The Japanese manual for Sonic & Knuckles alludes to the game's Special Stages in its story section, which includes a moment where Sonic gets sucked through a Super Ring and arrives at the Master Emerald Alter, where the player accesses the Special Stages in the game. However, writer Ian Flynn would later claim the Special Stages seen throughout the series are not considered canon, instead only existing as a gameplay mechanic.

According to former Mojang business and production director Daniel Kaplan, he came up with the original name for the mobile version of Minecraft, "Minecraft: Pocket Edition", a nod to the Game Boy Pocket, because he was a Nintendo fan.

To promote Pokémon Black and White, the Pokémon Company partnered with alternative rock band The Presidents of the United States of America to create a song titled "Can't Stop (Catchin' 'Em All)". The song mentions a multitude of Unova Pokémon alongside brief descriptors of their behavior or appearance. A music video was also created that was shared online and on a promotional DVD given out through Nintendo Power magazine. In addition to some of their original songs, the band performed "Can't Stop (Catchin' 'Em All)" live at the Pokémon Black and White launch party on March 5, 2011 at the Nintendo World store in New York City.

The Burning Axe of Sankis is a Legendary Axe that will drop at character level 70. The flavor text for the axe reads:


This is a reference to a forum user named Sankis and his role in "Boatmurdered", a Something Awful community playthrough of the game Dwarf Fortress between 2006 and 2007. Triggering a chain of events that would end the playthrough, a defensive pool of lava outside the fortress set a wooden catapult on fire and destroyed an inscription that the dwarf and former ruler Sankis made for a statue. The latter event sent him into a fit of rage that was worsened by the smoke from the burning catapult flooding into the fortress, causing him to catch fire and become violent, beating a cow and two fellow dwarves until he died.

In ARMS' reveal trailer, the Sparky's lightning bolt graphic is absent during the live-action introduction. Despite this, the graphic can be seen on the gloves during the gameplay portion of the trailer.

According to design director JB Long, the penultimate level Devilled Gardens has two different methods of acquiring Spoiler:Paul due to an oversight. The intended method requires the player to reach the top of the tower where the boombox is, then backtrack to the area where the Spoiler:Mirror spawns in, as signified by the laughter that plays upon reaching the top. However, once the Spoiler:Mirror spawns in, it stays there; because of this, if the player skips the boombox and replays the section normally, they can encounter the Spoiler:Mirror without needing to backtrack. Although the oversight had been found in testing, Long chose to keep it in, because he "wanted this Spoiler:Paul to be very obtuse and basically either route offers up the same "wait what why" feeling lol."

The Hareraiser duology was created by Dugald Thompson and his business partner John Guard after Thompson (under the pseudonym Ken Thomas) won a 1982 armchair treasure hunt revolving around the Kit Williams book Masquerade. Williams had buried a golden hare pendant in a secret location in the United Kingdom (Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire, England), and hid clues throughout the book's elaborate illustrations. Thompson claimed the Hareraiser games served as an additional two-part armchair treasure hunt; the first person to buy and solve the clues in both games would win the Masquerade pendant on the box art as the grand prize.

However, in 1988, it was discovered that Thompson and Guard had cheated in the Masquerade hunt by using Guard's personal connections to approximate the pendant's location, and then stole a sketch of the area from Mike Barker and John Rousseau, two physics teachers who had solved Masquerade's clues, but failed to find the treasure after searching with metal detectors. Thompson then mailed the sketch to Williams, who was unaware of how it was acquired. Williams was shocked by the revelation, feeling that it tarnished Masquerade's reputation and felt "a deep sense of responsibility" to everyone who was genuinely looking for it, driving him into a reclusive retirement. The Hareraiser games were widely re-evaluated as a scam, with its clues being meaningless so that Thompson would never have to give away the pendant, but in an ironic twist, Thompson was forced to auction it off for £31,900 to recoup his losses when the Hareraiser games flopped. Williams was later reunited with the pendant during a 2009 BBC Four documentary.

During the development of Zoo Tycoon, Microsoft held an online promotional competition called the "Beast in Show", where fans could vote for a real-life zoo animal to be included in the game. Out of the ten nominees, a polar bear named Magnet won the competition and was included as a downloadable animal. Magnet was born in 1988 and lived most of his life at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. He received his name based on the way he stuck to his mother's side and became highly popular with guests, often being seen playing with his favorite red ball.

In-game, Magnet essentially functions just like the regular polar bear, with the primary differences being a slightly different model with a cream-colored coat and having an additional distinct animation where he plays with his red ball. Oddly, despite being a real-life animal, Magnet is still treated as a standard, adoptable animal in-game, which means that it is possible to adopt multiple Magnets that can also be female. Magnet would later pass away on April 28, 2015 at age 26, after suffering from complications from kidney and liver disease.

