Iron Chef/Trivia

Tropes common to IC Japan

• Hey, It's That Guy!: MOTHER series creator Shigesato Itoi made his appearance in only four episodes.
• No Export for You: Most Nakamura-era and Ishinabe-era battles.

Tropes common to IC (Western)

• Bad Export for You: The UK version used a confusing 4 vs 1 two-round format.
  • Someone described it as 'MasterChef with the Iron Chef label slapped on'.
• Promoted Fanboy: Michael Symon is clearly a big fan of his fellow Iron Chefs. On both ICA and Cook Like An Iron Chef he makes regular references to their habits and styles (e.g. he mentions Morimoto every time he's chopping up a lot of ingredients).

Tropes common to all versions

• Fan Nickname: Bimbo du Jour (for the younger female guests), The East German Judge (Hosoki or Kishi - whoever's in the fourth seat that day and Jeffery Steingarten in that role in ICA)
  • Chairman Mark is also one, as ICA generally refers to him as just the Chairman, and the fanbase needs a way to differentiate between the two Chairmen.
  • A bit of an in-universe example, but some of the Iron Chefs have monikers of their own: Sakai is known as "Fish Sakai" or the "Delacroix of French cuisine", Kobe's the "Prince of Pasta", and Chen is the "Szechuan Sage".
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Seven of Nine was a judge!
  • So was Dr. Quinn! And Sofie Fatale did it in the original!
  • This troper's friend had a personal Hey, It's That Guy! moment: one of the ICA challengers had been a classmate of hers.
  • Um, that's not the Chairman... that's Troy "Catscratch" Carter!
    • Really? I thought it was Jimmy Lee.
    • You're both wrong, he's Eubulon the Advent Master.
  • This troper was stunned to see Hells Kitchen competitor Ralph Pagano show up on ICA. Back when Hell's Kitchen actually bothered to find contestants who could tie their own shoes without harming themselves or others, you understand.
  • Anthony Anderson has also shown up as a judge, as has Julie White. Even Dave Batista from WWE appeared as a judge once, where he admitted he was a big fan of the show, got served bigger portions than the others, and admitted to being rather nervous that he ends up being a judge in the episode where the secret ingredient was snails.
  • And now they're crossing the network streams: Adam Richman was a judge for Marc Forgione's first battle (Battle Bell Pepper).
  • As far as the chefs go, several Top Chef competitors have either been sous-chefs (eg. Arianne from season 5 and Ed from season 7) or competitors (eg. Spike from season 4) in ICA.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Sadly, due to length/licensing issues, Iron Chef will likely never make it to DVD, leaving people to keep their old recorded tapes or search the net.
  • Peculiarly enough, ditto for Iron Chef America: only the Battle of the Masters is out on DVD.
  • Averted with the Iron Chef USA episodes; circulating those is a violation of the Geneva Accords.
  • Averted in Australia: You Can Buy DVD's of the Dubbed Japanese version from SBS.
• The Pete Best: Iron Chef Ishinabe.
  • And for American audiences, Nakamura.
  • In ICA, Wolfgang Puck.