In issue 21 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, two characters on page 20 resemble Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste, the main protagonists of the animated series "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Car Noir". These characters would later appear again in "Sonic the Hedgehog Annual 2020" on page 7, itself a reference to the events of this issue.
In Issue #48 of the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, pages four and five depict several Central City citizens with designs that reference characters from other franchises, such as:
• Wally from Where's Wally? • Reigen from Mob Psycho 100 • Conan and Ran from Case Closed • Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph • Crinkly Wrinkly from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Incidentally, the Sonic series has crossed over with both Wreck-It Ralph and OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes in the past.
Being a family-friendly franchise, the Mappy series typically does not feature usage or possession of firearms from either Mappy or the Mewkies gang, despite the police and crime theme.
There are two exceptions to this, both being Mappy franchise projects released in the 21st century and aimed at an older audience. One is the merchandising for Mappy Park, a pachinko gambling game that is considered lost, so it is unknown whether guns actually appear in the game. However, a promotional cigarette lighter was made for the game shaped like a pistol. The other exception is the ShiftyLook Mappy: The Beat webtoon series where both Mappy and Goro use guns.
When Tsuyoshi Tozak, director of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends, was asked about if Bub and Bob would appear in the Super Smash Bros. franchise, they simply responded "let's skip that question". The interviewer theorized that they may have been under a non-disclosure agreement, citing a similar response when asking Studio MDHR, the developers of Cuphead, about if they wanted to make an animated series based on their game, which did eventually happen. However, come the end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's DLC cycle, a Bubble Bobble multimedia adaptation did not happen in any form, suggesting that Tozak was likely indifferent on the possibility rather than under NDA.
A pilot was made for a Pajama Sam television series that was pitched to PBS Kids, where Sam was aged up but inexplicably retained his onesie pajamas, and had a generic school bully as a nemesis. It supposedly had a high budget, and Humongous animator John Michaud, who revealed its existence, claims that it was fortunate it wasn't picked up.
Buffalo Bull was only a minor character in the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa cartoon, serving as the village blacksmith, but was made into a playable character in the game to allow 4-player gameplay.
In 2004, a commercial for Sonic Heroes McDonald's Happy Meal LCD games was aired in Pakistan. This advert would become infamous abroad for the low quality of its CGI animation, with inexpressive and off-model Sonic characters playing sports. In particular, the segment for Amy & Rouge Tennis (incorrectly called "Rogue & Amy Tennis" by the narrator) features a version of Rouge the Bat who is unclothed and resembles a mouse, and the segment for Tails Soccer has a one-tailed Tails performing an own-goal.
An English-language reupload of the commercial has managed to amass over 8 million views as of 2023, and in 2015 the Sonic the Hedgehog social media pages acknowledged the commercial as being "creepy".
Throughout October 2023, children's entertainment restaurant Chuck E. Cheese held a promotion titled "Five Nights of Fun", coinciding with the release of a movie based on Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game franchise inspired by Chuck E. Cheese and littered with references to the company's history. The marketing for FNOF directly pastiches the poster for the FNAF movie and refers to the purple-furred character Mr. Munch as a "purple guy", referencing the overarching villain of the game series.
Despite the obvious parody, an alleged internal document was posted online by a former employee, who had left Chuck E. Cheese days prior to the promotion coming under scrutiny, informing employees that they should feign ignorance of FNAF during the promotion if asked by children or their parents. One example of terminology provided is:
SAY THIS Oh, is there a movie coming out...? That's news to me! We're celebrating Five Nights of Fun in a row this October!
NOT THIS Yeah, they wanted to combat that idea of that people think that we are like that place they have in the movie... so they did this
In 1983, an album was released on vinyl by Kid Stuff Records titled Donkey Kong (alternatively called Donkey Kong Goes Home), retelling the story of the video game of the same name. It is notable for not only potentially being the first time Mario was voiced (having an unknown release date in 1983, which was also the debut year of Saturday Supercade), but also giving Mario a stereotypical Italian accent with an "-a-" verbal tic as opposed to the gruff Italian-American accent that would be used in multimedia projects for the rest of the 80s (including Saturday Supercade), predating Charles Martinet's debut as Mario in Mario Teaches Typing by 8 years. According to Kid Stuff Mario voice actor Pat McBride, the reasoning for this voice direction was
"He was Mario, he had that Italian background, we knew what his occupation was, and we knew he was a really good guy, in my brain, if there were kids in the neighborhood, he’d always pat them on the head and say hi. He’d look out for everyone, so he became the real good guy."
