When a work gets exported into another country, there's a likely chance the work will become localized to the country that the work is exported. For some franchises, the series' first localization is completely different compared to how we know it today.
This is particularly noticeable for works that were initially Bowdlerised for another country, especially if the work were to be aimed at children due to certain countries having different standards on what's appropriate for children, as well as another country changing a character's name from what they were originally called in their home country. If the work were to receive an uncensored release, that would mean that the work would be presented as it was originally shown in its home country.
Related to Early-Installment Weirdness, Early Adaptation Weirdness, and Ditching the Dub Names. See also Dub-Induced Plotline Change and American Kirby Is Hardcore.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In general, before Tokyopop normalized printing English translations of manga to be read from right-to-left like the original versions, most publishers published manga left-to-right in order not to confuse readers; this was often done by mirroring all of the artwork in the manga from its original orientation. While Tokyopop was not the first publisher to release manga unflipped, they were the ones that normalized reading manga in the direction it was originally intended internationally.
- Attacker You!: In the Italian dub, the main heroine You is initially stated to be the cousin of Kozue Ayuhara from the completely unrelated volleyball anime Attack No. 1. In the first episode, being related to Kozue is You's defining trait and the characters constantly talk about it, and in the episodes 2-8, Kozue is mentioned at least Once an Episode. This is dropped afterwards, and ever since the 9th episode, Kozue is never referenced again.
- Attack on Titan:
- The translation and script writing for the English dub of the anime's first season were handled by Clyde Mandelin and J. Michael Tatum, respectively. This resulted in some liberties taken with the English translation, such as changing the "trapped in a birdcage" metaphor to "home is a pen, humanity cattle" and unintentionally removing the significance of the visual of three birds flying over Wall Maria in the first and last episode of the season. There was also an instance of turning Keith Shadis into a stereotypical drill instructor, even having him reference R. Lee Ermey and his most famous role in Full Metal Jacket at one point. By contrast, season 3 changed the translator and script writer to Miles George and Aaron Dismuke/Bonny Clinkenbeard respectively, and the English dub is much more faithful to the Japanese version, even having Eren refer to the walls as a cage rather than a pen at one point.
- The English translations of Volume 5 of the manga initially referred to Hange Zoë as a female. However, series creator Hajime Isayama stated that Hange's sex and gender identity are up to the readers to decide. This was fixed in reprints and later volumes of the manga featuring Hange.
- Choujin X: The early Mangaplus translation originally translated Ely's surname as "Otsuta." This was later changed to "Otta."
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
- When the manga was first translated in English, it was initially called by its romaji name Kimetsu No Yaiba, in which Viz Media initially translated the first 3 chapters of the manga until they decided not to continue it. When they announced that they were translating the volumes for the series, it was retitled into the better-known Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba.
- The first three chapters of the manga were translated by Caleb Cook of My Hero Academia and Dr. STONE fame, while the rest of the series would be translated by John Werry.
- The debut simulcast Crunchyroll subtitles for the very first season of the anime back in 2019 weren’t really making an effort to line itself with the official English terms made standard by the Viz Translations once they really started bringing the manga volumes over to the US, thus in the early episodes the English subtitles would actually translate something like Muzan’s elite demon group as Twelve Demon Moons, just like some fan translators did, rather than the Viz version of Twelve Kizuki. This discrepancy didn’t last long, however, by the Mugen Train movie and second season onwards Crunchyroll would make the official Viz translated terms the norm for their anime subs as well.
- Detective Conan:
- The anime was initially supposed to air on Cartoon Network before being sent to [adult swim] due to featuring murder mysteries as a major plot point, resulting in the Funimation dub of the anime giving American names to most of the major and recurring characters aside from Conan. The Bang Zoom, the Macias Group, and Studio Nano dubs would retain the original Japanese names, though the Viz translations for the manga kept the Funimation names due to releasing around the time the English dub was airing.
- The Funimation dub had Conan's inner monologue done by Shinichi'snote Or in the Funimation dub's case Jimmy English VA due to him being a teenager trapped in a child's body, as opposed to having Conan's VA doing his inner monologue like his Japanese VA does. Later dubs would have Conan's VAs doing his inner monologue instead of Shinichi's VAs.
- Dragon Ball's localizations have gone through a steady progression over the years from changing nearly everything to being (mostly) more authentic to the source material:
- The very first localization of any part of the series was the NES game Dragon Power. Most of the characters bar Goku have had their names changed, and several have had their sprites edited—which, combined with the American Kirby Is Hardcore box art, would make it a bit tricky to tell it was even a part of the series unless you pay attention to the story.
