This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
5
▼
According to series director Katsuhiro Harada, he came up with the idea of including a character based off former United States president Donald Trump the same night he won the 2016 presidential election. He asked producer Michael Murray if there were no licensing fees for including characters based off the U.S. president, citing "a lot of buzz" around Trump as a reason for including him.
Both Harada and Murray then briefly discussed the character's fighting style and Rage Arts while in an Uber rental car in San Francisco the night of the election, until they eventually decided to scrap the idea entirely when their Uber driver became upset and started driving at speeds of 200 km/h while calling out "Fuck Donald Trump".
In the castle courtyard in Super Mario 64, there is a plaque to a power star with an illegible name written below, often interpreted as either "Eternal Star" or "L is Real 2401" - with the latter being more popular for how it could be seen as a cryptic hint towards unlocking Luigi.
Ed Boon revealed that he had hoped to include John Wick from the franchise of the same name as a guest character in Mortal Kombat 1, but that said plans didn't work out. While the exact reason why is unknown, it's worth noting that John Wick's actor Keanu Reeves had said in 2021 that he did not think the character was a good fit for the Mortal Kombat series.
The South Korean version of the game (released two years after the original Japanese edition) contains eleven unused maps not found in any other release, featuring fully 3D environments which do not line up with any locations present in the finished product. All assets related to these maps are dated after the game's Japanese release, with intervals ranging from five days to just over three months. Additionally, the maps' texture names are written in Romanized Japanese rather than Korean, indicating that they were not created by Nintendo of Korea.
Two of these maps, kri_04 and kri_05, additionally feature various cat NPCs, all drawn in substantially different art styles compared to not only each other, but also the final game. Each one is named after a developer from the Super Paper Mario staff: yamada_neko02 (Koichiro Yamada), koba_neko (Sayuri Kobayashi), tuka_neko (Naoko Tsukamoto), and kawa_neko (Chie Kawabe).
Of these four, kawa_neko is the most unique, and was apparently designed as a player character. Firstly, the cat's name is only given to its mesh, with its sprite instead being named bc_all.1. Additionally, kawa_neko features an animated tail and a mesh that is centered on the ground rather than the middle of the room. Furthermore, new_neko_18, a redesigned version of kawa_neko with white fur instead of black, can be found in kri_08, kri_09, and kri_10; new_neko_18's mesh is explicitly labeled "PLAYER" in the data for these maps.
Taken together, all of these elements imply that these early rooms were created as a proof-of-concept for an original project by Intelligent Systems that ended up cancelled for unknown reasons.
Felix the Cat, the new playable character announced alongside the Kickstarter campaign for the game's story mode DLC RULE of Inverse Ninjas, was decided through a Twitter poll. The other three characters on the poll were The Continental Op (a private investigator character created by Dashiell Hammett in 1923 whose copyright expired in 2019), Gnorm Gnat (an insect character created by Jim Davis prior to Garfield who entered the public domain as a result of his original comics not having a copyright notice), and Tarcis the Lover (a joke slot seemingly originating from a dating simulator made by this game's co-developer Trainwreck Studios, and that voting for was actively discouraged by the developers).
Tetsuya Nomura had requested for the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to be used in Kingdom Hearts III, but Disney responded that he would be "too difficult" to use, though they never clarified why. While his plans for Oswald had he been added to the game are unknown, it's worth noting that Nomura has admitted that Oswald is one of his favorite Disney characters.
According to level designer and artist Alex "Pikomi" Pierschel, since Giana Sisters DS lacks a multiplayer mode, Giana's sister Maria couldn't be playable or even appear in the game, and revealed that Punk Giana took her place.
In Mario Kart 64's Bowser's Castle, one can see what appears to be a green Thwomp locked up in a jail cell - this Thwomp is not actually green, but simply lit in a way that makes him appear as such.
This Thwomp would inspire urban legends claiming that players could bail him out through varying elaborate tricks, after which he would be playable under the name "Marty" (likely chosen for the ease of editing hoaxed images with the names Mario, Toad, and Yoshi)
When N64 Bowser's Castle returned in Mario Kart Wii, "Marty" would be made the color of the rest of the Thwomps, suggesting that his green complexion was simply an error and not an intentional design choice.
