This isn't Shinichi Chiba's first portrayal of Hanzo Hattori.
When Hanae Hayashi sprains her ankle before a dance recital, her English voice actress Emma K. Lahana's role in Power Rangers Dino Thunder is referenced:
The Japanese versions instead has Ran make one to Saeko Chiba: "Maya never tripped... like that."
A stealth one occurs when Hiroshi, after clumsily dodging a laser from Kuro in episode 2, is met with this question from the latter: "Training for the ballet, pink-o?" In another movie, one of Rupert Grint's co-stars plays a character who gets accused of doing the same thing after dodging a rogue ball during a sports match.
Australian Accent: Almost; Hanae in the English dub actually speaks with a Kiwi accent owing to Emma K. Lahana hailing from New Zealand. The casting is deliberate; per Word of God, there's a female singer in New Zealand with the given name Wing, and Hanae's name in the English dub is Wing Lynn.
Berserk Button: As with Ranma ½, most every major character and major supporting character has one:
Hiroshi is set off easily by two things: harming animals, and calling him or his friends the C word.
Ran does not like her room getting messed up, and she doesn't give a damn if her Pretty Cure merchandise survives unscathed, they're in her room, so any attack on her room puts her memorabilia in grave danger.
Kuro really hates being called a super spade, to the point where the third time it's spoken in any given episode, he goes bat-shit crazy on the poor sap unlucky enough that the third instance of that phrase comes out of his/her mouth.
Rica is really defensive about her friends, so harm any of them, and she'll give you what's for!
Ai Fukuda: You rotten little punk! If you're going to talk like a Yankee, at least speak grammatically correct Spanish! I'm sick and tired of people putting an O at the end of practically every other word just to try to sound like a Yankee!
Tsuruya gets her panties in a bunch whenever some crazy-ass lunatic impersonates a stereotypical Mexican. Bonus points for said crazy-ass lunatic being a villain.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: Ran is guilty of this as of episode 3, when she references Rica's Once an Episode habit of calling Hiroshi "limey" ("Catherine" in the original Japanese version).
Chekhov's Gunman: Ran's mother is the Ichiban ballet instructor and also teaches other forms of dance as well (including para-para, which is what the Cures learn for the YMCA number); she even has her own dance studio at home which contains an entire closet of dancewear. The Cures get their disguises from that closet in episode 9.
Country Matters: Twice in episode 3. The first is a more mild variation of the trope, when Rica calls Eileen a "screwy little quim". The second time, a possessed Risa Ozawa (the martial arts club leader at Ichiban) flat-out calls Hiroshi a c***, pressing his Berserk Button in the process and eliciting a Precision F-Strike from Rica.
Dancing Theme: A cover of the Cantonese version of "YMCA" is the original closing theme, and the Cures perform the traditional dance to the song during the closing credits. In episode 24, the closing theme becomes an English-language cover of "Anataboshi" (titled "When I Come to Your Star with My Love"); the Cures perform to the same choreography featured in MilkyWay's music video.
Disproportionate Retribution: When we first meet Kaori, she's willing to kill anyone who would dare burglarize a house (even by way of a literal curb-stomping). She soon softens up about this, though.
Exact Words: In episode 6, Kaori tells a pair of burglars, "You're in an era where arse-kicking knows no gender." She then proceeds to kick their arses all the way to next Tuesday.
Expy: Hiroshi and Ran are basically Nagisa and Honoka 4.0, except Hiroshi is a male Nagisa expy and also bears some resemblance to his English voice actor.
Fake Brit: Though Chloe Grace Moretz is American, Word of God says her character, Rica Watanabe, speaks with a British accent.
Global Ignorance: Ai Fukuda is described as the kind of person who'd call a Japanese person a "pommy". Her habit of using completely (not just politically) incorrect racial epiphets is only brought up a few times, including when she called an Italian student a "gook" and earned a foot in the scalp from Rica for the effort.
Going Commando: The Ichiban gym uniform incorporates bloomers, so of course Hiroshi doesn't wear his underwear in PE... at first. After his first PE class ends up racking up numerous close calls, he decides to wear his school uniform's tights under his gym uniform from now on.
Hong Kong Dub: Word of God says this is deliberate, as the style is meant to give off a Toei martial arts movie feel.
The Idiot From Osaka: Averted by Tsuruya in the Japanese version, where her father (who is Hispanic in the English version) spent enough time in Kyoto to pick up the Kansai dialect. The aversion is lampshaded by Ran in episode 1: "She isn't an idiot!"
Measuring Day: Happens in one episode, much to Hiroshi's chagrin. He's actually uncharacteristically worried for much of the episode... until at the end, it's revealed that the Chan family doctor is doing the measurements and already knows that Hiroshi's a boy, having been ordered to keep the secret. He winds up measuring Hiroshi's "rack" within the A-cup range.
Modesty Shorts: Cure Dragon. Also, Rica Watanabe when she's wearing her school uniform.
Monkey Morality Pose: Whenever something mindblowingly stupid (including lasers wrapping around a person's ankle without cutting the person) happens in front of the Cures starting in episode 23, Kaori covers her eyes, Hiroshi covers his mouth, and Ran covers her ears.
