The game has a secret CPU ghost mode which can be accessed under the Time Trial menu by pressing Start on a controller in port 2 while selecting a driver. This triggers a CPU cursor to appear, allowing the player to select a ghost driver to compete against. However, the CPU ghosts are capable of interacting with elements of a track's mechanics, like the ice blocks found in Vanilla Dome.
If the player allows the CPU to destroy these blocks, then drives over where the blocks were, then saves and race against their own ghost, a glitch will occur where the ghost will vanish when it touches the block that was supposed to have been destroyed and trigger a visual error where the player's tires will cycle between two frames of animation even while in an idle position. This glitch only occurs when the player and the ghost use the same driver.
In an interview featured in the 124th issue of the Nintendo Dream magazine, the game's director Hidemaro Fujibayashi explained that the character Ezlo was created because in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons, there wasn't any character that could explain things to the player and the development team felt players were disadvantaged because of this. He stated:
"At the time that we were making the Oracle games, we really struggled with the lack of a character like Navi in 'Ocarina of Time' that could explain the situation. So from the beginning, we had decided there would be a companion character on the next adventure".
In Episode 7 of the TV series adaptation of The Last of Us, Ellie and Riley are seen playing the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II. At one point, Riley uses Mileena's fatality on Ellie's character Raiden, with Riley being heard pressing four buttons to initiate the killing blow. Following the episode's release, a number of fans online claimed this was inaccurate, as one can simply just press and hold the Heavy Kick command during the "Finish Him!" prompt to initiate her Fatality. However, other Mortal Kombat players argued that the show's display of gameplay could possibly be correct, pointing out that there is an alternate way to do the fatality. Specifically, Mileena can perform the Fatality by standing close to the opponent, holding the Block button and tapping the Heavy Kick command.
In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he was asked if the SNES version of Zelda would be the same as the Super Famicom version. He responded that him and his team thought about making some improvements to the SNES version, including a number of things they could not complete in time for the Super Famicom release. Zelda makes full use of the available 8 MB of ROM space, but they knew they were going to need extra space for the English translation. They initially planned to increase the ROM size by 1 MB to solve this, until the compression routine their programmers wrote actually allowed them to fit everything in the original 8 MB storage. Miyamoto joked that they would save those aforementioned improvements for the next game.
In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he revealed that him and his team began developing the game at the same time as Super Mario World. Even back when they initially revealed the Super Famicom at the company in July, 1989, their plan had always had been to make and release the game alongside Super Mario World as a launch title for the new system. They were hoping to release the game in March of 1991, but it was delayed into the Summer, until it was finally released on the one-year anniversary of the release of the Super Famicom on November 21, 1991.
In the western localization of the game, the Special World's levels are all named after 90's American surfer lingo, with the names being Gnarly, Tubular, Way Cool, Awesome, Groovy, Mondo, Outrageous, and Funky.
However in Japan the first two levels are named "Fun Course", third and fourth are named "Even the Mario Staff is Shocked Course", fifth and sixth are named "Specialists' Course", and seventh and eight are named "Championship Course". None of the shared names are even differentiated through numbers, like "Fun Course 1" or "Fun Course 2".
Development took two years, with the original idea for the game being a standard RPG. Hardware limitations forced it to become an action-RPG instead, which worked well for the development team, as cooperative multiplayer became included as a result.
If the player manages to scan the projectiles that the Omega Pirate fires, the description will consist of placeholder text that reads "This is an Elite Space Pirate" on the first page and "Elite Space Pirate description 3" on the second. Not only does the later Japanese release retain this oversight, but it also introduces a second one, in that the placeholder text is still in English.
In June 2020, Chris Avellone, who helped with the game's writing early in development, was accused by three people of using his status in the video game industry for sexual harrassment and misconduct towards women. On director Stephen Kick's Twitter account, when asked if Avellone was still involved in the game following these allegations, Kick tweeted that he had not been involved with the game since 2017, and that Night Dive took the game's writing in a different direction after restarting development in 2018. The allegations were later retracted by the accusers following a libel lawsuit in 2023.
In a 2020 interview about Luigi's Mansion 3, the game's lead producer Kensuke Tanabe (who was also the scenario writer for A Link to the Past) compared a shift during the game's development to an early idea that was scrapped during A Link to the Past's development, revealing that the game originally had multiple parallel worlds but it had to be cut down to just two—those being the worlds of Light and Dark.
"When that happens, I try not to cling to that initial idea too much. For example, this is when I was working on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. At first, we were thinking about structuring the game with numerous parallel worlds. However, in order to establish the gameplay in the end, we decided that it would be better to narrow it down to two worlds: Light and Dark. I think game development involves much work where you never know unless you actually test it out."
