In a 2010 Eurogamer interview, the game's director Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that the game's Black and Blue Phantom multiplayer elements were inspired by his experience of driving on a hillside after some heavy snow:
"The origin of that idea is actually due to a personal experience where a car suddenly stopped on a hillside after some heavy snow and started to slip... The car following me also got stuck, and then the one behind it spontaneously bumped into it and started pushing it up the hill... That's it! That's how everyone can get home! Then it was my turn and everyone started pushing my car up the hill, and I managed to get home safely.
But I couldn't stop the car to say thanks to the people who gave me a shove. I'd have just got stuck again if I'd stopped. On the way back home I wondered whether the last person in the line had made it home, and thought that I would probably never meet the people who had helped me. I thought that maybe if we'd met in another place we'd become friends, or maybe we'd just fight...
You could probably call it a connection of mutual assistance between transient people. Oddly, that incident will probably linger in my heart for a long time. Simply because it's fleeting, I think it stays with you a lot longer... like the cherry blossoms we Japanese love so much."
Art Bell, host of the real life paranormal-themed radio program "Coast to Coast AM", lent his voice to the game by recording roughly 15 minutes of fictional broadcasts of his program that are interspersed in various places throughout the game. These broadcasts reveal key background information about events taking place in The Sphere.
The first two callers in the broadcasts (George from Garland, and Scott from Texas) are references to Prey's co-producer George Broussard and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller. Garland, Texas was also where 3D Realms was founded.
The games' most prominent subplot focuses on the conflict between Team Aqua and Team Magma in their efforts to gain control of the legendary Pokémon Kyogre and Groudon to change the climate in response to the effect of humans on the environment in order to create expanded environments for sea and land Pokémon respectively. Although it has not been confirmed by the developers, this subplot may have drawn direct inspiration from a real-life controversy that was a prominent issue in Japan at the time of the games' development and continues to be. The Isahaya Bay land reclamation project on the Japanese island of Kyūshū, which the Hoenn region is based on, aimed to expand the available farmland in one of Japan's last wetland habitats. This lead to fierce political conflict from environmentalists who argued that the project would cause long-term damage to the wetlands and the marine ecosystem of the area through agricultural runoff released into the sea, and from reclamation activists who argued that Kyūshū needed the land as Japan has very little arable land already and needs to produce enough food to feed its increasing population and keep up with rapid industrialization. The concept of Team Aqua and Team Magma draw striking parallels to each side of this issue (i.e. reclaiming land where there used to be sea and protesting to reclaim sea where there is now land) while being written as cultic villains akin to Team Rocket from past games without distinct arguments to their positions. This causes these parallels to be obscured and emphasizes the personal gain of expanding, or reducing land for the sake of certain land, or sea Pokémon to be won out from the conflict with little to no regard for humanity.
In Pokémon Emerald, the unified story featuring Kyogre and Groudon both being pacified by the presence of Rayquaza, a Pokémon heralding from the sky which in many religions and mythologies is where powerful gods and deities live, hints that a divine compromise between civilization and nature is the necessary solution, with how Hoenn is presented in the final game through the coexistence of different environments, humans and Pokémon being the result. This suggests that the preservation of Isahaya Bay while allowing for land reclamation elsewhere is the compromise this subplot is trying to get across.
Series producer Kensuke Tanabe stated, in an interview with The Verge, that Zip Lash would be the final game in the franchise if it wasn’t well-recognized or didn’t sell well. This became the case as the game was a critical and commercial failure, resulting in the series’ dormancy. Chibi-Robo!’s developer Skip Ltd. has also not released any new games since.
GoldenEye 007 was originally planned to be included in Rare Replay, even going so far as having a "Rare Revealed" documentary video focused on the making of the game produced for it, but was scrapped due to licensing issues. This video would later be leaked online in 2019 by a former Rare employee, and the game would eventually be re-released separately in 2023, with previous owners of Rare Replay being gifted the game free of charge.
"Hatman" is a recurring crude caricature of a Viacom New Media higher-up that the developers hated. Originating as paint graffiti of the person on a wall whose identity was disguised by putting a top hat on it, it soon made hidden appearances in the rest of the developer's output as an obligatory Easter egg. The earliest known Hatman Easter egg made for a game was a short CG animation for the game Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity.
On the End Credits screen, entering one of the following four codes without the quotation marks, "BOIDUTS", "YNNIF", "SKCUS", or "NAMTAH", will trigger one of four short videos:
• The first video is a montage of video footage recorded at Viacom New Media featuring the developers playing around during development (including running around outside during a thunderstorm), showing off a production baby, and ending on Butt-Head saying "Dumbass!" while the word is superimposed over a picture of a developer.
