others are more covert and may belong to secret organizations of some sort, so it's plausible that their existence may not be as well known. Not to mention that some seasons take place in alternate universes where past Ranger teams may not have existed, so the writers may not have always decided if a season takes place in the main universe or not and uncertain if the current season is in continuity with past ones. That said, it still bugs him, particularly in Megaforce when Emma had no idea what a Power Ranger is since Megaforce was an anniversary season and we'd eventually see that Megaforce does take place in the main universe, so there's no excuse for her ignorance.
• Artistic License: One of many things Linkara is fond of doing in History of Power Rangers is poking fun at the dozens upon dozens of times the series has given the double middle finger to science and physics.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Either this or some form of physics, as humans can breathe in space and on the moon.
  • Artistic License – History: In Samurai with the Bullzooka. Ancient samurai warriors... wielding laser guns.
    Linkara: Just as the ancient samurai intended.
    • In Operation Overdrive, he points out that a parchment that's thousands of years old bears latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates despite such having existed for the past couple hundred years only. He's more critical of the coordinates being in English numbers and not the ancient Arabic numbers.
      Linkara: I'm starting to think this parchment is as authentic as a treasure map on the back of a Denny's place-mat.
  • Artistic License – Martial Arts: Jungle Fury Rangers having jet boosters as part of their Super Modes. Though the better justification for this is that The Order of the Claw never had a Ranger team in the past, so while they use old martial arts techniques, the Ranger tech is mostly modern.
  • Artistic License – Physics: In Dino Charge when Sledge's ship anchors itself to the Earth and proceeds to tow the damn thing like a broken-down car.
    Linkara: And indeed, he begins towing the planet, because this is Power Rangers, and we long ago gave the double middle finger to science.
• Author Appeal: Linkara's fond of a few things, which he brings up now and then.
  • In his own words, he's a "complete sucker" for the original "Go Go Power Rangers" theme and has absolutely no problem with it being reused for Samurai and Megaforce despite acknowledging that people hated them because of the cheap reuses. However, he of course, doesn't mind a changing main theme for each season as long as they make the new theme good. He further likes the Zeo, Turbo, and Dino Charge themes for being sequel songs that reuse some of the original chords while otherwise being new. Ironically, though, he disliked the use of the "Go-Go" in Ninja Steel, as he said there was an odd key-change that made the entire thing just sound off.
  • Also, in his own words, he's a sucker for Morphers that flip open, stemming from his love of the Zeonizers from Zeo. This is a reason he loves the Mercury Ranger's Morpher in Operation Overdrive (though he likes the normal Morphers fine too).
  • He likes it when we're told what the Rangers from last year have done since the villain was stopped.
  • Fight scenes that don't use many special effects are praised, as are fight scenes that let the Rangers fight un-morphed for a time. Related to this, he likes seasons that focus more on martial arts battles rather than guns or superpowers; while he acknowledges the latter is more efficient, relying on powers instead of hand-to-hand combat can make the Rangers seem weak, like they couldn't fight competently without their powers (he references the "Kalishplosions" of the Burce Kalish era in that heavy special effects and pyrotechnics render actions scenes interchangeable, as it's individual shots of rangers and the monster reacting to explosions rather than fighting one-on-one). He does give a pass to Rangers that mainly use guns if there is a good reason, like Lightspeed Rescue, as they were also trying to defy Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?.
  • Chivalry and the general "Ranger values" of being a good person and wanting to protect people and stand up to evil no matter what, even if you don't have any powers. This is why he likes characters like Chip from Mystic Force, is one reason why he gave Wild Force a bit more love than it usually got, and why he considers Bulk and Skull's character arc so awesome. It's also a big turn off for him when Rangers don't display these kinds of heroic qualities, like Nick in Mystic Force, and it's a major factor why he considers Operation Overdrive the worst season; bland and boring Rangers are better than straight-up unlikable ones in his eyes. He also has a soft spot for chivalric villains (or the Noble Demon), as seen in Lost Galaxy and In Space.
  • Linkara is also a big fan of Arthurian lore, as he shared a good first impression of Lost Galaxy when the Rangers gain their powers by pulling the Quasar Sabers out of a huge stone slab on the planet Miranoi. It was also a part of the reason why he liked Chip in Mystic Force compared to the other characters since the character is a fan of Arthurian mythology and chivalry.
  • He's also a big fan of serial continuity as opposed to starting with a new team every season or having things set in an Alternate Continuity, which is a big reason why the 'Zordon Era' is his favorite since every season is a direct continuation of the previous one. He states that this was also a part of the reason why he initially stopped watching Lost Galaxy early on back when he was a kid since it was starting over with an entirely new cast rather than continuing with the characters he grew up with.