- The original English Dragon Ball dub by Harmony Gold would rename almost every character, including Goku to Zero, Bulma to Lena, and most infamously Karin to Whiskers the Wonder Cat in their combined feature of the first and third Dragon Ball movies. In an inversion of this trope, they translated Nyoi-bo to Power Pole and Kinto'un to The Flying Nimbus, names that Funimation still use today!
- The heavy Never Say "Die" restrictions enforced by Saban Entertainment meant that characters that died went to "another dimension" or somehow escaped, with one infamous moment having Nappa destroy a news helicopter and Tien claiming that it's okay because he can see the crew's parachutes. The restarted dub would lessen this before all other dubs removed it (with the exception of the infamous Nicktoons version of Dragon Ball Z Kai).
- Goku was changed into a more heroic character, even moreso than the source anime was doing to the manga, to the point of leaning more towards turning him into a Superman archetype (helped by their rather similar backstories). During the original The Ocean Group dub period, Vegeta claims Goku’s father was a great scientist, while in the in-house Funimation dub, Goku's Badass Boast declares that he's an "ally to good, nightmare to [Frieza]". This has permeated into the fandom's collective consciousness to the point where some fans will view his Blood Knight attitude as being out of character, when it's actually his strongest and most defining character trait.
- Since his initial appearance, Mr. Satan was referred to as "Hercule", since having such a demonic name was a no-no; even the Viz manga translation used Hercule despite otherwise being uncensored. This would stick around until around Dragon Ball Z Kai and Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, which keeps the original joke that the Earth worships "Satan" and that he eventually does help save the world.
- In Japanese, Piccolo speaks with a rather upper-class form of Japanese, which the manga initially localized into speaking Ye Olde Butchered English. This would quickly be dropped for a more standard, if considered and intelligent, form of speaking.
- The European Portuguese dub of Dragon Ball Z was initially a Gag Dub (by inserting Portuguese jokes and pop culture references), which made the show more successful in Portugal. The European Portuguese translations of later Dragon Ball installments (including Dragon Ball Z Kai) would follow the original Japanese and English versions closely, but Dragon Ball Super still maintained the majority of the previous Portuguese dubbisms from the Z dub.
- The 1996 Fire Emblem OVA was dubbed into English before any Fire Emblem games were released internationally, so Marth is referred to as "Mars" instead. Super Smash Bros. Melee onward would have him be referred to as "Marth" due to the Fire Emblem characters in that game being intended as a Regional Bonus for Japan, where his name is transliterated as "Marth".
- The first French dub of Fist of the North Star was done by people who very much disliked the series' overt gore and violence in what was broadcast as a children's show, who retaliated by essentially making a Gag Dub (through driven by spite rather than any liking for the series) full of puns and bad wordplay.
- Girl Meets Rock!: A strange example that overlaps with Screwed by the Lawyers. Under Japanese copyright law, any media featuring music protected under the JASRAC must pay a copyright fee. Girl Meets Rock! features a lot of copyrighted music but, since Shueisha already pays copyright fees for Jump titles, the manga featuring copyrighted music in its native Japan isn't an issue. When Mangaplus brought the series over to English, they originally translated all of the lyrics into English. On June 29, 2024, the manga was delisted from Mangaplus, presumably because of a Cease and Desist from the JASRAC. This is likely because Shueisha hadn't secured the rights for Mangaplus to feature copyrighted music. Since Girl Meets Rock! is rather niche in the West, the series presumably would have had net negative profits had they paid the required fees to the JASRAC. On November 23, 2024, the series was brought back onto Mangaplus... with all of the lyrics censored out. As a result, there exist official scans of the first 27 chapters with totally uncensored lyrics (although these scans can no longer be accessed, at least not legally). By contrast, all official scans from chapter 28 onwards have all lyrics cut out, but they still refer to specific bands and songs by name.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Viz Media initially chose to skip releasing the first two parts of the manga when they got the license, instead marketing Stardust Crusaders as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. After the success of the 2012 anime adaptation, Viz went back and rereleased the manga in order, starting from Phantom Blood.
