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In the Stillwater Loft where the Bachelor takes refuge during the course of the game, a map of the Town can be found. Almost everything on this map reflects the in-game map except for the Train Station, as the positions of the railways and station buildings are different. It's possible that this was an earlier version of the game's map used by the developers and was not updated as the layout of the Town changed.

Within the game's data is an unused Mashup for the song "Istanbul" by They Might Be Giants. While it is unknown why the Mashup was removed, it is theorized that it was because of the low amount of dancers within the Mashup, as only 6 dancers are used.

In the first, second and sixth SoulCalibur games, the classic numeric input for Ivy's notoriously difficult Summon Suffering throw is 376231A+G (Attack + Guard). This number combination actually holds significance as it appears to be a reference to the phone number for Namco's headquarters from before they were acquired by Bandai, being 03-3756-2311.

Allegedly, the developers used the phone number as the basis for the input as a reaction to an in-joke among Tekken and Soul Edge arcade communities, who would react to degenerate or weird stuff in the games with "gonna call Namco about this". The joke being: "If you can't do the throw, go call Namco about it." However, since this input was brought back in SoulCalibur VI long after the phone number stopped being used by Bandai Namco, this adds an additional (albeit probably unintended) layer to the joke: "Go call Namco about it. Oh wait, you can't."

In Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact there is an unused female voice that doesn't match either Elena or Ibuki. It's possible these voice lines belonged to an earlier version of Makoto, as she was originally meant to debut in this game but was moved to 3rd Strike due to time constrains.

In the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", the Japanese name for the character Spike (the foreman from Wrecking Crew) was changed in the corresponding dub. Although no specific reason was given as to why the change was made, it can be assumed it was done to avoid controversy as the character's original Japanese name is "Blackie", which is also a derogatory racial slur in English-speaking countries used to refer to dark-skinned people of African descent.

According to a later version of the "Project Wombat" developer bible for Crash Bandicoot (this version was given to a fan by the game's producer David Siller in 2015; an earlier version of it was officially published in 2018 in the book "The Crash Bandicoot Files: How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania"), Dr. Neo Cortex's backstory describes how he and Dr. Nitrus Brio when they were younger destroyed their high school by tampering with the physics department's test nuclear power plant. Afterwards, they traveled the world looking for a new home, but no matter where they went they were ridiculed and ostracized, and it is noted that soon after they left a location, that place was then met with "violent explosions and catastrophes". This culminates in one last account where the pair left the city of Chernobyl, drawing the attention of various international law organizations who connected the dots to their past incidents and soon added Cortex and Brio to the international most-wanted list. Feeling the heat, they finally settled down far away from humanity on the Australian island that he would soon name Cortex Island. This backstory heavily implies that Cortex and Brio were responsible for the real-life 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union.

The game's data contains labels for player 3 up to player 8. It is possible that a mode reminiscent of the Tournament Battle variant of Super Street Fighter II (a special version that networked 4 cabinets together to allow for 8 player elimination tournaments) was considered at one point in development before being scrapped.

In the campaign levels "Assault on the Control Room" and "343 Guilty Spark", a glitch can be performed where if you hold down the button to throw a grenade right as a cutscene showing you arriving on the Pelican starts, you will stay inside the Pelican despite map scripting normally forcing you to jump out. The ship will then fly off out-of-bounds. If this glitch is done in the former mission, you can exit at any time and explore, but if you do not jump out in time, the Pelican will fly through a kill barrier and kill you. If done in the latter mission, you can safely get out at any time and explore with no risk of death. If you travel northeast from where the Pelican landed, you may eventually encounter a lone Marine, Private Mendoza from later in the mission, standing around in the empty area doing nothing. In Anniversary Edition, this Marine is slightly hidden behind a tree (several were added to this area in this edition), but he can still be seen as the trees do not have collision-detection, allowing you to walk through them. While it may seem that him standing around doing nothing is an Easter egg, his presence here is actually just a pre-determined location for his model to spawn in at before he is needed later in the level so there are no memory allocation spikes that would occur if his model was just loaded in and destroyed from the level. This is part of a common game programming pattern called "object pooling" where multiple objects are pre-initialized to be in use, and once their usage is finished are set to no longer be in use. The position of Mendoza's model is changed to be used in a pair of cutscenes during the mission.

