Franchise: Star Fox

In a June 1997 Nintendo Dream interview with Shigeru Miyamoto regarding Star Fox 64, when asked if he would produce a sequel, Miyamoto responded with:


Funny enough, both of these ideas would come to fruition with future titles such as Star Fox: Assault, which hugely emphasized its multiplayer battle mode, and Star Fox Command, which revisited many of the real-time strategy elements that were previously experimented with in the then-unreleased Star Fox 2.

According to former Nintendo character designer Takaya Imamura, Wolf O'Donnell was inspired by his grandfather, who he described as being a "bad man".

The Japanese text for Papetoon, the home planet of Fox McCloud, is "パペトゥーン". Amusingly, this is also the Japanese text for Puppetoons, a Hungarian-American puppet and cartoon series created by George Pal. As the Star Fox series was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's love of old puppet dramas such as the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson "supermarionation" television series "Thunderbirds", it could be said that this is a joke that Fox originated from this show. Benimaru Itoh, the illustrator of the Star Fox comics published in Nintendo Power that Papetoon made its first appearance in, confirmed that this was an intended homage to George Pal in an interview in 2026.

While artist Takaya Imamura would be responsible for the character designs of the Star Fox team, all but one member of the team would be named by Star Fox's programmer, Dylan Cuthbert:

• Fox's surname, McCloud, was inspired by Connor MacLeod from the 1986 film Highlander, as Cuthbert wanted to give him a "cool sounding name" and wanted it to be based on his piloting abilities.
• Peppy's name was based on his characteristic of having a lot of energy despite his old age.
• Slippy's name was based on his clumsy, slippery characteristics.

According to Imamura, Falco Lombardi's name was inspired by Carlo Rambaldi, a famed Italian special effects and make-up artist who worked on films such as Alien and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.