TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open
Tropes Media Reviews Popular Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Browse Tools
Cut List Image Fixer New Edits New Articles Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug Terms Of Service
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Adaptation First
4 Following

Go To

Adaptation First (trope)
This is why you should order Ghibli Express delivery.

Some piece of fiction is created that doesn't get released outside its home country. But it proves extremely popular inside its home country, and so it is adapted into a movie, TV show, book, comic, or whatever.

Due to the pre-existing fanbase, this new adaptation enjoys massive sales upon release, and so the publishers decide to give it a worldwide release. The international release is so successful that the copyright holders decide to give the original an international release as well, based on similar logic to that which persuaded them to make the adaptation.

This is, so far, standard practice with anime, since a cartoon tends to be marketable to more demographics than the manga, Light Novel or Visual Novel it was based on. However, now that manga and light novels are getting more popular internationally, that tendency is fading somewhat.

This also happens a lot to books that are turned into foreign films. Translation of higher-profile works takes priority in fiction, and a film raises the work's profile.

Related to Sequel First, Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.", and Novelization First.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Multiple Media 
  • The first six Star Wars movies, as well as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the video games Shadows of the Empire and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed had novelizations, comics, illustrated screenplays and the like released before the actual main product. It seemed that with such a Cash-Cow Franchise like Star Wars merchandising really did come first, even before the very first movie came out and became the blockbuster success we know it as today. Disney stopped doing this with the sequel trilogy onward, with the books not appearing in shelves until after the movies came out. Disney has become so strict about preemptive spoilers for the franchise that they even held back the Grogu merch until after the first episode of The Mandalorian came out, despite having to miss out on a lot of late-year profits.

