In 2017, in celebration of Dragon Quest's 30th anniversary, a statue was erected in Sumoto on Awaji Island in Japan. Awaji Island is the birthplace of the series creator, Yuji Horii. According to Horii, each part of the statue is meant to represent something: the Slime for luck, the shield for protection from calamity, and the sword for to cut down evil fate.

The background of Green Hill Zone Act 2 was inspired by an early prototype version of Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog.

The first batch of Nintendo Switch consoles suffered an issue where the left Joy-Con would frequently desync as the result of a manufacturing error. This could be remedied by placing a small square of conductive foam atop the Joy-Con's antenna traces, which would significantly reduce interference. Nintendo themselves would amend the desyncing issue in later batches of the Switch.

The main framework of the game is themed around "uneasy children without parents" represented as "machine life-forms that have lost their creator" and "androids that have lost the humankind they were supposed to protect."

Unused story mode rankings exist in the game's data for ranks D, E and F. In the final game, the lowest anyone can get in Story Mode is C.

Segata Sanshiro, a character that was created as part of an advertising campaign for the Sega Saturn, appears as an assist character in this game. He makes multiple references to the console, as well as a reference to one of his advertisements when partnered with Sakura and Gemini. He even references the different difficulty levels of the Fire Emblem series when partnered with Chrom and Lucina.

The vocals of some of the songs feature Vocaloids.

Hatsune Miku - "COSMO" and "It's A Wonderful World"
Megurine Luka - "Code 03", "Dragon Warrior", "Endless Journey", "Her Sword" and "LNS OP"
GUMI - "COMA" (composed by Vocaloid producer, ensou)

The game was written by Yoko, Haha Kikuchi and Yoshiho Akabane. The team defined the game's central theme as "agaku", a Japanese word meaning to struggle out of a bad situation. Another theme for the game was "love", which was unusual given that all the central cast were robots, which were not normally associated with emotions.

According to Yoko, while the scenario of Nier was "wet" in its emotional content, for Nier: Automata he aimed for a "dry" narrative concerning the world's inherent unfairness and the prejudices the characters are forced to confront.

The Ninja Hurk poster in Lilac's Treehouse was put in as nod to the Marvel character The Incredible Hulk, who Lilac's voice actress Dawn M. Bennet is a huge fan of.

The chanting heard in Act 1 of Relic Maze was done by Lilac's voice actress, Dawn M. Bennet.

The Japanese version states that the game takes place in the year 1999 on an altered earth that is stuck in a mythological medieval fantasy state. The western translation however, states that the game takes place in 13XX.

Originally, collecting 100 rings would not grant Sonic an extra life in the Wii U version, this was changed in Version 3.0.0

When Orbot installs a new voice chip for Cubot, he says "The think bone's connected to the talk bone, the talk bone's connected to the mouth bone...". This is a reference to Dem Bones, a traditional song written by James Weldon Johnson.

In the post credits cutscene, Cubot says "What's up with those things anyway?", whereas the subtitles say, "What's up with those guys anyway?"

After failing an item minigame in the Japanese version, the announcer will say "Miss". But in the international versions the announcer says "Game Over". The clip itself can still be heard in the voice test option in the Sound Room.

When the player meets an Eskimo in an empty room, he will say "I’m Eskimo. There’s nothing here" in the English version, while on the original Japanese release he will say "I am an Eskimo. You didn’t call for me? Oops. My mistake". This is a reference to a comedy gag created by Japanese comedian Hitoshi Ueki during a broadcast of the comedy show Shabondama Holiday.

The game has 32 additional endings exclusive to the Japanese version. No official explanation has been given for the removal of these extra endings, but considering that they rely heavily on unusual speech patterns and pop culture references from the 60's and 70's, as well as the poor quality of the opening's translation (the source of the famous "all your base are belong to us" Internet meme), it's fair to assume that the localization team didn't translate the endings because it was possibly beyond their ability.

The 2K Blog released a series called "Beyond the Sea", which in a 27th of July post explained that another Big Daddy was considered for the game. Dubbed the "Slug Bug", this Big Daddy had a amorphous slug-like parasite on its shoulders. Ultimately this design was scrapped and didn't go beyond the concept art stage.

The 2nd Tsuchikage, Third Raikage, 2nd Mizukage & Fourth Kazekage were all planned as playable characters, but were excluded from the roster in the finished game. They are all still accessible through cheat devices, but were never completely finished.

The 3DS is the reason why almost every girl in the Senran Kagura series has large breasts. When series producer Kenichiro Takagi started to think of what people wanted to see in 3D the most, he thought of breasts in 30 seconds.