The story section of Sonic Underground's manual has numerous inconsistencies with the plot of the show it's based on, though are still featured in early production documents. These include:
• Robotnik at one point being referred to as "Sheriff Robotnik", likely a reference to the Sheriff of Nottingham from the legend of Robin Hood. He does not bare this title in the show itself; early leaks to the show's plot prior to release also reference his role as a sheriff, suggesting it was a scrapped concept from early on in development. • The Oracle of Delphius being banished to the Frozen Wastes by Robotnik and passing away from unknown causes sometime after, telling Sonic how to reunite with his siblings in his dying breath. While the Oracle does take up residence in Ice Cap in the final show, he was not banished there, nor does he ever die. • The Medallions being stated to be golden, but in the final show they bare a more silver coloration. Another detail stated in the manual but not in the final show is that they each possess three notes engraved into them. • Robotnik's given motive for finding Queen Aleena is so that he can marry her and make her his consort, as he believes that by doing so he can become the rightful ruler of Mobius. While not his overall motive in the final show, the episode "Wedding Bell Blues" did use a similar premise for its plot. • While not in early production documents, the game's manual states that it ends with Sonic, Manic and Sonia reuniting with their mother, which never actually happened in the original show, making it the only piece of Sonic Underground-related media where this goal is actually accomplished.
Prior to a 2020 Nintendo Treehouse presentation, primarily intended to show off Paper Mario: The Origami King, it was announced that a new game from developer WayForward would be shown off in the presentation. Due to WayForward's reputation for platformer titles such as the Shantae series and the recent release of Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring the Legend of Zelda seemingly signifying an interest from Nintendo in indie collaborations, many fans expected the showcase to present a revival of a dormant Nintendo platforming IP such as Kid Icarus or Wario Land. In a futile attempt to temper expectations, Nintendo would vaguely clarify that the game was based on a "third party IP", redirecting speculation towards other companies' gaming IPs. When the presentation came, the game was revealed to be Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, one of the licensed children's games that make up the vast majority of WayForward's gamography, which disappointed many, causing the Bakugan toyline to trend on Twitter and gaining the reveal trailer 3,500 dislikes against 1,500 likes on YouTube.
The Japan-exclusive Super Famicom version of Monopoly was produced by famed Japanese copywriter and essayist Shigesato Itoi (best known to people outside of Japan as the creator of Nintendo's EarthBound series), who is a champion Monopoly player and the leader of the Japanese Monopoly association. Itoi also served as a supervisor on the game's Japan-exclusive sequel, The Monopoly Game 2.
Dr. Claw's face, a recurring mystery in the Inspector Gadget cartoon, is shown in the Inspector Gadget SNES game. The design of his face, which possesses spiky grey hair, matches up with an action figure released prior, which used a mystery box gimmick for his face. It does not, however, match up with Inspector Gadget character designer Bruno Bianchi's take on the character released in a French magazine contest, where he is instead portrayed as a frog-like alien controlling fake human hands from his chair.
According to Tsunekazu Ishihara, the president of The Pokémon Company, Nintendo of America didn’t like the original Japanese designs for Pokémon as they thought they looked “too cute”, so they made their own redesigns.
In particular, Pikachu was apparently redesigned to resemble a tiger with big breasts. When Ishihara asked how it was meant to be Pikachu, the American designers responded that because it has Pikachu’s tail, then that makes it Pikachu.
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.
The uDraw was conceived after THQ employees noticed how difficult drawing was with the Wii Remote in the Wii version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, and was originally called the Drawn to Life Pal. Multiple pitches for other licensed Drawn to Life titles in the same vein as Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition were made, with Marvel Comics, Pixar, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian being pitched as examples. However, no Drawn to Life game with uDraw compatibility would ever release, though one uDraw launch title, Dood's Big Adventure, bears a fair resemblance to the series. No reason has been given for the series' absence or why a new IP was made with Dood's Big Adventure instead of using the brand recognition of Drawn to Life, but it may be connected to the controversial ending of the DS version of The Next Chapter and its finality for the core Drawn to Life Raposa universe.
Tasha Sounart, Pixar's creative director for the Disney Parks and the consultant for Toy Story elements in Kingdom Hearts III, has claimed that she believes the models for the toys in the game were the best they have ever looked in a licensed product that wasn't made in-house at Pixar:
"Really over all, this is probably the best that our characters have looked outside of our movies, because their attention to detail is really, really great."
Prior to release, Arc System Works announced that the game would feature twenty characters as paid DLC for the game's first season, meaning that the game would launch with only half of its planned roster. This prompted backlash from fans, who pointed out that the game reused assets from past fighting games and that half of Team RWBY would be sold separately while the other half was in the base game. In response, Toshimichi Mori announced that the remaining Team RWBY members (Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long) would be free of charge, and that the costs for the characters would not exceed that of the game's base retail cost.
On July 26, 2023, developer PerBlue released a poll requesting input on various franchises that were in consideration for inclusion in Disney Heroes: Battle Mode. As of March 2024, the only franchises from the poll to still not be part of the game are "Encanto", "Gravity Falls", "Miraculous Ladybug", "Inspector Gadget", "Amphibia", and "Fantasia". Notably, "Miraculous Ladybug" and "Inspector Gadget" are not actually owned by Disney, but appear to have been considered due to the company having ties to each of them. With "Miraculous Ladybug", Disney finances the show through its French division, giving them broadcasting rights in places such as the United States and select European regions. As for "Inspector Gadget", Disney was involved in the production of the 1999 live-action film based on the series due to owning DIC Entertainment at the time from merging with Capital Cities/ABC.
