Back in the summer of 1993, a seismic event happened in kids television entertainment; Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered. The show was a massive success and still has incarnations of the series in production to this day. The show took the unique approach of using stock footage from a Japanese live action show, Super Sentai, that producers could mash up with new American footage to be edited together to create an action packed kids show on a decent budget. This overnight smash hit led to a mad dash to duplicate Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' success as quickly as possible.

There was Big Bad Beetleborgs, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, Super Human Samurai Syber-Squad (which somehow got Tim Curry to voice the villain), but the first Power Rangers clone to make it to the small screen was VR Troopers. Debuting in September of 1994, the show followed the adventures of our heroes Ryan, JB, and Kaitlin against the villainous Grimlord. It would go on to have two seasons and 92 episodes. Using virtual reality as the hook and creating a difference between the properties, the show still took the idea of teenager martial artists fighting monsters from another world. On the surface, this sounds like it might actually be more grounded than Power Rangers. In reality, it was probably even crazier.

15 THEY HAD A SEGA GENESIS GAME

Not long into VR Troopers run, there was a game for Sega Genesis as well as Game Gear. It was a fighting game where you play as the different VR Troopers to fight Grimlord's forces. The gameplay is very generic with no flare outside of the fact that you get to play these characters you like.

There was one thing that makes it even worse though. In story mode, you have to fight an onslaught of Skugs (the Putty Patrol of VR Troopers) between each match. And every time you face them again, the game adds 10 seconds. Rather than making the game enjoyable, it turns it into a long slog that is anything but. It was absolute madness! Whose idea was that?

14 MADE FROM 3 DIFFERENT JAPANESE SHOWS

As mentioned above, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers incorporated stock footage from a Japanese show, Super Sentai. VR Troopers also incorporated stock footage, but from three different Japanese live action shows: Superhuman Machine Metalder, Dimensional Warrior Spielban, and Space Sheriff Shaider.

This creates situations for the show that we'll be going into more specifically throughout this list. One of the most obvious situations is how characters are only in one of the three different shows, leading to incredibly awkward editing, villains appearing in the background with characters that aren't featured in the episode they're in, and so much more! It gets super crazy, and it's a wonder they got away with it!

13 IT RAN OUT OF STOCK FOOTAGE TOO FAST

One might think because VR Troopers used stock footage from three different shows, that it wouldn't go through its stock footage so fast, but you would be wrong. The combination of characters that were used for this American series created a situation where all three shows were often being used every single episode; especially in the first season.

You would think that the people behind the show would have realized that they only had a finite amount of stock footage to use, but apparently not. It's possible they knew that the way they were doing this would mean the show couldn't last too long and that they didn't mind. The production team reused a lot of the stock footage over the run of the show and by the end of the second season, had to cancel the series in large part because of the lack of additional footage to use.

12 IT ALMOST STARRED JASON DAVID FRANK

When you think Jason David Frank, you almost certainly think of the Green or White Ranger. Well, if things had gone slightly different for him, you'd be thinking of VR Troopers instead! Okay, well not actually VR Troopers, because the pilot with Jason David Frank was called Cybertron (no relation to Transformers), but that was because it wasn't an ensemble cast at that point.

The Cybertron pilot featured Jason David Frank as a lone hero going up against Grimlord's robot forces. Other than that and martial arts still being featured in the show, it was very different. There was no talking dog, for example. Jamie Kennedy played the comic relief character in this pilot, which easily would have been one of the biggest named actors to be in one of these shows!

11 THERE WAS A VR TROOPERS MARVEL COMIC (SORT OF)

Back in 1995 and into 1996, Marvel Comics published a VR Troopers comic... sort of. The comic was a flip book, which means it had two stories in it with a cover on each side that you can flip around to read each story. The VR Troopers comic was paired with a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic, so you can imagine which of the two covers got displayed on the comic store shelves.

Quite a few legendary comics creators worked on these books including Carl Potts, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Deadpool co-creator Fabian Nicieza. They only made it up to issue #5 before the book was discontinued. It has never been collected in trade and is not available on comixology, so the series is all but forgotten except for those who happen to have the old back issues.

10 THE VOICE OF JEB THE DOG WAS ALSO GOLDAR

First, we're going to talk about how Jeb is a crazy character. He's the pet dog of Ryan (our protagonist), who ends up getting exposed to a power surge, which in turn gives him the ability to talk... because why not? Jeb was the Alpha 5 of the show, but what made him different is that he was also the comic relief character and would get involved in some wacky hi-jinks.

Jeb was voiced by Kerrigan Mahan, who was apparently doing a Jack Nicholson impression. Kerrigan is probably most well known for voicing Goldar in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as well as the fourth season of the show known as Power Rangers Zeo. So unbeknownst to you as a kid, you may have found yourself watching two shows with Kerrigan Mahan in the same day!

9 THE OLDEST STOCK FOOTAGE OF ANY SABAN SHOW

We've talked about how Power Rangers and VR Troopers use lots of Japanese stock footage. Unlike Power Rangers, though, VR Troopers used even older stock footage. One of the shows used, Space Sheriff Shaider, was already a decade old by the time VR Troopers hit TV. The most recent show used, Superhuman Machine Metalder, was already seven years old.

Watching the series as a kid or even just at the time with lower resolution TVs may have made it harder to notice, but looking back now, it's painful to see the drastic shift in video quality bouncing back and forth from the different stock footage being used; way more so than in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

8 THEY COULD BE MORE VIOLENT BECAUSE THEY WERE SYNDICATED

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and later on Big Bad Beetleborgs were shows that ran on Fox Kids. As a result, they had to adhere to certain guidelines to be more kid friendly. Even Power Rangers actually had to tone down Lord Zedd after parents complained he was too scary. Those same restrictions did not apply to VR Troopers.

