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Loved by good, feared by evil. Narrated by Optimus Prime.

"Form feet and legs! Form arms and torso! And I'll form the head!"
Commander Keith

Voltron: Defender of the Universe is a Combining Mecha cartoon, created by World Events Productions in 1984 with recycled clips from the Toei anime series GoLion and Dairugger XV. Voltron is still considered the combining mecha anime in mainstream American pop culture,note  but anime fans love it too. While changes to the anime were not as severe as those made to Robotech, alterations were made to fit GoLion and Dairugger together.note 

Two series were made, each with individual storylines: Voltron: Defender of the Far Universe (a.k.a. Lion Voltron) and Voltron: Defender of the Near Universe (a.k.a. Vehicle Voltron). Lion Voltron is the original and best-remembered, though Vehicle Voltron has its fans for its somewhat harder sci-fi premise. Later, additional episodes of Lion Voltron were made with all-new animation from Toei, including a special called "Fleet of Doom" featuring both Voltrons.

Episodes revolved around fighting Robeasts in a Monster of the Week format. Some Robeasts were huge Mecha, and others were apparently non-robot aliens that grew to gigantic size when hit with a special energy beam. Both species of Robeasts were always killed by being sliced in half with the Blazing Sword, prompting the same explosion footage episode after episode, as a censored alternative to the sometimes violent deaths in the anime.

In the United States toy market, Lion Voltron was sold under the name "Voltron III", while Vehicle Voltron was sold as "Voltron I". A third Voltron, "Voltron II", was also available. This "Gladiator" Voltron was based on Albegas, which was intended to be used for the third season that never materialized.

Voltron was one of the first television programs to be produced and broadcast in stereophonic sound. Around the time of the show's production, the Federal Communications Commission was in the process of approving stereo broadcasting, yet most programs and cartoons back then were still being broadcast in monaural sound. World Events Productions took notice of this and decided to make the stereo sound of the series a big selling point: almost every store selling stereo television sets in the mid 80's used Voltron as a highlight of what stereo sound could deliver versus mono.

In the year 1998 as the Turn of the Millennium approached, Voltron was revived in the form of Voltron: The Third Dimension, a completely CGI animated continuation of the Lion Voltron storyline, set a few years into the future relative to the original, as there are important changes to the setting, but the character cast stayed mainly the same. This sub-series tends to have a slightly darker, more mature take on its plots. In its second season, Voltron was redesigned as a "Cyber Stealth" model. (How exactly a robot that big could qualify as "stealth" even when painted black is anyone's guess.) There have also been several comic book series based on Lion Voltron, including a series that basically retells the origins of the "Voltron Force" and their discovery of Voltron and more recently, a Robotech/Voltron crossover. In addition, Privateer Press released a Voltron tabletop miniature game based on its Monsterpocalypse ruleset.

In The New '10s, Nickelodeon/Nicktoons brought us Voltron Force, another CGI Lion Voltron Sequel Series that premiered in summer of 2011. It picks up seven years after the original where, after an incident, the lions went crazy and were decommissioned by the Galactic Military. When Lotor comes Back from the Dead, it's up to the old team and the lions, as well as three new trainees, to stop his evil plans.

In 2016, Voltron: Legendary Defender, a Continuity Reboot, was released by Netflix and Dreamworks Animation, reviving the franchise. Because of the re-imagined series, there was talk of DreamWorks owners Universal Pictures doing a Live-Action Adaptation of Voltron, an idea that has for years been stuck in Development Hell due to legal issues. However, DreamWorks lost all rights to the franchise in 2021 which led to WEP getting full rights back from NBCU and the future of the franchise is unclear.

Meanwhile, select episodes from Lion Voltron, GoLion, Vehicle Voltron, The Third Dimension, and Voltron Force are available to stream from WEP's YouTube channel. Legendary Defender can be streamed in its entirety on Netflix.