  • He is also a fan of swords that transform into guns.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Or as he calls it, "The Wasserman Factor"; playing epic music, particularly the theme song of the season, over fights and other cool moments makes them more epic, and it bugs him when they don't do it for no reason, such as in Ninja Storm in some fights or in Mystic Force. As part of The Wasserman Factor, he also notes a season can be that much weaker if the theme music is bad, such as with Mystic Force or Operation Overdrive.
• Awesomeness Is Volatile: Linkara's theory for why the Rangers give off sparks when they hit something and why there are explosions behind them after they morph during the team-ups—there's just so much energy being given off. invokedThis has actually become more or less the canon explanation Dr. K gives for the giant explosions that occur behind the Rangers in Power Rangers RPM.
• Awesome Music: invoked One thing that is consistent in every review is addressing the quality of the opening theme, even above the Zords themselves (which he says kind of blur together). If the music is decent, he tends to be more lenient on its quality. If the music is bad, like with Operation Overdrive... don't expect him to hold back.
• Bias Steamroller: He has repeatedly stated that History of Power Rangers is strictly from his perspective and is biased as a result.
  • He greatly dislikes morphers that are cell-phone themed. For him, morphers should be unique and out of the ordinary, which helps the Rangers feel more special. He stated in his Wild Force video that morphers that look like everyday objects just come off as sad and generic. This is why he likes morphers such as the original Mighty Morphing ones, the Zeo morphers, the Solar morphers, ironically the Gosei morphers, and the Dino Charge morphers. There are some exceptions, like the Mystic Morphers, though they largely get a pass for being wands disguised as phones and not actual phones, and the Striker Morphers since they turn into guns, which he's a fan of.
  • His preference for more chivalric, kindhearted rangers also leads to a strong hatred for jerkass and smug rangers. However, this is largely when the negative attributes outweigh the positive ones, and there isn't enough development given to improve on the negative qualities.
  • He also has a heavy preference for rock n' roll theme songs (especially if the musician in question is Ron Wasserman) and has stated that other kinds of themes don't really fit Power Rangers for him. This is part of why he was critical of the Mystic Force hip-hop theme (and most of the music in that season for not fitting an action show like Power Rangers) and especially the Operation Overdrive rap theme. Ironically, he disliked the RPM theme for going too far in the rock direction.
• Breakout Character: Carter Grayson is one of the most mentioned characters in the post-Lightspeed reviews and is likely one of Linkara's favorite rangers. He often refers to when Rangers pull out their blasters as the "Carter Grayson technique".
• Canon Fodder:invoked While Lewis doesn't directly engage in this for the show overall due to it being a serious review show, he does do this for Power Rangers as a whole, with speculations about the existence of Scorpius's forces if Zordon's energy wave was supposed to "destroy all evil", the physics and length of a year for the Power Rangers universe, why aliens came to be accepted on earth so easily in less than 20 years, where RJ got the morpher technology from, and other matters that crop up thanks to having a shared universe.
• Central Theme: Linkara tried to find one in each season at the start of the retrospective- The only exceptions are his reviews of Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers Megaforce.
  • For Mighty Morphin, it's the classic Magic vs. Technology with the rangers using technology to defeat the forces of evil that use magic. Lightspeed Rescue also uses this theme as the Ranger powers are created by a military organization to fight a race of Demons.
  • Zeo is an interesting take on the Magic vs. Technology theme as the Machine Empire represents the technological side while Rita and Zedd represent the Magical side. The Zeo Rangers in turn are the combination of both (their weaponry and zords are built from technology, but the Zeo Crystal is a magical element that is used as their power source). A secondary theme for this season is Triumph, as the Rangers grew stronger this season from new zords, weapons, and the added strength that comes from the Zeo Crystal.
  • The closest he got for a theme for Turbo was "Cars vs. Space Pirates in Submarines".
  • In Space and Lost Galaxy are both Space Operas and both deal with the Grey-and-Gray Morality of villainy. In Space focused on what makes someone evil, while Lost Galaxy focused more on the Noble Demon side of evil and chivalry.
  • Time Force was about the Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate.
  • Wild Force was environmentalism.
  • Ninja Storm was about Family.
  • Dino Thunder was about comparing and contrasting the past to the present, particularly with this season and Mighty Morphin.
  • SPD was about how the Rag Tag Band Of Misfits became true heroes and escaped their superior's shadows.
  • Mystic Force is about the continuation of a magical war that so happened to featured the Power Rangers.
  • For as much as he hated Operation Overdrive, Linkara does admit that the story-arc with Mack's Robotic Reveal brought up some identity crisis in the final act.
  • Jungle Fury was about imperfections and how to train yourself to overcome them.
  • RPM was about how the apocalypse can bring out the best in people.
  • Samurai was about family responsibility, although he points out it mostly shows how negatively some of the rangers are affected by it.