    Anime & Manga 
  • This happens with anime based on visual novels or otherwise text-heavy games nearly without fail. Examples include:
  • Studio Proteus and AnimEigo coordinated to try and get the manga and anime versions of Oh My Goddess and You're Under Arrest! out at about the same time. Nonetheless, the OVA's for both ended up coming out a couple months before the first manga chapters.
  • The first work in the Berserk franchise released in English was the Dreamcast game Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage in 2000. It would be another two years before the 1997 anime got an official release. Dark Horse published the first volume of the manga a year after that.
  • The Case Closed manga was first released in the US in 2004, while the anime adaptation had started airing there the previous year.
  • The original A Certain Magical Index: The Old Testament novels were licensed a few years after the North American release of the anime adaptation. Its spin-off manga, A Certain Scientific Railgun, did get a North American release before its own anime adaptation, but still before the license of the Index novels.
  • Most of the animated Confession Executive Committee adaptations (the first two movies and the two television anime) were shown internationally via streaming, with only a few countries receiving a handful of the light novels they're based on. The series also started out as a collection of songs, but while most of them are available on HoneyWorks' channels, those compilations never made it out to international audiences before the adaptations did.
  • Doraemon: German-speaking countries didn't get the franchise until when Doraemon: Story of Seasons came out there in 2019, and German dub of Stand by Me Doraemon series was released in Netflix two years later.
  • Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Quest:
  • ADV Films released the Excel♡Saga anime in early 2002. Viz published the original Excel♡Saga manga a year later.
  • The anime adaptation of Kakutō Ryōri Densetsu Bistro Recipe was brought over to the US by 4Kids Entertainment as Fighting Foodons despite neither the manga nor the previous video game adaptations having been released outside Japan.
  • The two episode Fire Emblem anime was given an English dub in 1998, three years before the series was made well-known in the West thanks to Super Smash Bros. Melee including Marth and Roy in its roster, and five years before Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade would become the series debut outside of Japan. The game the anime is based on, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, wouldn't see an official English release until 2020 when it was made available for a limited time on the Nintendo Switch.
  • Fist of the North Star is a bit of a subversion. The original manga was released in America first by Viz Media in 1989, but it only lasted the first two volumes. Viz resumed publication after the cult success of Streamline Pictures' dub of the film, but it only lasted three more volumes before Gutsoon brought the rights to the series. They only published nine volumes before they went out of business. Viz has since re-licensed the title, and is currently publishing it in a hardcover format, but not before Toei Animation themselves had already released all 152 episodes of the TV series on video download and streaming services with English subtitles (Manga Entertainment produced a dub in 1999, but it only covered the first 36 episodes).
  • The 2001 Fruits Basket anime had been released in its entirety for over a year before Tokyopop was convinced (via a reader poll) to publish the original manga. It even went on to become their best selling title.
  • The Fullmetal Alchemist manga only came to the West in May 2005, while the anime had started airing in November 2004.
  • Full Metal Panic! first came to the US as an anime in 2002, then as a manga in 2003, while the original light novels didn't start releasing there until 2007.
  • The Haruhi Suzumiya anime got a global release long before the books it was based on… Except in Spain, where it was manga first, then the novels two months later. The anime is still unavailable.
  • While all three Kimba the White Lion TV series have been at least partially dubbed into English (the original 1965-67 one twice), Osamu Tezuka's Jungle Emperor manga has never been officially translated beyond a bilingual edition of the first volume available via Amazon Japan.
  • Defied with the Kingdom Hearts manga, whose planned Brazilian release in 2008 was shot down by Square Enix because none of the games were sold there yet. They eventually relented in 2013.
  • The 2003 anime adaptation of Kino's Journey was released on DVD in North America two years before Tokyopop started releasing the light novels.
  • Kochikame: Despite the anime getting streamed in North America starting May 2025, the original manga hasn't made it to English-speaking countries yet.
  • Lyrical Nanoha has been distributed internationally a lot more than its source material. This isn't much of a surprise since the original Nanoha was a mini-scenario of Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever, a hentai game.
  • The time between Geneon's release of the Master Keaton anime and Viz's publishing the original manga was over ten years.
  • The Mobile Suit Gundam spinoff novels were released around 1990 or so, nearly a full decade before the compilation movies and the TV series were released in the US (and 21 years before the TV series was released in the original Japanese in the US!) Two video games, Gundam 0079: The War for Earth and Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise From The Ashes, would also be released ahead of the anime's western debut (by five years and one year, respectively).
