Stuff You Can't Believe You Just Figured Out

[Deacon Blues]

I didn't give this much thought at the time, but the names of the Nahal Argama crew members are all puns/nods to the jobs they're assigned:

ウタルデ・ハッシャー (Utarde Husher): ハッシャー is a pun on 発射 which means "fire". He's also the gunnery chief in charge of the main cannons and mega particle cannon.

サーセル・ミツケール (Sercel Mickerl): Sercel is a French company dealing with seismic equipment and the last name (at least via ANN) seems to be misspelled. Mitsukeeru is a pun on the Japanese verb 見つける which means to locate or discover. Incidentally he's the sonar operator.

ヘルム・コンバース (Helm Compass): He's the navigator, so helm, obviously. Oddly enough, ANN has another misspelling as his last name should be Converse (or so the Visual Guide states for these names).

[Fritz Ashlyn]

In Gundam, eventually everyone is named for what they do. Sort of like the way things used to be but taken to an absurd extreme. 'Helm' pilots the ship! 'Husher' fires the guns! 'Full Frontal', uh... I'll get back to that one. 'Uragang' accuses people of organized street crime! 'Bright Noa' intelligently builds huge boats! 'Bring Stabity'... provides the knives?

[Cybaster]

One of the BGMs from the 1991 Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory was actually taken and/or remixed from a Western movie from 1987: Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. When I saw the latter on AMC, I had to squint my ears...and then I LOL'd when I recognized it.

And just thought I'd throw this out there. You know how some fans kept insisting that Arisa had romantic feelings for Asemu in Gundam AGE? After some browsing around, I finally figured out where that started: It's stated outright in the third Gundam AGE novel, apparently. No real heads or tails of that in the anime, though, surprise surprise.

[mcred23]

One of the BGMs from the 1991 Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory was actually taken and/or remixed from a Western movie from 1987: Death Wish 4: The Crackdown.

And also from Quest for Fire. Makes me wonder about all the music in the OVA (And where it might originally be from )...

[Fritz Ashlyn]

From what I understand, it's long been much more acceptable in Japan for composers to, uh, "borrow" musically from other sources. A recent controversy that comes to mind is Toei giving Kenji Yamamoto the boot from composing new BGM for Dragonball Kai after admitting that a lot of his pieces heavily borrow from other people's original works. If I remember correctly, "musical plagarism" if that's what you want to call it isn't looked upon as poorly there as it is in the west. Or wasn't, I guess.

[mcred23]

That or they were just being really lazy in 1991. You get 0083 taking stuff almost directly from movies, and F91 pretty obviously ripping off The Empire Strikes Back at least twice in its soundtrack...

[HellCat]

Along those lines, quite a few of SD Gundam Forces themes are reminiscent of Star Wars ones. The composer even cites John Williams as an inspiration in the soundtrack CD. From memory, I believe Princess Rele's theme has a noticeable amount of Leia's to it.

[AmuroNT1]

In a vaguely similar vein, for a while people were trying to identify a particularly awesome piece of music that popped up in Kamen Rider Decade. Then one day, someone was watching the game show Minute to Win It, and heard the exact same song; turns out it comes from a common library of music that was licensed by both shows.

On topic, I just now learned that Tokyopop screwed up the name of OZ Prize's super battleship from G-Unit (then again, what DIDN'T they screw up in that manga?) They used "Grandshario"; it's supposed to be "Grand Chariot", which is a French name for the Big Dipper, fitting in with the constellation theme (but obviously not the Zodiac theme).

[YazanGable]

That or they were just being really lazy in 1991. You get 0083 taking stuff almost directly from movies, and F91 pretty obviously ripping off The Empire Strikes Back at least twice in its soundtrack...

For the longest time, I thought F-91 was the most blatant of these.
Then I got talked into watching Urotsukidoji...and promptly lost it laughing when I heard the end theme in the last episode was an almost note-for-note lift of the theme to E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial.

No. Really.

Also, I'd have to look up the episode of Ideon again (was running a few when I caught this) but spotted something that I came to realize turned up in 08th MS Team as a reference.
In one of the episodes, the Buff Clan launches a three-wave attack on the Solo Ship.
The names of each attack wave:
-Topp
-Dell
-Arth

Will get screencaps later once I remember which ep in the run it was.

[Fritz Ashlyn]

Alongside such global cultural touchstones as the Utah Jazz and Shaq, Alfred J. Kwak is popular well into the Universal Century...