Voltron provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    Lion Voltron 
  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Haggar gave this to Zarkon, something which doesn't get revealed until after Lotor tries to poison him.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: The series' protagonists have gone through several of these in the series' various incarnations and sequels:
    • Second season: Allura's hair color is changed from honey blonde to strawberry blonde and Romelle's eye color is changed from indigo to dark brown. One color change that did make an iota of sense was making Sven's skin considerably paler, as would generally befit someone of Nordic ancestry.
    • Devil's Due Comic: Keith went back to having dark hair and dark eyes, and Pidge and Sven's eyes were colored green and blue to match their lions respectively. Allura's hair was a conspicuously paler shade of blonde than in the original anime.
    • This isn't counting fan art, which usually shows Sven with the traditional Nordic blue eyes and Pidge with green eyes, and had for years before the Devil's Due comic came out.
    • Voltron: The Third Dimension: Keith's signature black curls and dark eyes were changed to brown hair and blue eyes, much to the chagrin of many of his fans.
  • Adaptational Heroism:
    • Voltron's origins are much more heroic than his GoLion counterpart. In the American version, it is explained that Voltron was turned into five lions due to a trap by Haggar, while in GoLion, a benevolent Goddess split up the titular robot as punishment for his arrogance and violent ways.
    • Voltron makes villains less evil than in GoLion:
      • Daibazaal was a tyrant who had Fala's entire family shot, commits horrible atrocities on the conquered, and has slaves killed for sport. It's even revealed any affection Daibazaal has for his son, Sincline, is fake and Daibazaal has no love for him, only keeping around because killing him would cause scandal. In Voltron, Zarkon was a tyrant who killed Allura's father, isn't shown to murder slaves for sport, and doesn't commit horrible atrocities on the conquered. Zarkon's relationship with Lotor is more ambiguous with Zarkon seeming to show genuine affection for Lotor at times.
      • Honerva was always a Wicked Witch and commits satanic acts on her enemies and Galra prisoners. In Voltron, Haggar used to be a good sorceress and her actions are more typical witchcraft.
      • Sincline was a mentally unbalanced Child by Rape who abused women, had a sick obsession with Fala, and tended to kill his subordinates, and any honor he showed was fake. In Voltron, Lotor had a Hair-Trigger Temper, only attempted And Now You Must Marry Me stuff, had a more genuine affection for Allura, only yelled threats at his subordinates, and was actually honorable. Lotor even pulled an Enemy Mine to save Allura at one point.
      • In the 11th episode of GoLion, Galra was doing a Prisoner Exchange, but it's revealed to the audience that Galra had no intention to honor this and was going to kill the hostages anyway. In the 11th episode of Voltron, the Drules of Planet Doom seemed like they were going to actually keep to the deal.
  • Adapted Out: In GoLion, Allura's counterpart had older siblings who were killed along with her parents. In Voltron, Allura appears to be an only child. Someone had to have given birth to her niece Larmina, though.
  • Aesop Amnesia: You would think after the first time it happened that they would be warier about letting obviously suspicious people into the castle but this happened at least twice after the first time.
  • Alien Invasion: The forces of Doom are invading Arus.
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: In France the narration set to the music composed by Dale Schacker was replaced with a song by Arias Norbert. The lyrics apply only to Lion Force, though.
  • All Your Colors Combined: Five lions, each a different color, combine into one Super Robot.
  • Artistic License ā€“ Space: Earth, when shown in its Establishing Shot, has at least five moons around it.
  • Armchair Military: The Galaxy Garrison spends all their time talking about what the Voltron Force is doing rather than sending them supplies, reinforcements, or taking advantage of the fact that Zarkon's attention was focused on Arus to attack on another front. After the initial arc, they don't even show up to do that much very often. Justified in that Arus was pretty much on the other side of known space (hence the "far universe" description) and The Garrison was rather busy with dealing with the Drule Empire closer to home. Sending Keith and company was the most they could do to help Arus at first.
