Billy is one of the five "teenagers with attitude" selected by Zordon to become the original Power Rangers, along with Jason Lee Scott, Zack Taylor, Trini Kwan and Kimberly Hart.

In the episode "High Five", Billy creates not only the wrist communicators the Power Rangers use, but also the interface that allows the devices a remote access to the Command Center's teleportation unit.

He seeks out to improve himself physically, and the audience sees him transition over time from the suspenders-wearing "brain" to a confident, hyper-intelligent athlete with fighting skills, thanks in great part to Trini's Uncle Howard.

He performs an array of tasks, ranging from creating the method for which the Rangers use initially to infiltrate Rita's Dark Dimension, to disarming the lock-out mechanism for Alpha's activated self-destruct, and many other achievements.

Though Billy does manage to attract girls earlier in his "nerd-like" persona, it is after he begins his journey toward self-improvement that he garners more attention from romantic interests, even more so than the other members of the team.

To counter this, he travels to Aquitar for a cure from their Eternal Falls (analogous to the Fountain of Youth), which restores his real age; after that he opts to remain there with Cestria, a female Aquitian with whom he had fallen in love.

For Hasbro PulseCon 2022, David Yost announced he would reprise the role of Billy to mark the 30th anniversary of the Power Rangers franchise.

While attempting to re-establish contact with Zordon, Billy accidentally restores the evil spirit of Rita Repulsa, which takes over the body of Alpha 8 and becomes Robo-Rita.

When Trini's daughter Minh blames him for her mother's death, Billy works to correct his mistakes until, a year later, Rita reappears and captures Tommy, Jason, and Kimberly.

Billy leads the remaining Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - a team consisting of himself, Zack, Kat and Rocky - to thwart Rita's plan.

The events of the movie are non-canon to the television series, where a similar scenario plays out (minus Ivan Ooze) in the Ninja Quest saga near the start of the third season.

Studios comics feature Billy as a major character back in the original era, the series starting shortly after the battle with the Green Ranger.

[citation needed] In Power/Rangers Billy Cranston (played by Yves Bright), is trillionaire who buys Lockheed Martin and was found dead of an apparent suicide.

[citation needed] David Yost has stated he had walked off the show a few episodes prior to his character's departure, due to repeated and ongoing homophobic slurs by the creators, producers, directors, and writers of the series,[10] which is why he does not appear in them.

[11] As a result, stock footage of Yost was used for his departure and the character was voiced by someone else (In broadcasting Billy's departing message to his friends, it was mentioned they were having trouble with the signal).

[10] It was widely believed that Billy's surname came from Bryan Cranston, who did voice work for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers,[12] and would later portray Zordon in the 2017 film.

However, in recent years, promotional material for an attempted Bioman adaptation by Haim Saban, from 1984, revealed that the surname was decided on long before Cranston became involved with the series.