- The English translation of the first two parts of the story— Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency— tended to keep character names as they were in the original, with a few alterations (Cars, the Big Bad of Battle Tendency, became Kars, for instance, while AC/DC became 'Esidisi', which at least sounds the same). Stardust Crusaders was a major departure from this, with basically every character who wasn't a Crusader, Hol Horse, or DIO getting their name changed because the translators were Writing Around Trademarks due to the constant musical references. Oingo and Boingo became Zenyatta and Mondatta, J. Geil became Centerfold, Captain Tenille became Captain Dragon, and so on. Diamond is Unbreakable onwards only compounded this, because every new Stand in the series from this point on is a music reference, and several characters are named after fashion brands. In short, while the translation started off as faithful, it changed to the point where the number of references that are intact is outweighed at least ten-to-one by the sheer amount of Dub Name Changes.
- MANGA Plus initially titled Kaiju No. 8 as Monster #8 in English. However, Viz Media would also license the manga under the more well-known title Kaiju No. 8 and use a different translation than the MANGA Plus version. The English title on MANGA Plus was eventually changed to KAIJU NO.8 (Monster #8).
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: In early episodes, Kirby's more intelligible lines were redubbed by Amy Birnbaum, which resulted in his voice drastically changing. In later episodes, any intelligible speech is replaced with other audio clips of his vocalizations by his usual VA, Makiko Ohmoto.
- Love Hina's first volume by Tokyopop uses the color page from Chapter 30 of the manga (featuring Naru, Shinobu, and Haruka in swimsuits) as the volume cover instead of what was used for the Japanese version. All later volumes use the same covers as the Japanese versions.
- Lyrical Nanoha: Early translations of the first seasons spelled the name of Nanoha's intelligent staff as "Raging Heart", as that was the closest phonetically to how it is pronounced in the original Japanese. Later seasons, however, established the correct spelling as "Raising Heart", which has been used ever since.
- Mission: Yozakura Family:
- The English release of the manga started out as a digital exclusive, with the manga having a trimonthly schedule. After volume 5, the manga received a physical English release with a bimonthly schedule.
- The English translation of the manga translated the 10th Generation's mother and 9th Head of the Yozakura family Rei Yozakura's first name as "Shizuku" in Chapter 35. This is mainly as a result of series mangaka Hitsuji Gondaira admitting that he used the wrong kanji for Rei. Despite it being corrected in Chapter 70, the English translation still translated her name as "Shizuku". Later chapters, as well as collected volumes, correct her name to Rei.
- Naruto:
- The English dub originally used an Alternative Foreign Theme Song instead of the first Japanese theme "ROCKS". Starting with "Haruka Kanata", they began using the Japanese themes.
- The European Spanish dub initially featured translations of terms like jutsu (which get called "techniques") and Konoha (referred to as the "Leaf Hidden Village" - not Hidden Leaf Village) only to switch to the original Japanese terms and stick with them from the Konoha Invasion onwards.
- One Piece:
- The 4Kids Entertainment dub made a host of changes to reduce the amount of on-screen violence, resulting in absurdities such as some characters' fates becoming more grim than intended (such as Belle-Mere apparently starving to death or dying of untreated injuries in Arlong's captivity, as opposed to being shot in the head/upper torso), Don Krieg's darts being changed to poisoned suction cups to explain the totally-not-bloodstains covering Luffy during their fight, and skipping the entirety of the Reverse Mountain and Little Garden arcs (which turned out to have major story implications decades down the line). When Funimation got the dub rights, it was generally considered a massive improvement, even if the pacing did suffer after the time skip.
- The Funimation dub made English versions of the opening and ending songs up to the G-8 arc. Ever since Long Ring Island, however, the dub has kept the original Japanese versions of the opening and ending songs.
- Zoro's name remained unaltered for the first five volumes of Viz Media's release of the manga, but it was changed to Zolo to match the then-concurrent 4Kids dub. Zoro's name continues to be translated to Zolo for the English release of the manga to this day.
- Due to the ambiguity of some Japanese characters and the way they were translated, a fairly important plot point was obfuscated from English audiences for over twenty years: the name of the island the One Piece is located was translated as "Raftel" when it came up in early appearances, and it remained that way until a flashback in the Wano Arc, which revealed its intended name was "Laugh Tale", due to the reaction Roger had upon setting sight upon the One Piece.
- In the Persona 3 and Persona 4 manga adaptations, most of the cast is on a First-Name Basis, even when they weren't in the localization of the games, let alone the original Japanese. For example, Mitsuru from the P3 manga called most of her teammates by their first names, as opposed to using last names on everyone except Akihiko and eventually Yukari. Starting in Volume 10 of both series, the characters started addressing each other in a way consistent with the original Japanese, save for the localization not including honorifics.
- Pokémon: The Original Series: While Rachael Lillis would dub over the occasional line for Pikachu whenever Ikue Ōtani's lines overlapped with Japanese speech, "The School of Hard Knocks" has her re-dub nearly all of Pikachu's lines. The difference was noticeable enough that this was not attempted again.
