While Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the cartoons featuring him, Universal distributed them and owned the rights to the character. In 2006, in order to acquire the rights to use Oswald, Disney made a deal that included trading the services of sportscaster Al Michaels to Universal to get Oswald back.
There is some debate over the legitimacy of this deal, as there are no records of Oswald's debut cartoon - "Trolley Troubles" - having its copyright renewed by Universal when it should have in 1955, meaning that Oswald could have been a public domain character as far back as the 50s and it was likely just the trademark that was traded. This is something Disney would still end up utilizing as Oswald has made appearances in merchandising, commercials, and parks that would require trademark ownership, but would not likely inherently be required for a video game project. Oswald is unquestionably confirmed to be a public domain character as of 2023 following the 95-year anniversary of "Trolley Troubles".
The development of the first Donkey Kong game was outsourced by Nintendo to Ikegami Tsushinki, a company who is believed but not confirmed to have previously worked with Nintendo on several of their early ventures into arcade games. They produced and sold to Nintendo somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 printed circuit boards for Donkey Kong, and it is believed that Nintendo went on to copy an additional 80,000 boards from this batch without Ikegami's permission. Despite the sale, because no formal contract was known to have been signed between the two companies, Ikegami owned the source code to Donkey Kong as they had created it, and never sent it over to Nintendo.
In order to create a sequel on the coattails of the success of the first game, Nintendo employed subcontractor Iwasaki Giken to reverse-engineer Donkey Kong so Nintendo’s staff could develop the game's sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. Should this narrative be verifiably true, this would make Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo's first "in-house" video game created by themselves without any assistance from outside development companies. Ikegami viewed this use of the source code as blatant copyright infringement, and sued Nintendo in 1983 for ¥580,000,000 (around $91,935,800). A trial in 1990 ruled that Nintendo did not own the source code to the original Donkey Kong, and the parties settled out of court the same year for an undisclosed amount.
In an interview with the game's producer/scenario writer Hiroyuki Takahashi and director Shugo Takahashi published in the 1993 Megadrive Fan Attack Special book, they stated that the enemy "Paste" (called "Bubbling Ooze" in the English localization) was originally going to be named "Slime". Its name was not included due to copyright issues, so they tried other options to name it like "Ooze" or "Gel", neither of which got picked. They later came up with the name Paste, while the English release gave the enemies the unused name "Ooze". It's possible that 'Slime' couldn't be used due to a copyright for the iconic Dragon Quest enemy of the same name.
Many Nickelodeon fans noticed a significant omission of characters from the series The Fairly OddParents in Nickelodeon crossovers starting in 2008's SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom, which was the final installment in the Nicktoons Unite! series where Fairly OddParents protagonist Timmy Turner had previously been part of the main ensemble cast. The reasoning for this is believed to be due to Nelvana, a Canadian distributor of children's content, holding the international licensing rights and copyright for the first 5 seasons of the show outside of the US, having used this to syndicate the cartoon on the rivaling Disney Channel.
Timmy Turner did later appear in the 2022 Apple Arcade game Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis. In response to a tweet speculating that this could lead to Fairly OddParents content appearing in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, the community manager for the latter game Thaddeus Crews posted a "heads-in-the-clouds" emoji. A playtester for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 alleged that the legal issues with The Fairly OddParents are so complicated and strung-out that a former Nickelodeon or Nelvana employee was gifted the copyright to Timmy Turner's pink hat design as a farewell gift.
In 2023, an unknown person by the name of Brandon White bought the UK rights to Cookie's Bustle under the fake company name of "Graceware" and began filing DMCA takedowns against any website or video with documentation of the game, in some cases fraudulently using the name of Nintendo, believed to be in an act of copyright trolling. This led to an uptick in interest in the game, with many content creators streaming, making fan works based on, and reviewing the game in retaliation.