  • The Neon Genesis Evangelion manga premiered in late 1994, a few months before the anime. Despite this, the show is very much a case of Anime First, and the manga was only made to drum up interest in the series. Then Schedule Slip happened and the manga managed to outlive the series by almost two decades.
  • Paul's Miraculous Adventures: The Manga adaptation came first in English speaking territories via the Manga DANDAN serialization on February 25th, 2026, while the original anime series released on HIDIVE on June 30th, 2026 which is 4 months later.
  • Peacock King was adapted to a five-episode OVA in 1988 which was brought to North America by U.S. Manga Corps under the name "Spirit Warrior", and Sega similarly published two Peacock King video games in the west under the titles of "Spellcaster" and "Mystic Defender". The original manga wasn't localized until 2020.
  • Pokémon:
    • The franchise started off as a pair of video games, which was adapted into a few manga, and was then adapted into an anime. The anime was the first to be released outside Japan, with the games releasing weeks (in America) to months (in the UK) afterwards.
    • In South Korea, the anime came first due to a ban on Japanese cultural products preventing the game from being imported.
  • Pretty Series: The Kiratto Pri☆Chan and Idol Time PriPara anime series were licensed outside of Asia in December 2020 and February 2021 respectively, with Waccha PriMagi! also being licensed for simulcasting by Sentai Filmworks just a few months before its premiere, but the respective arcade games the anime were based on are not available in the West.
  • While Sanrio's 1978 film adaptation of Ringing Bell was given an English dub and released in America alongside gaining an official Spanish dub for Spanish speaking countries. The original book by Takashi Yanase (Chirin no Suzu) never gained an official English translation outside of Japan.
  • The 1996 anime adaptation Rurouni Kenshin was first released straight-to-DVD in the US by Media Blasters in 2000, while the manga wouldn't reach the country until Viz Media picked it up in 2003.
  • In North America, it took three years after DiC began their Sailor Moon dub for the manga to be acquired and translated by Mixx.
  • A few days after The Anime of the Game adaptation of Senran Kagura started airing in Japan, Funimation announced a simulcast of the series. It wasn't until November 2013 that the Updated Re-release of the first game was released in North America.
  • The original Shakugan no Shana light novels, or at least the first two of them, came to the US in 2007, a year after the anime first was released there.
  • The starting lineup of Shonen Jump was half determined by popular anime (Yu-Gi-Oh!, YuYu Hakusho, and Dragon Ball Z).
  • Show by Rock!! and its sequels were the only part of the series that made it overseas, with the game they were based on region-locked to Japan.
  • The Slayers anime was first released direct-to-video in 1996, while Tokyopop only started publishing the light novels stateside in 2004, but only got as far as volume 8.
  • The manga of Star Ocean: The Second Story was directly adapted into an anime that got released in the US while the manga remains in No Export for You territory.
  • The 2009 Tamagotchi! anime was the first part of the Tamagotchi franchise to be released in South Korea due to the Japanese cultural products ban. The toys (save for the Tamamori line being released around the time the anime aired) would not see a release there until 2019, with the Tamagotchi Some, their version of the Meets/ON.
  • The 1998 anime adaptation of Trigun was first released straight-to-DVD in the US by Geneon (then Pioneer Entertainment) in 2000, while the manga wouldn't reach the country until Dark Horse Comics picked up the license in 2003.
  • For a period, the only Unico related work to gain an American and international release was the two animated films (The Fantastic Adventures of Unico from, and Unico in the Island of Magic from 1983). The original manga by Osamu Tezuka which ran from 1976-1979 didn't receive an official translation until decades later. Not to mention the first animated appearance of the title character (Unico: Black Cloud and White Feather from 1979) remains exclusive to Japan note  alongside the 2000 animated short Saving Our Fragile Earth: Unico Special Chapter starring the character. The only country that was able to receive all animated works starring Unico (including the 1979 pilot and 2000 animated short) was Mexico and Spain where both gained official Spanish dubs.
  • The 1981 Urusei Yatsura anime was first released in the US on VHS in 1992, while the manga would only arrive later that decade.
  • The Variable Geo OVA was dubbed into English, whereas the Advanced V.G. fighting game series it was based on has still never been released outside Japan. The only other part of the franchise that received a Western release was Variable Geo: Neo, an H-series adaptation of the video game of the same name.
  • Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and its sequels have all been released worldwide. The source manga, the original arcade game (Wangan Midnight R and its PS2 port and PSP ports, the PS3 game, and anime, however, remain Japan-only.
  • The original When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace light novels were licensed in North America nine years after the series began; however, the anime adaptation was simulcast by Crunchyroll the season it aired and was eventually given a proper release in the West in 2016, around five years prior to the licensing of the light novels.
  • In America, the Yokai Watch anime came out a month before the video game did.
  • Zoids: New Century Zero was the third Zoids series, but was dubbed and broadcast in the U.S. prior to the earlier Chaotic Century and Guardian Force series.

