Trivia / Pokémon: The Original Series

• Banned Episode: A total of seven episodes were banned in the English dub.
  • "Holiday at Aopulco" - Banned due to James donning a pair of inflatable breasts. Was eventually dubbed as "Beauty and the Beach" years later (with the inflatable breasts cut), but then banned again.
  • "The Legend of Dratini" - Banned due to excessive gun use from a character-of-the-day. Ended up causing a Plot Hole in the dub, since this was the episode Ash caught 30 Tauros.
  • "Cyber Soldier Porygon" - Banned due to a scene with repetitive visual effects sending hundreds of Japanese kids to the hospital with seizure-like symptoms after its airing. The only one of these episodes to be banned worldwide. Nevertheless, it's been reported that an English dub of this episode was, in fact, made.
  • "Holiday Hi-Jynx" - Though dubbed, it was banned around 2015 due to the infamous "blackface Jynx" controversy.
  • "Stage Fight" - Banned for having Jynx as one of the background Pokémon at the same time as the above.
  • "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" - Also banned for having Jynx in it at the same time as the above.
  • "The Cave of Ice" - Again banned due to Jynx, but this episode was never dubbed at all.
• Executive Meddling: Putting it bluntly, Takeshi Shudō did not get along with the execs from The Pokémon Company, mainly because of this. Although accounts often tend to greatly exaggerate the amount of contempt Shudo had towards them, a lot of Shudo's ideas for the anime often tended to be shot down or significantly softened to appeal to kids, much to his frustration. Shudo's novels on his original ideas for the anime give an idea of the amount of stuff that got changed from his original vision.
• He Also Did: Takeshi Shudō also wrote GoShogun, Idol Angel Yokoso Yoko and Magical Princess Minky Momo. Pokémon anime director Kunihiko Yuyama also directed Go Shogun and Minky Momo''.
• Out of Holiday Episode: Multiple holiday episodes aired in Japan far from the holidays that inspired them thanks to the four-month Series Hiatus following the seizure-inducing "Electric Soldier Porygon". The Christmas Episode "Holiday Hi-Jynx" was scheduled for December 23, 1997, the week after "Electric Soldier Porygon", but aired as a special episode on October 5, 1998. The American broadcast rectified this by airing it on December 11, 1999. The episodes about Hinamatsuri (March 3) and Children's Day (May 5) aired back-to-back on July 9th, 1998.
• Role Reprise: As a result of the show being aired on the KidsWB Network, it was able to have a slew of Fake Crossover commercials with the other shows on there despite different talent pools^note All the Western Animation shows used the Los Angeles talent pool while the anime programs used the New York or Vancouver pool, depending on which dubbing agency was used, and used whichever actors from those shows were available. This meant that Veronica Taylor would get to be in the same commercial as Dan Green as Yami Yugi, or even Mark Hamill as The Joker!
• Series Hiatus: Pokémon went on a four-month hiatus after the Porygon incident, so that the producers could investigate and revise the guidelines on what animation techniques were appropriate for television viewing.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The GS Ball was originally supposed to be opened and contain a Celebi, which would then have its own story arc. The writing team decided to use Celebi in Pokémon 4Ever instead, so the GS Ball subplot ended up being dropped completely. This concept would be featured in the Japanese version of Pokemon Crystal, however, and eventually be made available worldwide in the Virtual Console version of the game.
  • Based of his novels, Takeshi Shudo originally envisioned the Pokemon world being a lot darker, or at the very least, the realistic implications of the world being more pronounced. Such things include Gym Leaders losing their jobs if they couldn't keep a good win-loss ratio (with Brock's gym teetering really close on losing its license), 10-year-olds being considered legal adults with all that that entails, and the villainous organization(s) being played a lot more menacingly than what was presented in the anime proper.
• Writer Revolt: It's believed the reason there was an arc that focused on a mother Lugia and her child is largely due to Takeshi Shudō's frustration over Lugia being presented as male in Pokémon 2000. (He had envisioned a goddess of the sea when designing Lugia.)

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