Never Trust a Trailer: Hiroshi and Ran are both dressed as ballerinas in the OP sequence; however, they never study ballet and only wear the outfits when disguising themselves as ballet students to protect two actual ballet students in one episode. They also wear different ballet costumes in episode 4 during the art museum field trip.
Nonuniform Uniform: Rica Watanabe is the only named Ichiban student wearing bike shorts with her uniform instead of tights, as well as sneakers instead of ballet slippers.
No OSHA Compliance: The funeral parlor where Cure Dragon fights Kuro is basically a deathtrap, with a pair of open retorts and an empty casket just outside of each retort. There's also the fact that the furnace room was unguarded and that nobody except for Cure Fortune (who was incapacitated at the moment anyway) was present to watch the whole thing, so the winner was definitely liable to seal his victory by going in and turning on the retort he had put his opponent in. And that's not even going into the gas mains the fight could've potentially busted up because they were directly behind the brick walls surrounding both of the retorts. Hiroshi himself lampshades this to Ran during an earlier visit:
Hiroshi Lee: Stay put, Ran. I'll look around for the man in black. Don't fool around near the ovens.
Not Using the Z Word: The word "Qipao" is never spoken in the series, even in the narration, except in supplementary materials (including Wiki entries); in-story, it's always referred to as a "Chinese dress" or something similar. Also, in episode 4 Hitler's name is never spoken, but it's clear that he was the one the tour guide was talking about when she said "he'd be much less hated if he had just stuck to painting for the rest of his life" (in reference to his career as an artist).
Paper-Thin Disguise: Hiroshi and Ran disguise themselves as ballet students in episode 9. Aside from the different-colored leotards, pink tights, and pointe shoes that are part of the standard ensemble for Ichiban's ballet class, all Hiroshi and Ran apparently need for nobody to recognize them are a pair of glasses and a different hairstyle, respectively.
Pimped-Out Dress: There's actually a lot of them in episode 4; of course, Ran's mother (the Ichiban ballet teacher) helped plan the art museum field trip, so it's pretty much to be expected.
Politically-Incorrect Villain: Kuro (who Word of God says is humanoid and is a native of Shiban's dimension) is this through and through; to show that this portrayal is deliberate, the author includes an actual Hispanic character as an Ichiban student who by contrast doesn't even bother trying to be Hispanic (save for her fluency in English and Spanish and one of her parents being Hispanic) and considers said villain's behavior and outfit to give anyone with Hispanic blood in them a bad name. Word of God says this trope is intended to make Kuro a villain both characters and readers will love to hate.
Parodied with Ai, who always gets her racial epiphets wrong. In the narrator's words, after Ai refers to Tsuruya as a "yankee":
"Yankees". That's what Ai Fukuda called Hispanics. In Australian boarding schools, she would be the kind of student who'd call Japanese people "pommies". And That's Terrible.
Precision F-Strike: After Risa calls Hiroshi a c*** and gets socked hard for the effort, Rica yells, "What the fuck did you just call my friend?"
Quip to Black: Done in one episode in the form of a Horatio Caine parody by Ran, complete with the obligatory "Won't Be Fooled Again" snippet. Oddly enough, it doesn't lead to the eyecatch.
Rica Watanabe: In any case, you're quite the real man, to put up with having to wear ballet shoes with your school uniform.
Screwy Squirrel: Ai Fukuda is definitely one, with silly pranks ranging from stealing scripts to putting an oil slick in the hallway. It's made all the funnier in the Christmas Episode when she sings this classic after unleashing bats in the dormitories:
Secret Keeper: As this is a Twelfth Night Adventure, there's bound to be at least some down the line; Hiroshi's parents, Ran, and Ran's mother are a few examples.
She Fu: This features quite a bit, from both Cures--Ran in particular incorporates pirouettes into her fighting style in several episodes, and it's stated that she studied gymnastics for a few years. Kaori averts this, though.
Shout-Out: Kaori's "Chiba the Bodyguard" speech in her introductory episode, in which she paraphrases Ezekiel 25:17, references the American version of Bodyguard Kiba:
Kaori Chiba: The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the father of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon thee with furious anger, you who poison and destroy my brothers; and you will know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I lay my vengeance upon thee!
The Japanese original contains a hidden one to Yubisaki Milk Tea--specifically, to the main character (a crossdresser) being called "Catherine" by another character.
Ted Baxter: Ai Fukuda claims that she's related to a couple of Cures (though she never names names) from another city, but nobody ever takes her seriously because she's a habitual liar and gets her facts wrong quite a bit. Word of God says she's just making such claims to draw attention to herself.
Those Two Guys: Taro and Go, Hiroshi's friends from his junior high days.
Tights With a Skirt: Part of the Ichiban uniform, but Hiroshi gets bonus points for being a male example, and both Ran and Kaori do it in Cure form.
Tights Under Shorts: Rica herself says if she's going to wear tights at any time, it has to be with shorts; indeed, she sports this in several episodes. Hiroshi also goes for Tights Under Modesty Shorts with at least one of his outfits.
Yubitsume: When the embalmer checks Hiroshi's left pinky to see if it's completely intact (regular injuries notwithstanding, of course), he explains that he wanted to confirm that Hiroshi wasn't a Yakuza (because all Japanese mobsters are missing at least the tip of their left pinky, right?). A later fight knocks out the tip of Kuro's left pinky.
