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.