It's notable that Mendoza's model has very minimal AI unlike other NPCs in the stage. Normally, if you use mods to possess any other character in the level and play as them, the game will recognize that the functions assigned to that character are being overridden by the player character and the level will crash. If you use mods to possess Mendoza's model however, the game will not recognize his functions have changed and you can play through the entire mission as him. He has less functionality than Master Chief, he freezes when he is hit due to him playing an animation central to his original AI, and will die in a few hits, but with the God Mode invincibility cheat on he can complete the level. Although designer Jaime Griesemer mentioned that there was a playable Marine unit named "future soldier" in an earlier RTS prototype of Halo titled "Monkey Nuts"/"Blam!", it's unknown if Mendoza specifically was ever planned to be playable.

In Episode 7 of the TV series adaptation of The Last of Us, Ellie and Riley are seen playing the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II. At one point, Riley uses Mileena's fatality on Ellie's character Raiden, with Riley being heard pressing four buttons to initiate the killing blow. Following the episode's release, a number of fans online claimed this was inaccurate, as one can simply just press and hold the Heavy Kick command during the "Finish Him!" prompt to initiate her Fatality. However, other Mortal Kombat players argued that the show's display of gameplay could possibly be correct, pointing out that there is an alternate way to do the fatality. Specifically, Mileena can perform the Fatality by standing close to the opponent, holding the Block button and tapping the Heavy Kick command.

In Hyrule Town, three travelers in the lobby of the Happy Hearth Inn, named Din, Nayru, and Farore, are the same characters as the Oracles from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons. They are each looking for new homes to move into, which is the basis of an optional side quest that can be started after completing the Fortress of Winds. Gorman will now be renting out a house to tenants, and Link can convince one of the travelers to move in and obtain a Charm from that traveler. Afterwards, if Link fuses Kinstones with Bremor, Mutoh will become motivated to build a second house for Gorman to rent out. Link can then convince one of the remaining two travelers to move in, and will obtain their respective Charm. Each of the two houses built have a red roof and a blue roof, reflecting the color schemes of Din and Nayru respectively. However no third house can be built in the game, leaving the third Oracle homeless and stuck in the inn's lobby. In the European version of the game, Gorman makes a comment about wanting to build a house just south of the Royal Hyrule Library, on a plot of land occupied by cats, but he never does. This comment was removed from the North American release of the game which came out two months later.

Although the choice of who will remain homeless is entirely up to the player, the most probable canonical traveler to remain homeless is Farore. This is based on the lack of a green-roofed house to reflect her color scheme, her figurine description noting that she is bothered by people who "take advantage of her kind nature" (unlike Din and Nayru's descriptions which only point out where they are from and are looking for a new home), and by the development history of Oracle of Ages and Seasons, which was originally planned to be three games with each focusing on a different piece of the Triforce represented by a different Oracle, although only two games centering on Din and Nayru would ultimately be developed.

It's unknown if this incomplete side quest was an oversight, or if it was an intentional in-joke by Capcom, who developed both The Minish Cap and Oracle of Ages and Seasons.

On September 8, 2022, the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II died, starting a national mourning period of ten days. Rumors began to circulate that Nintendo had postponed a planned Nintendo Direct in response to the news. On September 12, the Direct was formally revealed to air worldwide the next day, although it was not livestreamed in the UK. Instead, it was published as an on-demand video on Nintendo UK's YouTube channel at a later time. This Direct featured the full title reveal for the then-untitled Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, revealing the game's subtitle to be "Tears of the Kingdom". This lead to even more speculation that the poor timing of this subtitle being the name of one of Nintendo's most anticipated games at the time coinciding with the Queen's death was what resulted in the Direct being delayed, rather than doing so purely out of respect. It wouldn't be until October 3 for Nintendo UK to begin their own promotion of the game, long after the mourning period ended.

A secret message can be found on the title screen of the NES version of the game with the use of two controllers. At the title screen, select "CONSTRUCTION" on the menu. Press Start on Controller 1 to enter the mode, then press it again to return back to the title screen. Repeat this seven times. After the seventh enter-and-exit, hold Down on Controller 1 and press A eight times on Controller 2. Then, hold Right on Controller 1 and press B twelve times on Controller 2. Finally, press Start on Controller 1 to activate the message featuring an animation of a green droplet falling.


The most likely person as to the identity of "Open-Reach" is Tomcat System's founder and programmer Ryoichi Ookubo because of the similarities between "Reach" and "Ryoichi". It should be also noted that his name is hidden twice in the game's ROM, and from one fact pointed out by a Russian LiveJournal user, that the name Open-Reach appears as "OPR" on the title screen of another game Tomcat System developed, the 1991 Famicom game Castle Quest published by Hudson Soft.