    Asian Animation 
  • As Motu Patlu (2012) episodes have gotten French and Spanish translations on YouTube, that means countries that speak either language got the show before they got the comics the show is based on, which doesn't have any known translations in either language.
  • Noonbory and the Super 7: A lot of countries outside South Korea (ex. Canada and the United States) did not get the PinkAru and Noonbory stationary brand, but they did get this television series it inspirednote .
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Disney only released the show in the Asia-Pacific, while they released the Where's My Water? crossover game worldwide. As such, a bunch of countries only got the game and not the show.

    Comic Books 

    Films — Animation 
  • The English dub of Asterix the Gaul was produced before any of the comics had been translated into English. As a result, some of the character's names are different from their eventual official English names.
  • Dumbo was based on a children's story by Helen Aberson-Mayer that was initially sold to a toy company before being bought and adapted by Disney. As no copies of the original "Roll-A-Book" edition have been found, it can be assumed that it was never made. It would eventually be published as a regular children's book sometime after the movie released.
  • Studio Ghibli examples:
  • All of René Laloux's feature films — Fantastic Planet, Time Masters and Gandahar — were shown in the United Kingdom and the United States before their respective source novels were translated into English. An English translation of Fantastic Planet's book, Oms en série, wouldn't appear until 2010.
  • The Lorax was released in many countries where neither the original book nor the 1972 animated TV special had been released.
  • The Loud House Movie received a Ukrainian dub upon its release in 2021, two years before the series it was based on received a Ukrainian dub. The Central and Eastern European feed of Nickelodeon had not yet received a Ukrainian audio track; prior to then, the series was available for viewing in Ukraine on 1+1 Video, with the Russian dub.
  • Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, while obscure outside its native Norway, did get dubbed and exported to several other countries. The original writings of Kjell Aukrust that this movie is based on, however, haven't been translated yet.
  • Japan got Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future without getting the show the film is based on.
  • Two novels adapted into critically acclaimed anime films by Satoshi Kon:
    • Perfect Blue. Loosely based on the popular Japanese novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, the film was picked up for Western release by Manga Entertainment after its 1997 premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and got its first theatrical releases just over a year after release in Japan. The novel, on the other hand, would not be picked up until 2018. Seven Seas licensed it just after US distributor GKIDS rescued Manga’s long expired license for the film.
    • Paprika. The film had a relatively quick turnaround time in the West, with a successful theatrical arthouse release in summer 2007, less than a year after its initial release in Japan in fall 2006. The original novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, first published in Marie Claire Japan in 1993, was picked up by Alma Press (in the UK) and Vintage (in the US) shortly after, and released in 2009 in those territories.
  • Vuk the Little Fox was shown on TV in the United States with an English dub despite the original novel by István Fekete not having been translated to English.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Baron Balthazar segments of Curiosity Shop was the first time Americans got to see Professor Balthazar, a Croatian cartoon that had been exported to several European countries without any Adaptation Expansion.
  • The Hexer was aired in English-speaking regions before The Witcher was translated to English. Needless to say, the series was not very successful, and the books would languish in obscurity until the video games got localized.
  • LazyTown has been aired all over the world and dubbed into over 30 languages, but the original Latibær books, CDs and plays have never been exported out of Iceland.
  • The Noddy Shop was the first Noddy-related work released in most regions outside of Europe (save for Portugal), Asia and the Commonwealth, as the Noddy books never saw a release in those regions.
  • One Piece (2023) is the first One Piece production to be dubbed in Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Romanian, Tamil, Telugu and Ukrainian, since the manga and anime were not localized in those languages at the time.