- Sailor Moon:
- The original DiC and Cloverway North American dubs from the 1990s-2000s were full of Westernized Dub Name Changes and Bowdlerization. Most infamously, the male Zoicite was changed to a woman and Sailors Neptune and Uranus went from lovers to cousins to cover up any hints of same-sex attraction; the latter infamously backfired by making them look like Kissing Cousins. In addition, many episodes in Seasons 1-2 ended in a "Sailor Says" PSA-style segment summarizing the moral of the week's episode for young viewers. The Viz Media dub from The New '10s was true to the original anime, keeping the Japanese names, references, genders, and sexual orientations.
- Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon, also known as "Saban Moon", was a failed pilot for a North American localization of Sailor Moon made prior to the DiC dub with live action and animated segments. This featured Caucasian and African American Sailor Scouts, Sailor Mercury as a wheelchair user, and a heavier focus on outer-space battles, among other things.
- The manga, when it was first translated by MIXX (later known as Tokyopop), not only kept the original Dub Names for Ami, Rei, Makoto, Minako, Mamoru and Chibi-Usa, but went a different way with Usagi and instead of "Serena", they named her "Bunny". When Kodansha reclaimed the English rights, they all regained their Japanese names.
- Early on in the official localization of The Summer You Were There, protagonist Shizuku Hoshikawa's surname is romanized as "Hoshigawa." Additionally, Shiori calls her older sister Kaori "Onee-chan," instead of how she and Shizuku use "Sis" on their respective older sisters in subsequent volumes.
- Tenchi Muyo!: In the first two volumes of the manga, Tenchi's Light Hawk Sword is constantly referred to as the "Lightning Eagle Sword". Later volumes would use the original name.
- Urusei Yatsura's manga was initially called Lum * Urusei Yatsura and then later The Return of Lum when the manga was exported in North America. However, when Viz Media announced that they were releasing the manga in a 2-in-1 omnibus edition, they kept the manga's original name.
- Viz Media:
- Early releases by Viz, such as their original printing of Urusei Yatsura, were released in the same format as American comic books, with weekly individual issues containing one or two chapters each. After a few years they adopted a style closer to how they're published in Japan, publishing them as collected volumes or in magazines.
- Ever since Viz Media started every Shonen Jump series in the magazine, the initial logos for certain manga look completely different for their first chapter compared to their finalized logo design for the manga's volume cover.
- Manga under the Shonen Jump imprint that had an "Older Teen" rating or higher were initially listed under "Shonen Jump Advanced" imprint. As this was meant to publish the more mature Shonen Jump titles such as Death Note, Eyeshield 21, and Hunter × Hunter. This would be dropped by the mid-2010s as Shonen Jump titles with an "Older Teen" rating such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Undead Unluck, and Sakamoto Days would be under the same imprint as "All Ages" and "Teen" rated titles, and series that was initially published under that imprint had it either had it removed in reprints or later volumes if the series was still ongoing.
- World Trigger: The English dub of the anime initially made English versions of the openings for the anime's first season. The dubs for the second and third seasons, however, retain the original Japanese openings for the dub.
Comic Books
- Before the main series of Asterix books began to be published in English translation in 1969, selected parts of the comics were published in heavily edited form in the British anthology comics series Valiant and Ranger. Both of those reset the action to ancient Britain, and gave the characters and the strip entirely new names. The Valiant strips retitled the comic "Little Fred and Big Ed", after the new names given to Asterix and Obelix. In Ranger, the strip was titled "Britons Never, Never, Never Shall Be Slaves", and Asterix and Obelix were called Beric the Bold and Son of Boadicea.
Films — Animation
- As the English dub for Asterix the Gaul was produced before the comics were first translated into English, a few of the characters' names differ from their eventual official English names. Panoramix (Getafix) has his name unchanged, while Abraracourcix (Vitalstatistix) is called Tonnabrix, and Assurancetourix (Cacofonix) is called Stopthemusix. From Asterix and Cleopatra onwards, the film dub names would stay consistent with the comics.
Films — Live-Action
- Snow White and the Three Stooges, though far from early in The Three Stooges' careers, was one of the first Stooge works to be released in Japan when it was imported there in February 1962, and as such the Stooges are billed as "三人の道化たち"note "The Three Clowns" instead of "三ばか大将"note "The Three Fools" or "The Three Idiots", which would become their localized name when their shorts were released in Japan a year later.
