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In 2009, Justin McElroy, reviews editor for the now-defunct gaming blog Joystiq, contacted Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford asking the story of how Gearbox got its name for a puff piece series about different companies' names. Pitchford proceeded to tell an extraordinary story about how he and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell mistakenly boarded a cruising river boat together in New Orleans instead of a crossing ferry, and ended up getting into a high stakes Texas Hold 'Em poker game.

The stakes in particular were over the name "Gearbox", which he claimed came about from him and Newell discussing potential names for their up-and-coming game studios, and "realizing that something cool for a video game studio would have something to do with engines and machinery." Pitchford thought that the name was "sticky and simple and gears are cool things that have both an art and a precision to them and it's generally a nice, short but really cool word." Whoever knocked the other player out of the game or ended up with the biggest stack would win the Gearbox name. The stakes were higher for Pitchford, because according to him the other co-founders would have ditched him and shuttered the game studio entirely if he lost.

After four or five hours of play, Pitchford, being an avid poker player while Newell was not, found the right opportunity to turn the odds in his favor, leading to him winning the match, and Gabe Newell had to settle with Valve. Pitchford assured McElroy there were no hard feelings between the two as Gearbox would later work with them on several Half-Life spin-off titles, and the article was published and further corroborated by fellow outlet Kotaku.

However, later that day, McElroy was contacted by a spokesperson from Valve, who informed him that Newell and Pitchford first met after Valve shipped the first Half-Life game, making the story impossible. Upon this discovery, both outlets later contacted Gearbox, and a spokesperson confirmed to them that the story was fake. Pitchford then explained to a reporter at Kotaku that the intent of his "Tall Tale" was to entertain and not to mislead, and promoted the original articles on his Twitter account as such.

It's currently unknown how Gearbox actually got its name, or if the inspiration for the name featured in the story is true while the poker game surrounding it is fabricated.

In a Japan-exclusive guidebook published by Nintendo and Ape Inc., there is artwork depicting Link praying before a Crucifix, contrasting the game's origin story of the three Golden Goddesses, but also fitting with the Japanese version of the game calling the Sanctuary a Church. The Church's name was changed to the Sanctuary outside of Japan, presumably due to Nintendo's international policy on religious imagery, although this artwork and the rest featured in this guidebook were never republished internationally as other publishers released their own guides instead.

In a 1986 interview published in the out-of-print book "Programmers at Work" by Susan M. Lammers, series creator Toru Iwatami explained the kind of character he intended Pac-Man to be:

In a 2020 interview with IGN, series creator Toru Iwatani revealed that the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, were inspired by the Japanese manga "Little Ghost Q-Taro" and the American cartoon character "Casper the Friendly Ghost". More interestingly, he revealed that the ghosts were conceived to always be ghosts, meaning that they never died to become ghosts, and are more akin to Yōkai in Japanese culture as "ethereal beings and concepts that reside among nature that were simply 'there' from the very beginning."

Through the use of Action Replay codes, it's possible to die on the Level Select map. When this happens, Pac-Man will respawn on the game's title screen; moving around will reveal a stool and fishing rod off-screen, suggesting that he was originally planned to fish on the title screen instead of just standing and playing idle animations.

In the spawn area of the Zombies map "Der Eisendrache", there is a complicated Easter egg first discovered in 2019 that can be executed. When you spawn in, do not open any doors and allow the Zombies to break down the five barriers in the spawn area and enter the map. Once most or all of the Zombies are in the map, kill them for points. This should be done by the start of Round 2 and it is important to leave one or two Zombies alive and roaming the map so that you do not progress to Round 3. Once Round 2 starts, you need to go to every barrier and attach exactly two boards to each one, then go purchase the RK5 pistol. Next, you need to go back to every barrier and add two more boards to each for a total of four boards on each barrier, then go purchase the Shieva assault rifle, replacing the RK5. After that, you need to go back to every barrier one more time to attach one more board to each for a total of five boards on each barrier, then go and purchase the RK5 again replacing the Shieva. From the moment you purchase the RK5 again, you need to race to the fenced-off door to the east of where you first spawned in in under five seconds. If you get there in time, you can walk out onto the deck and find a heart-shaped arch spinning on a platform in mid-air. Inside that arch is a picture of developer Drew Marlowe and his family.

The Bearded Amprat is the only enemy in the series to have a visible anus.

In a 1994 interview with the game's director Takashi Tokita published in Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he was asked what made him want to make the game? He responded that the idea for the World Select featuring the game's several smaller worlds was the biggest motivator for him, as Square had made many different games with grand stories, like the Final Fantasy and Hanjuku Hero series, that take dozens of hours to complete. Tokita figured that in that sense, they were all the same, so he thought that if he could change that formula, it could breathe some fresh air into the team's development process and possibly enlarge the scope of the gameplay.