    • The Galaxy Garrison does send some help in the Post-Script Season, in the form of... one senior officer, who proceeds to forbid the team from forming Voltron and micromanaging their tactics. He then blames the ineffectiveness of his tactics on the youth of the pilots rather than on the fact that he'd hamstrung an elite unit with his stupid orders. He gets relieved for incompetence and shipped back home in a single episode.
  • Ass Kicking Pose: Voltron has several of these, usually directly after he's transformed, formed the Blazing Sword, or after he's beaten the Monster of the Week.
  • Avengers Assemble: "Let's go Voltron Force!"
  • Badass Normal: Sven. He survives being nailed in personal combat by a Robeast, and survived a plunge from the heights of Castle Doom. Even after that, he was in good enough condition to fly Blue Lion again.
    • This, however, is a case of Spared by the Adaptation: Sven was originally twin brothers in GoLion and neither of them were as lucky.
  • Beta Couple: Romelle and Sven.
  • BFS: "Form Blazing Sword!"
  • Big Bad: King Zarkon.
  • Blood Bath: The evil witch Haggar bathes her cat in blood (although it's called a "lava bath" in the English version).
  • Bowdlerise: A lot of character deaths and gory bits were edited or written out of the Japanese source material.
  • Captain Obvious: Keith, every time they form Voltron - telling them what they do every time.
  • Cat Scare: In the second episode, while traveling through the foggy woods, the space explorers hear a lion's roar. Then suddenly a bird flew from the bushes, startling Lance. Later they find out the roar came from a lion's statue in front of the castle.
  • Cats Are Mean: Haggar's Right-Hand Cat. Averted for Voltron itself, which is made of five benevolent cats.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: The Stock Footage shows the Voltron Force entering the ziplines wearing civilian clothes, and then riding in the trams wearing their pilot uniforms.
  • Chickification: While Allura was a really girly girl to start, she learned quickly; she was able to pilot Lance's lion (Red Lion) and hold the Blazing Sword with no problems at all by Episode 23, and Keith later teaches her judo. Unfortunately, her character's progress plateaued in the American-written second season, which had her father's ghost continually solving problems for her.
  • Color-Coded Characters: The Voltron Force and Lions.
    • Keith pilots the Black Lion and wears a red costume.
    • Lance pilots the Red Lion and wears a blue costume.
    • Sven pilots the Blue Lion and wears a black costume, but he is later replaced with Allura, who pilots the Blue Lion and wears a pink costume.
    • Pidge pilots the Green Lion and wears a green costume.
    • Hunk pilots the Yellow Lion and wears a orange-ish yellow costume.
    • Later Voltron series would change the colors of the characters' costumes to match their respective lion. Voltron: Legendary Defender changed this in its second season to match the original costumes.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Averted, if the above trope is any indication. Most of the heroes' costume colors don't correspond to their respective lion.
  • Combining Mecha: The trope codifier — in America, anyway. Whenever something involves smaller vehicles or creatures combining to form a larger whole, chances are good that people will compare it to Voltron.
  • The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Wonderfully averted when Lance doesn't trust a potential new pilot. Although it was for the wrong reason, Lance was right because the new guy was the Monster of the Week.
  • Cool Sword: The Blazing Sword, which gets pulled out Once per Episode.
  • Demoted to Extra / Discontinuity Nod: Due to Albegas never getting adapted, the Gladiator Voltron found itself as only a mere cameo through the years, mostly in the comics. One time it was seen as an early attempt by Earth scientists to create their own Voltron which would lead to the Vehicle Force (and was dismissed as a "knockoff" by the Lion Force pilots), and in one panel of the Robotech/Voltron crossover showing different dimensions and timelines, it was shown standing together with the other two Voltrons.
  • Divided We Fall: Since all five members of the Voltron Force have to be present in order to form Voltron, many of Haggar and Lotor's plans center around separating one member of the team from the rest. These plans invariably fail to work long enough. In GoLion, Honerva succeeded in killing Shirogane, which led to Fala replacing him.
  • Doomed Hometown: Lotor turns Pidge's home planet into a radioactive wasteland as part of a plot to lure the Voltron Force off Arus, after which Allura grants Pidge Arusian citizenship so that he can make himself a new home there.
  • The Dragon: Prince Lotor.
  • Dub Name Change: Most of the characters, and location.