Literature
- The first Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was retitled in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because the American publisher Scholastic was worried that kids would find a book with "philosopher" in the title to be boring. Various British English terms were also changed to American ones, such as "mom" being used instead of "mum". The US versions of the rest of the books in the series retain their original titles and slang usage, though all references to the Philosopher's Stone in later books were still changed to keep consistency.
- Moby-Dick: The first British edition of the novel censored religious and sexual references in the book and critiques of royalty. Scholars believe the heavy-handed censorship may have led to the epilogue being accidentally cut, and therefore cutting out the explanation for how the story is actually being told.
- When Yen Press obtained the rights to license both Haruhi Suzumiya and Spice and Wolf, it was commonly accepted that light novels couldn't sell well in the West. Consequently, both of these series had completely different covers compared to their original Japanese ones in order for them to appeal to a wider audience. Reprints and later volumes of these series retain the original Japanese covers.
Live-Action TV
- Kamen Rider:
- The first series to be localized in Indonesia, Kamen Rider BLACK, was originally localized as Satria Baja Hitam (Black Steel Knight). It was popular enough that Kamen Rider BLACK RX and Kamen Rider Super-1 were also localized as Satria Baja Hitam RX and Satria Baja Hitam Super One in the 90s, but later localizers simply use the original titles for other series from the 2000s onwards.
- In Indonesia, the franchise's iconic transformation phrase "Henshin!" ("Transform") was originally localized as "Mantra Aji!" when RCTI first dubbed Kamen Rider BLACK. Later localizations translated the phrase faithfully ("Berubah!") until RTV became the primary Indonesian localizer in the late 2010s, and the phrase is now left untranslated.
Tabletop Games
- When Warhammer: Age of Sigmar first came out, every single foreign translation of the game didn't translate most of the terminologynote This was due to Games Workshop games in general removing localized names starting from April 2014 up until July 2020: in that same timeframe, both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 had their foreign localizations altered to remove any localized name. The names of any given faction, unit, and weapon were left in Gratuitous English, and the same happened for most of the game-relevant stats and keywords. This was slowly changed with time: in 2018, with the release of the game's second edition, the names of weapons, stats, and keywords were localized in Spanish, German, French, and Italian, while the third edition in 2021 finally gave localized names to the factions and their units too.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Early sets had much looser rules for name translations, with translators often inventing totally new names. This became a problem when the design shifted towards "archetypes" that were mechanically related to each other by their names. Nowadays, card names are kept closer to their original form to avoid confusion, but older card names have caused some problems in regards to archetypes:
- Summoned Skull is called Summoned Daemon in Japanese. This became an issue years later when Daemon (translated to Archfiend in English) became an archetype, meaning later printings of Summoned Skull require text clarifying that it belongs to the archetype.
- Frog the Jam is an unremarkable Vanilla Unit that nevertheless had to be excluded by name on the effects of every Frog monster since it wasn't technically a frog in Japanese; the original card uses a different kana spelling of "frog" than cards in the archetype. This issue was eventually circumvented by renaming the card to "Slime Toad".
- The Early Days Collection of video games from the series highlights this issue by including a combination of games that had been localized early in the series' worldwide history and some that were initially Japan-only and localized for the first time in the collection. The newly-localized games use the current card names from the TCG, while the previously-localized games remain as they were. So Slime Toad is called that for the first two Duel Monsters games and the fourth, but the third calls it Frog the Jam.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing: The original game and Wild World gave a Dub Personality Change to almost every character, making them much ruder and aggressive, particularly to the player. Since Animal Crossing: City Folk, the localised writing has been more consistent with the Japanese version, with more friendly and approachable characterisation.
- Chrono Trigger: The English localization of the original Super Nintendo Entertainment System version gave Frog a Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe accent due to him coming from the game's equivalent of The Middle Ages, despite the Japanese version not having him talk so formally. Ever since the Nintendo DS remake, English localizations of the game have dropped this and have him speak normally.
- Contra: At the time the game was released on consoles, the world was going through a few changes — the United States was mired in the Iran-Contra Affair while Germany had passed a law that prohibited selling kids anything that glorified violence towards other people. Thus, Contra would be rebranded in Europe as Probotector, turning the player soldiers and any enemy humanoid soldiers into various robots. This would last until the release of Contra: Hard Corps, as later games would retain the original name and the human soldiers.