  • For Megaforce, he says the show thinks it's about nostalgia and humans banding together to protect one another. However, he points out that the execution (or lack thereof) of these elements turns them into annoying and empty platitudes. He at first stated in the beginning that the theme was "fight scenes", but then later stated the true theme was "a bizarre form of laziness", due to what little effort that was put into the series was usually put in things that did not really matter, like recreating a set to match the Super Sentai footage, instead of making better tributes, replacing Super Sentai-only rangers, or giving the characters arcs.
  • Dino Charge was about what makes someone a hero.
  • Ninja Steel is about high school life.
  • Beast Morphers is about family relationships, though he admits that this theme is a bit undercooked and amounts to just showing off various people interacting with parents or siblings without having much of a coherent thesis about what makes a family. Still, given that it is a children's show, he frames it as a positive, modelling various types of loving relationships for the young audience.
  • Dino Fury is about cycles of revenge and pain and The Power of Love to overcome them.
  • Once & Always is about resolution and passing the torch to the next generation. Cosmic Fury uses this theme as well, and also makes a surprisingly pointed critique of capitalism.
• Character Catchphrase: "...which makes sense" when a detail makes sense, despite at first looking like a Plot Hole.
  • As well as "...for some reason" a few times, when a detail doesn't make sense.
    • He also uses "Because... Because." in some cases.
    • As well as "Because... I have no idea."
  • Also, "I'm sure [villain] will neeeeeeever bother anyone again", for the villains who eventually come back. (He used a variation of this when Trent first appeared in Dino Thunder.)
  • He introduces the team-up morphs with, "And, of course, it's time."
  • "Which means it's AWESOME!" When describing the various weapons and equipment used by the season du jour's Sixth Ranger, usually a melee weapon that becomes a gun.
  • He ends each teaser with a quip and some variation of "Welcome, friends, to [series name]."
  • Sometimes, he'll say "Whoops." for accidental racism.
  • "Yeah, I know, limited by the Sentai footage", when discussing a Plot Hole or Wasted Plot that he begrudgingly admits was due to the source material. However, after he states that fact he will usually explain while that may be the reason, that it's not an excuse since the production team could have made their own footage, worked around that story element, or even skipped a particular Super Sentai if it was so difficult to translate into an Americanized Power Rangers season.
• Cliffhanger: When the seasons started to have multiple videos he usually ends each one with bait to force you to continue to the next video, such as a teaser for the yearly team-up to be reviewed or some major shake-up in the story. He also ends each series by quoting the theme song of the next series.
• Clip Show: He generally doesn't like when they do these in the show because they come off as lazy, though he's mostly indifferent to them after a while. There are some exceptions that he found more unique than the others:
  • In S.P.D., he liked "Insomnia" for its framing device — the Rangers can't sleep and overhear Cruger talking to Kat about how he wonders if the A-Squad would have beaten Grumm by now if they hadn't been captured. The Rangers reflect on their growth as a team over the season, and also discuss why Grumm hasn't launched a larger invasion of Earth; this leads to them piecing together that his previous attacks involved him stealing specific materials, and they conclude he's building a Superweapon, thus setting up the show's last several episodes.
  • In Mystic Force, he actually enjoyed the clip show from a plot perspective, as it was used by the villains to display Koragg's ineptitude when it came to dealing with the rangers and why they should be rid of him.
  • In Dino Charge, having it be unknown to both the viewer and the rangers which one of them is the fake and going through their memories to see which is the one was actually considered too good an idea to be wasted on something like a clip show.
• Deadpan Snarker: Particularly on the worse seasons, but he admits in Mystic Force that sometimes he even snarks on elements he enjoyed just for the sake of it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • His MMPR through In Space reviews tended to be a little broader in the recaps, highlighting the main cast and a few story arcs but rarely getting into individual episodes and would overlook quite a few characters, zords and weapons that are rather significant parts of that season (such as Scorpina, Titanus and the "Doomsday" two-parter). This was partly because he was basing much of the recap on his own memory of watching the show, and by Lost Galaxy had to be more attentive and take notes. He eventually did a George Lucas Altered Version on several seasons, which saw that era with quite a few rewrites, re-edits and subtitle corrections to bring it more in line with the later videos.
  • Several reviews took the time to mention concurrent real world Power Rangers franchise developments or address audience questions. These were similarly edited out as it dated the videos and sometimes add 10 minutes of monologuing for nothing related to the actual season. The videos as they are now are more like mini-documentaries than semi-improvised streamer commentary.
• Elite Mooks: Often is discussed on whether mooks really WERE Elite when a season had more than one type of mook. For some like Mystic Force, he sees no difference between multiples types, while others like SPD he feels does this much better with some of the elites even getting speaking lines and proving themselves more powerful than the others.
