On the Name Entry screen, when attempting to submit an inappropriate name (i.e. profanity, sexual content), it will instead be replaced with a different, more appropriate name. Humorously, this also applies when attempting to submit the names DDR (an abbreviation for rival series Dance Dance Revolution) or 573 (The "Konami Number", Konami being the company behind DDR), as they will be replaced with "SMX" (abbreviation for StepManiaX) and 123 respectively.
Claptrap's bounty item is his 2012 Character of the Year award from the Spike Video Game Awards. In the cutscene of him putting the bounty on the table for the tournament, GLaDOS says that it looks familiar. This is a reference to how Portal 2 was nominated for and won six awards at the 2011 Spike VGAs, with GLaDOS and Wheatley's voice actors, Ellen McLain and Stephen Merchant, also winning awards for Best Performance by a Human Female/Male respectively.
The manual for Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! is a bait and switch, as it is only 6 pages long and has a giant sticker obscuring the detailed text on pages 4 and 5 reading "REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS", intended as a joke in theme with the original TV series. This manual has been posted around on the internet frequently over the years, but often without the context that the game did come with a poster, stylized as a blueprint, containing game hints. The last two sentences in the bottom-right corner of the manual do reference this poster:
"Although it's frowned upon by the most macho of the breed, some real men actually refer to blue prints for help. If you find yourself in need of - dare we say it? - instructions, you can refer to the enclosed poster blue prints for hints."
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Both the Bounce Ball and Cutting Board items have different effects based on which character is using it. Specifically, they appear to be affected by bust size. For example, characters with larger chests (i.e. Tsukomo Sana, Ouro Kronii, Pavolia Reine) will spawn larger Bounce Balls. Conversely, characters labeled as being "flat chested" (i.e. Gawr Gura, Natsuro Matsuri, Kobo Kanaeru) will spawn larger projectiles when equipped with Cutting Board. Both these items, and their effects, reference former hololive member Uruha Rushia, who would get upset at people for teasing her flatness, insisting that she is actually "boing boing" (the Bounce Ball references this onomatopoeia).
The "X-Potato" weapon is a reference to one of Inugami Korone's livestreams of Blasphemous, in which she accidentally mispronounces the name Exposito while looking up boss names up after beating the game. It is unlocked by surviving 10 minutes while playing as Korone in a run. Its available Collabs (fusions between two weapons) are also references to Korone:
• Rap Dog (combined with Idol Song): Alludes to Korone's ability to rap, most prominently shown off when she and Nekomata Okayu sang "if..." by DA PUMP. • MiKorone (combined with Elite Lava Bucket): A portmanteau of Inugami Korone and Sakura Miko's names, a term for streams featuring the two collaborating together. • I'm Die, Thank You Forever (combined with Holo Bomb): References a collaboration between her and Mori Calliope played Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, each using their non-native language (English for Korone and Japanese for Calliope). During one attempt, Korone, realizing she couldn't diffuse the bomb in time, uttered "Ah, I'm die, thank you forever" before exploding.
A running gag throughout the Ace Attorney series involves the protagonist and his assistant having a conversation about the difference between a ladder and a stepladder. First occurring in "Turnabout Samurai", the third case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a stepladder has appeared in at least one location in each game to date (with the exception of The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures) for the sole purpose of continuing the tradition. The conversation generally goes as follows: after examination, the protagonist and one of their partner characters engage in a debate about the usage of the words "ladder" and "stepladder", and the difference between the two. Usually, one will accuse the other of being too absorbed in the details instead of looking at the big picture to realize that they both serve roughly the same function, to which the latter's response will often vary. Additionally, similar gags in regards to other items in the series have also been used, particularly in The Great Ace Attorney games, which primarily use a variant of the debate involving the difference between a shovel and a spade instead.
Within the various re-releases of the Ace Attorney games, an achievement is added that can be unlocked for engaging in every "ladder vs. stepladder" debate within the games featured in that collection. In the case of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a second achievement for engaging in every "shovel vs. spade" debate within the two games is also included.
In an interview with YouTube channel "The Geek Getaway", the CFO and COO of the revived Intellivision, Nick Richards, could be seen in front of a door reading "Amico Hater Dungeon". According to a comment by the channel, Richards said his daughter put up this sign.