- Dragon Quest: Before the release of Dragon Quest VIII, English localizations of the game not only carried the Dragon Warrior Market-Based Title, but had generally more literal translations of in-game terms, causing many of the series' famous puns to be Lost in Translation. From DQVIII onward, however, all localizations of the franchise attempt to preserve the wordplay in some manner, retroactively extending to Updated Rereleases of previously released Dragon Quest games. For example, a party member who's a wolf trapped in human form in Dragon Quest VII was named "Gabo" in Japanese, after the onomatopoeia for a wolf's howl, with his name carried over unchanged in the initial English version, while in the Nintendo 3DS rerelease, spin-offs, and Reimagined, he is now renamed "Ruff", preserving the intended wordplay.
- Final Fantasy:
- Due to Nintendo of America's rules against including religious iconography in games, the Churches where the party goes to revive fallen members in the original localization of Final Fantasy 1 were changed into Clinics. Later remakes and remasters left them as Churches.
- Due to Character Name Limits, things such as character names and magic spell names were truncated to fit up until Final Fantasy VII, with examples including Blizzaga being localized as Ice3, Barbariccia as "Valvalis", and Midgardsormr as "Terrato". From Final Fantasy VIII onward, these shortened names were reverted as character limits were no longer a concern.
- Guilty Gear: The Missing Link has a number of odd localization choices that aren't consistent with the rest of the Guilty Gear series. For instance, Overdrive attacks are called "Chaos Moves" and the Tension meter is called the "Chaos Gauge", which they would share their Japanese names in the rest of the series. This also extends to some characters' specific moves, such as Potemkin's iconic Slide Head ability being called "Graviton Stomp".
- In the Japanese and Korean versions of Kirby's Return to Dream Land, the Signpost Tutorial visuals were accompanied by an O mark when performed correctly, while the other international versions replace it with a check mark. The Korean localizations of the games starting with Kirby: Triple Deluxe would replace the O mark with a check mark, with the Japanese version of Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe following suit when it released in 2023.
- The Legend of Zelda: In the 1980s to the early 1990s, Nintendo of America had extreme policies about censoring religious references in games, so all the temples in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and A Link to the Past were renamed to "palaces" in English. By the time Ocarina of Time was released, their policies loosened, so temples could finally be called temples. A Link Between Worlds is the only game since to use "palaces", likely for the sake of consistency with A Link to the Past.
- Little Tail Bronx: In the English translation of Tail Concerto, the two main races are called dog-people and cat-people, which are literal translations of their Japanese names. From Solatorobo: Red the Hunter onwards, they're called "Caninu" and "Felineko", respectively.
- Metal Gear:
- Because the MSX2 was a platform that was never made available in North America, the NES version of the first Metal Gear was the one that was brought over instead of the original. The in-game English script for the most part hewed pretty closely to the Famicom version's Japanese script, which didn't deviate that much from the MSX2 original, but the packaging and manual has a completely made-up backstory which goes into the history of Outer Heaven's leader, giving him the identity of Vermon CaTaffy (a thinly-veiled parody of real-life Lybian dictator Muammar al-Qadaffi, contradicting the Japanese backstory of the enemy leader being an anonymous mercenary whose identity is a secret even to the player at the start of the game, creating a disconnect when at the end it is revealed that the final boss is none other than the player's own commanding officer and main radio contact Big Boss.
- Snake's Revenge features a similar disconnect between the in-game script and the manual backstory, only this time Snake's Revenge was not even a game that was released in Japan - it was developed primarily for the western market after the surprise success of the first Metal Gear on the NES. When the original game's creator Hideo Kojima caught wind on the fact that a separate Konami department was working on a sequel, he started spearheading another Metal Gear sequel with his own team for the MSX2 - Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake - and that became the official sequel in Japan, resulting in Snake's Revenge skipping a Japanese Famicom release completely. Later on, when Kojima himself revived the series with Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, which got a worldwide release, he made sure to let know which of the 2D Metal Gear games were his by making MGS strictly a sequel to the MSX2 games, even going as far as to include in-game plot summaries of both titles to let an entire audience that missed out on those games the story behind them.
- Monster Hunter:
- Most King Mooks have names that start with "dosu" (ドス) in Japanese. In the First and Second Generations, this was localized as having their names end with "-drome", with the subordinate dromaeosaur-like Bird Wyverns also having their names end with "-prey". (ex: Velocidrome and Velociprey) Starting with the Third Generation, this has been localized as having their names having the word "Great" in front of the base name. (ex: Great Jaggi and Jaggi)
- In Monster Hunter 2 (dos), Dundorma was spelled "Dondruma".
- In Monster Hunter Freedom 2, Fanged Beasts were called "Primatius", and in Freedom Unite, they were called "Pelagus".