• Ensemble Dark Horseinvoked:
  • He frequently says that Bulk and Skull are "the real stars" of Power Rangers' Zordon era.
  • Outside of the Zordon Era, we get Carter Grayson: The greatest badass ever.
  • He also sometimes goes into details about certain rangers that he likes over the rest of the team, so far having done Katie in Time Force, Cam in Ninja Storm, Chip in Mystic Force, Rose in Operation Overdrive, RJ in Jungle Fury, Antonio and Lauren in Samurai, Gia in Megaforce, Steel in Beast Morphers, Izzy in Dino Fury, and singling out Zack as his favorite of the original Mighty Morphin in his Remaster of Season 1.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Has noted that Power Rangers has a tendency, especially in later seasons, to give their Evil Overlord the stereotypical super-deep, gravelly evil voice. He also notes that while he understands Power Rangers does this to try to make their main villain sound badass, it usually makes them sound incredibly generic, instead.
• Evolving Credits: This happens to the series itself, as with each new series that comes out, Linkara creates a new theme. The first theme lasted 11 seasons due to Samurai not having their Gold ranger yet, but following that he changed it after 2 and then 4 themes to keep up with the additional ranger season. However, for his youtube uploads, the full-length intro featuring all of the Power Rangers groups was cut for possible copyright issues, instead being replaced by a single bar of "Go, go, Power Rangers!" along with the HOPR title.
• Executive Meddlinginvoked:
  • While he won't hold it over a season just because it was made during the "Disney Era", he has mentioned several times over that Disney really didn't get the franchise's appeal and would constantly interfere to try and reduce the violence, cut its budget, and at one point even wanted to just directly dub a season of the Super Sentai instead of converting it into a proper Power Rangers season^note ironic considering the problems the first two series of the "Neo Saban Era" would go through.
  • He also mentions that in the "Neo Saban Era", while he is glad Nickelodeon came and saved the series, there were a lot of weird mandates that hurt the new seasons overall, the oddest of which is Nickelodeon's strict policy that seasons have to be 20 episodes long, so Power Rangers seasons had to be split into two "mini-seasons", a normal and a 'Super' season. And this is without getting into all the meddling that happened in Megaforce.
• Fan Wank: invoked Very often brought up when discussing theories about how the continuity and story elements of past seasons may connect to future ones.
  • He brings up the idea that, since the series is a Long Runner spanning decades, including a couple of shows set in the future, it's possible several of the Ranger teams, particularly the ones based on Earth, are interconnected in some manner. In S.P.D., Sky's father is wearing the Time Force uniform and the team is said to have had parents working at S.P.D. in the year 2001. While rejects the idea that Wes was Sky's father, it is feasible that Bio-labs was affiliated with S.P.D., since they were shown to be researching the Quantum Morpher in Time Force to reverse-engineer it. Andrew Hartford could have been a financier for Lightspeed Rescue, which could be how he got access to the robotics technology of their automated rangers to create a cyborg-like Mack and how he knows about the Morphing Grid to create Operation Overdrive, and he could also have had a hand in the creation of S.P.D. RJ in Jungle Fury notes that he Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy that was able to tap into the Morphing Grid to create that series' morphers, which could be Hartford (especially since Operation Overdrive was the immediate season before).
  • Also in S.P.D. he discusses the time scale of the series — if one presumes that each season takes place in the year it was produced, as is usually implied, the Long Runner nature of the series means there's a continuity problem on the horizon as S.P.D. takes place in 2025 and says at the time, aliens are living on Earth alongside humans and are accepted as an everyday facet of life. Presuming Power Rangers is still on the air with new seasons by that point, he doubts that aliens will start being added to the cast rosters to reflect S.P.D.'s future that should now be coming to pass. He proposes two ways to reconcile this: that a "year" in the Power Rangers universe is longer than in the real world, thus giving them a larger timescale to have events happen, or that the "2025" date is relative to a revised dating system different to what we on Earth use now to match the rest of the universe, and thus it could take place much further in the future. He does concede though that after Mystic Force, it's possible that having magical creatures become integrated into human society might have laid the groundwork for acceptance of aliens in the future.
  • Speaking of timescales, he actually has 3 different ways of looking at the ending of Power Rangers Dino Charge. Ninja Steel would later confirm that the first option is the canonical one.
    • Option 1: The series is as-is, meaning dinosaurs now live alongside humans. This is the full Alternate Timeline theory that much of fandom might embrace to keep the mess away from the primary continuity. The main problem he has with this is that several characters refer to the rangers as "rangers" not "the rangers". This indicates that past rangers do exist in Dino Charge's world, we just don't know if they're the same rangers in the primary continuity. Ninja Steel would later confirm this option as the canon one with the Crisis Crossover event: Dimensions in Danger, in which it established there is an entire multiverse of Power Rangers, and that like with RPM, Dino Charge takes place in a separate universe.