• The second video is another montage of videos and pictures recorded during development (including the team going swimming and posing on a couch with Beavis and Butt-Head statues) set to an original rock song written for guitar and sung by one of the developers. Hatman also makes appearances in this video.
• The third video is a montage of video footage recorded during the making of the game's beta, which according to the video was completed on August 25, 1995 at 4:45 in the morning. The video prominently features the developers excitedly screaming "Beta" over and over again, before showing them lying in the hallway of the studio exhausted and ending with the quote "These kids are intense...." on screen.
• The fourth video is a crudely-made CG animation of Hatman floating through space, and is believed to be the earliest instance of the Easter egg made for a game.
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At the Veterans Hall, select the Foot and and click the top-left, top-right, bottom-right, and bottom-left corners of the building's sign in that order. A sequence will play out where the stuffed grizzly bear from the Insane Wing appears in front of the building and Butt-Head tells Beavis to "check in his anal cavity". Beavis then reaches inside the bear's anus and pulls out a red piece used in the puzzle game Zoop, which was also published by Viacom New Media around the same time as this game, before putting it back inside claiming that he felt something, but couldn't grab it, and then cutting to the game's title screen. Presumably, this sequence was scrapped from being used in the Insane Wing, but left in the game by hiding it in a different location.
At the start of the game in the Classroom, select the Foot and use it on the top-left and top-right corners of the door and chalkboard respectively. This will trigger an animation where Beavis and Butt-Head walk to the chalkboard, and Butt-Head draws a picture of Hatman before cutting to the game's ending cutscene.
Hatman's existence in Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity was first revealed in a 1999 Chicago Tribune article on Hatman after Viacom New Media was integrated into Virgin Interactive in 1998, although it would take another 20 years for video footage showing this Easter egg in action to surface online.
In the Slaughterhouse, selecting the Foot and using it on the bottom-right corner of the top-left beam holding up the building will cause the Foot to flash. Doing the same to the bottom-left corner of the top-right beam and then the bottom pixels of the two hooks on that beam from left to right will cause a short sequence to play out. Beavis will activate the slaughter machine, and a man wearing a cow mask will be killed in the machine instead of a cow. One of the game's developers who revealed the existence of this Easter egg explained that this man was originally a caricature of a recognizable employee at Viacom New Media talking on a cell phone, but another employee suggested the cow mask be added to make the jab less obvious.
On the Podlink Farm, if you select the Foot and click on a specific spot on the top-left corner of the gate sign, the Foot will briefly flash. Do the same for the bottom-center of the sign and the top of the farm's silo, and a short animation will play of a nuclear missile launching out of the silo. One of the game's developers who revealed the existence of the Easter egg explained it as being a "tiny juvenile rebellion" by Viacom New Media aimed at the Viacom managers they were sometimes at odds with.
Throughout the game, Theo frequently takes pictures of his trek for his "Instapix" (in-game replacement for Instagram) account called "TheoUnderStars". Ten months prior to the game's release, an actual Instagram account under this handle was created that posted pictures between April 4, 2017, and September 9, 2019, the release date of the Farewell DLC chapter. The account features artwork by concept artist Amora Bettany that took place before, during, and after the events of the game.
On the bookshelf located in the Fortress of Doom, there is a book titled "How to Comb your Mustache" by Cliffton M. Fischbach, the father of YouTuber Markiplier, who passed away due to lung cancer. The developers included his name as an easter egg in the game because Mark Fischbasch stated that his father got him into the very first game in the series.
The skybox of Wet-Dry World, originally believed to be a stock photograph of the hillside town of Casares, Spain, was later found to be a composite of altered photographs of the town of Shibam, Yemen. The sole exception is the red building near the top of the picture, which was identified as the Great Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the city of Cairo, Egypt. The location fits the idea of Wet-Dry World, because Yemen is a desert country that, like other Middle Eastern countries, experiences sporadic large-scale flash floods.
According to Capcom USA's Product Manager Scott Smith, the reason why Gouki's name was changed to Akuma for the international release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo is because Capcom USA felt there were too many characters whose name had the letter G. Scott Smith, who was tasked with coming up with a new name, chose the name 'Akuma' based on a news story from Japan where people were trying to name their child after the devil but the government wouldn't let them. Mr. Smith looked up devil in Japanese and found the name Akuma.