- Before Monster Hunter: World, Mandragoras were called "Dragon Toadstools".
- In Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) and 3 Ultimate, you could catch Tsuchinokos in traps in the farm; which were items used to trade with the Argosy. They were localized in English as "Saturnians". When the Tsuchinoko returned as an endemic life in World, it got localized as "Tsuchinoko" in English.
- In the Second Generation, Mantles (as in the rare monster drop, not the cloaks that Hunters can wear in World and Wilds) were called "Heavenly Scales". (ex: "HvnlyRathalosScl")
- Persona: The English dub of Persona 1 did its damndest to convince players that it took place in the USA, even giving one of the party members a Race Lift and peppering his dialog with stereotypical African-American slang. From Persona 2 onwards, the games would keep the Japanese setting.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon Red and Blue added a mention that Mew was originally discovered in Guyana in the West Indies; this is one of a few references the games make to the real world, alongside Lt. Surge explicitly being American and the appearance of the space shuttle Columbia in the Pewter City museum. Unlike Surge, however, the Mew is just said to have been found in a jungle in the original Japanese.
- Up until Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the text system used in international versions of the games rendered all proper nouns in capital letters. Diamond and Pearl did away with this in all cases except for Pokémon species names, which were updated to use proper case in Pokémon Black and White.
- Rattata's and Raticate's Pokémon category in English and German used to be "Rat Pokémon" instead of "Mouse Pokémon" like in Japanese. Their categories changed to match the Japanese one in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.
- Puyo Puyo:
- The 1992 arcade game had a share of localization quirks that would be ditched entirely come Fever, which includes the name changes that resulted in characters like Arle and Schezo to be called "Silvana" and "Devious", no spell names were chanted when performing a chain, and there's an attempt at a more serious story that resulted in Rulue and Satan undergoing Adaptational Villainy when the original storyline was much more laid back. The only element of this localization to be retained in future titles' English versions, even past Fever, was Satan's rename into "Dark Prince", likely as Bowdlerization.
- Puyo Pop Fever was also not immune to this. Aside from the obvious title change from Puyo Puyo to Puyo POP, Amitie was more prone to acting on annoyance in the dub, Raffina's name was spelt Raffine, Lidelle suffered from constant Inconsistent Spelling issues that lead to her having three different names at once, and it was the only time where Raffina swore with a "damn", whereas later games refrained to cursing at all.
- The original The Sims is the only entry where the Japanese version was given the Market-Based Title SimPeople, to be more consistent with other Sim games. All pre-made Sims (bar the Goths) and homes were altered to give them an East Asian flavor. Later games starting with The Sims: Bustin' Out (which was localized without the subtitle in Japan) kept the original name, and pre-made Sims and homes were left unaltered.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Localizations of the early games ramped up Sonic's Totally Radical attitude compared to the Japanese games, and redesigned Dr. Eggman into the more sinister-looking Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Starting with Sonic Adventure, Sonic's characterisation in English dubs became more consistent with his Japanese counterpart, and Eggman was no longer redesigned (though Sega split the difference name-wise by making "Ivo Robotnik" his real name and "Eggman" an alias).
- Amy Rose is named "Princess Sally" in the manual for the North American release of Sonic the Hedgehog CD, suggesting they were trying to connect it in some way to the then-upcoming Saturday Morning cartoon series. Sally ended up being a squirrel there, and Amy uses her original name in all later appearances.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- The mushroom people were referred to as "Mushroom Retainers" in the English localization of the NES Super Mario Bros. games. Toad was the name of a specific one in the second and third games to be released outside Japan - at least, in English, whereas in Japanese, the character was simply referred to as being no different than the other mushroom people. In Japanese, the entire race of people were called "Kinopio," a play on "Kinoko" meaning mushroom, and "Pinocchio." From Paper Mario 64 onward, the race of people would be localized in English as "Toads," with "Toad" no longer being the name of a specific character.
- Princess Peach's name was originally changed to Princess Toadstool in the English localization of the series. Since the 1996 release of Super Mario 64, her name has been kept as Peach, which has always been her name in Japanese. When Super Mario 64 made the change, it split the difference by giving her full name as Peach Toadstool, something that had occasionally been hinted at in non-game materials.
- Super Robot Wars: The first three entries of the franchise that were translated into English officially, Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, Original Generation 2 and OG Saga: Endless Frontier, were called Super Robot Taisen due to the television series Robot Wars airing at the time and not wanting people to confuse the two franchises. Starting with Moon Dwellers, all English entries would go to the fully English translated title.
