The character design of Purlo, who runs the STAR game in the thoroughfare of Castletown, was directly based on Tingle. According to Eiji Aonuma, he is what Tingle would look like if he was made with a realistic design.
Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights features many similarities to the Professor Layton franchise by Level-5, namely in regards to the aesthetics and story. Noriaki Okamura, the game's designer, admitted that he was inspired by the series when making the game.
While Mario's mustache, red shirt and blue overalls were described by Miyamoto as the result of technical limitations, there's a possibility that they were also inspired by an issue of the Japanese men's fashion magazine Popeye, named after the fictional character that Mario was already partly inspired by. The March 1980 issue of Popeye magazine features cover art of a man with a mustache wearing a red shirt with blue overalls.
The Ziggy enemies appear to be modeled after Ziggy Stardust, a stage persona created and portrayed by English rock musician David Bowie from 1972 to 1973. In addition to the identical names, the Garden Ziggy variety features brightly colored lightning bolts painted across each eye and a large yellow mohawk, with the results resembling the cover photo for Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane (which depicts Bowie with a red lightning bolt on one eye and a large red mullet).
Upon its reveal, Pepper Grinder was compared by some gaming outlets to Game Freak's Drill Dozer, owing to a shared theme of drilling, some similar gameplay mechanics, and a ponytailed main character design very loosely resembling Drill Dozer's Jill. The game's solo developer Riv Hester did say that Drill Dozer was an influence on the game, but it was not intended as an outright spiritual successor, as he did not play it until after work had begun on Pepper Grinder.
BoKe Travelog was a PC browser game released exclusively in China that ran from 2011 to 2013 before shutting down. The game was very clearly inspired by Poptropica, though notably included a background story for the game's events, unlike Poptropica. Set in an alternate timeline where climate change forced humans to move from land to sea due to rising water levels, it follows a group of people known as "BoKe" as they confront the evil Dr. Hedra, who wishes to take over the world and has begun attacking the various islands left from the climate change to do so. The game also featured various visual similarities to Poptropica, namely with its map layout and the plots of each island, though it did use its own spin on the character designs.
BoKe Travelog had eight islands, each one of which was based on an island seen in Poptropica. The islands were:
• "Potato Island", based on "24 Carrot Island". • "Octopus Island", based on "Shark Tooth Island". • "BoKe Island", based on "Early Poptropica Island". • "Time Tangled Island", based on the island of the same name. • "Haunted House Island", based on the mini-quest of the same name. • "Diamond Island", based on "Counterfeit Island". • "Superman Island", based on "Super Power Island". • "Battle Island", which had various aspects of Poptropica's multiplayer interactions, such as the Paint war, Hoops, and Pathwise minigames.
Also like Poptropica, a book series based on BoKe Travelog (called "Mystery Island Adventures") was released, featuring stories unrelated to the in-game islands. The game was ultimately shutdown on December 22nd, 2013 according to a news post on the site: while the post does not state why it was shutdown, it emphasized that it was a difficult decision to end the game.
Alongside being in the same key, Ryu Hayabusa's theme music "The shooted" and Ein's theme "Vigaku" both feature a recurring guitar solo. While "Vigaku" plays a few different arrangements of its solo throughout the song, the solo as heard in "The shooted" is played the same way throughout the majority of the song except for the very end, where a different take on it is played. When comparing the primary solos in both "Vigaku" and "The shooted", while both solos play through a similar scale of notes, there are some individual notes in each solo that are different to distinguish them from each other rather than fully recycling them. In the game's soundtrack released on CD, "The shooted" is placed ahead of "Vigaku", suggesting that the solo heard in Ein's theme is meant to be an interpolation of the solo in Ryu's theme. As such, it appears the entire point of these solos being so similar is to highlight the connection between Ein and Ryu as friends that the amnesiac Ein forgot in the game's storyline. The solo that is repeated in the same way in "The shooted" seems to represent who Ryu is, while the different interpolated versions of the solo in "Vigaku" may represent Ein trying to remember his past or Ryu's role in doing so. In Ryu's Story Mode, he knocks Ein out of the tournament, causing him to regain some of his memories including who Ryu is, and he eventually regains the rest of his memories after battling Kasumi at Ryu's request.