  • Ermine Cape Effect:
    • Even when not fancied up, even in uniform, Allura still wears her tiara.
    • King Zarkon is a straight case, always sitting on his throne, wearing his cape and heavy-looking crown.
  • Everything's Better with Sparkles: Allura does sparkle sometimes.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Allura's mice can always tell if somebody is really Haggar under a disguise.
  • Fairytale Wedding Dress: A dress made for Allura to wear at her possible future wedding.
  • Falling into the Cockpit: Allura did not appear to have any pilot training before deciding to take over as Sven's replacement on the team. She is noticeably the weakest pilot for some time afterwards.
  • Fanfare: Notable in that Voltron's score has one, while GoLion does not.
  • Faux Action Girl: Allura, especially when she isn't piloting the Blue Lion. There's a reason she was the picture of the trope.
  • Fighter-Launching Sequence: The Voltron Force going to their lions, which involves ziplines and personal shuttles.
  • Forgotten Superweapon: The Blazing Sword, always the last thing pulled out in a battle.
    • Except in the first few episodes, where it was the first.
      • It does get pulled fairly quickly in a small handful later episodes, only for it...and Voltron...to quickly suffer a No-Sell, followed by a Worf Effect.
    • Also Voltron itself. When the Voltron team first arrives on planet Arus, the planet has only just been ripped to shreds by Zarkon — despite the fact that the leadership knew where the lions were and had already built a complicated transit network to get to them, and someone must have surely known the keys were buried with the King — yet no one handed the keys over to their best pilots and told them to form Voltron.
      • Not so much with Voltron as with the lions. Remember, the mice took one of the keys.
  • For Great Justice: When Keith spouts about Voltron's role.
  • Frankenslation: It's made by combining GoLion and Dairugger XV.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Allura and the mice. She even knows their language. Pidge would also fall into this category.
  • Gladiator Games: Zarkon has a Robeast Arena, with the strongest Robeast usually getting to fight Voltron. At several points, Lotor fights in it, and at one point, Zarkon himself gets in the arena to fight Lotor, and wins. Usually they forced captured slaves to fight in them only to be slaughtered by the Robeast.
  • Go-Go Enslavement: Lotor keeps at least a dozen slave girls whose sole duty is to dance for him in harem outfits. He fully intends to have Allura and Romelle join them once they are captured.
  • High-Class Gloves: The wedding dress Nanny made for Allura. Also part of Romelle's mini-dress of power.
  • Homage: It could be unintentional, but Allura's grand dress bears a resemblance to Princess Aurora's.
    • Speaking of clothing homages, Lance looks like Lupin III's kid brother made off with James Dean's leather jacket.
    • In a more obscure example, Pidge looks a great deal like Soldier Blue would if he had normal hair and eye coloring.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Voltron mecha.
  • Just Eat Gilligan: Why didn't Yurak devote all or most of their firepower to destroying their worst enemy? Or at least attacking various parts of the planet, rather than the capital city right next to the freaking lions? Either you do some damage and avoid Voltron for a while, or better yet split the Voltron Force's numbers and prevent them from even forming him? And supposedly they have massive numbers of robot warriors, so why not use them to tire out the Voltron force with a small but constant barrage? Or sneak in and gas the damn palace?
  • Kiss Diss: There's an infrequently used piece of Stock Footage in which Pidge tries to get a kiss from Allura, only for Allura to have him be kissed on the cheek by the mice.
  • Large Ham: Prince Lotor. Is there any time he doesn't shout his lines?
  • Larynx Dissonance: In the dub, a lot of the female extras voices were done by a guy.
  • Leader Forms the Head: The Transformation Sequence (played, of course, Once an Episode) comes with a voice-over of the team leader ordering each step of the process, ending with "...AND I'LL FORM THE HEAD!"
  • Leit Motif: And it is AWESOME.
  • Lighter and Softer: The most violent scenes from GoLion were removed in Voltron.
    • Another notable example is that Sven just barely survives the attack in episode 6, whereas Takashi Shirogane (his name in the original series) in GoLion is clearly Killed Off for Real.
  • Limited Social Circle: The Voltron team does pretty much everything together.
  • Limited Wardrobe: With the exceptions of Allura and Sven (a Composite Character), everyone has exactly three outfits - a uniform, a set of civvies, and sleepwear.