Nintendo never gave the team behind Donkey Kong Goes Home any form of guidance for the project, and did not give any word - positive or negative - about the finished album beyond approving it.
The "Fate/Unpublished Material" and "Fate/Side Material" booklets reveal an unused character for Fate/Stay Night. "Tachie", otherwise known as "Galahad", "Shielder", or "Stray Servant" was planned as an alternate Heroine Servant the player could have chosen instead of Saber. She was scrapped from the game as to keep the story manageable.
This character was also planned for the animated adaptation of Fate/Stay Night by Studio Deen, but was scrapped in favor of an adaptation of the "Fate" Route. An animated movie featuring Tachie was also considered, but also abandoned.
This unused character was later revisited and inspired the design for Mash Kyrielight, a seperate Shielder Servant and primary heroine of Fate/Grand Order.
In 2022, Logan McPherson, the director of the animated series "Sonic Prime", stated that the show was canon to the games, drawing upon their existing mythology. This would make Sonic Prime the first television series based on the Sonic franchise to be considered canon to the mainline series. Ian Flynn would further support this claim, revealing that he knew when exactly in the series timeline the show took place in, but would not reveal it until after the show ends, while noting that something happens in the show to make it clear that it is indeed canon to the games. In 2024, after the release of Sonic Prime's third and final season, Ian Flynn finally confirmed the show's status in the overall Sonic timeline: aside from taking place sometime after the events of Sonic Advance 3, the show's placement is considered moot due to the ending Spoiler:having the show wipe itself out. In response to complaints regarding this outcome, Flynn claimed that its placement in the canon was intentionally vague, and the show being canon to the games at all was not his decision due to only being involved in the animated series as a consultant. He later claimed that he and other parties had made efforts to flag the show's inconsistencies early on in production, but that many of these efforts were flat out ignored. He noted that there was not an easy way to brush these issues aside, but also made a point that there was an effort to do so.
The UK children's gaming TV show Bad Influence did major marketing work for Rise of the Robots, devoting a large chunk of its Christmas special to the game and designing a new opening sequence based on Rise. Ironically, when the game launched, Bad Influence gave the game an extremely low score, much like most other gaming publications that were hyping up the game.
Early in the Pokémon franchise's life, the Poliwhirl line recieved a major push in marketing, comparable to that of series mascot Pikachu.
Mascot costumes were made of Poliwhirl for promotional events, the Pokémon Adventures manga featured Poliwhirl as one of Red's Pokémon, Poliwag was placed closely to Pikachu on the box art of Pokémon Snap, food and toy lines would near-consistently feature a member of the Poliwhirl line alongside Pikachu even when the pool of Pokémon was as limited as 3 or 4 (with exceptions primarily being ones that also lacked Pikachu), and, most famously, Poliwhirl appeared on the center of the cover of TIME Magazine's issue adressing the popularity of Pokémon.
This could be related to Poliwag being Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri's favourite of the original 151 Kanto species.
Comedic video about bizarre Pokémon merchandise showing off many instances of Poliwhirl and Poliwrath merchandise - the nature of Poliwhirl's "mascot" status is discussed at the 13:06 mark: https://youtu.be/Gri7-XW3no8
The January 2024 IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic mini series based on Fang the Hunter revolves around him, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear searching for the mysterious “eighth” Chaos Emerald. This is a reference to the 1996 arcade game Sonic the Fighters (Bean and Bark’s debut game), which erroneously featured eight Chaos Emeralds, each one owned by the eight playable characters.
Sonic and Dr. Eggman’s cameos in the 2012 film "Wreck-It Ralph" and its 2018 sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" can be attributed to a Sonic the Fighters arcade cabinet being in Litwak’s Arcade. The arcade cabinet in the film uses the title "Sonic Championship", as the game was named this outside of Japan. Despite the game using the classic designs for the characters, Sonic and Eggman are shown in their modern designs inside the gaming world.
Though Donkey Kong's neutral special Giant Punch has no specific origin, Donkey Kong performs a similar wind-up punch in "Bad Hair Day", the first episode of the 1997 animated series "Donkey Kong Country", which first aired 17 months prior to the Japanese release of Super Smash Bros.
In "The Devil & Ms. Chalice", the final episode of the animated series "The Cuphead Show!", the last scene of the episode features the Devil's Casino in its only appearance in the show. The final shot of the series shows Cuphead, Mugman and Ms. Chalice running towards the casino, referencing the opening of the game. While not confirmed, this also implies that the show is, at least in broad strokes, a prequel to the game.
