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On January 17, 2022, the Italian Senate hosted a Zoom meeting about the Transparent Public Service. Just when Nobel Prize-winning physicist Giorgio Parisi was about to be introduced, a user named Alex Spence “zoombombed” the meeting with at least 30 seconds of a CG pornographic video featuring Tifa Lockhart that was originally made by Patreon user JuicyNeko.
The news spread mere days after the incident, and Tifa became the subject of memes that associated her with Italy, including being considered an Italian video game mascot that’s on par with Mario.
The source code for Doubutsu no Mori contains references to a variety of non-Nintendo Famicom ROMs that would not appear in the final game, including Arkanoid, F1 Circus, and most bizarrely, the bootleg port of Tekken 2 by Hummer Team.
There is a cactus prop at Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World that does not originate from an official Mario game, but rather the fanmade mod Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii. At the time of the park's opening, a Google search for "new super mario bros wii cactus" would show images of Newer's desert levels alongside New Super Mario Bros. Wii, meaning that the cacti was likely added by accident, being mistaken for official Nintendo material.
On March 17, 2019, in response to a post on the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account celebrating St. Patrick's Day, YouTuber Jacksepticeye jokingly asked if he could voice "Irish the Hedgehog", to which the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account responded:
"Absolutely.
(We just need to create him first.)"
A year later, they made good on this promise, releasing a video titled "Irish the Hedgehog" on the official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel. According to Sega, the character was designed by artist Mark Hughes, and the video included a "folksy" remix of the song "Escape from the City" from Sonic Adventure 2 made by Hyper Potions and Jun Senoue.
A few years afterwards, Jacksepticeye would return to the Sonic franchise to voice another character: the appropriately-named Jack from the "Sonic Prime" episode "It Takes One to No Place".
On June 9, 2022, a fan animation was uploaded to YouTube by FlippinDingDong, depicting a tape recording of a fictional 1990s Saturday morning cartoon series based on the Gex franchise that aired on Toon Disney. The video reuses Gex's one-liners and music from the original games. The animation went viral and FlippinDingDong would later be commissioned by Square Enix to animate the reveal trailer for Gex Trilogy.
When Sonic Prime was released on Netflix, GameFam Studios, the development team behind Sonic Speed Simulator, inserted officially-licensed Sonic Prime product placement into their other games on Roblox - however, this included the unauthorized Friday Night Funkin' fangame Funky Friday, which they would not legally be allowed to make paid content or promotions in.
Friday Night Funkin' creator ninja_muffin99 has expressed interest in taking legal action against GameFam and Sega, though later specified that it would not be through a lawsuit. It is unknown if any legal action has or will be taken.
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.
When asked about Bubsy's height and weight for an episode of the Death Battle-esque YouTube series Limit Break featuring him fighting Gex, creator Michael Berlyn said that Bubsy is 3'6'' (42 inches) and 80 lbs, making his height closest to the length (or height if they were to be bipedal like Bubsy) of an Eastern or Mexican bobcat, but significantly heavier than any real-world species of bobcat.
During the pre-release to Pikmin 4, many fans of the franchise were upset that the game did not recieve a larger marketing push from Nintendo, given its spotty sales history. In response, a large swathe of Pikmin fans took to the PixelStar service (which allows individuals to cheaply buy temporary advertising space that would usually be reserved for wealthy corporations in Times Square in New York City) to display Pikmin memes and fan art as a form of unsanctioned advertising. The total amount of money spent by Pikmin fans was estimated by MeriStation USA to be $300 minimum.
Pikmin 4 would end up becoming the best selling installment of the Pikmin franchise. This result most likely has much more to do with the popularity of the Nintendo Switch relative to the GameCube and Wii U, but given how major an advertising space like Times Square is, it isn't completely impossible that the PixelStar advertising could have contributed to the game's sales.
The unofficial demake Halo 2600 was developed by Ed Fries, who previously worked at Microsoft from 1986 up until 2004 and played a large role in the development of the Xbox and the acquisition of Bungie.
In the early 2010s, Pop, a British TV channel that syndicated DIC's Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, had the fanmade game Sonic on Clouds avaliable on its website.