In an interview that took place during E3 2019, lead producer Kensuke Tanabe hinted that the team created multi-floor puzzles, since the layout of a hotel would be easy to visualize. However in the final game this idea was scaled down to multi-room puzzles. When asked about this in a 2020 Kotaku interview, the game’s director Bryce Holliday said that this was done due to the difficulty of designing challenges across floors. He stated:
“Those types of floor puzzles are the hardest to develop and the most challenging to change after the fact, hence the absence of them in the final product. However, that idea of room connections is throughout the game at the room scale rather than floor scale. There are many secrets within ‘gaps’ in the map, behind oddly placed walls or rooms where the height doesn’t seem to match those around it.”
According to the game's director Takayuki Nakayama, Decapre was originally meant to be in the base roster instead of Cammy. This was changed after the developers realized the latter was more essential to the game's storyline.
In the player's house garage you can find two posters which say "Stoney" and "Sport Sport", which are references to the 2006 film Rocky Balboa and the 1988 film Bloodsport, respectively.
In the Street Fighter 5 Climax Arts Plus Zero to 6 book, the game's director Nakayuki Nakayama stated that Juri Han didn't originally wear a black top underneath the catsuit, and that this was added after many people said the original design was too sexy. Juri's original design can be seen in Cammy's character story, which was included in the base game before the release of the cinematic story mode A Shadow Falls in June 2016 and Juri's inclusion as a season 1 DLC character in July 2016.
Cammy's level 2 Super is inspired by a scene from Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. In the scene, Cammy grabs British Minister of Justice Albert Sellers by the collar, leaps up onto his shoulders, twists around, snaps his neck, then comes down and kicks his knees out from behind. This move is performed by Cammy in the game.
The Wii U Virtual Console port of the game has the option to select both Multiplayer and Ghost Exchange. However, both options are locked out due to the physical game requiring the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable, which unlocks those game modes on the actual Game Boy Advance hardware.
One potential stage that was in development involved having to save a puppy from danger.
The idea had to be shot down, because if the player failed to rescue it, the puppy would fall to its death, which would obviously have been too dark for a Nintendo game.
If a fighter tries to footstool Piranha Plant while the plant is crouching, the footstooler will be met with a biting attack that takes 4% damage. This happens automatically every time even when the Piranha Plant player presses nothing during the footstool. This highly situational attack however can be easily dodged and countered by the attacked player making it useless in high-level play.
In Hyrule Town, three travelers in the lobby of the Happy Hearth Inn, named Din, Nayru, and Farore, are the same characters as the Oracles from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. They are each looking for new homes to move into, which is the basis of an optional side quest that can be started after completing the Fortress of Winds. Gorman will now be renting out a house to tenants, and Link can convince one of the travelers to move in and obtain a Charm from that traveler. Afterwards, if Link fuses Kinstones with Bremor, Mutoh will become motivated to build a second house for Gorman to rent out. Link can then convince one of the remaining two travelers to move in, and will obtain their respective Charm. Each of the two houses built have a red roof and a blue roof, reflecting the color schemes of Din and Nayru respectively. However no third house can be built in the game, leaving the third Oracle homeless and stuck in the inn's lobby. In the European version of the game, Gorman makes a comment about wanting to build a house just south of the Royal Hyrule Library, on a plot of land occupied by cats, but he never does. This comment was removed from the North American release of the game which came out two months later.
Although the choice of who will remain homeless is entirely up to the player, the most probable canonical traveler to remain homeless is Farore. This is based on the lack of a green-roofed house to reflect her color scheme, her figurine description noting that she is bothered by people who "take advantage of her kind nature" (unlike Din and Nayru's descriptions which only point out where they are from and are looking for a new home), and by the development history of Oracle of Ages and Seasons, which was originally planned to be three games with each focusing on a different piece of the Triforce represented by a different Oracle, although only two games centering on Din and Nayru would ultimately be developed.
It's unknown if this incomplete side quest was an oversight, or if it was an intentional in-joke by Capcom, who developed both The Minish Cap and Oracle of Ages and Seasons.
The game has a secret CPU ghost mode which can be accessed under the Time Trial menu by pressing Start on a controller in port 2 while selecting a driver. This triggers a CPU cursor to appear, allowing the player to select a ghost driver to compete against. However, the CPU ghosts are capable of interacting with elements of a track's mechanics, like the ice blocks found in Vanilla Dome. 
If the player manages to scan the projectiles that the Omega Pirate fires, the description will consist of placeholder text that reads "This is an Elite Space Pirate" on the first page and "Elite Space Pirate description 3" on the second. Not only does the later Japanese release retain this oversight, but it also introduces a second one, in that the placeholder text is still in English.
In the player's house garage you can find two posters which say "Stoney" and "Sport Sport", which are references to the 2006 film Rocky Balboa and the 1988 film Bloodsport, respectively.
In the Street Fighter 5 Climax Arts Plus Zero to 6 book, the game's director Nakayuki Nakayama stated that Juri Han didn't originally wear a black top underneath the catsuit, and that this was added after many people said the original design was too sexy. Juri's original design can be seen in Cammy's character story, which was included in the base game before the release of the cinematic story mode A Shadow Falls in June 2016 and Juri's inclusion as a season 1 DLC character in July 2016.