"ZIP, CARTOON - FIJIT REWIND 02", a common cartoon sound effect originating from the Hanna-Barbera sound library, is a sped up and reversed version of the Pac-Man cartoon theme song, better known as the theme song to Pac-Land.
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The 2023 Netflix animated series "Captain Laserhawk: Blood Dragon Remix", which is a loose adaptation of Far Cry 3's expansion game Blood Dragon (alongside featuring other recognizable Ubisoft characters), marks the first time that Rayman has ever been portrayed in an adult-oriented manner, featuring scenes with him saying swear words, drinking alcohol, snorting cocaine, and separately doing the latter while eating sushi off the back of a naked cow lady.
His flashback of going to college and then being rejected by humans due to being an alien is shown in a pixellated style resembling his appearance in the original Rayman while playing the song "The Lum King" from Rayman Origins.
Although it's not confirmed by Ubisoft, his story arc could be seen as an allegory for how Rayman's popularity dwindled since his initial debut in 1995.
One criticism that the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" received is that while composer Bryan Tyler collaborated with Nintendo veteran composer Koji Kondo to create a score that incorporates orchestrated rearrangements of iconic songs from the Mario franchise, there were too many moments of Illumination-mandated pop songs replacing the score in certain scenes. The most infamous example of this being the replacement of the original composition "Driving Me Bananas", a medley of songs from the Donkey Kong Country games, with a-ha’s "Take on Me" feeling somewhat out of context.
According to Jamey Scott, who worked in the film's sound department, Tyler fought hard to keep his orchestrated rendition of the Super Star theme in the film over the studio's suggestion of Van Halen's "Jump", and succeeded.
In issue 21 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, two characters on page 20 resemble Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste, the main protagonists of the animated series "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Car Noir". These characters would later appear again in "Sonic the Hedgehog Annual 2020" on page 7, itself a reference to the events of this issue.
In Issue #48 of the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, pages four and five depict several Central City citizens with designs that reference characters from other franchises, such as:
Being a family-friendly franchise, the Mappy series typically does not feature usage or possession of firearms from either Mappy or the Mewkies gang, despite the police and crime theme.
Throughout October 2023, children's entertainment restaurant Chuck E. Cheese held a promotion titled "Five Nights of Fun", coinciding with the release of a movie based on Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game franchise inspired by Chuck E. Cheese and littered with references to the company's history. The marketing for FNOF directly pastiches the poster for the FNAF movie and refers to the purple-furred character Mr. Munch as a "purple guy", referencing the overarching villain of the game series.
In 1983, an album was released on vinyl by Kid Stuff Records titled Donkey Kong (alternatively called Donkey Kong Goes Home), retelling the story of the video game of the same name. It is notable for not only potentially being the first time Mario was voiced (having an unknown release date in 1983, which was also the debut year of Saturday Supercade), but also giving Mario a stereotypical Italian accent with an "-a-" verbal tic as opposed to the gruff Italian-American accent that would be used in multimedia projects for the rest of the 80s (including Saturday Supercade), predating Charles Martinet's debut as Mario in Mario Teaches Typing by 8 years. According to Kid Stuff Mario voice actor Pat McBride, the reasoning for this voice direction was
The "Fate/Unpublished Material" and "Fate/Side Material" booklets reveal an unused character for Fate/Stay Night. "Tachie", otherwise known as "Galahad", "Shielder", or "Stray Servant" was planned as an alternate Heroine Servant the player could have chosen instead of Saber. She was scrapped from the game as to keep the story manageable.
Early in the Pokémon franchise's life, the Poliwhirl line recieved a major push in marketing, comparable to that of series mascot Pikachu. 
Sonic and Dr. Eggman’s cameos in the 2012 film "Wreck-It Ralph" and its 2018 sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" can be attributed to a Sonic the Fighters arcade cabinet being in Litwak’s Arcade. The arcade cabinet in the film uses the title "Sonic Championship", as the game was named this outside of Japan. Despite the game using the classic designs for the characters, Sonic and Eggman are shown in their modern designs inside the gaming world.
Though Donkey Kong's neutral special Giant Punch has no specific origin, Donkey Kong performs a similar wind-up punch in "Bad Hair Day", the first episode of the 1997 animated series "Donkey Kong Country", which first aired 17 months prior to the Japanese release of Super Smash Bros.
