Franchise: Kirby

A prequel to the Kirby series titled "Kid Kirby" was being developed for the SNES by DMA Design, now Rockstar North. The game was a platformer featuring a younger Kirby which would've utilized the SNES Mouse peripheral, however the game was canceled supposedly due to the mouse not selling well.

Although Meta Knight first appeared in Kirby's Adventure, he wasn't given a name until the release of Kirby's Avalanche.

Series director Shinya Kumazaki maintains an art gallery on his personal website where he showcases paintings that he makes in his spare time. Several of these pieces depict dystopian surrealist versions of characters from the Kirby franchise, including Miracle Matter, Queen Sectonia, Taranza, and Drawcia.

In 1996, the Club Nintendo magazine in Germany printed a comic titled Kirby's Biggest Case, depicting the usually lovable Kirby as a depraved detective who smokes, drinks alcohol, reads "dirty magazines", and sneaks into women's restrooms. Writer Claude M. Moyse claimed that this portrayal of the character as, in his own words, "a freak" was a way of getting back at creator Masahiro Sakurai, who he had a grudge against for unknown reasons.

When Donkey Kong became popular, Nintendo was sued by American film company Universal Studios over allegations that Donkey Kong was plagiarizing their 1933 film King Kong. Lawyer John Kirby, defending Nintendo, pointed out that Universal was aware of and had previously argued in court that the story of King Kong was in the public domain due to the film's novelization, which came out before the film and marked the first non-promotional appearance of the character, failing to have a protected trademark in the first place. As a result, Universal lost the case. Nintendo lavishly awarded Kirby by taking him, his wife and some associates to dinner at a fancy Manhattan restaurant, giving him a sailboat named "Donkey Kong" and the exclusive rights to the name Donkey Kong for sailboats as a strange show of gratitude. Nintendo would later go on to collaborate with Universal to create Donkey Kong attractions at Universal Destinations & Experiences theme parks, with Shigeru Miyamoto stating: "The world really does work in mysterious ways."

In a 2011 interview with Game Informer, Miyamoto stated that "Kirby" was one of many candidates on a list of names that were proposed for the then-in development video game character, and upon seeing it, he recalled John Kirby and felt that a connection between the two would be amusing. However, the name was picked not as a tribute to the lawyer, but rather because the harsh-sounding nature of the name was a comedic contrast to the character's soft, cute design.