Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Details Only True Sentai Warriors Know

It's been decades since the legendary Saban Entertainment introduced the world to the heroes of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," a gaggle of campy, colorful, kick-butt, karate-happy teens with a seemingly endless supply of giant mechs and maniacal villains. In that time, the franchise and its many, many iterations have gone on a wild Megazord's ride of ups and downs, from creating one of history's biggest toy sensations to spawning one of its most notoriously mistreated casts. With so much time, so many different incarnations, and so much notoriety to its name, it's no surprise that the "Power Rangers" dynasty is chock-full of interesting and little-known facts and secrets.

The cast is an interesting enough subject unto itself. When you add in the franchise's odd corporate history, extended media empire, and absolutely bonkers canon, there are enough fun "Power Rangers" details to extend to Rita Repulsa's moon base and back. Some, like the alleged "Power Rangers" curse, are dark, while others, like the seemingly endless amount of dedication exhibited by the late Jason David Frank, are light. Much of it is just crazy. Like the Zordons of knowledge, we've assembled the most fascinating franchise facts to battle the monsters of ignorance. These are the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" details only true Sentai warriors know.

One of the most endearing qualities of the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" series, especially in its first few seasons, is its low-budget nature. This turns what could be a too-serious teen drama into a delightfully wacky and totally campy action romp. Such goofiness helped the series battle controversies regarding its glorification of violence, and continues to aid adults when they want to turn their brains off and enjoy the brightly-colored series alongside their children. In fact, as outlets like Vox have pointed out, a lack of campiness is one of the major reasons why the 2017 "Power Rangers" reboot failed to wow audiences. As you might expect, Season 1's pilot episode is as zany as it gets (and TV pilots are notoriously bizarre to begin with). But what is certain to surprise you is the fact that a second, even zanier pilot, exists.

Though it was rewritten and reshot (and even recast, in the case of original Yellow Ranger actress Audri DuBois), the first pilot made for "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" was eventually released during the 1999 special "The Lost Episode." That means that all of its nonsensical glory is available to view online, and boy, it is worth watching whether you're a diehard Ranger fan or not. In addition to featuring a different actress as the Yellow Ranger, the unused pilot also changes the teens' hangout to a blandly white bowling alley, in addition to changing a startling amount of characters' names. Just ask the Rangers' floating head mentor, Zoltar.

It's easy to assume that a show made up of footage that's at least half recycled is cheap to make. But the reality of this frugality goes deeper than you could possibly imagine. In truth, "Powers Rangers" is so exceptionally cheap to make, and has, at times, been so successful, that it might just be one of the single most cost-effective series in television history.

One major way in which producers cut costs on "Powers Rangers" is by recycling costumes and props. This practice is a common one across all sorts of TV productions, but the many "Power Rangers" series take it to a whole new level. Consider the list of recycled props used in live-action TV maintained by the media-savvy users of TV Tropes. This list has more entries for "Power Rangers" than any other series, from the Rangers' signatures suits to their colorful weapons to entire monster outfits. "Power Rangers" even managed to repurpose the armor from "Starship Troopers."

The frugality of Saban has a dark side, however, and it mainly involves the treatment of actors. The original "Power Rangers" cast has opened up repeatedly over the years about how poorly they were paid and how pitiful their royalties were, despite the pop culture explosion they helped create. As original Black Ranger actor Walter Jones told Huffpost, "We weren't paid a lot, at all. I could have worked the window at McDonalds and probably made the same money the first season ... [Haim Saban] just had absolutely zero conscience about making billions using our faces because it was his idea and he owned it."

There's no one detail about the legendary "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" theme song, "Go Go Power Rangers," that is worthy of delving into — there are millions. From concept to execution to its eventual position as an iconic piece of '90s culture, "Go Go Power Rangers" is a rock-and-roll-ercoaster of wild details.

The theme song was composed by Ron Wasserman, who opened up to Complex about his incredible process. Based solely on a rough cut of the intro video, his knowledge that the show was called (as he misheard it) "Mighty Morphine Power Rangers," and a prompt from Saban to use the word "go," Wasserman created the song in just two and a half hours. As crazy a story as that is, the song's background and future are just as wild.

Before he hired Wasserman to write the song, Haim Saban worked as a professional songwriter. He helped compose such classics as the themes to "Inspector Gadget" (a song just as "go" heavy as the one that precedes "Power Rangers"),"He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," and "She-Ra: Princess of Power." Once "Go Go Power Rangers" premiered, its popularity led to it being released as a single, which rose all the way to the third-highest spot on the 1994 UK Singles Chart.

You can always count on the free market to follow up a smash hit like "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" with a stream of spin-offs, homages, and blatant copies. Although many of these lookalike productions have come from competing companies looking to hitch a ride on successful coattails, many of them also come from the original studio, who eternally hope to bottle up another bolt of lightning. Whatever the source, the immediate and explosive success of the "Power Rangers" franchise led to a series of truly wild rip-offs.

From Saban, who understandably didn't want to let their good brand name go to waste, came "Big Bad Beetleborgs" and "V.R. Troopers," along with lesser-known projects like "Masked Rider" and "Los Luchadores" (both of which are worth tracking down online, if only for the nostalgia and/or uncontrollable laughter). Non-Saban companies kept up the pace: Among their biggest and best attempts to cash in on "Power Rangers" mania are "Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills" and "Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog." Though these series have become little more than pop culture curiosities, no one can deny their chutzpah — or their seriously fabulous names. When's the last time the viewing public was treated to a show as whimsically named as "Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills"?

You might know that Jason David Frank was an important member of the "Power Rangers" canon and community, but you probably don't know the true extent of his influence. A scroll through his filmography will hint at his importance: Frank was featured in a whopping 257 episodes of the series, which is more "Power Rangers" appearances than anyone else in the franchise's history. Yet even Frank's unrivaled on-screen presence doesn't do justice to how integral he was to the series and its community.

For one thing, Frank walked the walk. Not only did he play a martial arts master on TV, he became one in real life, running his own karate academy and even breaking a martial arts world record (as if he couldn't get any cooler, the record was for most pine boards broken while skydiving). Frank was also an eighth-degree black belt with a number of major awards to his name, making his every punch, kick, and flip on "Power Rangers" that much more awesome.

Above all, Frank was the all-time ultimate Power Ranger because of his loyalty to the fan community, which endured long after his tenure on the show ended. Just months before his passing, Frank attended the 2022 Power Morphicon, meeting with fans, signing memorabilia, and leading the whole venue in a rousing chant of "Morphin' time!" Making the appearance even more heartwarming is the fact that Frank had decided years earlier to move past the Rangers to a new pet project, "Legend Of The White Dragon" — yet he still stuck by his original fans.