    • Allura has four outfits: her uniform, her sleepwear, and two sets of civvies (one formal, one casual). It is revealed in "The Witch Gets a Facelift" (Episode 13), that Allura has a closet full of various outfits, but we don't see her wear any.
    • Voltron: The Third Dimension took it to its logical conclusion; everyone except Allura wore only their Voltron Force uniforms. Allura was given some dresses to wear on state functions.
  • Love Triangle: Hinted as early as Episode 6, in which Allura physically comes between Keith and Lance during an argument, and again in the final episode of the first season in which Allura, lying down in a field among the Voltron force, is reclining between Keith and Lance. It's a Love Tetrahedron once Lotor is brought into the picture. The Triangle collapses in the Post-Script Season, in which not only are Keith and Allura kissing, embracing, and holding hands, but Allura's father gives them his blessing.
  • Make My Monster Grow: It's fairly common for Zarkon's forces to use either magic or science to make the robeast-of-the-week grow much larger as it prepares to fight against Voltron. In one especially literal example, after Prince Lotor replaces Yurak as leader of Zarkon's attacks on Planet Arras, Yurak is enlarged into a giant robeast and pitted against Voltron himself.
  • Militaries Are Useless: Apart from the Voltron Force, the Galaxy Garrison is completely useless. The team fights the entire war using entirely allies and resources they found on their own. If anything, they're even worse in the postscript season, where the Galaxy Garrison actually appears as something other than commentators who are too far away to provide any assistance in a few episodes, and still fails to accomplish anything without Voltron doing the lion's share of the work.
  • Mini Dress Of Power: Romelle, after she gets rescued and gets involved in the final battle.
  • Modest Royalty: Once Allura is a pilot, she usually wears her pink jumpsuit instead of her fancy dress.
  • Mooks
  • Mordor: Planet Doom appears to be a black wasteland with skeletons everywhere.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Ladies, you get your selection of four different flavors of Bishounen: Knight-in-white-armor Keith, ladies' man Lance with the leather jacket and tight pants, quiet and thoughtful Sven, and Lotor, who MIGHT have a heart of...*something* underneath all those impulses of conquest. And pick two male characters from Voltron, ANY two male characters from Voltron—at least the ones of legal age—and you WILL find a female-written Slash Fic pairing them.
  • Name-Tron: Especially since GoLion didn't have that kind of name.
  • Near-Miss Groin Attack: In "The Buried Castle", where skeleton warriors raise their spears from underground between Lance and Allura's legs.
  • Never Say "Die": The word destroy was always used instead. However there were a few exceptions, Yurak died after being turned into a monster, a Gory Discretion Shot was pulled on a merchant who attempted to extort Lotor, and Mogor died in a Bloodless Carnage.
    • In the final episode of Lion Voltron, Allura considers all the people Prince Lotor has "hurt", accompanied by a montage of various characters that appeared throughout the series. Made all the more poignant by the fact that in GoLion, their equivalents were killed.
  • Never Trust a Title: The two-parter "Return of Coran's Son"/"Coran's Son Runs Amuck"; the character mentioned in the titles is actually a clone.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: The weapons systems that each Lion and Voltron possess are never explicitly listed, so new weapons pop up out of nowhere every few episodes. The only Voltron weapons that show up on a regular basis are the flamethrower arms and the Blazing Sword, the latter of which is used in pretty much every episode in which Voltron is formed (which is almost all of them).
  • Official Cosplay Gear: You can get official Voltron costumes of the titular robot, but if you want a costume that isn't Halloween costume quality, you're better off making it yourself.
  • Ojou Ringlets: Allura/Fala, although the way they are drawn makes them easy to mistake for sideburns.
  • Overlord Jr.: Lotor.
  • Parental Abandonment:
    • Both of Allura's parents died years before the events of the show.
    • We also don't see Romelle and Bandor's mother when they are introduced, so we assume they've been motherless for some time; and even through the cut-and-paste editing, you can see that their father died in battle.