According to an interview with Title Match Wrestling, Former wrestler Sabu was paid $100,000 to have his likeness used in WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2008. However, he also went on to state that WWE made it so he can only be playable as a custom created wrestler as a way to avoid paying him any royalties nor including him in later games within the series.
Dōbutsu no Mori e+ is the only version of the original Animal Crossing to not be packaged with a promotional memory card (even the N64 Dōbutsu no Mori included a themed Controller Pak). This is because the game's extra content expands the maximum file size to 72 blocks: 57 for town data, 5 for saved letters at the post office, 5 for saved patterns at Able Sisters, 1 for NES save data, and 4 for travel data. While GameCube memory cards were officially available in larger 251-block and 1019-block sizes, all first-party cards bundled with games were manufactured exclusively in the minimum 59-block size.
The seemingly unique design for the Belmonts' Vampire Killer whip, with a metal chain, a morning star at the end, and the religious-looking crossguard, is actually very closely taken from two different sources: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and the Pachinko game Castlevania: Erotic Violence.
The games' most prominent subplot focuses on the conflict between Team Aqua and Team Magma in their efforts to gain control of the legendary Pokémon Kyogre and Groudon to change the climate in response to the effect of humans on the environment in order to create expanded environments for sea and land Pokémon respectively. Although it has not been confirmed by the developers, this subplot may have drawn direct inspiration from a real-life controversy that was a prominent issue in Japan at the time of the games' development and continues to be. The Isahaya Bay land reclamation project on the Japanese island of Kyūshū, which the Hoenn region is based on, aimed to expand the available farmland in one of Japan's last wetland habitats. This lead to fierce political conflict from environmentalists who argued that the project would cause long-term damage to the wetlands and the marine ecosystem of the area through agricultural runoff released into the sea, and from reclamation activists who argued that Kyūshū needed the land as Japan has very little arable land already and needs to produce enough food to feed its increasing population and keep up with rapid industrialization. The concept of Team Aqua and Team Magma draw striking parallels to each side of this issue (i.e. reclaiming land where there used to be sea and protesting to reclaim sea where there is now land) while being written as cultic villains akin to Team Rocket from past games without distinct arguments to their positions. This causes these parallels to be obscured and emphasizes the personal gain of expanding, or reducing land for the sake of certain land, or sea Pokémon to be won out from the conflict with little to no regard for humanity.
"Hatman" is a recurring crude caricature of a Viacom New Media higher-up that the developers hated. Originating as paint graffiti of the person on a wall whose identity was disguised by putting a top hat on it, it soon made hidden appearances in the rest of the developer's output as an obligatory Easter egg. The earliest known Hatman Easter egg made for a game was a short CG animation for the game Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity.
At the start of the game in the Classroom, select the Foot and use it on the top-left and top-right corners of the door and chalkboard respectively. This will trigger an animation where Beavis and Butt-Head walk to the chalkboard, and Butt-Head draws a picture of Hatman before cutting to the game's ending cutscene.
In the Slaughterhouse, selecting the Foot and using it on the bottom-right corner of the top-left beam holding up the building will cause the Foot to flash. Doing the same to the bottom-left corner of the top-right beam and then the bottom pixels of the two hooks on that beam from left to right will cause a short sequence to play out. Beavis will activate the slaughter machine, and a man wearing a cow mask will be killed in the machine instead of a cow. One of the game's developers who revealed the existence of this Easter egg explained that this man was originally a caricature of a recognizable employee at Viacom New Media talking on a cell phone, but another employee suggested the cow mask be added to make the jab less obvious.
On the Podlink Farm, if you select the Foot and click on a specific spot on the top-left corner of the gate sign, the Foot will briefly flash. Do the same for the bottom-center of the sign and the top of the farm's silo, and a short animation will play of a nuclear missile launching out of the silo. One of the game's developers who revealed the existence of the Easter egg explained it as being a "tiny juvenile rebellion" by Viacom New Media aimed at the Viacom managers they were sometimes at odds with.
The skybox of Wet-Dry World, originally believed to be a stock photograph of the hillside town of Casares, Spain, was later found to be a composite of altered photographs of the town of Shibam, Yemen. The sole exception is the red building near the top of the picture, which was identified as the Great Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the city of Cairo, Egypt. The location fits the idea of Wet-Dry World, because Yemen is a desert country that, like other Middle Eastern countries, experiences sporadic large-scale flash floods.
Entering the cheat code "UGLYMUGS" and viewing the game's credits will display a group photo of the game's developers, Left Field Productions.