In a 2001 interview featured in the Capcom vs. SNK 2 Another Play Guide, it was revealed that the team wanted to include Linn Kurosawa from Alien vs. Predator as a playable character, but that they couldn't do it due to copyright issues. Because of this, they went with Maki from Final Fight 2 instead.
At another point, they considered giving Maki a moveset identical to the one Linn has, but eventually decided against it, instead giving her a moveset that more closely matches the one she had in her debut game.
When The Oregon Trail was first being tested with 12-to-14 year olds at the Carlton College, the school faculty reacted negatively to offensive portrayals of Native American people in the game as tomahawk-wielding savages inspired by cowboy movies. While the developers of the game were initially offended by the prospect of changing the depiction, they eventually realized it was the right thing to do after questioning how an indigenous descendant would react to having to fight members of their race in the game.
Game & Watch Gallery 3 has a crude unused placeholder title screen with Wiggler on it. This already unused piece of content itself has unused sprites of its own that don't show up when the screen is activated - including Fly Guys, flowers, a crocodile, sleeping men, and - very morbidly - Mario and Luigi roasting a whole rotisserie Pikachu.
A prototype build for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale shows an early character select screen with a set of unused characters:
•Chop Chop Master Onion from the PaRappa the Rapper series •Captain Blasto from Blasto •Buzz from the Buzz! series •A Big Kulche from the LocoRoco series •Dr. Nefarious from the Ratchet & Clank series •A Eucadian Soldier from Warhawk •A knight from Fat Princess •Um Jammer Lammy from the PaRappa the Rapper series
Notably, Dr. Nefarious is featured in the roster without Ratchet or Clank. PaRappa the Rapper is the most represented series in this roster, and has more characters than any one series would get in the final game including DLC. The knight would appear in Fat Princess' moveset, LocoRoco and Buzz! would be represented through stages, and Blasto would be absent completely.
In Super Fall Brawl, one of the many reskins of Jingle Brawl, the new character was intended to be Sheen Estevez from Jimmy Neutron, in promotion for his then-new spin-off series Planet Sheen. However, Sheen was not coded correctly, making him near-impossible to beat in a fight. The game's second update would remove Sheen and his stage completely, and he would never be added back in, making Fall Brawl the only Super Brawl game without any new combatants. Sheen would return in Super Brawl 2, though the House of Pain stage, based on the first episode of Planet Sheen, would be swapped for a Zeenu stage generally based on Planet Sheen instead of a single episode.
During the game's roster reveal in 2022, an image for WWE Superstar Elias featured him in an outfit that he had never been seen in. At the time, Elias had not been seen in WWE for 9 months as they had planned to re-package him in a new gimmick, but the new gimmick was deemed, "too Macho Man" and was scrapped. The render was likely made during this time, and shows what his outfit would have atleast looked like.
This render would eventually be changed in the final game, with him still using his musician gimmick. Elias would later return to WWE as "Ezekiel" (the younger brother of Elias) with a clean shaven face, shorter hair, and the same outfit seen in this early render.
According to Kane Carter, characters from titles released as part of The Fazbear Fanverse Initiative (such as Candy the Cat from Five Nights at Candy's and Popgoes the Weasel from POPGOES Evergreen) were eligible for inclusion in the game, as a manager from Illumix mentioned in a livestream that they were considered part of Scott Cawthon's official roster. However, this never happened as the game was shut down in March 2024 without any characters from these projects being added.
During the game's development, Lucas - the protagonist of Mother 3 - was briefly considered as a replacement for Ness by the development team. However, due to the delays surrounding Mother 3's original Nintendo 64 release (and that game's eventual cancellation), Ness returned instead as they originally planned.
Both Ness and Lucas would go on to be playable in this game's sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, though Lucas' appearance would be based on Mother 3's eventual Game Boy Advance release as opposed to what is now commonly referred to in the fan community as "EarthBound 64".
