The word "Maple" can be spelled when putting together the first letters of five of the six main Hero characters: Mercedes, Aran, Phantom, Luminous, and Evan. Shade, the sixth character, is intentionally not included because his existence was canonically long forgotten when the Black Mage was sealed away before the start of the series.
However, Evan did not exist at the time the Black Mage was sealed. Evan's deceased predecessor, Freud, was one of the six Heroes who sealed the entity. Considering this, Shade could still be included to spell "Maple" by way of his original name "EunWol" ("은월") used outside of the North American/European/Oceanian servers for the game, while Freud would still act as the class to leave out.
Additionally, in the Explorer characters' plotline, the NPC characters that accompany the player character are named Sugar, Tess, Olive, and Rondo. If the player character is designated as "You", their first letters spell the word "Story".
A Station of Awakening for Alice from Wonderland was originally created and planned to appear in this game and accompany the Belle, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow-White ones but ended up never being used. Spoiler:With a possible explanation being the fact that Alice, like Kairi and Jasmine and unlike the other Princesses of Heart, was not abducted by the Disney villains at the very start of the game.
In a Kingdom Hearts Ultimania for this game, there was an early design for Roxas that was shown off where he had hair and attire that greatly resembles Sora's. Spoiler:One possible reason for the change was to better hide the fact that Roxas is Sora's Nobody.
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.
One of Hideo Kojima's early ideas for the game's ending was to have Snake and Otacon turn themselves in to the United Nations for breaking the law (presumably for the crimes they committed while operating as Philantropy during Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty), and be convicted and executed. The rest of the developers reacted negatively to this ending, which resulted in Kojima changing it. However, it's possible a remnant of this ending was left behind in the form of the game's end credits theme, a cover of "Here's to You", originally written for the 1971 Italian docudrama film "Sacco & Vanzetti". Both the song and film are based on the real-life case of two Italian anarchists who migrated to the United States in 1908, and in 1920 were convicted and sentenced to death after being accused of murdering two people during an armed robbery. The original 1971 recording of the song would later be used as the opening theme to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.
It was previously believed that the Z Saber Battle Chip could only be accessed by trading it into the game from Mega Man Zero 3, of which each copy of the game had only one copy of the chip. However, in 2022, an easier way to obtain the chip was discovered by entering the following hidden code at the Number Trader: 72794137. This code also works in the Japanese version of the game, causing its existence to baffle players as it has never been released in any of the game's official strategy guides. It's possible that the code was intended to be used during development as an easier way to access the chip without having to trade it across games, and that it was never meant to be found by players.
This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
1
▼
On page 6 of the game's manual, there's a news article about how a protest group called A.R.S.E. (American Road Safety for Everyone) is pushing to get motorcycles banned from Liberty City, and might also be responsible for getting bicycles banned from Liberty City a few years prior. This explains the absence of bicycles and motorcycles in Grand Theft Auto III.
In the living room of the Border House, to the left of the corkboard, there is a small, unmarked wall area that when hovered over will reveal a caption for a "Painting". Clicking it will instead cause April to walk to the adjacent right wall where the unseen painting is hung and comment:
April: "It's a reproduction of an early Lebowski. Not a particular favorite of mine, but, there ya are."
During the cutscene "Vision in the Living Room" which is only played if April has chosen to not work the evening shift at the Fringe Café, a shot of the painting depicting an abstract rendition of a woman's head can be seen. This painting appears to be a caricature of American actress Julianne Moore, who appeared one year prior to The Longest Journey's release in the 1998 film "The Big Lebowski" in the role of artist Maude Lebowski, suggesting that the painting may be a self-portrait.
In the Canalave Library there is a Book that was not in the original games for the DS, called the "The Sea's Legend", that the game describes as being "recently discovered" and that states the mysterious following text:
Spoiler:"Once upon a time in the East Sea, there was a Pokémon known as the prince. A brave human asked Pokémon living in the sea to let them see the prince. Mantyke, Buizel, and a Quilfish with huge spikes acknowledged the human's bravery and joined them. Together, they set off in a boat over the sunset-streaked sea, sailing through the ocean gate stretched over the waves. News of this reached the ears of the prince, who went to meet the brave little party at the Seaside Hollow."
It's possible that this text was put into Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Spoiler:to tease the upcoming game Pokemon Legends: Arceus via giving the player a hint of a storyline or event that may happen in the latter game's plot. Furthering the suspicious nature of the text, Game Freak, when sending out review copies of the games, forbid any reviewer from talking about any of the text in the library.
In an interview with VGC for The GameCubes's 20th anniversary, veteran Rare developer Martin Hollis revealed that not only was he among the first people to see "Project Dolphin", but also that he was possibly responsible for the GameCube's name and theme:
“I arrived in Kyoto, went into the big building, and Mr. Miyamoto and his team straight away took me to this empty meeting room and sat me down in front of a television [...] They switched it on, and Miyamoto told me to press the A button on the controller. I pressed it and the purple rolling cubes appeared on screen with the boot up music that we now know so well, revealing the GameCube name. [...] As the on-screen reveal happened, Mr. Miyamoto stared at my face intensely! That was my initiation, which was maybe because I’d actually suggested the name ‘Cube’ during my time at NTD. Months earlier I did a sheet of paper at Nintendo of America with a whole load of suggestions for names and one of them was ‘Star Cube’ or something like that.”