In 2018, an indie studio named Golden Mushroom claimed they were working on a sequel to Glover for the Nintendo Switch. However, it was soon discovered that they had only applied for the trademark to the name "Glover", and not the copyright, meaning they didn't actually own the rights to the IP. In reality, the copyright had been acquired by Piko Interactive, who had purchased it from Atari SA (the company that had purchased Hasbro Interactive in 2001).
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.
▲
1
▼
When explaining what other games can or can't be added to the Fazbear Fanverse Initiative in the future, POPGOES creator Kane Carter revealed that Scott Cawthon was against mature and illegal content like vulgar language, sex, and drugs appearing in anything related to Five Nights at Freddy's. As such, it was unlikely that games like Dayshift at Freddy's and Five Nights at Fuckboy's would be added to the Initiative. He also revealed that Cawthon tries to avoid the usage of copyrighted material, and unfortunately, several fangames use content taken from already established IPs or real-life restaurants. This meant that games like Jolly and Jollibee's, Five Nights at Treasure Island, Five Nights at Wario's, and Five Nights with Mac Tonight were all out of the picture due to all of them using copyrighted characters.
According to series producer Tetsuya Nomura, one reason that Mickey Mouse's role was limited in the original Kingdom Hearts was because around the same time as its release, Capcom owned the license to use Mickey Mouse for the game Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse. The developers persisted and were eventually given the go-ahead to add him into the game "as long as [they only had him in] one scene, from far away, as a silhouette, with him waving his hand or something". As such, Mickey only appears briefly and seen from behind near the end of the game, helping Sora and Riku seal Kingdom Hearts itself.
Mickey's perspective of this event also appears in Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep: A fragmentary passage. The reason that Mickey loses his shirt is to partially keep the continuity of the original Kingdom Hearts that showed Mickey in his classic shirtless look.
The reason Fatty Bear never appeared in another point-and-click adventure game was due to a mixture of series creator Laurie Bauman Arnold owning the rights to the character and the name "Fatty", in spite of being intended in an endearing manner, being considered potentially offensive.
The box art of Dalmatians 3 shows a character inspired by the animated Disney version of Cruella De Vil. This character does not appear in any of the movies originally produced by Dingo Pictures or its associated re-release video games, with the game disc featuring no human characters whatsoever aside from a jester mascot who appears on the menu screen. The original book character of Cruella De Vil has yet to enter the public domain.
Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life was intended to appear as a playable character in Nicktoons MLB but was scrapped for unknown reasons, with the only remnants of his appearance being his skeleton and a small black square labeled as his texture. Rocko's Modern Life is the only Nickelodeon show without a playable character to be referenced in the opening copyright credits.
In the US PSP and PS4 versions of PaRappa the Rapper, PJ Berri and Katy Kat's Chunky Burger orders in the intro are censored - in the PS1 version they ask for a "giant vanilla frosty" and a "large chocolate frosty" respectively, but in the remastered version they instead ask for a "giant vanilla" and "large chocolate". The subtitles for PJ's order completely omit any drink from his order. This is due to "Frosty" (in the context of a drink) being trademarked by Wendy's. Despite this copyright issue, the claim from Katy Kat that Jet Baby could defeat Superman goes uncensored.
The mutant bird illustration on the box art for Sqij! and Obitus, drawn by speculative fiction artist Tim White, seems to have originated from the 1979 edition of the 1975 book Under a Calculating Star. It is unknown if either use was licensed.
As stated in the game's official app store description, Blue Ninja is intended to be a parody of superheroes and "the best of ninja trained spider games". Based on the initial teaser trailer (when it was known as "Superhero Game 2021") featuring a different red and black design from the final game, using music from the film "Spider-Man 3", and the game description's numerous references to "spider heroes", it's very obvious that this game is meant to specifically be a parody of the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. The visual similarities to Spider-Man in Blue Ninja's early design were most likely changed for the final game to avoid copyright disputes.
Chip's Challenge 2 was finished in 1990, two years after the completion of Chip's Challenge and a year after the latter game's release, but due to the IP being sold, it had to wait 25 years to see an official release in 2015, following five years of negotiation over the series' rights.
