Sonic X Shadow Generations' title was leaked a day prior to its reveal by notable leakers and a URL registration. Following the leaks, some fans and gaming news websites jokingly noted that the term "Sonic X Shadow" had previously also been used on the internet since the 2000s to refer to fan art, fan-fiction and slash fiction depicting the hedgehogs as a romantic couple.
A popular belief within the Friday Night Funkin' fandom is that the game's main protagonist Boyfriend used to be in a relationship with Pico, the main protagonist of Pico's School and the opponent of Week 3. This gained so much traction that Tom Fulp (the creator of Pico's School) jokingly said it was "official Pico 2 canon". Programmer NinjaMuffin99 initially claimed this was just a joke, but later changed his mind and confirmed it was canon. The cutscene for the song "Stress" alludes to this, as Tankman mockingly refers to Pico as Boyfriend's "sexually ambiguous, angry little friend."
On April 1st, 2021, Tom Fulp updated Pico's School as an April Fools Day joke, with this version ending with Pico revealing to Cassandra that he and Boyfriend are dating and that everybody in the school accepts them. The next day, this version would be released as a separate game called Pico's School: Love Conquers All, being set in an alternate timeline. Given that the game portrayed Pico and Boyfriend's relationship in a positive light, some fans have taken this as a sign that Tom Fulp approves of the idea that they were at one point a couple.
In 2023, Activision Blizzard was ordered to pay $35 million by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its failures to maintain proper workplace disclosure controls and violations of whistleblower protections. The fine was imposed due to the company’s failure to ensure proper employee protections against workplace harassment and gender discrimination, which led to many women leaving the company. The SEC used a 2021 lawsuit by the state of California’s Civil Rights Department against Activision Blizzard to launch its own investigation meant to determine whether the firm’s handling of the situation constituted a breach of its fiduciary duty to investors. The proceedings were started after the company’s home state charged it with violations of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act in summer 2021.
In a tweet meant to celebrate Trans Day of Visibility, the game's developer M36games revealed through a series of emojis that the characters Margret the Mole and Pierre the Pineapple are transgender, with the latter's scars seemingly being surgery scars. The following year, in a separate tweet by NecromancerTwink, the co-creator of Bauhaus the Bat, he decided to also make this character transgender after discovering a possible error in the character's article on the game's Fandom wiki.
Tingle's effeminate mannerisms have caused many fans to assume the character is supposed to be gay, and so much so that in 2006, GayGamer named Tingle as gaming's #1 "gayest character". The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma would say to Kotaku in 2015: "He's not gay. He's just an odd person." The Tingle spin-off games very overtly portray Tingle as a heterosexual man, with Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love being a combination of a dating simulator and point-and-click adventure where every date is female, while in Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, part of Tingle's motivation is that he wants to be with beautiful women.
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In 2018, the Bubsy series fandom Amino was visited by a user named "Beelzebubsy" alleging to have unreleased concept art drawn by Ken Macklin for Bubsy's design in Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind. Bubsy fans immediately noticed that one design - a female Bubsy that was scrapped for being "too sexualized" - bore a close resemblance to "Modern Bubsy", a fan-made interpretation of the character as a depressed transgender prostitute created by SqrlyJack, an artist who hates Bubsy and gained notoriety for being malicious towards Bubsy fans. This connection was further drawn by the presence of another alleged prototypical design inspired by Michael Jackson, who SqrlyJack is known to be a fan of, and his jacket used in the music video to Jackson's song "Beat It", as well as a later post by the same user showing a screenshot of a Bubsy parody from one of her RPG Maker games. The third concept art does have a strong resemblance to a real piece of Bubsy concept art shown in a 1990s magazine, suggesting it may have been traced.
If one observes the hoax concept art closely, they can see that the attempt at replicating Macklin's signature does not completely match up with his real signature, such as having a lowercase a with a double-edged side instead of one, and a lowercase k without a sloped bottom, adding to the already strong suspicion that the concept art was faked.
Another Bubsy fandom member, Xindictive, who was on a Bubsy Discord server with late Bubsy creator Michael Berlyn, has said on occasion that both Berlyn and a former friend of SqrlyJack have confirmed the images to be faked for a fact. However, since the Discord server where these communications presumably took place has been closed as a result of hacking, it is hard to access these direct confirmations.