    Video Games 
  • The 1994 Bonkers game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was released in Japan in 1995, despite the original TV series not having been dubbed to Japanese.
  • The 2004 action game Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo was the first ever release of... well, Osamu Tezuka's Dororo to reach Western shores. The manga itself wouldn't see a proper English translation until 2008, 40 years after its original release.
  • The Cars tie-in game released three days before the movie premiered in theatres.
  • Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo for the NES made it to North America as Dragon Power (with all the names changed and some Bowdlerisation applied) in 1988 before any other Dragon Ball media did. 2 years later it was released in France as well, this time with the Dragon Ball license intact due to the anime having a successful run on television over there at the time.
  • Doki Doki Panic, a Licensed Game featuring Fuji TV's then-mascot characters, was infamously released in the West as Super Mario Bros. 2. No other Yume Kōjō material has ever made it out of Japan.
  • The JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game by Capcom made it to the States years before the manga or the APPP OVA ever did. As a result, many confuse the latter to be adaptations of the former. Due to Crunchyroll and Hulu streaming subs of the David Production anime, Viz Media re-releasing the manga (including the first two story arcs, which were previously subject to No Export for You status), Jonathan and Joseph Joestar being playable in J-Stars Victory VS (which was ported to the States), and the release of two more video games in the series, this is finally changing.
  • The first appearance of the Kamen Rider franchise in English, predating Saban's Masked Rider by a year, was The Masked Rider, an FMV Game for the Sega CD based on Kamen Rider ZO.
  • Kinnikuman was first exported under the title M.U.S.C.L.E. as a toyline and NES Licensed Game.
  • Lilo & Stitch:
    • Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise and Stitch: Experiment 626 were both Christmas Rushed so they could appear on the store shelves two days before the film's premiere. The GBA game released a week before that, but it is a sequel to the film's events and not an adaptation per se.
    • Stitch Jam, a tie-in to the Lilo & Stitch anime spin-off series Stitch!, was released in the United States over eighteen months before the show's English dub finally aired there, despite said dub debuting in Australia the year prior. (Even then, the U.S. run of the anime lasted for less than a week with only five episodes.)
  • Little Nemo: The Dream Master was released in 1990 in the U.S. and in 1991 in Europe; the anime feature it was directly based on, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, was not released outside Japan until 1992.
  • So far, the only officially licensed Western appearance of the fantasy mecha series Mashin Hero Wataru was a Macekred translation of a licensed video game for the TurboGrafx-16 which was retitled Keith Courage in Alpha Zones.
  • The NES adaptation of Metal Gear 1 was released in North America years before the original MSX2 game was ported to the PS2 and included in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. While the NES version is technically a port too, many changes were made to the gameplay and level designs that it feels more like a separate game.
  • The first official release Japanese audiences saw of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is Gameloft's Licensed Game. The TV series–the first 52 episodes of it at any rate–were aired on Japanese television in 2013.
  • Parasite Eve (1998) is known to most Americans as a video game series. In Japan, the game was based on a movie, which was based on a book. Both got localized years after the second game was released.
  • The video game Retro Game Challenge came out in English-speaking countries a good while before the TV series Retro Game Master ever got an official translation — though the show was advertised in the game's instruction manual, so it was clearly being planned when the game came out.
  • Roco Kingdom 2: Wish of the Holy Dragon got a South Korean localization without the country ever getting a translated version of the game it's based on.
  • Shin Megami Tensei would be another famous example; the franchise began with the novel Digital Devil Story, which was adapted into the original Megami Tensei games for NES, none of which made it outside Japan. The first entry in the franchise to come West was Jack Bros for Virtual Boy, followed by Persona 1 a year later.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (THQ) was first released in North America in late October 2004, about three weeks before the movie it was based on was released (the game had also released in Australia before the movie did, though the movie came before the game in Europe).
  • Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run was supposed to be a tie-in for the canceled movie.
  • Thunder Force II MD, a port of the Sharp X68000 game Thunder Force II, is the only version of TFII to be released outside of Japan. In fact, outside of Japan, it's simply known as Thunder Force II, minus the "MD" title.
  • Titus the Fox was in its native France a Licensed Game adaptation of the song La Zoubida by French comedian Lagaf'. Said song had never been released abroad, hence why the game got a reskin for the export.
  • The Touhou Project was for most part not officially available outside of Japan until Touhou Tenkuushou ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons released on Steam, 15 years after the series migrated to Windows platforms (which was followed by most of earlier games releasing the afterwards), with only western release beforehand being Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character's release through Playism. However, the game still end up releasing officially only in Japanese which seems to stem from ZUN's desire to remain Doujin and fears that any professional translation would end up with Executive Meddling/Macekre (only two of the games on Steam have official localization and one of them falls under Translation Train Wreck). Sometime between the Playism and Steam releases, ZUN would give his blessing to a number of Touhou fangames to participate in the Play, Doujin! scheme (wherein Sony purchased enhanced remakes of Doujins to be sold on the PS4 as Indie Games). Several of these games later received English releases, where they were retitled to seem like a series and marketed as "the Touhou games" (though eventually this would also involve porting the official fighting game Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo, as well as a fangame that is actually a Shoot 'em Up unlike all other ones).
  • Toy Story 3 (Disney Interactive) was released three days before its source movie premiered outside of film festivals (excluding the PS2 version, which released in October of that year).
  • Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2021) is a strange case, in that while the game was announced first, due to a littany of delays, various anime and manga adaptations came before the game's actual release everywhere. In particular, the game only released in Japan midway through the second season of the main anime, and only saw global availability midway through the anime adaptation of Umamusume: Cinderella Gray.
    • Additionally, a spin-off game called Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - Party Dash is this exclusively for western territories, as it released in August 2024, as opposed to the main game's release in June 2025.
  • CD Projekt RED's The Witcher was released internationally before the original books were. It was the second adaptation to be brought abroad, the first being the TV series The Hexer, which had flopped internationally. The games raised awareness of the original books and eventually led to them getting translated.
  • The Wii game based on Wreck-It Ralph was released three days before the movie itself premiered in theatres. On a meta level, Fix-It Felix Jr. was defictionalized by Code Mystics in July 2012, several months before the movie came out.