Nintendo did indeed trademark "Starcube" lending more legitimacy to Hollis' suspicion.
The internal name for the Alaska level on the game disc is "05_GREENLAND". this suggests that the level was originally going to be themed around and take place in the Dutch-owned island of Greenland instead of the U.S. state of Alaska.
Also, internal file names for the Pacific Island level ("07_EASTERISLAND") reveal that it was possibly supposed to be Easter Island (Rapa Nui).
In Level 7: Outpost, the hidden area where that level's Elysian Archive code can be found earns you an achievement called "Loekrise Kingdom". In that area, a small tent and clothesline are set up surrounding the code by a shoreline, with a message laid out in rocks along the shore that reads "LOEKRISE KINGDOM". This is believed to be a reference to the 2012 film "Moonrise Kingdom".
A model and a self-heal ability parameter for Ratchet were extensively worked on, suggesting the Autobot Medic was going to play a bigger role in the game than just appearing in cutscenes, possibly as a playable character in the Autobot Campaign or as a boss in the Decepticon Campaign.
On the disc, there is an unused character called "Evil Bumblebee" with black blood-splatter-like spots on his vehicle mode, which is Bee's old '77 Camaro alt mode. It is unknown if this was supposed to be a separate character from Bumblebee or the same character sporting a different look.
Cyclonus' signature Mini-Con Crumplezone appears attached to Cyclonus' Vehicle Mode as his cockpit, but in Robot mode, instead of appearing alongside Cyclonus or part of his "chest", he instead appears attached to his left arm. It's possible this was done by the developers to make the Decepticon a little more intimidating during his boss battle.
There is an unused Splitscreen mode in the game's data that seems to imply that the Story Mode was going to support Local Co-op instead of just the Online Co-op it supports in the final release.
There is an unused Game Modes tab on the disc that comes with data suggesting that there were other game modes planned like "Boss Mode" and "Explore Mode", however no further data exists on these modes.
There are a total of 21 unused Mini-Cons in the game's data, some of which appear as text strings while the rest appear to resemble JSON files. However, two were extensively worked on before being scrapped. The first one was called "Endgame" and would have summoned large "holes in the fabric of space" that would have sucked enemies and objects into them. The second dropped Mini-Con is called "Bug-Out" and would have called upon "Emergency Warp Gates". Although Endgame was scrapped, his model was reused for in-game Mini-Cons Discord, Twister, and Overwatch.
The game went through a number of early titles throughout development including "Transformers Armada" (which was the name shipped with review copies of the game), "Transformers Armada: The Battle for Energon" and "Transformers Armada: Prelude to Energon", all of which bear the name of the show and toy line that it's based upon. However, when the game was launched at retail, the name was changed to just "Transformers" for unknown reasons.
A Station of Awakening for Alice from Wonderland was originally created and planned to appear in this game and accompany the Belle, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow-White ones but ended up never being used. Spoiler:With a possible explanation being the fact that Alice, like Kairi and Jasmine and unlike the other Princesses of Heart, was not abducted by the Disney villains at the very start of the game.
In a Kingdom Hearts Ultimania for this game, there was an early design for Roxas that was shown off where he had hair and attire that greatly resembles Sora's. Spoiler:One possible reason for the change was to better hide the fact that Roxas is Sora's Nobody.
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 the living room of the Border House, to the left of the corkboard, there is a small, unmarked wall area that when hovered over will reveal a caption for a "Painting". Clicking it will instead cause April to walk to the adjacent right wall where the unseen painting is hung and comment:
In Level 7: Outpost, the hidden area where that level's Elysian Archive code can be found earns you an achievement called "Loekrise Kingdom". In that area, a small tent and clothesline are set up surrounding the code by a shoreline, with a message laid out in rocks along the shore that reads "LOEKRISE KINGDOM". This is believed to be a reference to the 2012 film "Moonrise Kingdom".
A model and a self-heal ability parameter for Ratchet were extensively worked on, suggesting the Autobot Medic was going to play a bigger role in the game than just appearing in cutscenes, possibly as a playable character in the Autobot Campaign or as a boss in the Decepticon Campaign.
Cyclonus' signature Mini-Con Crumplezone appears attached to Cyclonus' Vehicle Mode as his cockpit, but in Robot mode, instead of appearing alongside Cyclonus or part of his "chest", he instead appears attached to his left arm. It's possible this was done by the developers to make the Decepticon a little more intimidating during his boss battle.
There is an unused Game Modes tab on the disc that comes with data suggesting that there were other game modes planned like "Boss Mode" and "Explore Mode", however no further data exists on these modes.