During the Warhammer 40,000 crossover promotion in 2020, the game's publisher Wargaming came under scrutiny after it was made aware by Twitter user Darren Bogus that they were sponsoring controversial YouTuber Arch Warhammer to help promote it. Arch Hammer is known within the Warhammer community for his misogynistic, racist, and hateful remarks. In a statement from Wargaming on July 3rd 2020, they issued an apology and claimed that sponsoring Arch was due to "human error" and had since cut ties with him. They even admitted that they were warned beforehand by Warhammer's owners Games Workshop not to collaborate with him but had failed to follow their request.

In an update for the game released in November, 2020, two in-game podcasts featuring journalist Helen Lewis were replaced by Ubisoft after receiving complaints from concerned gamers. This was due to Lewis being known in the public for having transphobic views and writing a number of articles criticizing legislation which were in support of making gender transitioning easier.

Ubisoft told in a statement that the speaker profiles for the scripted in-game podcasts were chosen by an external producer that worked with the development team. They promised that in future they'd perform background checks on any future partners.

The Game Boy Advance version was originally intended to be a straight port of the original Sims game for PC, however this wasn't possible as the simulation gameplay of the Sims didn't translate well to the hardware. Instead, inspired by the first console version of The Sims where players could follow their Sim's story in a more personal way, the game's producer J.C. Connors pitched to EA what would become Bustin' Out on the Game Boy Advance.

A Nintendo Switch version of the game was planned and even worked on, but, according to the Steep twitter account, this Switch release was canceled in order for the development team to focus on creating more content for the other console versions of the game.

The game has two different titles between the North American and UK versions. In the US the game is referred to as Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, whereas in the UK it's called 51 Worldwide Games. Another change is that Checkers and Toy Soccer are called Draughts and Toy Football respectively in the UK version.

In 51 Worldwide Classics, there's a Golf Game which has up to 9 Holes. When looking closer at all the holes, they seem to show a striking resemblance to the first 9 Holes from Golf in Wii Sports, and in turn many holes from the NES game Golf.

If you inspect the steering wheel of The Princess Peach cruise ship while Bobby the Bo-omb is next to Mario, he will remark how he once dreamed of being a captain or an admiral. This is a reference to Admiral Bobbery, Mario's Bo-omb partner from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

The Sombrero Guy from Autumn Mountain may have been planned to be a temporary party member just like Spike and Bone Goomba, but was left out. Altering the code through save file hacking makes the character fully functional and adds an otherwise unused graphic to the pause menu.

While the game was briefly released physically and through Nintendo's eShop on the Switch, the game was later made unavailable for purchase. The original rumor was that the game was using the Switch's hardware to mine cryptocurrency, but this was later discredited by the game's producers.
It was revealed that the reason for the game's quick removal from sale was due to a lawsuit between the game's publisher, Planet Entertainment, and IP owners Office Create. The lawsuit claims that Planet Entertainment's license to use the Cooking Mama IP expired the day before Cookstar's release.

In 2020, Konami in collaboration with prosthetics company Open Bionic released an official Metal Gear Solid "Venom Snake" Cover, based on Venom Snake's prosthetic arm in the game, for use with Open Bionics' "Hero Arm" prosthetic. The "Hero Arm" can be used by any upper arm amputee below the elbow. Daniel Melville from the town of Reading in the United Kingdom was the first to receive the design, an avid gamer and fan of the Metal Gear series.

Found on one of the movie theater marquees is the message "Maddie, Will You Marry Me?" This was an Easter egg included in the game at the request of fan Tyler Schultz who tweeted out to Insomniac asking them for help with his marriage proposal to his then girlfriend of 5 years Madison Gamble ("Maddie" for short) by including the message somewhere in-game. However, by the time the game had released, Gamble had broken up with him with Schultz explaining what had happened. Insomniac had offered to patch out the message but Schultz requested to keep it in as a reminder for "the almost mistake that I made." adding that his girlfriend told him "that the video game message wasn’t the way she wanted to be proposed to, either."

Gamble would later say in a statement that she never even liked video games and only tolerated them because of Schultz. She claimed that she broke up with Schultz due to his behavior and gave him a month to change but to no avail.

On the Trinity Church's clock, the hands are set at 1:21. This is a reference to 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie, when the clock tower's hands stopped spinning rapidly and position on 1:21, after Gwen Stacey died from a fall. This is also a reference to the story "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" appearing in the comic The Amazing Spider-Man issue #121.
Additionally, the colored green and purple windows matches the Green Goblin's costume.

A small inflatable dragon is hidden beneath the sand at Goo Lagoon.

According to the Capcom team in the game's official Japanese guide book, they were asked about the meaning behind the name of Ibis island, and they responded:

"The name of the ibis bird in Japanese is “toki” (a homonym for time), and we liked how that word resonated with the game’s themes of “extinction” and “time”… we could probably come up with a number of different explanations for the name, but basically we liked those associations. Also, considering the name of “Raccoon City” from Resident Evil, maybe there’s a lot of animal lovers on the team too."

The game's features were inspired by The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker as well as the Metroid and Dark Souls series.

The game was notable for being the first PlayStation game that required the use of Dual Analog type controllers. The left stick was used for precision movements while the right stick was used for various gadgets.

On a Billboard seen in Whistlestop Rails is an advertisement for Yo'ster Cookies Flowers, paying tribute to the game Yoshi's Cookie.

While he is normally an avid gamer, Masahiro Sakurai revealed in a Famitsu interview that he strictly refrains from sharing what he is currently playing on social media sites because of fears it would be misinterpreted by the Smash Bros. fandom (especially outside of Japan) as a confirmation of a new fighter for the series. He also states that the issue has gotten so bad that he frequently declines appearances on TV shows that deal with a specific game for the same reason.

If a character has been inflicted with confusion, there is a chance that they will not attack either the select enemy nor themselves; the game will instead claim that they are playing their Game Gear, and that Shining Force Gaiden is a great game.

When waking a villager with the "normal" personality type up from a nap, one of the phrases they can say is "this is not my beautiful house," referencing a line from the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime" released in 1980.