The character design of Tiki appears to be based on Tinker Bell from Disney's 1953 animated film adaptation of the J.M. Barrie stage play "Peter Pan". Aside from general similarities like them both having blonde hair in a bun, an hourglass figure and a green strapless dress with triangles cut out across the hemline, the strongest similarity connecting them is in the form of a logo animation that appears when starting up the game and in several trailers, showing Tiki swiping fairy dust over the Atlus logo to reveal it. This appears to be a reference to a recurring transitional animation commonly used by Disney where Tinker Bell sprinkles or shoots pixie dust at something (oftentimes the Disney logo) to enhance it or cut to something else.
Iron Lung received a notable surge in popularity in June 2023 following the disappearance and implosion of the Titan submersible with five people on-board. Some have compared certain aspects of the game to the circumstances of those on-board the Titan, namely the inability to open the submersible from the inside. The game's creator, David Szymanski, expressed discomfort over this through a series of tweets, the first of which included a weekly sales chart from Steam with the words "This feels so wrong." He then remarked:
"I definitely see the dark humor in this whole Titanic sub thing, it's just... like, I made Iron Lung the most nightmarish thing I could think of, and knowing real people are in that situation right now is pretty horrific, even if it was their own bad decisions. Like all the jokes I've been seeing are hilarious but also good lord nobody should have to die like that."
In 2021, a 15-second clip of early animation tests for the game dating back to 2006-2007 was discovered on the website of animator Michael Daubert, who worked on animations for an early iteration of the game, but went uncredited in the final release as everything in the test footage was scrapped. These tests showcase a completely different art style from the final game and unused gameplay elements, with Mickey shooting ink out of his body to quickly surf around, and jumping and slamming the ground to summon a tidal wave of ink to attack large Blotling enemies. This tidal wave attack also causes Mickey to lose all of his colors, turn white and become exhausted, suggesting that the known early idea of ink/paint/thinner usage changing his physical appearance was going to involve a stamina meter tied to his attacks. Mickey's early design was more stylized compared to his traditional appearance in the final game, featuring a prominently tall forehead, a lanky, stretched body, no visible mouth, and crooked oval ears. This early design would live on through an emblem used in promotional materials and as a recurring icon throughout the final game, with the inky black outline of the early design's head forming an "M".
The entrance to the final boss in Yo! Noid 2, where the player must hurl a dice into a TV screen showing Mike Hatsune's head, is assumed by many players to be a reference to another 1980s commercial, the "1984" commercial for Macintosh computers aired in 1983 and during Super Bowl XVIII in 1984, where a woman throws a sledgehammer into a TV screen showing the face of a Big Brother figure. Despite "literally everyone" he has seen play the game making the comparison, Aska, who designed this portion of the stage, said this was unintentional and he simply wanted something fragile to make it clear that the dice could be hurled, with a cracked TV screen working as the stage already had a lot of TV screens.
During the dialogue between Little John and Baloo as part of their Friendship Campaign "Bear Country", they both point out how they each look and sound similar to the other. This is a reference to how they were both voiced by Phil Harris in their respective films, as well as the fact that some of Little John's animations in "Robin Hood" were copied from Baloo's animations in "The Jungle Book".
Both Mach Rider's identity and gender are ambiguous. They are portrayed with a muscular build, and the NES and Famicom versions' manuals never use any gendered pronouns to refer to them. The arcade port Vs. Mach Rider's stage clear screens slowly introduce piece-by-piece an image of a skimpily-dressed woman (bearing similarities to Jane Fonda's appearance in the 1968 film Barbarella) holding a dagger, but it is never specified if this character is Mach Rider, or one of the other wasteland survivors. However, Mach Rider's trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Melee years later lists them as a male character with he/him pronouns. Even later on, Captain Rainbow, a game centered around obscure and neglected Nintendo heroes, has an unused model for Mach Rider that, while not having visible breasts due to wearing armor, portrays them with a feminine skinny waist.
