[quote=Rin]
Seeing how popular Thunderbirds was in Japan, I don't think that would be unwarranted really. ...I'm pretty sure that kind of thing has shown up in sentai before, actually....And Gokaiger is amazing and awesome, yes. ^_^
[/quote]

I know the DekaMachine access tubes from Dekaranger/SPD were a pretty blatant UFO reference. Hell, I might even go so far as to call GoGoV a complete homage.