Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (TV)

The second of three straight alternate universe Gundam series during the mid-90's, Gundam Wing's main mecha, the Wing Gundam, actually makes a few brief cameos in the final episode of the previous AU series, Mobile Fighter G Gundam, which aired a week before the first episode of Gundam Wing did.

The mask for Zechs appears to be a homage to the title character in the 1974 film 'Phantom of the Paradise'.

Gundam Wing Director Masashi Ikeda abruptly resigned his position midway through the series and was substituted by Shinji Takamatsu, who would go on to direct the next Gundam series, After War Gundam X. Because of the awkward circumstance in which this happened, the credits do not mention this change. Subsequently, Takamatsu leaves Sunrise after the failure of Gundam X, and the Endless Waltz OVA was directed by Yasunao Aoki. Ikeda would later leave his position as the director of Inu Yasha midway through the series too.

Characters in the show are named after numbers: Une, from the French one; Zechs, from sechs, German six; Milliardo, from miliardo, Italian billion; etc. The name Heero Yuy is derived from the Japanese hitotsu, one, and yuitsu, only, and most other important characters in the show are also named after numbers or words related to numbers.

April 7 is very significant to both Mobile Suit Gundam and Gundam Wing. Mobile Suit Gundam premiered in Japan on April 7, 1979. 16 years later, Gundam Wing premiered in Japan on April 7, 1995.

The animation staff snuck several Easter eggs into the series in the form of quick snippets of joke text. In Episode 3, the medical readouts on Heero include the readme file for the TWAIN plugin for Adobe Photoshop; similarly, in Episode 8, a chip labelled "Intel Outside" can be seen. There are also several references to the Universal Century timelines, as seen in the mobile suit schematics, such as references to mega particles, movable frames, Gundarium, and the ALICE System from Gundam Sentinel.