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In September 2021, Neopets attempted to enter the budding Non-fungible Token market with a project called the "Neopets Metaverse", predictably sparking major backlash from the Neopets fandom citing pre-existing criticisms and negative stigmas surrounding NFTs. However, much less predictable were the string of controversies that followed, which involved using the fansite Dress to Impress to make their NFTs (notably signified by one of the tokens having a glitch only present on Dress to Impress and not the official Neopets site), promotion of an R-rated NFT collection titled "Horny Hedgehogs", banning the word "gay" from their Discord server but permitting homophobic slurs, portraying those opposed to NFTs as the "Soyjak" meme, and in secret planning to get the main game developers to implement long-requested features so fans would "shut up" about the NFT project.
When the project first spread, the Neopets Twitter account stated in a direct message that it was a scam, putting doubt on its legitimacy, but the main brand would later would endorse the project. The most infamous endorsement came when the winner of an art contest ended up being an anti-NFT protest image, which they removed and - after being called out - subtly censored it by compressing it so hard that it couldn't be read without extremely close observance.
After two years, Neopets ultimately announced in July 2023 that it would be completely shuttering the Neopets Metaverse project after former CEO of the Metaverse division Dominic Law brokered a "management buyout deal", and that the game would no longer have any cryptocurrency or NFT elements.
Princess Remedy and Frallan, who are ex-girlfriends from their original game Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt, have a unique romantic team victory pose and can do a special healing kiss when one grabs the other and presses taunt. This will not work with Frallan's Nuna costume and Remedy's Princess Amelia costume.
Despite being aimed at preschool-aged children and their parents, the Sega Pico was marketed in the US in a similar edgy fashion to Sega's products for older audiences, particularly with a commercial titled "Sponge", which opens with loud rock music and features intense camera cuts, mild slapstick, and most unexpectedly, a joke where the Sega Pico is shown as a heavenly device protecting a child from a drag pageant reality show titled "Middle-Aged Men Who Want to Be Teenage Girls".
Additionally, while much tamer and inoffensive, the animated commercials featuring the Pico's mascot, Smart Alex, featured the loud and in-your-face "Sega Scream".
A side quest called "The Ballad of Jari and Somr" was made as a tribute to two devs that met and fell in love while working at Santa Monica Studios, Jake Snipes and Sam Handrick. This quest involves going to The Eternal Campfire to unlock it and then searching for ingredients to prepare a meal, an homage to the couples love of making meals together. The unfortunate catalyst for this addition to the game was the death of Jake Snipes in 2020.
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Emese Szigetvári, commonly known as LadyFiszi online, is an artist who used to work on the Five Nights at Freddy's series, providing art for the games and several of the books. However, she has been involved in several controversies since 2019 regarding things such as transphobic comments, writing fanfictions involving pedophilia and sexual assault, grooming allegations, creating art and being a part of groups that glorify Nazism and Fascism, and tracing allegations. Eventually, it got to the point where the official r/fivenightsatfreddys subreddit moderators decided to ban her because of these allegations, drawing even further attention to them. This ultimately led to Scott Cawthon officially firing LadyFiszi from the franchise on February 27, 2023.
Scott Cawthon retired from game development in 2021 after it was discovered that he had donated thousands of dollars to anti-LGBTQ+ Republican political candidates. Cawthon posted a message to his fans on his website stating:
"I've had a blessed, fulfilling, and rich career. I've been shown great kindness and I've tried to show great kindness in return. I've tried to make some good games (let the debate ensue), and I've witnessed the creation of possibly the most creative and talented fanbase on the planet. [...] I realize that I miss a lot of things that I got to focus on before FNaF became such a success. I miss making games for my kids, I miss doing it just for fun, and I miss making RPGs even though I stink at it. All of this to say that I am retiring."
He also stated that he would be choosing someone that he trusts to take over the FNaF franchise. Cawthon later removed this message from his website, has not announced a successor for the franchise, and appears to still have complete control over it. In 2023, Cawthon released the first game since announcing his retirement, Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space, as a supposed tie-in to the "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie from that year.