Chiptune composer Martin Galway developed an unofficial port of The Great Giana Sisters for the Nintendo DS and released it online on February 20th, 2007 to mark the 20th anniversary of the series. The port came out two years prior the official release of Giana Sisters DS.
As an early April Fools' joke, the fan-run Facebook/Blogspot group Operation: Power Up made a fake Super Smash Bros. website character page based on the ones used in the official website to "reveal" Nester, the mascot of Nintendo Power magazine, as a playable character. While the page itself is notably accurate to the source material, the screenshots shown at the bottom are of very low quality: not only is Nester's model poorly made, he's only ever shown alone in the pics and is clearly pasted on in some of them.
When asked about the popular "RTX On" fan remake of the Morshu cutscenes from Link: The Faces of Evil by animator Hoolopee, CD-i Zelda animator Denis Charnov simply stated: "Disgusting animation."
Prior to doing official work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as one of its writers/artists, Evan Stanley worked on a fan comic called "Ghosts of the Future" based on the series. Set in an alternate reality where Sonic and his friends are defeated by Dr. Eggman with the aid of a mind-controlled Shadow, the comic featured Silver the Hedgehog as the main character, tasked with restoring the seven Chaos Emeralds that were removed from time as a last resort. After being brought on to do official work on the franchise, the fan comic has been referenced on two occasions in official Sonic comics. The first was in issue 257 of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Richard and Deborah Erin (Silver's parents in the comic) during the scene where Rotor is directing rescue operations outside Twinkle Park (note that they are slightly recolored in this scene). The second time was in issue 64 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Vanice the Hedgehog and Sicily the Hedgehog (Silver's sisters in the comic) during the scene where Silver and Whisper are trying to confront Duo.
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"Sonic.exe" is a creepypasta story originally written by JC-the-Hyena, a user on the Creepypasta Wiki, about a cursed CD-ROM version of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, notable for its malicious depiction of Sonic, giving him black eyeballs with glowing red pupils. The story became popular partly through a genuine appreciation of the story's content and scariness, and from those mocking the extremely poor quality of its writing, which has also been described as amateur and cliched, and later lead to it being removed from the Creepypasta Wiki. Sonic.exe received two lesser-known sequels, a rebooted story in 2017, many unofficial games based off of it, as well as other tributes and parodies. JC-the-Hyena would later resign from authoring new Sonic.exe projects after multiple allegations of pedophilic and predatory behavior surfaced in 2021, with the story's fan communities taking control of it since.
The story became so popular and attached to the wider Sonic franchise that the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account has referenced the story on two separate occasions. The first was on January 13, 2017, where they posted a video of Sonic standing in Green Hill Zone as a black recolor of Big the Cat passes him by, changing him and the environment to something more akin to what is depicted in the story. The second was on April 14, 2021, where they posted an image of a pile of Game Gear Sonic titles, with Sonic.EXE being hidden within the pile.
"Spelunker taishitsu" (Eng: Constitution of a spelunker) is a Japanese idiom referring to someone who is easily injured, commonly used in sports. This originates from Spelunker, which is widely popular in Japan as a "kusoge" (Japanese for "crappy game") specifically for the protagonist's frail nature and sometimes ridiculous death conditions.
When Prince Florian was first revealed in the June 2023 Nintendo Direct for the game, some fans believed that he was either a callback or reimagining of Prince Haru, a character that only appeared in the 1986 anime film "Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach" who transforms from a dog known as Kibidango into a human. This prospect was seen as troubling by Mario fans who partake in shipping, with some believing that Mario and Peach would be retconned as no longer being romantically interested, with Florian taking Mario's place as Peach's boyfriend, as Haru was in the movie.
Upon the game's release, Florian would not show any romantic interest in Peach, nor transform into a human, with their only similarities being that they are princes of flower kingdoms and Florian's facial structure baring a loose resemblance to that of Kibidango.
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On January 28th, 2021, a fan animation by ZONE-Sama was uploaded on Twitter titled "Ankhazone". The video features Ankha having sex with the Villager, to the tune of Sandy Marton's "Camel by Camel", as an homage to a similar pornographic fan animation by Minus8 called "Ankha Ride". The video became popular in the following months as a result of "Camel by Camel" trending on its own on TikTok that various remixes and parodies of "Ankhazone" became prevalent throughout the latter site and YouTube.