[Compass]

Anyone played Gradius IV? I swear, you hear George Michael's "Careless Whisper" saxophone solo during the course of the game.

It looks like the US exports great music and imports great anime

[YazanGable]

The Sax Man REALLY gets around, it seems.

[teslashark]

Not much worth mentioning, but the Vagan helmets of AGE already appeared in OO.

Blitz Gundam's Lancer Darts are LOSAT or KE missles. A KEM is essentially a rocket propelled lance, so it coule be used as a stabbing weapon.
The appearance of the standard Orb rifle is based on the Taiwanese T65 piston AR.

[YazanGable]

An amusing bit of casting trivia discovered recently.

Been watching Daitarn 3. On hearing a familiar voice, did some looking. Seems the show was the acting debut of Shuici 'Char Aznable' Ikeda.

Now, this isn't as odd on its own...until you look at the rest of the cast. Three of the main heroes being played by the VAs who would later go on to play Bright Noah, Sayla Mass, and Mirai Yashima.

So even back then, Tomino was pitting these people against each other it seems.

...though he certainly lasted longer as Char.

[CloudFF7]

I noticed that certain factions in gundam universes have certain colors of their beam weaponry. In Universal Century the Federations(and later Fed related factions) beams are pink, while Zeons(and later Zeon related Factions) are yellow. One of the few exceptions is the GP02 whose beam sabers are green, and the Dijeh and Hyaku Shiki whose beam rifle/sabers are yellow and some of Titans mobile suits have yellow color beams(these mobile suits are of Zeon descent).

This pattern would continue in AGE with the Federation being pink, while the Vagan being yellow.

Cosmic Era, choose a different approach, most standard beam rifles colors are green for both the Alliance and ZAFT, the cannon Striker/Wizard packs have a red beam with a lightning aura, while sword packs for both sides are pink. Beam sabers vary all Gundam types are pink, while others are yellow, some of the non Gundam ZAFT mobile suits melee weapons are pink the GuAIZ beam claw and ZAKU beam axe are examples.

[GX9900-Gundam-X]

Well its not gundam but I looked real hard and the "Trombe" Colors of Elzam Von Bransteins mechs in SRW tend to be red black and gold/yellow THE COLORS OF THE GERMAN FLAG seeing as he is German (well space German or at least German themed) That is a neat and sorta patriotic and coo idea

[Ryuu74]

I noticed that certain factions in gundam universes have certain colors of their beam weaponry. In Universal Century the Federations(and later Fed related factions) beams are pink, while Zeons(and later Zeon related Factions) are yellow. One of the few exceptions is the GP02 whose beam sabers are green, and the Dijeh and Hyaku Shiki whose beam rifle/sabers are yellow and some of Titans mobile suits have yellow color beams(these mobile suits are of Zeon descent).

This pattern would continue in AGE with the Federation being pink, while the Vagan being yellow.

Cosmic Era, choose a different approach, most standard beam rifles colors are green for both the Alliance and ZAFT, the cannon Striker/Wizard packs have a red beam with a lightning aura, while sword packs for both sides are pink. Beam sabers vary all Gundam types are pink, while others are yellow, some of the non Gundam ZAFT mobile suits melee weapons are pink the GuAIZ beam claw and ZAKU beam axe are examples.

And in Wing, All beam guns are yellow because all mobile suits are descended from the same source.

[Dark Duel]

Beam sabers vary all Gundam types are pink, while others are yellow, some of the non Gundam ZAFT mobile suits melee weapons are pink the GuAIZ beam claw and ZAKU beam axe are examples.

I honestly can't think of any MS in the CE besides the Strike Dagger that had a beam melee weapon that wasn't pink.
Might be because until a couple of days ago I hadn't watched an episode of Seed in ages, and I stopped rewatching Destiny over a month ago, so maybe I just forgot if there was one.

[Dendrobium Stamen]

I honestly can't think of any MS in the CE besides the Strike Dagger that had a beam melee weapon that wasn't pink.

All four of Aegis' limb-mounted beam sabres are yellow, also.

My theory, a good few years back, was that yellow blades had a higher output than pink; I can't recall why - and it didn't fit with the atomic-powered Gundams having pink blades - but there wasn't to my knowledge any official explanation given, then or now.

[Dark Duel]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the Aegis. So yeah, the Aegis and the Strike Dagger. That makes two.
And honestly, I don't think there IS a reason for it beyond a random aesthetic choice. Certainly not officially.