Believe it or not, Power Rangers can legally rent a car this year! The show is celebrating its 25th anniversary in a big way, bringing back several past fan-favorite Rangers for a special Ninja Steel episode that may or may not include our new favorite villain. Either way, Power Rangers has been on the air for longer than some of our readers have been alive.
What started out as a simple American kids’ show made from spliced-together Japanese footage has become a pop culture phenomenon; even those who have never watched the show would recognize the colorful suits and awesome helmets!
Not to mention, so many elements of the show have become ingrained into pop culture as a whole. The giant robots vs. rubber monsters, the “teenagers with attitude,” the premise of the monster of the week, and even the idea of a multi-colored team of superheroes are all things that have been drawn from the Power Rangers lore.
Being a quarter of a century old and created at a time that many adults look back on with heavy doses of nostalgia, Power Rangers is much discussed on the internet. As much as we may love it, the show’s ridiculous premise and low-budget production make it perfect fodder to poke fun at via memes.
Here are 16 Power Rangers Memes That Will Split Your Sides!
Wait. That’s Not Ivan Ooze…
Back in 1995, at the height of Power Rangers‘ popularity, Saban made Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. Though the film received terrible reviews and flopped at the box office, fans today look back on it fondly. It may be ridiculously dated with its terrible CGI effects and ’90s lingo, but it was fun at the time!
Besides, it gave us Ivan Ooze, one of the best Power Rangers villains ever.
When the first images of mutant baddie Apocalypse were released from X-Men: Apocalypse, fans reacted pretty poorly. Instead of being the menacing blue and white villain from the comic books, Apocalypse looked like he was just a regular dude in a bluish/purple costume. Fans likened the character’s design to the grotesque villain from MMPR: The Movie; this meme references the reaction.
Practicing Their Ranger Pose
One of the most laughable things that the Power Rangers did during their heyday was the over-the-top arm movements they made after every comment. They just couldn’t say something as simple as “you’re going down, Goldar!” without swishing their torso around like a circus acrobat. The producers did this to portray the characters’ expressiveness, which couldn’t be shown through normal facial expressions thanks to the masks.
As the show went on and they used more and more American footage, the movements and poses got worse. Although they are severely toned down today, the ridiculous movements have become a staple of the show.
This meme pokes fun at people who do the infamous “holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa” pose when vacationing in Italy by likening them to the Power Rangers’ poses.
Are We Not Doing Phrasing Anymore?
This image hurts to look at as a Power Rangers fan. First off, the meme is using the Yellow Ranger as the Green Ranger, and the Pink Ranger as the White Ranger. Also, this is a joke that has literally been made a million times before. You have the Red Power Ranger. You have the Blue Power Ranger. You have the Black Power Ranger. You get the picture.
Some people like to joke about the way it sounds when you say “White Power Ranger.” It was innocent enough when we were kids, but as we got older and realized exactly what that meant in the context of modern society, we realized that we were probably better off just calling him the White Ranger. This meme pokes fun at the situation.
We’ve All Been There Before…
This meme speaks to the struggles we all had to go through whenever we wanted to play Power Rangers as kids. If we were in a large enough group, the five or six core rangers would be taken. Even if we stretched it and included Rocky, Adam, and Aisha on top of the originals and included both of Tommy’s colors, there were only nine rangers in total and six colors to choose from.
This meant that, despite our best efforts, somebody got stuck being a brand new, made-up character. Usually this was done by just picking a random color like orange or purple and trying to pair it up with a Dinosaur. For example, you could be the Grey Ranger whose Zord was the Stegosaurous, or the Orange Ranger whose Zord was the Brontosaurous. Either way, it wasn’t as cool as pretending to be one of our favorite heroes!
Budget Rangers
Power Rangers keeps stretching the limit on how much quality you can get out a smaller and smaller budget. By using mostly recycled Japanese footage from Super Sentai, the show is able to keep costs fairly low. For the period of time when Disney owned the franchise, things were made even cheaper by moving the production to New Zealand. Even in the Neo-Saban Era, the producers of the show are notoriously budget-conscious.