    • Option 2: The new timeline is "Jurassic Parked". Despite saving the dinosaurs from going extinct from Sledge's asteroids, dinosaurs later became endangered or went extinct later on in this new timeline, but via The Butterfly Effect, the main change from stopping Sledge is either the endangered angle or that people could bring dinosaurs back to life. This keeps continuity mainly untouched, but just alters circumstances surrounding the events.
    • His personal "easier" way of looking at the ending. The paradoxes created from their actions would've gotten the attention of Time Force, forcing them to go back in time, save Earth without the problem of creating a black hole, and otherwise keep the timeline as is with the Dino Charge rangers resuming their normal lives afterwards.
    • Another canonically valid possibility was raised during his recap of Dino Fury, which retroactively revealed that the Green Morphin Master had quietly intervened in past of not just that series, but past series, including invoking the Legendary Battle in Super Megaforce. Among the possibilities that Linkara points out of things she might have been responsible for was resolving this particular Timey-Wimey Ball.
  • While he is aware that RPM takes place in an Alternate Universe, he prefers the idea that it doesn't. After Venjix is destroyed, what if alien races, who have been in contact with Earth for several years across various seasons, such as the Aquitians, Mirinoians, Triforians, and to a lesser extent, Edenoians, came to help humanity rebuild? Aliens would be hailed as the saviors of the human race for their aid, while robots and cyborgs would be hated and shunned thanks to Venjix's actions — which perfectly sets up the future society of S.P.D. and even Time Force.
• Flat Character:
  • Notes that the Rangers start with distinct personalities, but Flanderization turns them into this. He focuses on Tommy so much because his character arc of going through losing and regaining his powers is the only personal storyline worth mentioning, and even later he admits Tommy ends up not having much personality outside of how he plays off the other Rangers. Later additions to the team likewise end up filling the roles they're given for the plots of the week. The worst of these probably came in the second season with Aisha and Rocky, as Aisha really wasn't anything except "Kimberly's best friend", and Rocky ... was just there (since the Ranger he was replacing, Jason, was The Leader whose position fell back onto Tommy when he left). By the time Kat replaces Kimberly, Linkara points out that 5 out of the 6 Rangers now barely have a personality (outside of Billy as The Smart Guy) which is probably why ratings started to tank in Season 3.
  • Rita's entourage barely got anything bar a passing mention as well, although Scorpina stands out in particular. Linkara outright forgot about her when he first released his review, and during the re-release when he finally does mention her he admits the reason he forgot about her is that she didn't really have any influence on the plot whatsoever.
• Foreshadowing/Call-Forward: Videos will sometimes contain hints or subtle comments as to his opinions of seasons he hasn't reviewed yet, and on other occasions, Linkara often alludes to themes and ideas that he's going to discuss when he gets to a particular season in a future video, such as discussing the idea of a robot war happening in the Power Rangers universe in Operation Overdrive, two episodes before his RPM review.
• Fridge Logic:invoked Regularly discusses these throughout the series, noting that some plot points that seem odd actually make sense when you think them over, while others make you tilt your head because they don't make sense.
• George Lucas Altered Version: During a lull in production Lewis went back to previous videos, most of the earlier ones, and fixed various mistakes as well as changing to better quality clips and making them more YouTube-friendly. Originally, everything after the first season was planned to just be a Re-Cut/Remaster with only the first season video full-on getting this treatment with him making sure to mention Titanus, Scorpina, Ernie, Ms. Applebee, Principal Kaplan, and the Radbug this time around, but then he redid the second season, opening by saying that he's going to play this by ear. He also recognized that several videos opened with a very topical discussion of the Power Rangers fandom or the HOPR series itself; as such his opening statements before his Wild Force video about how he planned to continue the series were removed for being outdated, considering that was the 10th season and he eventually got caught up with the series at Megaforce, the 20th season.
• Humongous Mecha: Despite all the Megazords prominent in the series, Linkara rarely talks about them. He reasons that after a while, they all blend in and discussing them would just end up being padding. One exception is Lightspeed Rescue, where he gushes over almost every Megazord in the season.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Linkara will use this trope a lot, normally pointing out at least one episode (if not more) in a season that, at first glance, appears to be pointless Filler only to show that it actually is quite important in fleshing out the setting, gives great Character Development, or ties in nicely to that season's Central Theme. This is also the reason why he has declined offers from fans to be told which episodes in a season are important and which ones he should skip, as he likes to decide himself whether an episode is substantial to the plot or skippable filler.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!invoked: The reason why Linkara only gives, at best, a passing nod to the Rangers' individual weapons or their zords: after a while, they all become so similar that they all just blend. Although he will make exceptions for exceptionally weird weapons, melee weapons that turn into guns, Megazords that are made of two or more smaller Megazords, and/or Megazords that are enormous even as far as Megazords normally go.