    • Pidge is also a war orphan who eventually was adopted. And then Lotor slagged his home planet.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Allura's dress. Romelle's dress isn't that fancy, but when she wears a battle jumpsuit, it fits this trope better.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Galaxy Garrison's job is pretty much Mr. Exposition. Despite supposed huge amounts of resources at their control, all they do is sit around and talk about what Voltron is doing.
  • Post-Script Season: How much more popular was Lion Voltron than GoLion? It was so much more popular that World Events Productions actually hired Toei Animation to make 20 new Voltron episodes. Not 20 new GoLion episodes, 20 new Lion Voltron episodes. That just doesn't happen very often.
  • Princess Classic: Even as a pilot, Allura is like this.
  • Princesses Prefer Pink: Allura wears pink with everything, even her uniform.
  • Recursive Canon: This version of the show appears in one episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender and it is justified as an In-Universe anime adaptation of that Team Voltron's adventures. Considering how great are the differences between both versions of the series, the obvious reaction of the "true" Team Voltron is to wonder who the hell thought that making this show was a good idea.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Lance is the Red Oni - impulsive, confrontational, outspoken, rebellious, even a little aggressive - and pilots the Red Lion... but wears blue uniform and civvies. Keith is the Blue Oni - rational, calm, level-headed, prudent, reasonable... but wears red uniform and civvies, and pilots the Black Lion. Curiously, Keith is The Hero and Standardized Leader and very idealistic; while Lance is The Lancer and much more realistic. Further playing with this trope is the fact that Allura has an even mix of both Red Oni and Blue Oni traits, wears pink outfits, and pilots the Blue Lion... and has a crush on one of these guys.
  • Refusing Paradise: In the episode "The Little Prince", an angelic being offers eternal paradise to our heroes, who all-but-immediately refuse. Internal monologues then confirm their unending devotion to the people of Arus.
  • Robeast: The Trope Namer.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Allura as one of the pilots.
  • Schizo Tech: Voltron and the Castle of Lions are state of the art, while everything else on the planet appears to be using a medieval tech base.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The top speed of the Voltron lions is Mach 10, but they're able to fly between planets in a fairly short amount of time. For reference, traveling between Earth and Mars at that speed would take about seven months under ideal orbital conditions. Traveling between systems would take years.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge go to answer a distress signal coming from Pidgeā€™s home planet (in Golion, it was actually Earth), but get detained by Coran and the castle guards, saying that Voltron is for the defense of Arus. The four fight their way through and go anyway, saying that ignoring a distress signal is low.
  • Series Fauxnale: The first season finale, "Final Victory", which was the dubbed version of the series finale of GoLion. The Post-Script Season, however, basically undoes everything that happens in it.
  • The Short Guy with Glasses: Pidge.
  • Simple, yet Opulent: Allura and Romelle's princess dresses have just a few frills, so they are both this trope and pimped dresses.
  • Slippery Swimsuit: Happens once to Princess Allura. A high dive while wearing a bikini leads to her top surfacing before she does.
  • The Something Force: The Voltron Force
  • Space "X": In the second episode, while in the middle of the desert Hunk hungers for some "space burgers".
  • Speech-Impaired Animal: The Space Mice.
  • Standardized Leader: Keith.
  • The Starscream: Lotor desires to overthrow Zarkon and rule himself. At the end of season 1, he accomplishes this.
  • Status Quo Is God: Between the original finale and the Post-Script Season.
    • Zarkon has returned to the throne of Planet Doom.
    • Lotor is back in a subordinate position without any sign that he's been punished for his coup.
    • Haggar and Lotor are working together again, despite having betrayed each other in the finale.
    • Planet Doom has returned to being able to pose a threat to the galaxy despite Voltron trashing most of its infrastructure in the finale.
    • The Voltron Force is in an antagonistic relationship with the mice that they hadn't had since episode 4 of the original show. Pidge, who was actually the mice's closest ally after Allura, is the one most opposed to the mice's activities (which are far worse than anything they pulled in the original anime).
  • Stay in the Kitchen: The way Allura's guardians treat her some of the time, especially Nanny.