In an interview with TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman published in Game Informer on March 5th, 2024, he revealed that the comic miniseries "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin", originally envisioned in 1987 as the final storyline during the original comic book's run and set 30 years in the future, was initially planned by Paramount to go "multimedia". However, they scrapped these plans, because concerns emerged about it conflicting with the sales and marketing for the recently-released 2023 animated film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem". Paramount then suggested that Eastman and company adapt it into a video game so that they could "give it all the edge and all the attitude and intensity that [he] did in the comic series and even go a bit deeper."
Despite popular belief, Epic Mickey is not the first video game to include the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The actual first game to feature him was Férias Frustradas do Pica-Pau (also known as "Woody Woodpecker's Frustrated Vacations"), where Oswald (based on his "Oswald Rabbit" iteration owned by Universal at the time) was one of Woody's friends that had been kidnapped by Buzz Buzzard.
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".
Darkened Skye came about as a result of Simon & Schuster Interactive attempting to acquire the M&M's license for use in gaming, due to the popularity of the Spokescandy mascots. Skittles was simply a back-up option in case the M&M's deal fell through, but both licenses were acquired. While Dale DeSharone, one of the game's executive producers, believed it should have been aimed at a younger child audience, Mars wanted to attract an audience of people in their 20s, because that demographic did not buy Skittles as much as people in their 30s and older, though they were also adamant that the game couldn't be violent. The game's aesthetic was inspired by a series of late-1990s high fantasy Skittles commercials.
In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Sonic’s disdain of mushrooms could be a jab at his rivalry with Mario in the 90s. This is reinforced in the Thai dub of the film, where the joke about Tom saying that Sonic won’t be the only “fungi” on the mushroom planet is replaced with “at least you can have a mushroom forever,” to which Sonic replies with “No. I’m not Mario”.
Nintendo possibly “returned the favor” in 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, where the Super Mario Bros. Plumbing advertisement features a map with one of the landmarks listed as “Mushroom Planet”.
The English version of the game mistakenly refers to the character Connie Springer as female in some cases, and similarly mistakenly refers to the character Nanaba as male in the journal entries.
Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story and Toy Story Activity Center were developed by a devision of Pixar known as the Interactive Products Group, which exclusively made video game content. The division was closed down when the Toy Story 2 movie entered production, and merged into Pixar's main movie animation staff, as the animators behind the first film were working on A Bug's Life and the IPG had already proved itself by making as many frames of animation for their games as there was in the first Toy Story, with a near-identical quality. Due to the shuttering of the IPG, later Pixar PC games using pre-rendered graphics, such as A Bug's Life Activity Center and Monsters, Inc. Scream Team Training, would have significantly lower quality animation than the movies, and Toy Story would be the only Pixar film to have an Animated Storybook based on it.
Apart from a cameo in Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut (where he appears on Sonic X posters during Mission Mode), Sonic X for Leapster marks the only appearance of Sonic X character Chris Thorndyke in a Sonic the Hedgehog video game. Specifically, he appears in the animated cutscenes and cheers Sonic on off-screen each time a math problem is solved.
In the Japanese version, and prototype US builds, of DuckTales, the ending line of the game was the grammatically incorrect, and arguably out-of-character, Scrooge line "There really is more important treasure than this, that is... dream and friends", which was changed to "I couldn't have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world." for the US release. Darlene Lacey, a producer on the Disney side of DuckTales would say of the partially unused line in a Kotaku interview:
"It seemed so earnest and dramatic, I was so tempted to leave it as is, but I knew I couldn’t. So, I changed it to the more polished, but forgettable ‘Right, lads! I couldn’t have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world.’ I love that fans found out about the original ending. It was the better line!"
Paul Frommer, the developer of the Na'vi language, contributed to Frontiers of Pandora to ensure that the language remained accurate. He also provided names for the new flora and fauna introduced in the game.
Dr. Claw's face, a recurring mystery in the Inspector Gadget cartoon, is shown in the Inspector Gadget SNES game. The design of his face, which possesses spiky grey hair, matches up with an action figure released prior, which used a mystery box gimmick for his face. It does not, however, match up with Inspector Gadget character designer Bruno Bianchi's take on the character released in a French magazine contest, where he is instead portrayed as a frog-like alien controlling fake human hands from his chair.
According to Tsunekazu Ishihara, the president of The Pokémon Company, Nintendo of America didn’t like the original Japanese designs for Pokémon as they thought they looked “too cute”, so they made their own redesigns.
The uDraw was conceived after THQ employees noticed how difficult drawing was with the Wii Remote in the Wii version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, and was originally called the Drawn to Life Pal. Multiple pitches for other licensed Drawn to Life titles in the same vein as Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition were made, with Marvel Comics, Pixar, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian being pitched as examples. However, no Drawn to Life game with uDraw compatibility would ever release, though one uDraw launch title, Dood's Big Adventure, bears a fair resemblance to the series. No reason has been given for the series' absence or why a new IP was made with Dood's Big Adventure instead of using the brand recognition of Drawn to Life, but it may be connected to the controversial ending of the DS version of The Next Chapter and its finality for the core Drawn to Life Raposa universe.
In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Sonic’s disdain of mushrooms could be a jab at his rivalry with Mario in the 90s. This is reinforced in the Thai dub of the film, where the joke about Tom saying that Sonic won’t be the only “fungi” on the mushroom planet is replaced with “at least you can have a mushroom forever,” to which Sonic replies with “No. I’m not Mario”.
In the Japanese version, and prototype US builds, of DuckTales, the ending line of the game was the grammatically incorrect, and arguably out-of-character, Scrooge line "There really is more important treasure than this, that is... dream and friends", which was changed to "I couldn't have done it without you. I really am the richest duck in the world." for the US release. Darlene Lacey, a producer on the Disney side of DuckTales would say of the partially unused line in a Kotaku interview: