A rumor was circulated that the game was based on ideas left behind from another game, Twisted Metal: Apocalypse, which was cancelled after the tragic death of 6 members of the the creative team, who passed away in an airplane crash.
This story was perpetuated by Lead developer David Jaffe during an interview to promote a future Twisted Metal release. In it he states "there were a number of people who were working on the team -- and I wasn't working with the team -- that were killed. They died in a plane crash in Utah on a ski trip." However, he later rescinds that comment in a back and forth with a reporter from 1up.com. During that, Jaffe says, "We never used- and I never would- a tragedy (real or fake) to promote ANYTHING. The story of the developers dying in the plane crash (totally fake) was never used to promote that game."
Mighty the Armadillo's sprite sheet is nearly identical to Sonic's sprite sheet from Sonic Crackers, a Genesis prototype game from which Knuckles Chaotix drew its elastic ring mechanic.
This has led fans to speculate that Sonic was originally intended to be in the game instead of Mighty, but was changed late in development. This, as well as the theory that Tails was also meant to be included, is backed up by other assets in the game, including Amy Rose being hidden in a sound test and Sonic and Tails appearing in the ending screen when the game is completed with all 7 Chaos Rings.
There is a persistent rumor that N. Oxide was intended to be a playable character, unlocked through completing various tasks and beating certain records in the game. Although he can be selected using a cheat device, he is extremely buggy, and will most likely crash the game. According to the developers, they once considered making him a playable character, but were unable to due to the extremely limited memory of the Playstation, and his boss level was designed with those limitations in mind in order to make him functional.
In 2012, TV Tropes user Tunafish edited the site's page for the Civilization series to claim that Gandhi can become the most aggressive character in the original game due to a rollover error. World leaders' aggression levels drop by two points upon adopting democracy; because Gandhi's aggression is set to 1, the lowest possible value, the pacification allegedly lowers it to -1, which defaults to 255, the highest possible value.
Despite the edit not providing any evidence, the claim nonetheless circulated online in subsequent years. Because leaders will vehemently pursue a nuclear weapons policy when their aggression is high enough, the claim spawned the "Nuclear Gandhi" meme among Civilization fans, poking fun at the apparent dissonance between the real Gandhi's pacifism and his fictional counterpart's apocalyptic jingoism. A KnowYourMeme page on the memes further distorted the rumors by claiming that the bug first appeared in Civilization II rather than the first game; as of March 2024, the page now acknowledges that the rumors are false.
The Nuclear Gandhi claim was eventually debunked by series creator Sid Meier in his 2020 autobiography, Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games. In the book, Meier revealed that Civilization and Civilization II are respectively programmed in C and C++, which are immune to the kinds of rollover errors that the urban legend describes. Consequently, Gandhi's aggression level remains at 1 after the adoption of democracy. Nevertheless, Meier admitted that he found the memes surrounding the urban legend funny.
Shiver Star, the game's 5th world, appears to be a frozen-over version of Earth, containing several uninhabited urban areas. Nintendo has confirmed that Shiver Star was once inhabited, but the climate drove them to evacuate the planet. This has led fans to speculate that Shiver Star is a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. Though Nintendo's intentions during the making of Shiver Star remains unknown, it can be inferred that the world is either a message about climate change, or the suggestion that the "Kirby" series takes place in our own universe.
While Curse of Monkey Island was being developed, an animated feature film based off of the game series was in consideration. It was believed that Curse of Monkey island was the said movie. However. According to Sam and Max creator Steve Purcell, who was one of the artists providing concept art for the said film, the film would have had an original story as well as introduce new characters. The film never happened, but it's believed that the first Pirates of the Caribbean film from Disney is based off of the purposed script for the Monkey Island film.
It is commonly speculated that Gwyndolin was a son of Lord Gwyn raised as a woman due to his affinity to the moon. Unsurprisingly this leads to him having feminine traits such as long hair, fair skin, and feminine clothing. But surprisingly he also has breasts. This is because the character model used for Gwyndolin is a female character model, despite the fact the character is actually male. This trait is also present in the Dark Souls Art Book.
It was rumored that Shigeru Miyamoto disliked Donkey Kong Country. The rumor stated that Miyamoto said "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre game play as long as the art is good."
Later in an interview with IGN, Miyamoto clarified that he did in fact like Donkey Kong Country, and that he worked very closely with Rare on the game.
Looking through the code in EoSD reveals a third playable character who was scrapped due to time constraints. The character's name is "Rin Satsuki", who would have wielded Flower Sign (Type A) and Wind Sign (Type B) Spell Cards. The character was speculated to be a Kirin or a nurse. The only official artwork of this character that exists is from Comiket 62.
Sword Quest had a contest with 5 items made with real gold and jewels. Only 2 were won by gamers but the last 3 items were lost due to the video game crash of 1983, and Atari was sold off. The remaining items were once rumored to be in the hands of the then-new owner of Atari, Jack Tramiel.
It was originally believed that the only reason the game needed the Expansion Pak to run was because it fixed a game-breaking bug that caused the 4 megabyte game cartridge to randomly crash. Rare couldn't find any other solution, so they bundled the Expansion Pak with the game, costing them a lot of money. They still don't know what caused the bug. According to software engineer Chris Marlow:
"There was a bug that caused the game to randomly crash that only occurred in the 4meg-only version ... and they couldn't find out what it was, so they had to shift with the memory card in it for free and it cost them a fortune."
However, developer Mark Stevenson claimed that while there was a game-breaking bug, it only affected one hardware revision of the Nintendo 64 that would be resolved on later models. He claims that the actual reason the Expansion Pak was required was because Rare's management instructed the game's developers to support it early in development to accommodate advanced graphical effects like dynamic lighting. Stevenson speculated that these two stories were likely conflated into one, creating the memory leak rumor that persisted for years.
Ultimately, Simon Craddick, one of the four engineers who worked on the Expansion Pak's implementation into Donkey Kong 64, claimed in a Facebook group that the only thing the Expansion Pak actually did was add vertex lighting to the levels.
In the audit menu of the arcade version, there is a useless row of text that says "ERMACS" (which stands for Error Macros) and is listed under "Reptile Battles." Because of this, players thought that Ermac was a hidden boss like Reptile. Ermac became a running joke for the developers, so much so that they even made him a real character for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, with his BIO saying he was hiding in the first Mortal Kombat.
There was a rumored Game Boy Color port of the game called "Metroid II: Return of Samus DX" featured once in the German gaming magazine "Club Nintendo" that was claimed to make use of the Game Boy Color's vast color-palette. However, the game never released and its existence has been contested by a testimony from Nintendo of America translator Dan Owsen who was unaware of plans for the port, suggesting that the screenshot featured in the magazine may be a mock-up.
The Pokemon Trainer has an unused jumping animation. Some fans have speculated he may have been playable on his own, but it seems more likely that this jumping was planned to help him traverse large areas like The Subspace Emissary.
The S.T.A.R.S. group photo has an unidentified member on the far left. It is speculated that he is either the predecessor of Rebecca Chambers or an early concept of Kevin Dooley, an RPD pilot who sometimes helped the S.T.A.R.S. team on their missions. The latter would make sense as there is an RPD helicopter in the background.
According to Capcom, there is a secret somewhere in the game that players have yet to uncover, similar to the one in Mega Man 9. It's unknown what it is or if Capcom is even telling the truth.
According to Capcom, there is a secret that no one has found in Mega Man 9. To this day, no one has any idea what the secret is, or if Capcom is telling the truth about it.
For years, Lara Croft's bust size was believed to be the result of an error made by developer Toby Gard, when he accidentally increased the dimensions of her breasts by 150%. The creative team then argued to keep the change. This claim originated from a 1997 interview with Gard, who joked that a "slip of the mouse" resulted in Lara's chest being resized by 150% instead of 50%. In a 2021 article by TheGamer investigating the origin of the claim, Gard confirmed that this statement was intended as a joke. The article also revealed that false belief in the claim was exacerbated by an April Fool's Day article by GameSpot in 2000, which attributed the claim to a supposed developer named Nigel West, who is not actually listed in the credits for any Tomb Raider games that existed at that time.
In the French and German releases of the game, the character of Nimdok and his chapter as a whole were removed, because the chapter was based around a Nazi concentration camp. For nearly 30 years, it was rumored that the removal of Nimdok's chapter made the best ending unattainable. However, this was eventually disproven in 2023, when YouTube user StarlightPumpkins uploaded a video laying the rumor to rest by successfully achieving the best ending in the French release.
Speculation has risen among fans that Serges is actually the mind of Dr. Wily transferred into a Reploid body. Some dialogue from the Japanese version has him talk about Dr. Light, X's creator, and his appearance and his tendency to rely on machines for transport and attacking resembles Dr. Wily in many ways. Keiji Inafune has never confirmed or denied the fact, and has seemed reluctant to do so, suggesting the theory could be true.
A rumor was circulated that the game was based on ideas left behind from another game, Twisted Metal: Apocalypse, which was cancelled after the tragic death of 6 members of the the creative team, who passed away in an airplane crash.
Mighty the Armadillo's sprite sheet is nearly identical to Sonic's sprite sheet from Sonic Crackers, a Genesis prototype game from which Knuckles Chaotix drew its elastic ring mechanic.
In 2012, TV Tropes user Tunafish edited the site's page for the Civilization series to claim that Gandhi can become the most aggressive character in the original game due to a rollover error. World leaders' aggression levels drop by two points upon adopting democracy; because Gandhi's aggression is set to 1, the lowest possible value, the pacification allegedly lowers it to -1, which defaults to 255, the highest possible value.
While Curse of Monkey Island was being developed, an animated feature film based off of the game series was in consideration. It was believed that Curse of Monkey island was the said movie. However. According to Sam and Max creator Steve Purcell, who was one of the artists providing concept art for the said film, the film would have had an original story as well as introduce new characters. The film never happened, but it's believed that the first Pirates of the Caribbean film from Disney is based off of the purposed script for the Monkey Island film.
It is commonly speculated that Gwyndolin was a son of Lord Gwyn raised as a woman due to his affinity to the moon. Unsurprisingly this leads to him having feminine traits such as long hair, fair skin, and feminine clothing. But surprisingly he also has breasts. This is because the character model used for Gwyndolin is a female character model, despite the fact the character is actually male. This trait is also present in the Dark Souls Art Book.
Sword Quest had a contest with 5 items made with real gold and jewels. Only 2 were won by gamers but the last 3 items were lost due to the video game crash of 1983, and Atari was sold off. The remaining items were once rumored to be in the hands of the then-new owner of Atari, Jack Tramiel.
There was a rumored Game Boy Color port of the game called "Metroid II: Return of Samus DX" featured once in the German gaming magazine "Club Nintendo" that was claimed to make use of the Game Boy Color's vast color-palette. However, the game never released and its existence has been contested by a testimony from Nintendo of America translator Dan Owsen who was unaware of plans for the port, suggesting that the screenshot featured in the magazine may be a mock-up.
The Pokemon Trainer has an unused jumping animation. Some fans have speculated he may have been playable on his own, but it seems more likely that this jumping was planned to help him traverse large areas like The Subspace Emissary.
The S.T.A.R.S. group photo has an unidentified member on the far left. It is speculated that he is either the predecessor of Rebecca Chambers or an early concept of Kevin Dooley, an RPD pilot who sometimes helped the S.T.A.R.S. team on their missions. The latter would make sense as there is an RPD helicopter in the background.