  • Stock Footage: Including stock audio. The exact amount used (some scenes get skipped or compressed) varies from episode to episode depending on how much time the animators needed to fill after the actual storyline of the episode is accounted for, but the key clips that get brought up all the time are:
    • The center of the control room rises under Coran's feet, revealing the entrance to the ziplines.
    • The Voltron Force runs to the ziplines.
    • The Voltron Force rides the ziplines to the trams.
    • The Voltron Force (now wearing their pilot uniforms despite being dressed in civvies in the previous stock footage scenes) rides the trams to their Lions.
    • The Voltron Force inserts their keys and activate the Lions.
    • The Lions leave their respective hangars.
    • The Lions run (or fly) in formation.
    • The Lions form Voltron.
      • The line "And I'll form the head!" seems weird in Lion Voltron since the Black Lion forms both the head and entire body... but both shows used the same narration for the combining sequence. Thankfully, the GoLion Transformation Sequence has the head transforming on its own, so the whole thing works.
    • Voltron forms Blazing Sword.
  • Storm of Blades: In the second episode, after the team crash-landed on Arus, they're suddenly bombarded with a storm of spears, thrown by the scared natives believing them to be Zarkon's men. Keith tries to tell them they're friends, but they continue to throw at them until Hunk has enough and chases them deep into the cave.
  • Super Robot
  • Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Sven, especially when it comes to the Robeasts and the Drules.
  • Trailers Always Lie: The opening credits claim that the show is the story of a team sent by the Galaxy Alliance to retrieve Voltron. This is wrong on many levels.
    • The team's original mission had nothing to do with Voltron. They were sent to discover what Zarkon was up to, got captured, escaped, and found the Castle of Lions and Voltron by chance after getting shot down.
    • The team first assembles Voltron in episode 4 (or to put it another way, roughly 3% of the way through the series), and never take it back to Alliance HQ.
    • One member of the team featured in the opening credits (Sven) is incapacitated early in the series and doesn't come back until a later season, but remains in the credits instead of having Allura appear.
  • Transformation Is a Free Action: Subverted oh so many times, but that's what happens when you get Combat Pragmatist villains.
  • True Blue Femininity: Romelle's main dress.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: Allura and Romelle are distant cousins who look almost exactly alike.
  • Unwilling Suspension: Romelle.
  • Warrior Princess: Allura.
  • Villain Ball: In "The White Lion" Haggar succeeds in capturing four of the five members of the Voltron Force, but instead of just cutting their throats or something, she ties them up and waits for them to wake up so she can gloat about her victory and make them watch as the Lion Robeast kills them, which gives Keith time to draw away the Robeast and Coran and Nanny to deliver the Blue Lion and drive away Haggar. This is not the only example of times the villains snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by needing to make a production out of the death of the Voltron Force.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": Zarkon
  • Villainous Crush: Lotor's infatuation with Allura appears to be his motivation for much of the series, and also for his hatred of Keith.
  • Villains Act, Heroes React: At times it seems like Arus keeps forgetting that it's at war whenever Zarkon stops attacking for a while. Rather than do anything to strip Zarkon of the ability to keep sending more Robeasts to them, for most of the show, the only times they concern themselves with issues outside of Arus is if someone explicitly requests that the Voltron Force intervene.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: If anything get blasted, obliterated, or cleaved by the Blazing Sword, it's just a robot. Really. The dialogue says so.
  • White Hair, Black Heart : Prince Bokar of Sennec from very early in the series (villain of the week). Prince Lotor and Witch Haggar both have white hair as well.
  • Wicked Witch: The aptly named Haggar.
  • The Worf Effect: Every encounter the titular robot has with a robeast who is a physical threat to Voltron is an example of this.
  • Wrong Insult Offence: Happens when Allura insults the evil Prince Lotor and Lotor does feel insulted... but for the wrong reasons.
    Allura: You're a monster, just like your father!
    Lotor: That old fool?! Why I'm twice the monster he is!
  • You Have Failed Me: This gets pulled on Yurak, and later on Lotor. Then when Zarkon himself fails, the Drule Empire frees Lotor so he can invoke the trope against Zarkon.