This meme poses the question of “what if Power Rangers was even lower budget?” It shows a group of people in knock-off ranger costumes and makes the comment that the superteam was hit hard by the economic recession. Actually, if they could get away with it, this is probably how Saban would do the suits for the next season.
Predicting the Future
Power Rangers Ninja Storm was one of the more underrated seasons of the show. Sure, it had a talking Guinea Pig in the mentor role and was much more comedic than other seasons, but at its core the story was fairly coherent, the costumes were cool, and the characters were a blast to watch. Sadly, it often gets overlooked thanks to the two concurrent seasons (Dino Thunder and S.P.D.), which are considered some of the franchises’ best.
However, Ninja Storm apparently had the power of foresight! The three main rangers wore the colors of Teal, Red, and Yellow. When they combined their Zords to form the Ninja Megazord, their colors came together to form a symbol in the cockpit. Upon closer inspection, it looks an awful lot like the current logo for web browser Google Chrome.
The Crossover We All Need
Any true Power Rangers fan knows the bit of trivia about Bryan Cranston. During the early days of MMPR Cranston was working his way up the Hollywood ladder and did the voice acting for two of Rita’s monsters (Snizzard and Twin Man).
The Blue Ranger’s full name (Billy Cranston) was actually a nod to the actor by the producers.
In the 2017 Power Rangers movie, after years of establishing himself as a serious actor, Cranston returned to the franchise in the role of Zordon. Somebody decided that it was time to make a joke about the actor’s involvement in the show, and this meme crossing over Power Rangers and Breaking Bad (the actor’s most famous role) was born!
In all probability, it was probably made as some sort of promotional image for when the movie’s roles were announced.
Go, go, Goku Rangers!
’90s kids love Power Rangers. ’90s kids love Dragon Ball Z. What more could they want than a mash-up of the two franchises?
We could debate for hours about whether or not Goku could defeat all six of the Power Rangers. A lot of people would laugh at the idea and say that the Rangers would be toast when Goku goes Super Saiyan. Others would like to remind DBZ fans that Bulma gave him a run for his money in regular form.
Somebody on the internet created this image of the “Goku Rangers,” five Gokus each with a different hair color. Then, somebody took the idea of a crossover a little too far and created an entire backstory for the Goku Saiyan Rangers. They are versions of the Saiyan each from a different universe that were called together to fight evil. Huh.
Straight Outta the ’90s
You know who Chuck Norris is. To each person, he’s a different guy. To people who were around in the ’70s and ’80s he was a martial arts legend who fought Bruce Lee. To those of us who grew up in the ’90s, he was Walker, Texas Ranger. Anyone who grew up post-2000 knows him as that awesome guy from all the “Chuck Norris Facts” memes.
This meme takes all of the above and ties it together with the bow of Power Rangers. Obviously it gives us a hilarious play on words (Walker Texas Power Rangers) in addition to creating a new “Chuck Norris Fact” meme.
Is it a little too on the nose? Probably. But we are talking about memes, for crying out loud!
Things Never Really Change
When it was first announced that we were getting a big-budget Power Rangers movie, fans were skeptical. MMPR was corny and over-the-top. How was that going to translate to the big screen?
It was announced that Elizabeth Banks and Bryan Cranston were Rita and Zordon. Then promos teased us with the expanded lore seen across the multiple seasons of the show. By the time March 2017 rolled around, fans were hyped.
This hilarious comic shows us that, even all these years later, we haven’t changed much. The marketing for Power Rangers pushed all of our nostalgia buttons, so when we saw the posters in the movie theaters we had the exact same reaction as we did when we were five years old and the first MMPR movie was released.
It’s the Bright Colors, Isn’t It?