    Western Animation 
  • Animaniacs was never aired in Norway for some inexplicable reason, but its spin-off Pinky and the Brain was.
  • Captain N: The Game Master was released in a handful of European countries, but some of the games featured, like Dragon Quest I and Final Fantasy I, weren't released in Europe until years later. It is unknown if the episodes pertaining to those games even aired over there.
  • The Canadian series Cybersix is based on the Argentinian comic of the same name, which has been officially translated into French and Italian but not English.
  • Darkwing Duck never aired on television in Hungary, but a picture book based on the show was oddly released in 1998. Several characters from the show also appeared in DuckTales (2017), which was also released in Hungary. The original show was actually dubbed into Hungarian in 2004, but the dub went unreleased until it was dumped onto streaming in 2022, meaning that the 2017 DuckTales adaptation did technically come out first.
  • Dungeons & Dragons (1983) got released direct-to-VHS in Norway and Sweden before any actual D&D sourcebooks did. In these countries, the show was rebranded into an adaptation of the Swedish TTRPG Drakar och demonar, which was hugely popular in the region at the time.
  • Gargoyles never aired in Norway, so their first exposure to the show would be from DuckTales (2017), where Manny the Headless Man-Horse is revealed in the series finale to be that verse's equivalent to Goliath.
  • The Loud House series has two notable examples:
    • The Casagrandes was dubbed into Ukrainian in May 2023, two months before The Loud House, the original series, would receive a Ukrainian dub itself. Prior to this, The Loud House Movie was actually the franchise’s first media to be dubbed into Ukrainian, almost two years prior. (Both series were, however, available in Ukraine via 1+1 Video, albeit with their respective Russian dubs.)
    • A very similar case happened in Kazakhstan, as The Casagrandes received a Kazakh dub in April 2022. The original series would not be dubbed into Kazakh until December 2023 (albeit in scattered episode fragments), and even then, its live-action adaptation, The Really Loud House, received a Kazakh dub less than a month beforehand.
  • Disney's very loose adaptation of Marsupilami was the first time ever Americans got to see the titular character. Some Spirou & Fantasio stories featuring the character had previously been translated to English in the 60s, but only in Britain.
  • The only way most people outside of the UK and the Commonwealth know about Katharine Tozer's Mumfie is the series Magic Adventures of Mumfie.
    • Italy knew Mumfie first through the puppet series Here Comes Mumfie – they were the only country to get it outside of the United Kingdom.
  • The classic long-running French comic book series Michel Vaillant was first seen in the US as the 1990 animated series, whose English dub renamed the show to Heroes on Hot Wheels due to a sponsorship from Mattel.
  • Outside of Europe and the Commonwealth, Enid Blyton's Noddy books have never been released. The first exposure for most overseas viewers was either Noddy's Toyland Adventures or The Noddy Shop.
  • Ready Jet Go! Space Camp was the first piece of Ready Jet Go! media released in France.
  • In most countries, The Railway Series was never released, so the first exposure to Thomas, Gordon and the other stars of the series for these regions would be the long-running TV adaptation Thomas & Friends. In Norway, some of the books did eventually release in 1988, but that was 2 years after the TV series premiered there, and without a doubt solely done to capatilize on the latter's success.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was released in Brazil in 1990, before any of the Super Mario games had been released there.
  • Considering the source material was an independent comic, every country outside of the United States was introduced to the heroes in a half-shell through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987).
  • In the Czech Republic, Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie was dubbed before the actual series it was based on.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Browse Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top