    Vehicle Voltron 
  • The Battlestar: The Explorer, the space carrier from which the vehicles launched before combining
  • Combining Mecha: Two ways! 15 small vehicles could combine into three larger ones, and then if that didn't get the job done, they could re-combine into the titular Humongous Mecha.
  • The Emperor: Zeppo, who is technically the Big Bad, but rarely shows up, relying on Throk, and Hazar.
  • Fighter-Launching Sequence: Most of the time but not always.
  • Forgotten Superweapon: The Blazing Sword... so similar to the Lion version, but both shows were Toei productions anyway.
  • Humongous Mecha: Not only Voltron, but the Robeasts as well (they tended to be piloted vehicles in this version).
  • Never Say "Die": Although Dairugger XV had its fair share of military death, the American dub took pains to tell the audience that the things being shot up were "robot attack ships" and "android stormtroopers." The next-to-last episode even had a violent Drule lynch mob chanting, "Capture the president! Capture the president!"
  • Nobody Can Die: In the American dub, the only character confirmed to die was Captain Keyo.
    • Enemy troopers who were obviously getting killed were said to be "android stormtroopers."
    • Space fighters that blew up were dubbed "robot attack ships."
    • When a Sea Team member has a flashback to his brother dying a tragic death, the American dub ends with him saying "Oh, brother, I'm so glad you're all right!"
    • An angry, bloodthirsty mob storming the Presidential base on Planet Drule were heard screaming "Capture the president! Capture the president!"
    • Villains of the week were said to be exiled.
    • Quark claimed he'd return, right before his ship exploded.
  • Old School Dog Fight: The air team vehicles got to do a bit of this before the need to form Voltron arose.
  • Puppet King: Emperor Zeppo is pretty much a pawn of Viceroy Throk. Also counts as a Sheltered Aristocrat.
  • Rule of Cool: In the original Japanese version, Captain Newley (Captain Asimov in the original) was the senior officer to Commander Hawkins. In the US version, their ranks were reversed and Newley was taking orders from Hawkins. Since Hawkins was more active of the two, the dubbers must have assumed he was The Captain. Also, he was voiced by the always awesome Peter Cullen using his Optimus Prime voice. Which means, he's got to be the man in charge!
  • The Short Guy with Glasses: Chip.
  • The Something Force: Vehicle Voltron Force.
  • Stock Footage: The transformation
  • Super Robot: Vehicle Voltron
  • Thou Shall Not Kill: Notable in one of the last episodes where Throk, and his comrades try to escape Planet Drule. In the original Dairugger, the heroes chased down the fleeing Mecha, and destroyed it, killing Caponero (Throk), and his followers. In Vehicle Voltron, the heroes let it get away because there were people in it, and they were fleeing. Reasoning that Voltron is a defender.
  • Transformation Is a Free Action: See above.
    • Bit of a subversion here. Several Drules actually attack Voltron mid-combination sequence, and it worked, sorta. While not fully combined, and therefore not at full power, Vehicle Voltron has fought without a head, and without a leg, just for examples.
  • Wagon Train to the Stars: Vehicle Voltron is composed of several flying Vans.


 
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Voltron Intro

The opening of Voltron (narrated by the legendary Peter Cullen) tells of how the "good" planets of the solar system called on Voltron to bring peace to the galaxy.

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