When completing Arcade Mode as Bridget, one possible ending depicts her coming out as a transgender girl, having previously been depicted in earlier games as a cisgender boy who was raised as a girl. This plot development attracted rumors that it was a "bad ending" exclusive to the English localization and that Bridget was still a crossdressing boy in the Japanese release. Eventually, director Akira Katano and developer Daisuke Ishiwatari confirmed on their "Developer's Backyard" blog that Bridget was indeed intended to be a trans girl in the Japanese version and that the game's endings were not written under the pretense of them being "good" or "bad," stating that they simply showcase different, coexisting aspects of each character, indicating that Bridget's trans identity is in place across both of her Arcade Mode endings.
Ash is a mini boss that can only be encountered in Japanese versions of the game. He is a homosexual who is very stereotypical in both appearance and behavior. He prances around the stage, lets out a feminine laugh when he grabs the player and uses the female voice cry when defeated in battle. He can be unlocked as a playable character by pressing and holding the B button when he is defeated. He is the strongest out of all the characters and attacks fast.
Ash was removed from the North American and European versions of the game likely because of the obvious backlash SEGA would've received. His boss theme can still be heard but only in the BGM test screen.
In the Japanese release of Phantasy Star II, the piano teacher, Ustvestia, is openly homosexual. When a male party member volunteers to be taught the Musik technique by Ustvestia, Ustvestia replies, "He looks cute." Ustvestia then proceeds to charge the male party member less for the lesson than he would charge a female party member.
However, in the English release of Phantasy Star II, Ustvestia simply says, "He looks smart." The gender-based disparity in the fee for learning Musik is left unexplained.
As a backer reward for the game's Kickstarter, backers had the option to provide a message to appear in-game on a memorial stone. One of the in-game memorial stones in the final version of the game had its message later changed due to it being considered by many as a hateful, transphobic joke.
A number of people were against the change, but Obsidian decided to have the messaged altered. The original message by the backer read:
"Firedorn Lightbringer Here lies Firedorn, a hero in bed. He once was alive, but now he's dead. The last woman he bedded, turned out a man. And crying in shame, off a cliff he ran."
After receiving numerous complaints from gamers about the quote, CEO of Obsidian, Feargus Urquhart, chose to change it and together with the backer who created it, decided on a new message.
"Here lies Firedorn, a bard, a poet He was also a card, but most didn't know it A poem he wrote in jest was misread They asked for blood, so now he's just dead."
Shigesato Itoi revealed in a 2003 interview that Tony, Jeff's roommate at the Snow Wood Boarding House in Winters, is homosexual:
"Well, for example, there's a gay person in MOTHER 2. A really passionate friend who lives in an England-like place. I designed him to be a gay child. In a normal, real-life society, there are gay children, and I have many gay friends as well. So I thought it would be nice to add one in the game, too."
Upon release, many streamers criticized the game for giving the option for the player to choose their pronouns in the creation menu. Similarly, a player on Twitter criticized the game for allowing a male NPC, Sam Coe, to flirt with a male player character. In response, Elias Toufexis, the voice actor for Coe, clarified that the character was played as bisexual.
Princess Remedy and Frallan, who are ex-girlfriends from their original game Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt, have a unique romantic team victory pose and can do a special healing kiss when one grabs the other and presses taunt. This will not work with Frallan's Nuna costume and Remedy's Princess Amelia costume.
Scott Cawthon retired from game development in 2021 after it was discovered that he had donated thousands of dollars to anti-LGBTQ+ Republican political candidates. Cawthon posted a message to his fans on his website stating:
Ash is a mini boss that can only be encountered in Japanese versions of the game. He is a homosexual who is very stereotypical in both appearance and behavior. He prances around the stage, lets out a feminine laugh when he grabs the player and uses the female voice cry when defeated in battle. He can be unlocked as a playable character by pressing and holding the B button when he is defeated. He is the strongest out of all the characters and attacks fast. 
As a backer reward for the game's Kickstarter, backers had the option to provide a message to appear in-game on a memorial stone. One of the in-game memorial stones in the final version of the game had its message later changed due to it being considered by many as a hateful, transphobic joke.