VR Troopers aired under syndication, meaning that the show was licensed out to multiple broadcasting stations to be aired. This allowed for the show to get away with doing things they would not have been able to if it was a Fox Kids original program. As a result, the violence was turned up in this series, allowing the heroes to really attack the monsters and robots. This was still clearly a cheesy kids show though, so it's a bit baffling as to why this seemed to be important.

7 IN THE JAPANESE FOOTAGE THEY ARE NEVER SEEN TOGETHER

As mentioned earlier, there was a lot of stock footage used from three different series in the making of VR Troopers. Now, you would think sure, they're using stock footage from multiple shows, but surely they wouldn't go as far as using heroes from separate shows to create all sorts of logistical problems in editing it into one coherent television experience, right?

Wrong! The character of Ryan was from one show, while JB and Kaitlin were from another. As a result, the three are never seen together in any of the Japanese footage. That forced the writers to come up with excuses to split them up in the battle; something old fans of the show may not remember. Then, either Ryan or JB would defeat the monster at the end of the show. Unfortunately, Kaitlin never beat any of the monsters in the original Japanese series. Sorry, Kaitlin!

6 IT NEVER GOT A PROPER ENDING

Old fans of VR Troopers might remember the plot line through season one of the show, which involved Ryan needing to find his dad. They accomplish that mission and save Ryan's pops, but the show continued for another season. In Season 2, the troopers are still fighting the forces of Grimlord and his horrifying robot armies, which are regularly defeated by Ryan, JB and Kaitlin.

The last episode of the series aired on February 21st, 1996 and was titled "Galileo's New Memory." The plot of this particular episode was that the troopers need to save a robot from Grimlord. That's the last we see of them! We never see them come close to defeating Grimlord, and the series never gets a proper ending, despite having 92 episodes.

5 THERE WAS A BOARD GAME

Not only did VR Troopers have a video game available on Sega Genesis and Game Gear, it also had a board game. It was released through Milton Bradley and required two to four players to play. You may be thinking to yourself how it's possible to play with four players when there are only three VR Troopers, but the way the game works is that players rotate which trooper they are each turn.

Basically, you have to fight through Skug after Skug to get to General Ivar to defeat him and win the game. The Skugs are controlled by other players during battle. It's all dice-based combat, with the active players rolling against the Skugs who are played by one of the inactive players. The game is ultimately way too simple and not terribly challenging, but hey, this is a board game for a kids show after all.

4 THE PLOT IS LIKE A CYBERPUNK TAKE ON LOVECRAFT

Old fans of the show may have forgotten exactly how dark the plot really is and what exactly is at stake. Grimlord is an immensely powerful villain in a dimension that's parallel to our own, but he has a human form in our dimension on earth that is working to create a way to allow Grimlord entry, so that he can claim both for himself.

Anyone familiar with the works of H. P. Lovecraft knows that many of his stories or stories inspired by him involve ancient Gods trying to come back to reclaim the earth, with only a few that are aware enough to even attempt to stop that from happening. So VR Troopers is basically a Lovecraft story, but with lots of robots and virtual reality. If Lovecraft was alive in the early '90s, he'd of probably touched on this idea himself.

3 THE MAIN VILLAIN IS BASICALLY ELON MUSK

Grimlord's human form on Earth goes by the name Karl Ziktor. He's a billionaire industrialist using his power and influence in an attempt to break down the barriers keeping our world separate from Grimlord's virtual reality dimension. I don't know about you, but to us he sounds an awful lot like another billionaire industrialist; Elon Musk.

Sure, Karl Ziktor or Grimlord are far less likely to end up with someone like Grimes, but Karl totally sounds like he'd be the CEO of a company called SpaceX. What might the quest for a fantastic future look like? Is it a future where Grimlord has taken over the world? There is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that Elon Musk is secretly Grimlord. All we're saying is that we wouldn't necessarily be THAT surprised.

2 ALL THE HENCHMEN HAVE RIDICULOUSLY ON-THE-NOSE NAMES

The villains on VR Troopers have such obvious names that they put Mega Man robot masters to shame! Grimlord is one thing, but his henchmen? Forget it! The names are so ridiculous, old fans of the show may think they've been misremembering them. You haven't been; they really are that obvious!

Here are just some of the names: Frogbot, Drillbot, Spiderbot, Wolfbot, Bugbot, and Lizardbot. Not obvious enough for you? How about Fighterbot? Yeah, Fighterbot. Or Canon Nose. What about Tankatron? Yeah, that's what we thought. Look, some of them aren't quite as obvious like Graybot, whose power is the ability to make himself appear as a human, but for the most part these names are pretty obvious.

1 VR ISN'T VIRTUAL REALITY, IT'S A PARALLEL DIMENSION

What is easily one of the absolute craziest things about this show is what virtual reality means. Ryan's father was a scientist who had gone missing while doing research into virtual reality. What he had apparently uncovered was that virtual reality, or VR, is actually another dimension entirely that is filled with mutants. That, for some reason, isn't quite explained, nor is their need to also conquer our dimension.

Ryan, JB and Kaitlin have the ability to move in between both dimensions in order to fight these mutants, which is already a crazy enough idea before you drop in how virtual reality technology itself has somehow led to a scientist finding another dimension. It doesn't even begin to make any sense, and even in the early days of VR technology, it would still be super hard to suspend your disbelief for that.