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Long before My Hero Academia, shonen adaptations like Naruto and Bleach just kept airing non-stop, which meant tons of padded-out filler arcs to keep pace with the manga. Studio Bones did things differently and released MHA in yearly seasonal chunks instead, which is a big part of why the pacing, animation and story all feel so much tighter than a lot of its shonen peers.
For a chunk of the English dub cast, MHA was basically their big break. Justin Briner (Midoriya) and Clifford Chapin (Bakugo) both had this as a career-defining role, and Christopher Sabat took on All Might right around the same time he was already busy being the voice of Vegeta.
Magne, a trans woman in the League of Villains, is voiced by a cisgender man in both the original Japanese track and the English dub. It's one of those casting choices that still gets brought up whenever people talk about how anime handles trans representation.
Kohei Horikoshi is such a die-hard fan of American superhero comics that in one interview he flat out said he's often got a Japanese-translated Marvel or DC comic in one hand while he's actually drawing MHA pages with the other. He's also mentioned being especially fond of Spider-Man.
All Might's mix of goofy, bumbling charm off-duty and total selflessness in a fight has often been pointed back to Dragon Ball's Goku as an influence. Horikoshi has openly cited Dragon Ball as one of his favorite series and a huge inspiration on how he built modern shonen heroes.
Horikoshi has praised Eiichiro Oda's willingness to let characters speak their minds, something he leaned on heavily for Bakugo. But he's also said outright that he just doesn't have the stamina to write something on the scale of One Piece, which shaped his decision to keep MHA a more contained story rather than a decades-long saga.
The clunky, armored Iron Might suit that shows up later in the series isn't just a random support-item design. Horikoshi grew up drawing giant robots, and the suit is basically his love letter to old-school mecha anime like Mashin Hero Wataru from his childhood.
Aizawa's hero name comes straight from David Lynch's 1977 cult film Eraserhead, a surreal horror movie about the anxieties of parenthood that has genuinely nothing to do with quirks or teaching. Fans have gone back and forth for years on whether Aizawa's detached, deadpan personality was meant as a nod to the film's tone.
The retired, cane-wielding hero Gran Torino shares more than just a name with Clint Eastwood's 2008 film. Both are grumpy old war veterans who feel disconnected from the world around them but still can't help stepping in to protect people when it counts.
According to a breakdown from a professional MHA translator, the series' famous motto is basically Horikoshi signing his own name into the story. The 'koshi' in his surname uses the kanji for 'go beyond,' making Plus Ultra a sly bit of wordplay hidden in plain sight.