We knew that just about anything released into the MCU was going to be decent. But most of us didn’t expect Thor: Ragnarok to be as good as it was! The first two Thor movies are generally ranked pretty far down on the list of MCU movies, but the third one is often considered one of the cinematic universe’s best. This was in part because director Taika Waititi embraced the campiness of the comics and gave us a film that wasn’t afraid to be fun or corny.
Somebody got the idea that the core cast of Ragnarok matched up fairly well with cast of Power Rangers, and superimposed their headshots on the teenagers with attitude. Actually, it kind of works: you have the pretty boy with the long hair as the Green Ranger, the science nerd as the Blue Ranger, and the preppy yet BA woman as the Pink Ranger.
Explosions!
During the Disney Era of Power Rangers, everything exploded. Sure, early seasons of the show always had the bad guys explode when they were defeated by the Megazord at the episode’s end. But Ninja Storm through RPM amped it up to the extreme, with giant balls of fire appearing behind the characters whenever they did something as simple as striking an awesome pose or jumping over some barrels on their bikes.
This comic asks the question of what would happen if the same laws of physics applied to the Super Megaforce season of the show, when all of the past rangers from every season came together to fight off an alien invasion.
During the episode the gigantic team does their signature awesome pose. Wouldn’t the sheer power of this act destroy the known universe?
Infinity War Ain’t Got Nothing on Saban
You thought Disney owning Power Rangers was weird? How about that brief period of time in which Saban owned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The result? Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. It was a terrible show that swapped out cool ninjitsu action for slapstick comedy and completely changed the lore of the Turtles. However, during this time we got a cross-over episode between the TMNT and the Power Rangers!
Sounds cool, right? It was actually fairly jarring. The tone of the two franchises didn’t really mesh, and the Turtle costumes looked pretty bad even for Power Rangers standards. Not to mention, this was something that nobody really asked for.
This meme satirizes the ridiculously corny episode by claiming it was a much more ambitious cross-over than the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War.
How Do They See in Those Things?
Power Rangers Time Force is seen as one of the better seasons of the series. It had some interesting storylines involving time travel, dealt with some darker themes than most Power Rangers seasons, and had one of the coolest villains and sixth Rangers of the entire show.
Then there were the costumes: Time Force‘s suits were pure awesomeness, with a sleek design and inverted visors for the first time in the show’s history.
When you stop and think about it, how did those visors work? They look cool, but wouldn’t it be more practical for the black parts to be the design and the glossy parts to be the trim?
The actors for this season claim that they had no problems seeing while in the suit – the colored parts of the visors were similar to a two-way mirror – but practically speaking these things look like a nightmare.
Life Goals
Oh yes, that picture is real. And the caption is absolutely correct.
We are now at the point where all of the Millenial generation (the ones that grew up with MMPR) are now full-grown adults, most of which have jobs that can pay for the hobbies and items that they couldn’t have as children. Saban has realized this, too. Nowadays there is an entire line of Power Rangers toys called the “Legacy” line that cater to adult collectors!
This meme is worth 1,000 words. Who knows how much that entire set-up cost this person? Yet, one look at it makes the ’90s child in us all scream “I want it!” Maybe some day we can have an entire Ranger squad to join up with Tommy here!
Bad Luck Jason
We all knew the drill as children. The Rangers would fight the “monster of the week” throughout the episode until they solved the unique problem they were posing to the team. Then, after the creature was seemingly defeated for good, Rita or Zedd would use their magic to resurrect their monster from the grave and make it grow the size of a skyscraper. Of course, the Power Rangers would summon their Zords and were able to bring the monster down once and for all.
This meme shows what all of the Rangers must be feeling by putting Jason’s head on the “Bad Luck Brian” meme. Week in and week out, the team had to put in a bunch of effort to destroy their enemy the first time before it was brought back to life and they had to do it all over again.
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Did we leave off any of your favorite Power Rangers memes? Let us know in the comments!