As for Noriko, her identity remains unknown. In the comments section of the sourced video, one commenter claimed that Noriko was Ookubo's daughter who was three years old at the time of the game's development, while the aforementioned LiveJournal user claimed that Noriko was a romantic partner, claiming her to be a former Namco graphic designer named Noriko Ikegawa (whose name would later appear in the credits for the Nintendo game Animal Crossing as a model designer), but there is no substantial evidence to support either of these claims.

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.

The Pokémon Toedscool and Toedscruel (divergent evolutions of Tentacool and Tentacruel) are called "OKAKINGU" and "OKAGYARADOSU" in the game's data respectively. This is interesting as these names seem to instead reference the names of Magikarp, called "Koiking" in Japan, and its evolution Gyarados respectively, meaning that the games were originally going to feature a pair of divergent evolutions for the Gyarados family instead of the Tentacruel family. However, there is no other data in the games but names for these scrapped Pokémon.

If you listen closely to the music being played in the Divine Beasts, you can make out Morse code for "S.O.S." This is very likely a distress call the Champions made when they were attacked by the Ganon Blights 100 years prior to the start of the game.

Although the Paldea region is based on Iberia, its starters may take inspiration from the modern culture and fauna of New World places that Spain and Portugal colonized and influenced. Specifically:

•The Skeledirge line may represent Mexico. Its name, secondary ghost-typing, and skeletal imagery evokes Mexico's Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a celebration of the former lives of deceased loved ones where, among other things, celebrators may dress in flamboyantly colored costumes and paint skulls on their faces. Crocalor also has a head growth resembling a Sombrero. This and the line's theme of singing to attack may also be a reference to Mariachi folk music. In a fauna sense, Crocodiles are also endemic to Mexico.

•Quaquaval's influence may derive from Brazil's culture. This can be seen in the name which has elements of Carnival, a Catholic festive season popularly celebrated in Brazil with lavish parades. In addition, it being part fighting-type and being dance-themed may be based on the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira, a fighting style that heavily resembles dancing in many of its moves. Quaquaval is also based upon the South American Crested Duck.

•Meowscarada, while possibly taking inspiration from Iberia itself with its resemblance to the Iberian Lynx, could also take cues from the Southern United States, specifically the State of Louisiana. This is because New Orleans, in Louisiana, is known for its Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) celebrations as part of Carnival, which iconically feature performers in elaborate masks, hence Meowscarada's name evoking the word Mascarade. Although Louisiana was influenced by France, it was also conquered by Spain later, along with a lot of the Southern U.S. It may also be based on Louisiana's prominent diasporic religion surrounding Voodoo. Meowscarada's species may furthermore be based off of the Bobcat/Red Lynx, a relative of the Iberian Lynx.

Tandemaus and Maushold may have dark origins as they may be based on the concept of a "Rat King", where several rats' tails are tied together or tangled by a person (although there have been reported cases of this happening without human interference). Explaining the German-sounding name of the Pokémon, the Rat King concept is named after the German term "Rattenkonig" which, in turn, is based on the villain of the same name from the short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" who is sometimes depicted as being comprised of several mice or rats.

Also the Pokémon themselves may be aesthetically based on toy-like dioramic objects called "Sylvian Families" in Japan (or "Calico Critters" in English countries) which are essentially dressed-up mouse dolls in different whimsical small settings that make the mice look more like a human family. These Sylvian Families started in Japan in the 1980s, which is when many of the veteran developers at Game Freak would have grown up.

Shujin's psychiatrist Dr. Takuto Maruki is introduced during the month of May and is always offering snacks to anyone that visits him. The protagonist can even obtain some healing items when he visits him during certain ranks. This is probably due to Spoiler:how he visited Rumi in the hospital empty-handed after her traumatic experience where a burglar broke into her home and murdered her parents. Maruki then tries to have snacks on hand to give to students in an effort to remember her.

In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, Roaring Moon's Violet Dex entry as well as the occult magazine's description of the Paradox Pokémon both imply that there is a deep connection between Roaring Moon and Mega Salamance. Considering that Roaring Moon, like all past Paradox Pokémon, is a prehistoric version of an existing Pokémon, in this case Salamance, this could mean that there is also a connection between Mega Evolution and Pokémon prehistory.

Foongus' Pokemon Scarlet PokéDex entry states that there is an in-universe theory that the "creator of the modern day Poké Ball" was inspired by the Pokémon's appearance when designing the device.