• Long Runner:
  • In part due to the Schedule Slip, but he noted with amusement in reviewing Samurai that it was the first season to premiere after he started The History of Power Rangers.
  • This is also discussed in the Samurai review as to how fans were inevitably disappointed by the show for several reasons, but his first being that as Power Rangers has been going on for so long, "Not every season is going to be good."
• Magic A Is Magic A: Some things in Power Rangers just do not work with reality, but he admits it is consistent in that regard (like being able to survive in space). He does point out that a rather simple statement in MMPR season three from Zordon saying "Too much pink energy is dangerous" indicates a certain In-Universe rule WHY there aren't any repeat colors on any given team. This holds up throughout the seasons that if there are two repeat colors on a team that it causes instability in their powers, possibly even fatal to one of them.
• Merchandise-Driven: Repeatedly mocked when the Rangers get new equipment or vehicles, ostensibly so the toy side of the show can keep pumping out new merchandise for the kids to buy. The only times he finds it more acceptable is when the rangers are part of a military organization, where it would make sense to have teams of researchers working around the clock to make new weapons and equipment for the heroes. However, by Power Rangers Samurai he's grown really sick of the overuse of this trope, calling the season out for adding a new weapon, new zord, or new costume variation pretty much every other episode.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Defies this belief when discussing morphers, first bringing it up for the Growl Morphers in Wild Force. He prefers the Morphers to be foreign, fantastic objects set apart from normal day-to-day technology. Thus, when they're designed after cell phones (as repeatedly happens), he usually doesn't care for the idea. He doesn't mind it in Mystic Force though, since the Morphers there are actually wands that they magically transform into cell phones to be inconspicuous, and the Striker Morphers from Beast Morphers pass muster because they turn into guns.
  • He elaborates on this in the Wild Force rerelease. He understands the idea that making morphers resemble everyday objects helps with maintaining a secret identity, as well as the fact that communicators and morphers had become the same thing by the time of In Space, but feels that cell phone morphers lead to less interesting designs due to being tied to the same 'flip phone' aesthetic.
• MST3K Mantrainvoked: Mentions several times that for the franchise to work, it must take place in an Alternate Universe where societal and technological progress and the laws of the science are different. The first episode of the franchise alone establishes that the moon has a breathable atmosphere and we're still conducting manned missions to it in the 90s, so there are some things you just have to go with and not overthink it.
• Narm Charminvoked: "It's Power Rangers, it's supposed to be cheesy." Sometimes, however, he notes that a series can get a bit too surreal.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: He frequently expresses disappointment that the series avoided any such displays of affection (except for Kimberly/Tommy, and MUCH later on, Izzy/Fern) with some sort of romance happening in nearly every season. Whenever there is some sort of heartfelt confession that should lead to a kiss but never does, he subtitles it "Kiss her you idiot!
• Nostalgia Filter: In effect from the first season of Mighty Morphin' through In Space (except for Turbo), but out the window from Lost Galaxy and beyond, as Linkara explains that was when he officially stopped watching Power Rangers as a child.
• Oscar Bait: There are particularly well-done moments either comically or dramatically that he lists with an "Oscar Clip" subtitle to indicate their quality.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: He hates this when it happens in crossover episodes, as he wants the teams to stand alongside each other as equals, not have one end up doing a lot of the heavy-lifting and look cooler than the other. As he points out in his Operation Overdrive videos:
  Linkara: The cardinal sin of a team-up episode, is making one team look better than the other instead of being equals.
• Police Are Useless: Notes we rarely see police or military attempt to engage monsters or protect people, and in one episode from Mighty Morphin' we see that Angel Grove's police department has special regulations for dealing with monsters and the Power Rangers. However, when we finally do see military forces attempting to fight a monster, we see they're not very good at it, so presumably, they know better and just let the Rangers handle it. The exception of course being RPM, which due to a greater focus on the military and rangers working together avoids any Take That!, at least directly.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Discussed. He likes it when Power Rangers breaks off from Super Sentai and is willing to try its own plots and ideas rather than just adapt the Sentai wholesale.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: He often discusses this trope in seasons where we see the Rangers specifically recruited for a larger operation, discussing why or why not it makes sense to recruit teenagers instead of military or government operatives. In Operation Overdrive in particular he goes on a rant about it when it's lampshaded by one of the Rangers that with Hartford's money, he could hire an army to aid him instead of relying on his young son, a stuntman, a thief, an admittedly intelligent college professor, and a racecar driver.