The Venom Brigade, the game's antagonists, were originally moles as opposed to snakes. In addition to this, the fourth mole was yellow as opposed to Handy's blue coloration. The change from moles to snakes was done because Cruise Elroy wanted more distinction between the human Annalynn and the game's enemies.
18 years after the game's release, on September 16th 2017, a Silent Hill fan community member by the name of roocker666 posted images of never before seen enemies hidden in the game's files online. These formerly unseen creatures include a giant headless frog (FRG), a possibly monkey based creature (MKY), an ostrich like creature (OST), a purple moth (BTFY), a manta ray (El), and a faceless snake (SNK).
Three additional models were discovered at a later date, including beta versions of the Larval Stalker and the Grey Children, and most notably a giant chicken (CKN) that was bigger than the others and is thought to have been intended to be a boss character.
Masahiro Ito, the game's background and creature designer, acknowledged the discovery on Twitter, but had no comment regarding the original purpose of the models.
In an interview with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, it was revealed that an early, experimental build of the game had split-screen multiplayer, with Mario and Luigi as playable characters.
The game's planned multiplayer mode ended up being reworked into a Mario Bros.-style minigame thanks to the Nintendo 64's technical limitations making the split-screen concept unfeasible. However, in February of 1996 (just a month before E3 of that year), both multiplayer mode and Luigi were removed, in part because the Nintendo 64 was bundled with only one controller. These statements are corroborated by findings from the Gigaleak, a massive content leak of internal data from Nintendo in 2020 that included early assets from Super Mario 64. Among the leaked material was a model and textures for Luigi and sprites for "1P" and "2P" icons. Luigi's model is dated June 20, 1995, while the icons use the same generic font seen in the Shoshinkai demo from November of that year, rather than the custom font seen in both the E3 1996 demo and the final release.
According to producer Kazuhisa Wada, the addition of the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable was considered during development of Persona 3 Reload, but was ultimately deemed "too time-consuming and expensive" compared to remaking "The Answer", the epilogue chapter from Persona 3 FES.
In the castle courtyard in Super Mario 64, there is a plaque to a power star with an illegible name written below, often interpreted as either "Eternal Star" or "L is Real 2401" - with the latter being more popular for how it could be seen as a cryptic hint towards unlocking Luigi. 
The South Korean version of the game (released two years after the original Japanese edition) contains eleven unused maps not found in any other release, featuring fully 3D environments which do not line up with any locations present in the finished product. All assets related to these maps are dated after the game's Japanese release, with intervals ranging from five days to just over three months. Additionally, the maps' texture names are written in Romanized Japanese rather than Korean, indicating that they were not created by Nintendo of Korea.
In Mario Kart 64's Bowser's Castle, one can see what appears to be a green Thwomp locked up in a jail cell - this Thwomp is not actually green, but simply lit in a way that makes him appear as such.
Game & Watch Gallery 3 has a crude unused placeholder title screen with Wiggler on it. This already unused piece of content itself has unused sprites of its own that don't show up when the screen is activated - including Fly Guys, flowers, a crocodile, sleeping men, and - very morbidly - Mario and Luigi roasting a whole rotisserie Pikachu.
A prototype build for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale shows an early character select screen with a set of unused characters:
During the game's roster reveal in 2022, an image for WWE Superstar Elias featured him in an outfit that he had never been seen in. At the time, Elias had not been seen in WWE for 9 months as they had planned to re-package him in a new gimmick, but the new gimmick was deemed, "too Macho Man" and was scrapped. The render was likely made during this time, and shows what his outfit would have atleast looked like.
18 years after the game's release, on September 16th 2017, a Silent Hill fan community member by the name of roocker666 posted images of never before seen enemies hidden in the game's files online. These formerly unseen creatures include a giant headless frog (FRG), a possibly monkey based creature (MKY), an ostrich like creature (OST), a purple moth (BTFY), a manta ray (El), and a faceless snake (SNK).
In an interview with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, it was revealed that an early, experimental build of the game had split-screen multiplayer, with Mario and Luigi as playable characters.