Pitting the Wrexham AFC against either the Liverpool or Stockport football clubs will trigger hidden commentary between actors Ryan Reynolds and Robb McElhenney, who in November 2020, bought the Wrexham football club for £2m ($2.5M) due to British comedian and writer Humphrey Ker explaining to the BBC how his lunch habits led to McElhenney having an interest in the sport:

At the Toad Town train station, there is a blue Toad who tells Mario that after he defeats Bowser and restores peace to the Mushroom Kingdom, he has something else he wants to tell him. However, no such event can be triggered as it's impossible to access the train station after defeating Bowser, making the line pointless as you cannot talk to him again. It's possible that this was meant to be part of content found in the post-game, but was cut during development.

Due to South Korea banning casino gambling in video games, two of the minigames in "Bowser's Pinball Machine" were reworked. The Jackpot and Roulette minigames were changed to UFO and Whac-A-Mole minigames respectively.

The End Poem that is displayed when entering the Exit Portal after defeating the Ender Dragon was written by Julian Gough, the singer and lyricist for the Irish alternative rock band Toasted Heretic, at the invitation of creator Markus Persson. In 2022, 11 years after the game's official release, Gough revealed that he had never formally signed a contract with Microsoft or Mojang when he wrote the poem, allowing him to retain copyright over it. In the same announcement, he released the poem into the public domain, encouraging fans to make their own derivative works based on it.

In the Seraphic Gate, there is an optional boss fight with Spoiler:Brahms featuring a fourth-wall breaking message from an unknown developer on the game before the fight when talking to him:

In the Japanese release, the player is able to use Dive on the deep water tiles in Team Aqua's hideout due to a programming oversight. Because these tiles were never intended to lead anywhere, diving in them simply teleports the player back to Petalburg City, the lowest-indexed map location in the game. In the international release, this error is fixed by disallowing the player from using Dive in the hideout.

This glitch is not present in Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire, because in those games, the entrance to the hideout is no longer accessible after obtaining the Mind Badge, which is required to use Dive in the overworld.

In 2021, the game's debug menu was discovered on a demo disc and was later executed in the retail version through the creation of a GameShark code. The menu contains four options featuring the surnames of four of the game's programmers (most likely to test out certain aspects of the game each one focused on more easily): Satoshi Kishiwada, Yasuhiro Yamamoto, Tamotsu Goto, and Naoto Uenaka.

Additionally, by selecting "Area 7 Action" and "Scene 06 - Last-Scene", you can access a beta version of the crumbling Soda Fountain, the final area of the game Spoiler:where Musashi battles against Dark Lumina, lacking textures and featuring an overhead camera compared to the sidescrolling camera in the final game.

At the Fluffy Puffy Breadshop in Grillin' Village, there is a glitch that can be performed outside the bakery right before it closes. It requires Musashi to fall asleep on a very specific part of the wooden floorboards leading inside, and if performed correctly, the shop's door as it closes for the night will push him inside. When inside, talking to Jam at the counter will reveal that the bakery is currently having a sale. However, this can be done on any day of the week, making this glitch a possible exploit to buy cheaper goods from the Breadshop.

The Japanese FM Towns release of Monkey Island 2 is completely missing the so-called "cliffside puzzle" (which involves stealing a fish from a chef, trading the fish to a fisherman for a rod, and casting your line over a cliff, so a seagull appears and snatches the piece of the treasure map away).

At first, it was speculated this was either a bug (with one person going so far as to officially submit it as a bug for the ScummVM emulator in 2006) or censorship. But looking at the game's source code, the change was seemingly intentional, with additional lines of code being added to tell the program to skip the correct sequence of events.

When asked about this, even former developers and play testers couldn't explain or remember why. Recent consensus is that this was most probably because of a technical issue involving vertical scrolling (where if the screen moved up and down you couldn't have objects or animations on the screen at the same time or the game's script would break - and the cliffside "room" is the only room in the game to feature vertical scrolling).

The game's first PlayStation release came bundled with a bonus disc containing "Making of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete", a 30 minute documentary on the development and localization of the game. At any time the documentary is playing, pressing Up/Down/Left/Right/Triangle/Start will trigger a secret minigame produced by Timon Marmex Trzepacz from the game's North American publisher Working Designs. The game, titled "Lords of Lunar: Silver Star Story", is a clone of the 1980 Atari arcade game Warlords that can be played with up to 8 players through two PlayStation Multitaps.

The opening battle against the Poochyena attacking Professor Birch and the player's first Pokémon cannot be lost and the Poochyena cannot win. The Poochyena is programmed to flee the battle if the player somehow manages to get their Starter to red health.

Although naturally each and every Special Move in the series mirrors itself and its hitboxes, an odd exception is made for Cloud's Cross Slash. When Cloud does the move, he draws the Kanji "凶" ("Kyo"), which means misfortune, bad luck, evil, and other negative things, and because this is a kanji it must be written a certain way regardless of orientation. It cannot simply be flipped like other moves, meaning that the move's hitboxes change depending on where Cloud is facing. From the right side and facing left, Cross Slash will actually hit lower, making it better at hitting smaller characters. However, from the left side facing right, Cross Slash will hit higher up, making it a better anti-air attack. This also occurs with the Limit Break version of the move. These differences makes Cloud mirror matches uniquely imbalanced and not as 50/50 as they would be for other fighters.