The developers of Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales got very agitated with having to listen to Bubsy's catchphrases on loop, and would repeat them to one another mockingly. For one of producer Faran Thomason's co-workers, Bubsy's catchphrase "What could possibly go wrong?" became a 20-year long in-joke with other developers of the game (in spite of said catchphrase not even being said in Fractured Furry Tales outside of the ending text scroll).
In the source code for Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, a string of text can be found reading "no smutty comments please", suggesting there were previously inappropriate developer comments in the code thet were deleted.
Race Ace is the only game in Don't Buy This to have been released as an individual cassette prior to the compilation's release, credited to Tony Rainbird, who helped create the Firebird label that Don't Buy This was published under, meaning its inclusion may have been an in-joke.
Throughout development of Shipwrecked 64, Squeaks D'Corgeh would make references to a non-existent character in the game named "Duncan Dolphin". This even included a fake death animation for a character named "Drake Dulfin" (likely intended to be the Spoiler:Starling counterpart of Duncan) being shot in the face by Spoiler:Brandon Lester in his Bucky Beaver costume in what appeared to be a Wild West-esque setting. This continued after the game's release, where one of the patch notes for the Hotfix 2 update stated "Removed Duncan Dolphin", likely as a reference to the "Removed Herobrine" gag seen in updates to Minecraft.
However, on April 1st, 2024, an April Fools update was released that added Duncan to the game as a New Game+ bonus. If the game's True Ending has been reached, he will appear in The Theater at Midnight and ask Bucky for help activating his "New. Radical. Mechanism!!" due to losing the trinkets needed to make it work. This will take the player to a new area called "Garten of Duncan", a recreation of the Testing Sector from Garten of Banban made using assets from The Plaza. Clearing the map will take the player to a previously unused location called "Layer 4 Elevator", where an audio tape reveals that the player can input console commands to access other unused locations as part of the update. Entering the door will take the player to another new area, known simply as "Sample Area", but only a few seconds after entering the player will be kicked out to the encounter with the Spoiler:Studiogrounds Husk at the end of the game.
Notably, in the "Layer 4 Elevator" area, Chief Wulf can be seen on top of the tallest building in the area. If the player uses console commands to reach him, he can be spoken to, revealing that Spoiler:he has relived the same days over and over again, watched Stumbler O'Hare die over and over as part of that, and believes that he will be forgotten after his death.
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Explosive Fighter Patton from 1988 is believed to be the first video game to use the swear word "fuck", referring to the Famicom Disk System as the "fucking box". It is not known if this is an in-joke or a translation error.
This is followed by Skweek for Amstrad CPC in 1989, whose development builds leaked to the UK market, featuring a variety of vulgar in-joke placeholder phrases. The swearing version of the game has not known to be preserved, but it is alleged that one of these quotes was "fuck your mother!". This would make it the first use of "fuck" to be known for a fact to have been intentional, even if its distribution wasn't.
1990's Paranoia, the Japanese version of Psychosis features an 8-bit sound effect upon stage clear that appears to be made to evoke the phrase "fuck you!", which is played in accompaniment with an alien flipping the bird. This is technically the first vocalized use of "fuck", but is not a recording of a human voice, and is the first for-a-fact intentionally included use of "fuck".
1991's Llamatron contained a voice sample of the word "oh, fuck!" which was cut off. A glitch made it so that if you paused the game upon dying, it would play uncensored, making it the first clear vocalised use of "fuck", even if still not intentionally added.
1995's The Orion Conspiracy contains one of the earliest known uses of "fuck" that was clearly spoken, uncensored, and known for a fact to not be an oversight. Also of note is Discworld, released in the same year, having an Easter egg referencing John Cleese's 1989 eulogy to the late Monty Python member Graham Chapman. While both games released in the same year, it is unknown which game came out first as Discworld is the only one of the two to have a known release date, coming out on March 17, 1995.
According to creator Tony Grayson, possibly in a joking manner, the Anton characters are all multicoloured as a result of a nuclear war that left only Japan and their home country of the Backburner Peninsula, and are not meant to be any real-world enthicity. Grayson jokingly compared the skin colors of the Anton characters to The Groovenians, a 2002 Cartoon Network pilot that was not picked up for a series.
One of Kage's item win poses features him throwing a pan into the air and it landing on his head. This is a reference to a secret win pose he had in Virtua Fighter 3tb.