In June 2023, the character models for the game received complaints on Twitter by fan artist Rafa Knight, who noted that they resembled her own models of the characters that had been used for merchandise, even having the same minor imperfections as the toys. She claimed she had not been credited for her work either, instead being ignored by Sega and other related figures. In response, Katie Chrzanowski, the social media manager for Sega of America, apologized for the misunderstanding and explained that the models were custom-made for Sonic Superstars, and promised to privately email Knight with more details later on. It's unknown if any more developments in this controversy happened since.
There is a cactus prop at Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World that does not originate from an official Mario game, but rather the fanmade mod Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii. At the time of the park's opening, a Google search for "new super mario bros wii cactus" would show images of Newer's desert levels alongside New Super Mario Bros. Wii, meaning that the cacti was likely added by accident, being mistaken for official Nintendo material.
On March 17, 2019, in response to a post on the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account celebrating St. Patrick's Day, YouTuber Jacksepticeye jokingly asked if he could voice "Irish the Hedgehog", to which the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account responded:
When Sonic Prime was released on Netflix, GameFam Studios, the development team behind Sonic Speed Simulator, inserted officially-licensed Sonic Prime product placement into their other games on Roblox - however, this included the unauthorized Friday Night Funkin' fangame Funky Friday, which they would not legally be allowed to make paid content or promotions in. 
When asked about Bubsy's height and weight for an episode of the Death Battle-esque YouTube series Limit Break featuring him fighting Gex, creator Michael Berlyn said that Bubsy is 3'6'' (42 inches) and 80 lbs, making his height closest to the length (or height if they were to be bipedal like Bubsy) of an Eastern or Mexican bobcat, but significantly heavier than any real-world species of bobcat.
During the pre-release to Pikmin 4, many fans of the franchise were upset that the game did not recieve a larger marketing push from Nintendo, given its spotty sales history. In response, a large swathe of Pikmin fans took to the PixelStar service (which allows individuals to cheaply buy temporary advertising space that would usually be reserved for wealthy corporations in Times Square in New York City) to display Pikmin memes and fan art as a form of unsanctioned advertising. The total amount of money spent by Pikmin fans was estimated by MeriStation USA to be $300 minimum.
Chiptune composer Martin Galway developed an unofficial port of The Great Giana Sisters for the Nintendo DS and released it online on February 20th, 2007 to mark the 20th anniversary of the series. The port came out two years prior the official release of Giana Sisters DS.
Prior to doing official work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as one of its writers/artists, Evan Stanley worked on a fan comic called "Ghosts of the Future" based on the series. Set in an alternate reality where Sonic and his friends are defeated by Dr. Eggman with the aid of a mind-controlled Shadow, the comic featured Silver the Hedgehog as the main character, tasked with restoring the seven Chaos Emeralds that were removed from time as a last resort. After being brought on to do official work on the franchise, the fan comic has been referenced on two occasions in official Sonic comics. The first was in issue 257 of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Richard and Deborah Erin (Silver's parents in the comic) during the scene where Rotor is directing rescue operations outside Twinkle Park (note that they are slightly recolored in this scene). The second time was in issue 64 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Vanice the Hedgehog and Sicily the Hedgehog (Silver's sisters in the comic) during the scene where Silver and Whisper are trying to confront Duo.
When Prince Florian was first revealed in the June 2023 Nintendo Direct for the game, some fans believed that he was either a callback or reimagining of Prince Haru, a character that only appeared in the 1986 anime film "Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach" who transforms from a dog known as Kibidango into a human. This prospect was seen as troubling by Mario fans who partake in shipping, with some believing that Mario and Peach would be retconned as no longer being romantically interested, with Florian taking Mario's place as Peach's boyfriend, as Haru was in the movie.
In June 2023, the character models for the game received complaints on Twitter by fan artist Rafa Knight, who noted that they resembled her own models of the characters that had been used for merchandise, even having the same minor imperfections as the toys. She claimed she had not been credited for her work either, instead being ignored by Sega and other related figures. In response, Katie Chrzanowski, the social media manager for Sega of America, apologized for the misunderstanding and explained that the models were custom-made for Sonic Superstars, and promised to privately email Knight with more details later on. It's unknown if any more developments in this controversy happened since.