Contrary to popular belief, the Pokémon franchise was not the main inspiration for Palworld. According to Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe, the game was actually based on Ark: Survival Evolved, which also had monster companions in the form of dinosaurs. Similarly, the survival mechanics and in-game tasks were inspired by Rust, and the creature designs were inspired by the Dragon Quest series.
Some gameplay ideas used in Resident Evil - such as an action-puzzle-action-puzzle structure, and a restricted inventory system - were first explored in the very tonally opposite SNES cartoon adaptation Disney's Goof Troop, which was designed by Resident Evil's director Shinji Mikami. One rumor, originally claimed online in a Kotaku article by Tim Rogers, who claimed to have been informed of the connection by an unspecified "tech genius" friend, suggests that Resident Evil is built off of Goof Troop's source code.
In Final Egg, two large stasis tubes can be found. One holds Metal Sonic, while the other holds an unknown Sonic-based robot, later referred to as Mecha Sonic Mark III by Ian Flynn. This robot has no importance in the story, however, it seems to be based heavily on the design of Mechagodzilla from the "Godzilla" franchise's Shōwa era, due to many similar parts and possible textures from the robot. This also seems to be a reference to Mecha Sonic Mark I, also known as Silver Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, whose concept art also shows similarities to Mechagodzilla.
The character Veigar seems to be based on the Black Mages from the Final Fantasy series. This connection is further backed by one of Veigar's skins, called White Mage Veigar, which has the white and red coloring of the White Mages from the Final Fantasy series.
The character Cho'Gath seems to be based off the character the Violator from the American comic book franchise "Spawn". This could be a coincidence, but when the game first launched, the Void (where Cho'Gath is from) was framed more like the world's equivalent to Hell, and the Violator is a minion of Hell.
If the Song of Healing is reversed, it sounds similar to Saria's Song from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. While this may seem unintentional, the inputs to perform each song are also reversed from each other, with Saria's Song being played by pressing Down, Right and Left, while the Song of Healing is played with Left, Right and Down.
The bridge of Silver's theme in 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, "Dreams of an Absolution", has a similarity to the original Green Hill Zone theme from 1991's Sonic the Hedgehog. Songwriter Bentley Jones has said that this was not intentional, but in retrospect he did notice it.
While Mario's mustache, red shirt and blue overalls were described by Miyamoto as the result of technical limitations, there's a possibility that they were also inspired by an issue of the Japanese men's fashion magazine Popeye, named after the fictional character that Mario was already partly inspired by. The March 1980 issue of Popeye magazine features cover art of a man with a mustache wearing a red shirt with blue overalls.
The Ziggy enemies appear to be modeled after Ziggy Stardust, a stage persona created and portrayed by English rock musician David Bowie from 1972 to 1973. In addition to the identical names, the Garden Ziggy variety features brightly colored lightning bolts painted across each eye and a large yellow mohawk, with the results resembling the cover photo for Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane (which depicts Bowie with a red lightning bolt on one eye and a large red mullet).
Alongside being in the same key, Ryu Hayabusa's theme music "The shooted" and Ein's theme "Vigaku" both feature a recurring guitar solo. While "Vigaku" plays a few different arrangements of its solo throughout the song, the solo as heard in "The shooted" is played the same way throughout the majority of the song except for the very end, where a different take on it is played. When comparing the primary solos in both "Vigaku" and "The shooted", while both solos play through a similar scale of notes, there are some individual notes in each solo that are different to distinguish them from each other rather than fully recycling them. In the game's soundtrack released on CD, "The shooted" is placed ahead of "Vigaku", suggesting that the solo heard in Ein's theme is meant to be an interpolation of the solo in Ryu's theme. As such, it appears the entire point of these solos being so similar is to highlight the connection between Ein and Ryu as friends that the amnesiac Ein forgot in the game's storyline. The solo that is repeated in the same way in "The shooted" seems to represent who Ryu is, while the different interpolated versions of the solo in "Vigaku" may represent Ein trying to remember his past or Ryu's role in doing so. In Ryu's Story Mode, he knocks Ein out of the tournament, causing him to regain some of his memories including who Ryu is, and he eventually regains the rest of his memories after battling Kasumi at Ryu's request.
The character design of Tiki appears to be based on Tinker Bell from Disney's 1953 animated film adaptation of the J.M. Barrie stage play "Peter Pan". Aside from general similarities like them both having blonde hair in a bun, an hourglass figure and a green strapless dress with triangles cut out across the hemline, the strongest similarity connecting them is in the form of a logo animation that appears when starting up the game and in several trailers, showing Tiki swiping fairy dust over the Atlus logo to reveal it. This appears to be a reference to a recurring transitional animation commonly used by Disney where Tinker Bell sprinkles or shoots pixie dust at something (oftentimes the Disney logo) to enhance it or cut to something else.
In 2021, a 15-second clip of early animation tests for the game dating back to 2006-2007 was discovered on the website of animator Michael Daubert, who worked on animations for an early iteration of the game, but went uncredited in the final release as everything in the test footage was scrapped. These tests showcase a completely different art style from the final game and unused gameplay elements, with Mickey shooting ink out of his body to quickly surf around, and jumping and slamming the ground to summon a tidal wave of ink to attack large Blotling enemies. This tidal wave attack also causes Mickey to lose all of his colors, turn white and become exhausted, suggesting that the known early idea of ink/paint/thinner usage changing his physical appearance was going to involve a stamina meter tied to his attacks. Mickey's early design was more stylized compared to his traditional appearance in the final game, featuring a prominently tall forehead, a lanky, stretched body, no visible mouth, and crooked oval ears. This early design would live on through an emblem used in promotional materials and as a recurring icon throughout the final game, with the inky black outline of the early design's head forming an "M".
Both Mach Rider's identity and gender are ambiguous. They are portrayed with a muscular build, and the NES and Famicom versions' manuals never use any gendered pronouns to refer to them. The arcade port Vs. Mach Rider's stage clear screens slowly introduce piece-by-piece an image of a skimpily-dressed woman (bearing similarities to Jane Fonda's appearance in the 1968 film Barbarella) holding a dagger, but it is never specified if this character is Mach Rider, or one of the other wasteland survivors. However, Mach Rider's trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Melee years later lists them as a male character with he/him pronouns. Even later on, Captain Rainbow, a game centered around obscure and neglected Nintendo heroes, has an unused model for Mach Rider that, while not having visible breasts due to wearing armor, portrays them with a feminine skinny waist.
In Final Egg, two large stasis tubes can be found. One holds Metal Sonic, while the other holds an unknown Sonic-based robot, later referred to as Mecha Sonic Mark III by Ian Flynn. This robot has no importance in the story, however, it seems to be based heavily on the design of Mechagodzilla from the "Godzilla" franchise's Shōwa era, due to many similar parts and possible textures from the robot. This also seems to be a reference to Mecha Sonic Mark I, also known as Silver Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, whose concept art also shows similarities to Mechagodzilla.
The character Veigar seems to be based on the Black Mages from the Final Fantasy series. This connection is further backed by one of Veigar's skins, called White Mage Veigar, which has the white and red coloring of the White Mages from the Final Fantasy series.
The character Cho'Gath seems to be based off the character the Violator from the American comic book franchise "Spawn". This could be a coincidence, but when the game first launched, the Void (where Cho'Gath is from) was framed more like the world's equivalent to Hell, and the Violator is a minion of Hell.