In November 2020, Seth "Dopply" Fulkerson released unofficial remakes of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon for Linux and Windows. To avoid receiving a cease-and-desist from Nintendo, he made the remakes unavailable for download two days after release.
In the Xbox One version of GoldenEye 007, the DK Mode - named after Donkey Kong for changing the proportions of in-game models to those of DK's from Donkey Kong 64 - retains its name. Given that Nintendo were directly involved in the project to re-release GoldenEye 007, with the game having a simultaneous relaunch on Nintendo Switch Online and Microsoft Store, this could be the first time Nintendo has officially allowed their IP to be referenced on a direct rival console.
Upon the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Ken Penders, a former writer on the Archie Comics Sonic comics, sued Sega and EA for supposedly using Sonic character concepts he had independently trademarked prior - particularly the Nocturnas Clan, a futuristic echidna tribe which he deemed as too similar to his own Dark Legion, a futuristic echidna technocracy. This lawsuit came months after Archie Comics filed their own suit against Penders due to a breach of contract after the trademarking, causing Archie to allow their contract with Sega to expire so they could negotiate new terms for the rights to create Sonic comics. This legal fiasco ended in Archie settling the case with Penders, losing the exclusivity to produce Sonic comics after negotiations with Sega, and causing them to write the "Super Genesis Wave", a super-charged energy blast utilizing the Chaos Emeralds that acted as a massive continuity rewrite where over 500 original characters and concepts created by Penders and other writers for the Archie Sonic comics were retconned. The Sega case on the other hand ended in a stalemate due to the statute of limitations, and will not be able to continue unless Sega uses characters from The Dark Brotherhood again.
In four separate 1989 issues of Video Games & Computer Entertainment, the mail-in game order service Play It Again put up an advertisement featuring a list of games customers could order. Among these is a mysterious title, Yeah Yeah Beebiss 1, which is not the name of any one game - this title would reappear in a separate advert for FuncoLand, under the name "Yeah Beebiss 1". To add further mystery to this game, it was placed between W and X games alphabetically instead of with Y games. There are multiple theories on the status of Beebiss:
•Some believe that Beebiss is a baby-themed game like Baby Boomer, Rai Rai Kyonshis: Baby Kyonshi no Amida Daibouken, or Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, given that "baby" sounds like "Beebiss" - with Rai Rai Kyonshis being considered the most likely candidate of the 3 for "Rai Rai"'s (A Japanese onomatopoeia associated with China) similarity to "Yeah Yeah", the game's release in 1989, and the presence of other import games on the listing. Rai Rai Kyonshis is generally the most accepted identity of the game. •One theory proposes that the game was made as a copyright trap to catch which retailers are stealing game lists, something one of the founders of Play It Again confessed to doing, albeit without confirming if Beebiss was among those games. •A rather strange theory proposes that the game was somehow related to exploring, possibly being Atlantis no Nazo's cancelled US release Super Pitfall II, named for Charles William Beebe, a famous explorer and naturalist •Another theory suggests that the title was simply a bizarre, elaborate in-joke that both Play It Again and FuncoLand employees were in on.
The myth of Beebiss would inspire the game Yeah Yeah Beebiss II, developed by popular retro gaming YouTuber John Riggs and based on the aesthetic of Rai Rai Kyonshis.
J. Langston III's original name during development was J. Langston Popsicle III, or "Popsicle" for short, but had to be changed due to Popsicle being trademarked by Unilever. Multiple lines were spliced to remove "Popsicle", though one was removed and one was re-recorded.
In four separate 1989 issues of Video Games & Computer Entertainment, the mail-in game order service Play It Again put up an advertisement featuring a list of games customers could order. Among these is a mysterious title, Yeah Yeah Beebiss 1, which is not the name of any one game - this title would reappear in a separate advert for FuncoLand, under the name "Yeah Beebiss 1". To add further mystery to this game, it was placed between W and X games alphabetically instead of with Y games. There are multiple theories on the status of Beebiss: