25 Things You Missed In Avatar: The Last Airbender

be honest how many times have you re watched Avatar The Last Airbender whether it's your first journey along with Avatar Aang or you've seen a story more times than you care to admit we've gathered up some things you might have missed out on from hidden references to fun Easter eggs let's take a closer look at this amazing series we know the residents of the spirit oasis may look like koi fish but they actually have very appropriate names considering their role in the world of Avatar The Last Airbender the Moon spirits name is tui which means push in Mandarin Chinese while the ocean spirit laws name translates to pull in the same language this makes sense when you think about the moon's push and pull on the tides which led to the discovery of waterbending the only art which didn't originate from animals firebending was passed down from dragons earthbending came from Badge moles and airbending was taught by flying Bisons and like Appa long before avatar the last airbender was available or easy streaming on Netflix fans had to tune into Nickelodeon to get a glimpse of Avatar Aang and his friends there's even a hidden tribute to the network in the book three episodes sokka's master at one point we see Toph playing around with the meteorite raw changing its shape as earth benders tend to do but what are the shakes that she manipulates the meteorite into looks awfully familiar to Nickelodeon fans it looks just like the classic Nickelodeon splat only it's a dark color instead of the traditional bright orange did you manage to spot this blink and you'll miss a moment on your first watch through everyone has their own favorite character from the show but is there anyone out there who doesn't love good old uncle Iroh seriously I'm asking is there anyone who doesn't love this guy even though he's such a beloved character we don't actually know a lot about his past but that wasn't supposed to be the case in the commentary for the episode the firebending masters creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko revealed that there was originally going to be an entire episode about iroh's backstory but it just didn't end up happening since these two are going to be making a live-action version of the series with the Netflix many fans are hoping we'll finally get to take a deep dive into the background of Iroh and learn more about how he became the man we met in Avatar The Last Airbender yes Zuko was incredibly lucky to have an awesome uncle like Iroh but pretty much every single other aspect of his life was terribly unfortunate his family issues make the Baratheon's from Game of Thrones look like the Brady Bunch but there was one big question mark regarding his backstory that was never addressed on the show we know Zuko's dad was Ozai but his mother was a woman named Ursa who seemingly disappeared and her fate was never discovered during the show that's because the original plan was to a story in the standalone spin-off movie but that never ended up happening instead we found out in a comic book called the search that she was banished for treason but was given a new identity by the mother of faces she got a new look but at the cost of her old memories Ursa was able to reconnect with an old flame and that's not just a little Fire Nation humor as a woman named Ana Rico she had a daughter named kee before eventually having her appearance and memory restored and reconnecting with her son Zuko in the episode the Guru we saw avatar aang learn about his chakras from guru Pathik but if you paid close attention you might have learned something as well that's because the showrunners took care to make sure that the colors of Aang's visions coincided with the hues traditionally associated with each chakra they range from red to purple the same way they're aligned on the visible spectrum in this fictional world not everyone is capable of mastering the elements but that doesn't necessarily stop them from fighting we all know Jun isn't shy about getting involved in altercations and in sozin's comet part one the Phoenix King we saw her facing off against a very familiar-looking opponent or at least someone who's well known to video game fans with that white Qi and red headband he's absolutely unmistakable as Ryu from the Street Fighter video game series Jun's lucky he didn't hit her with a Hadouken there's lots of reasons to love Avatar The Last Airbender so let's give credit to its creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko interestingly enough one of them had to leave another high-profile animated project in order to work on this show at one point in his career DiMartino was directing a little show you might have heard of it's called Family Guy and then he reconnected with his college friend Ken it's Co DiMartino left Family Guy to work on a project with his old friend which led to the creation of Avatar The Last Airbender Iroh is always a great character but he underwent a voice actor change during the second season at one point he was voiced by the award-winning actor Mako a omatsu you might recognize him as the guy behind aku from Samurai Jack or the narrator from Dexter's Laboratory sadly he passed away from esophageal cancer before he could complete his work on Avatar The Last Airbender The Legend of Korra character Mako was named after him as a tribute to his memory and work on the first series Joe was known for being the leader of the Fire Nation Navy but he wasn't exactly known for being the nicest guy around during an interview with IGN Michael DiMartino revealed that the inspiration for Joe's character came from Jason Isaacs role as the villain in the Patriot DiMartino was so impressed with his performance that he asked to the last airbender casting director to find him someone similar for the role of Zhao and she ended up hiring Jason Isaak himself to voice the character Isaac said that he was instructed to sound like himself while recording Zhao's dialogue but specifically his American self Toph beifong was the most powerful earthbender of her time and a pioneer in the art of metal bending but the version of her that we're used to seeing is completely different than when she was first created first of all she was originally going to be a HEA Toph was going to be an athletic 16 year old boy with big muscles and a crass way of speaking the idea was to have him act as a foil for Sokka and this was incorporated into the unaired pilot episode of the show but later on the show's creators realized that they preferred the idea of a powerful young woman who could take more intimidating looking foes the idea was originally pitched by head writer Aaron Diaz but co-creator Bryan Konietzko wasn't on board at first later on he supported the change and admitted that the new Toph is one of his favorite characters of all time in the original character design was not a total loss since it went on to influence bolin in the legend of korra even though avatar the last airbender is considered kid-friendly by most people there's no denying it deals with some pretty dark themes not only does it feature many fictional tragedies but it has some surprising connections to the real world one of the most grim locations in the entire show is Lake laogai found in the agrarian zone of Ba Sing se the capital of the earth kingdom it used to be a vacation spot back in the day but was later used to hide an underground prison used to incarcerate enemies of Long Feng it was also used as a base of operation for the Dai Li before being discovered by Aang and his allies Lake laogai isn't the most cheerful place so it's not too surprising that laogai is an abbreviation for the term Lao dong guys Oh which means reformed through labor this is a reference to the Lao guy labor camps in the People's Republic of China it's not exactly a controversial opinion at Avatar The Last Airbender is an amazing show but it's somehow even less controversial to say that the live-action last airbender movie is less than amazing it's one of the most universally disliked films ever made and even the show couldn't help but make fun of it a little bit at one point our heroes watch a play put on by the Fire Nation theater troupe the Emperor Island players and it's not the best and it's not just because it shows the Fire Nation winning the war in destroying Aang in the DVD commentary for this episode the creator's revealed that the writing team might have intended for this episode to make light of the last airbender directed by M night Shyamalan you know it was really unclear before avatar aang spent a century encased in ice he was close to his mentor monk gyatsu in fact some fans suspect that he and the other monks are where Aang developed his sense of humor in addition to his airbending skills watching Aang realized that his father figure had perished after he ran away was devastating but few fans realized that monk gyatsu was named after an actual person he shares his name with the 14th dalai lama tenzin gyatso let's take a closer look at the opening sequence of the show we know it's narrated by Katara who gives a brief history lesson including the phrase everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked while this statement is accurate check out the line of firebenders they look like the ones we see throughout the series but they should look like the soldiers who lived back before the hundred year war began according to our nuke they would have had giant shoulder spikes and faceless helmets there are some characters out there who just want to watch the world burn and in some cases I mean that quite literally many fans feel that Daenerys Targaryen Zutter madness in the final season of Game of Thrones came out of nowhere and I can't help but compare her journey to that of Azula from Avatar The Last Airbender her journey seemed a lot more authentic and some fans believe that this is because she showed many signs of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia this could explain her delusions as well as her increasing level of paranoia there are many interesting things to look at in the world of Avatar The Last Airbender from elemental bending to flying bison but if you listen closely to the voice of Ozai you might recognize a very familiar sound yes that's the voice of the legendary mark hamill he's best known for portraying famous Jedi Luke Skywalker huh in the Star Wars franchise and he also voices the Joker in Batman the animated series even though he plays one of the most well known heroes in a galaxy far far away we have to admit Hamill certainly makes an excellent villain after aang wakes up from his ice nap he has a lot to get used to the world as he knew it had totally changed and everyone he once knew was long gone well almost everyone at one point Aang and his friends encounter King Bumi but aang fails to recognize him at first in Aang's defense he's 100 years older now while the avatar looks the same as Bumi remembers him to get aang to out himself as the avatar Bumi throws a piece of chicken causing him to airbend it away an interesting detail here is that King Bumi remember dang being a vegetarian and used this knowledge to confirm his identity this one is a pretty deep cut you might not have noticed if you've only watched the series a single time