• Rule of Cool: Discussed when certain plot elements may not be properly explained, but he doesn't care because they're cool anyway. Also brought up when discussing Megaforce in regards to "Forever Red" from Wild Force. Fans will endlessly discuss "Forever Red" and come up with theories to explain the plotholes in that episode because despite those plot holes the episode is great. Megaforce, which was crap, gets no such attention for its plot holes.
• Running Gag:
  • Serpentera's three AAA batteries limit how much Lord Zedd can use it, and how he should just focus on fixing that problem over his many other, failed plans.
  • "And I'm sure <X> will neeeeever be brought up/mentioned again". He lampshades this in his Dino Fury review by briefly saying this about Lord Zedd in the end before admitting that yes, he will return eventually.
  • Pointing out whenever someone denies the existence of the Power Rangers that there was a full-scale alien invasion of Earth thwarted by the Power Rangers.
  • Comments a few times that the reason Zordon kept secrets from the rangers is that he's mad at them for breaking the zords.
  • Cracks about the Abandoned Warehouse District being the site of Megazord battles.
  • After Wild Force, always pointing fun at any claims that places are in the US by pointing out that all their filming is now in New Zealand.
  • Every time a Super Mode is introduced he analyzes the cosmetic appearance, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but often concludes with "At least it isn't glitter!" about the underwhelming upgrade the Rangers got in the third season of MMPR, which was literally a thick layer of glitter on top the suits.
  • Never forget the Ancient Ninja Electric Guitar. In his review of Megaforce he mocks the repeated use of the reference and declares that no, he's never getting over it. He is then quite entertained by Ninja Steel doing it again with Levi.
  • Anytime he mentions how the series has screwed the laws of science multiple times.
  • His usage of the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) clip of Rocket laughing and mocking that "that's not a real plan", which he even lampshaded to have used in three consecutive seasons, except that the joke worked in all three seasons.
  • After the Timey-Wimey Ball ending of Dino Charge, Linkara makes a point to bring up the status of its universe's space-time continuum whenever its relevant, whether it be "getting drunk and humping a pinball machine" or suggests the risk of it getting "repeatedly smashed in the face with a rock".
  • Referring to the headquarters of most teams as the "Command ___" such as Samurai's Command House.
  • "Money: the true enemy of the Power Rangers" for whenever something absolutely nuts happens that can only be explained by budget problems behind the scenes.
• The Scrappy:invoked He certainly sees various characters from the various seasons like this.
  • People such as Lucas, Merrick, or Nick rub him in a wrong way, but one of his more hated Scrappies being Dax from Operation Overdrive, to the point that he said that the only way Jungle Fury could be worse than the previous seasons was if every ranger was replaced with Dax.
  • As far as villains are concerned, he hates Divatox for being a lame space pirate trying to take over the world, Bansheera for being boring and flat, Lothor for being overly goofy when the audience is obviously supposed to be taking him seriously, and Xandred for never actually doing anything, except drink "medicine" and complain about his headache.
  • And as for mentors, while he has expressed dislike for Dimitria, Shayla, Sensei Kanoi Watanabe, Gosei, and Doctor Hartford, he seems to hold a place of hatred for Mentor Ji, whom he calls out as being elitist and basically useless to the Rangers, claiming him to be more of a glorified butler than a mentor. Then he takes that back, as Dr. Hartford's butler, Spencer, actually went out and did fieldwork, and was one of his favorite characters of that season, so even compared to a butler, Ji comes up short.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Linkara points out the series' use of this trope since the franchise's beginning during the Jungle Fury review, stating that the forces of good seemed to not focus on permanently defeating evil, preferring to just lock Big Bads away and hope no one releases them, which rarely goes well.
• Seasonal Rot: invoked He is pretty open when he feels a series is lackluster with serious problems that prevent it from being even just So Okay, It's Average.
  • Turbo was blasted for the inconsistent tone and radical cast turnover, and the fact that he couldn't identify a Central Theme.
  • Mystic Force had the Red Ranger lacking in personality or even real nobility.
  • Operation Overdrive had a plot that was lacking in many aspects along with a Ranger team who were rewarded for trying and not for actual accomplishments.
  • Samurai didn't bother to develop plot lines so they were either underdeveloped or lasted too long.
  • Megaforce he just flat-out despised in its entirety.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • He's taken a few shots at himself and the fact that he's doing this series.
  • He forgot to mention Titanus and Scorpina in his video for Season 1 of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. He then chastised himself for Titanus when it's used again in the video for Season 3 of MMPR and took a potshot at himself about Scorpina in the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Reversioned video he posted for April Fools' Day. However, the Titanus and Scorpina omissions were fixed in a Re-Cut.
• Serious Business: Averted completely in every sense of the word. Linkara's a huge Power Rangers fan but he's also not afraid to make fun of the silly and goofy elements of the series as well as the plot holes and bad moments. He's also a good sport about parodies, saying that he loves most parodies of Power Rangers, highlighting that his favorites are the CollegeHumor sketch and the Animaniacs sketch "Super Strong Warner Siblings".