- The Russian localization of Warcraft III was done by SoftClub and took many creative liberties; for example, Arthas was translated as Artes, Kel'Thuzad as Kel-Tuzed, and Silvermoon as Silvergard. After Blizzard made an in-house Russian localization of World of Warcraft, all subsequent Warcraft media released in Russian were translated consistently with WoW. Warcraft III: Reforged, the remastered edition of Warcraft III, was completely re-localized into Russian to be consistent with WoW, much to the chagrin of many fans who considered the new version inferior to the iconic voice acting of the original.
- The Witcher (2007): The original English localization was done on a shoestring budget to save money on voice acting for a rather risky project due to how niche it was deemed to be. The end result, while workable, sounded pretty awkward and left a lot of the original Polish dialogue out. After the game became a surprise hit, the localization studio actually apologized for the original cut and started working on the Enhanced Edition, which was delivered as both a retail re-release and a free-to-download patch. It features a mostly re-recorded script with no cuts applied to the source material to make it sound more natural and make the English version of the game just as complete dialogue-wise as the Polish original was.
- Ufouria was the first Hebereke game to be released outside of Japan, and made the strange decision to replace two of the main characters: Hebe the penguin became Bop-Louie the Cartoon Creature, while O-chan the Token Human became Freeon Leeon the lizard. When later Hebereke games (including the 2024 sequel to Ufouria) were localized, they kept the Japanese cast.
- Yo-kai Watch:
- The British English versions of the first two games have the currency used be pound sterling rather than the United States dollar. As a result, the 10-yen gum item was localised as 10-Cent Gum in the North American and Australian English versions and as the 10-Pence Gum in the British version. The third game changed it to keep it in line with the other versions, making the dollar the currency and renaming the gum to Humdrum Gum.
- In the first game, the title Enma Daiō was translated as both "Lord Enma" and "King Enma", with both titles being used interchangeably. Later titles settled on Lord Enma.
Visual Novels
- Fate/stay night: While the visual novel itself would not get officially released in English until 2024, the adaptations and supplementary material that did see official release outside Japan had Saber's True Name be rendered as "Artoria Pendragon". Future depictions such as the 2024 release of the visual novel and Saber's appearances in Fate/Grand Order and related merchandise render her True Name as "Altria Pendragon" due it being the name Kinoku Nasu has used (to the apparent displeasure of the official localization team, given how the official translation for a chapter of Learning with Manga! FGO changed the dialogue to insult the name "Altria", and Saber's initial bio in Melty Blood: Type Lumina used "Artoria" before being changed soon afterward to "Altria").
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: The French translation translates the word "prosecutor" to "avocat de l'accusation" (accusation attorney). In later games' French translations, "prosecutor" is translated to "procureur" (a literal translation).
Western Animation
- Miraculous Ladybug:
- The first season saw Alya and Nino, the show's two most prominent black characters, use outdated African-American slang in the English dub, despite both of them being French citizens. This was quietly dropped in subsequent seasons.
- Mr. D'Argencourt used Ye Olde Butchered English in his first appearance, despite being very French. Later appearances drop this in favor of normal English peppered with Gratuitous French.
- The Italian dub of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic initially translated the term "Cutie Mark" with "Simbolo di bellezza" (which translated as "Beauty symbol"). Throughout Season 1, though, they would begin zigzagging back and forth between the translated term and the original English one, expecially after the debut of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. From Season 2 onwards, the term was always left in English.
- The Turkish dub of Shimmer and Shine left the titular genies' names untranslated in its first episode before they became "Işıltı" and "Parıltı" respectively starting from the second episode onwards. Due to the new localized names, the theme song also had to be completely re-recorded.
- The Italian dub of The Smurfs (1981) initially ignored most of the localized Italian names that were already used in the comics. Most characters kept their English names with only the "Smurf" part translated (so, for example, Brainy Smurf was called "Puffo Brainy" instead of "Puffo Quattrocchi"). Only Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Gargamel, and Azrael had their localized Italian names from the get-go (and Gargamel was called "Garganella" most of the time). Halfway through the first season, though, the dub began using consistently all the localized Italian names, which are still used to this day.
- When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) was brought to the UK, the series was renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles where any usage of the word "ninja" was cut out and Michelangelo's nunchucks were replaced with him using a grappling hook. This is because the UK censors objected to the word "ninja" and nunchucks. This was dropped by the time of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), where that series did not have its name changed, and an advert for a mid-'00s DVD release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) touted that it included a deleted nunchucks scene.