and if that's the case you should probably watch it again once you're done with this video just to be safe in the episode the puppet master team avatar speaks with an innkeeper named Hama who was once part of the Southern Water Tribe she tells them about the time her camp was raided by the Fire Nation and she ended up imprisoned as a result during her flashback we see a Fire Nation warship which freezes in the ice this is the exact same Fire Nation ship Aang and Katara encountered all the way back in the very first episode of the show there's something so satisfying about a small detail being a major callback we all know that Zuko started out as a villain before becoming an ally of avatar aang and rebelling against his father but some fans were hoping his friendship with Katara would cross over into romance at some point saris doTERRA fans that ship never ended up happening even Dante Bosco and may Whitman the voice actors for Zuko and Katara respectively were on board but even though these characters didn't end up together their voice actors did have the opportunity to work together again Bosco voiced to jake long in the show american dragon jake long while whitman voiced his love interest on the show i'm not sure how large the crossover is between fans of Avatar The Last Airbender and fans of professional wrestling but this reference is pretty hard to miss in the blind bandit we see an earthbending competition called earth rumble 6 and it's not hard to see the similarities between this and an actual Royal Rumble wrestling event there's even a wrestler called the boulder which is clearly a reference to wrestler turned movie star Dwayne the rock think that enough years will pass someday that will forget Dwayne Johnson used to be known as the rock the boulders over his conflicted feelings there's a different element in the episode the siege of the north part one that depends on which language you watched it in ready to fight a sea sponge the comparison to sang Cox performance and a sea sponge is a reference to a cartoon character you're probably familiar with who lives in a pineapple under the sea it's a spongebob squarepants reference but in the German translation of this episode PACU mentions a starfish this is another spongebob reference but one a met his best friend Patrick earlier I talked about the fact that Toph had a major makeover between her initial character and what we ended up seeing on the show she's not the only character that almost looked completely different so let's take a look at what our beloved flying bison Appa almost looked like instead of being a bison he almost looked like an anthro morphic dog but even that is closer to his final design than Momo got originally Momo was going to be a robot instead of a lemur when Apple was transformed into a bison he originally had a pair of large spiral shaped horns but apparently these horns were just way too much of a pain to draw so the spirals were straightened out in the final version Zuko was fortunate enough to have the help of his uncle Iroh but he very nearly had an animal companion by his side as well in the original script Zuko was going to have a pet Hawk who would end up functioning as a foil for Momo ultimately the writers nixed to the idea of Zuko's pet hawk but found another use for his character design later on Pocky jumped from being the pilot to being sokka's messenger bird even though he was sokka's pet and not Zuko's this didn't mean that he and Momo got along any better Sokka might have a great sense of humor but this member of the Water Tribe was pretty unlucky when it came to love at least the first time around he ended up falling for you a a princess of the North Water Tribe Sokka acted as her bodyguard but sadly he couldn't keep her safe from her final fate during the siege of the North the spirit tui was destroyed threatening the delicate balance of the world so ua sacrificed herself to replace it which is fitting because the word ua means moon in mandarin chinese after losing ua Sokka did manage to find love again with Suki whose name is a version of tsuki which means moon in Japanese apparently Sokka just couldn't escape the pull of the moon Suki is a popular character but the show's creators had no idea just how much fans would like her in fact she was originally going to appear in book 1 and then never be seen again after the episode the Warriors of Kyoshi but not only did the fans desperately want more Suki but so did the crew behind the scenes the show runners were savvy enough to make her a member of team avatar but interestingly enough she was actually cut out of the live-action last airbender movie originally Jessica Jade Andrews was cast as Suki but she and the rest of the Kyoshi warriors were cut out of the film because M night Shyamalan worried about them taking the focus away from Aang clearly when it comes to creating last airbender content Suki is an important component did we manage to catch your favorite fact about Avatar The Last Airbender or was there something that we missed don't forget to stay up-to-date with the latest on the upcoming live-action series by clicking on the subscribe button and turning on your notifications for more from us here at Screen Rant thanks for watching we'll see you again next time

Channel: Screen Rant

Views: 1,183,959

Rating: 4.7511721 out of 5

Keywords: Avatar Aang, Last Airbender, Easter eggs, hidden references, what you missed, Prince Zuko Uncle Iroh, Guru Pathik, Michael DiMartino, Toph Beifong, Ember Island Players, M. Night Shyamalan, Fire Nation, Monk Gyatso, Princess Azula

Id: dh8ylN4DYh4

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020