• Sequel Escalation: The videos get progressively longer and more detailed as the series goes on. The Zordon-era episodes all come in under an hour-long for each season, helped by Lewis highlighting the important parts since he's going from memory and the abundance of filler earlier in the show. After that, though, the episodes are broken into three and even four-part videos, often half an hour long each, as he brings up the greater amount of character development and the way that each series fits (or doesn't) into the greater patterns of the entire franchise. As of writing, the longest episode, Megaforce, is a whopping three hours long with a 44-page script. However, the subsequent series, Dino Charge, was much shorter, at only two videos, and later, the Beast Morphers review was only one single video (granted, one about as long as two Dino Charge vides combined).
• Squee: On Twitter, Lewis said he was "holding back an epic scream of delight" after he got a package from a fan that included not only an autographed picture of Christopher Khayman Lee (Andros from In Space) but also a letter from Lee in which he said he was a big fan of both HOPR and Atop the Fourth Wall, and a comic he had written himself.
• Stepping Out to React: During the video on Power Rangers Turbo, Linkara has to leave to scream his head off upon seeing the infamous "Ranger Pizza".
  Linkara: So after a filler episode where they get baked into a giant pizza... excuse me a moment... (footsteps into the distance) AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!! (footsteps coming back) ...the story continues in The Phantom Phenomenon.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: invoked As Linkara looked at the series throughout the years, he noticed that whenever an awful season would occur, the next one would try and fix it by bringing in elements that were introduced from the first, but better. The best examples he could find are In Space, Jungle Fury and Dino Charge in regards to Turbo, Overdrive and Megaforce respectively.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Loves swords (or any melee weapon for that matter) that turn into a gun/cannon, and will take the time to highlight any Ranger who uses such a weapon (normally, Linkara only gives passing mention to any of the Ranger's weapons). And for the record, this does not count Gunblades, which is a sword with a hilt shaped like a gun ... which is stupid.
• The Tag: He ends each video with a particular funny, awesome (Carter Grayson blasting a monster at point-blank range) or moving scene. The most emotional one comes from Power Rangers in Space with a line from Zordon in the early seasons: "The world is lucky to have you, and so am I. May the power protect you always."
• The Teaser: He starts off each review with one of the sillier scenes from that season without any narration, which is acknowledging right from the get-go that there are some things you can expect from Power Rangers.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Mentions several times that having the theme song playing in the background tends to make the moment in question seem much more epic.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Characterinvoked: During the character analysis Linkara will almost always point out at least two of the Rangers who were wasted during their season. One is usually a Ranger who gets no character growth because they were perfectly stable and relatively happy to start with (most commonly the Plucky Comic Relief Ranger or the Sixth Ranger), while the other gets passed over due to being Out of Focus, and just not getting a character arc or enough episodes centered around themselves to flesh them out (typically The Stoic Ranger or one of the two girl Rangers).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In-Universe, when a series misses an opportunity, Lewis usually has his own take on what the show could have done instead, such as making Major Havoc the end villain of Turbo, or making Bulk and Skull the Rangers' secret keepers. Exaggerated with Megaforce, where these sort of suggestions make up almost a third of his complaints.
• Unfortunate Implications: invoked Occasionally discussed, often with the lampshade "whoops." Aside from the original Mighty Morphin' having Zack as the black ranger and Trini as the yellow ranger, Tommy, who would be established as having Native American ancestry, would become the red ranger in Zeo. Later in Samurai he discusses the Caucasian Jaden having the family name "Shiba" and Antonio playing up his Latino mannerisms when his actor is American with Thai ancestry.
• Unintentional Period Piece: invoked Sometimes he starts a video with a short, personal monologue about the behavior of the fans watching the videos and how it is actually affecting his enthusiasm for the project, or about recent events that are related to Power Rangers but not so much specifically this project. He has admitted that this dates his videos to very specific time periods, and makes them outdated very swiftly.
• Updated Re-release: In part due to being a member of Power Force (a group of fans who are endorsed by Saban themselves provided they use officially released clips from DVD's), and because of Youtubes strict guidelines, Linkara has released many of his older HOPR videos with newly edited footage and audio. While this means that certain footage, such as the opening showing all of the various Ranger teams throughout the years set to "Go, Go Power Rangers", had to be cut drastically shorter it does allow Linkara the chance to rerecord the audio to make it closer to the quality of his later videos and correct some mistakes he made in the original video.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When this is averted, he calls it "The Carter Grayson Technique", after the Lightspeed Rescue Red Ranger's primary technique of "shooting the monster a lot", rather than resorting to fancy martial arts.

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