According to game designer Atsushi Tomita, the team chose Morrigan as the representative for the Darkstalkers series, because of her popularity and a desire to add more female characters to the game. The team gave her new moves that matched her nature as a succubus, because they felt that her moveset in her home series had nothing succubus-related due to her originally being designed as a female vampire.

The game's main characters, Mio and Zoe, are named after game director Josef Fares' two daughters, who were both in the audience for the game's official reveal at The Game Awards 2024.

Troy Baker and Colleen O'Shaughnessey (credited as Maggie O'Connor) are both listed in the game's credits for voicing the referees Espio and Charmy respectively, despite them not having any voice lines in the game itself.

Pre-release interest in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl managed to stretch out into the Japanese Super Smash Bros. fandom, despite Nickelodeon series not being particularly popular in Japan and the channel being taken off the air in 2009. The initial popularity of the game would lead to an official Japanese release (with only in-game text being translated to Japanese) after work on the DLC was finished in 2022, something that no other Nickelodeon game by GameMill Entertainment has had, including the game's sequel. While the game's popularity would die down like it did elsewhere, steep sales and cheap discount prices would result in a regional competitive scene for the game reappearing and frequent appearances on the Nintendo Switch's sales charts. This would lead to it peaking at number #6 on Japan's Switch download charts for the entire year of 2024, beating out all of Nintendo's first-party titles on the hardware, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Most of the NES and SNES cartridges in Mickeyjunk Mountain are based on games released in a cartridge format. However, there is one exception: Minnie's Dinner Party, an online Flash game released in 2008. This was removed in Epic Mickey: Rebrushed.

Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up and the Wallace & Gromit DLC for PowerWash Simulator both feature prominent appearances of the robot character LAD (Labour Assisting Device). LAD did not appear in any of the original Wallace & Gromit films, and first made his debut in the lesser-known 2010 educational spin-off series Wallace & Gromit: World of Invention.

During the Dragon Funk stage in Scratchin' Melodii, there is a sequence where Melodii and Pitaya battle in a manner resembling fighting games. These reference a variety of attacks from different video games and media properties that creator LJ Lephem Star is a fan of, including Pitaya frequently spinning into a ball like Sonic The Hedgehog, both Pitaya and Melodii briefly appearing in torn manga panels drawn in the art style of Dragon Ball and performing Kamehamehas, and several references to moves from Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.

While it has not been confirmed by the developers, Satan's depiction in Antonblast as a fat, flamboyant character with an operatic voice and large buttocks has been theorized by some fans to have been inspired by the Red Guy, a portrayal of the same Biblical demon in the 1997 Cartoon Network series Cow & Chicken. Supporting this, Satan refers to Anton in the game's opening cutscene as a "Red Guy", which was Anton's original name prior to the development of Antonball. When informed of these similarities on YouTube, the Red Guy's original voice actor Charlie Adler gave two responses in the form of a flustered emoji and a thumbs-up emoji.

The character of Dropsy, a merciful and viceless clown with a seemingly terrifying appearance, was originally envisioned as a villain in a circus level for an unmade "zombie platformer" game. Creator Jay Tholen would eventually use the character in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" forum game on the Something Awful forums in 2008, where he would build a story out of responses to his art, leading to Dropsy's starring role in a point-and-click game, which began development in 2011. Tholen stated that he was not bothered by initial reactions to the grotesque character design and assumptions that the game was a "stoner-horror-comedy", stating that he liked "hiding a powerfully loving, gentle being inside an unattractive wrapper" and that it mirrored how Dropsy is perceived by other characters in-game. However, he hoped this would not "keep people away from a game that they may actually enjoy."

The game was created in fourteen days while developer Cyberwave was on a holiday break. It was initially based on the voxel terrain mechanics seen in another game made by Cyberwave, Solarpunk, but this was soon discarded and replaced with different mechanics inspired by the 2004 browser game Motherload, with digging mechanics and randomly spawning ores being added afterwards.

In 2008, the game's publisher D3Publisher and game news outlet IGN held an invitation-only competition to find who could create the best level. The competition was held in conjunction with SMU Guildhall, a game development graduate program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The prize was a $10,000 scholarship awarded on behalf of the winner to a graduate student in the program for tuition assistance. Designers from developers like Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and Arkane Studios among six other entrants participated in the competition and created custom levels that fans could download, play and vote for. The winner was Shane Hensley, the studio head of Superstition Studios, for his level "Pinball Wizard".