The homeless guy citizen's ability to search through trash cans to discover treasure is a reference to how you could do the same in the game EarthBound. This ability was given to the homeless man and not the main protagonist, the Vice President, is because the Vice President is least likely to be seen pilfering through trash cans.

In the back of the police station, there's an APB which reads "All units be advised: Spiteful youth seen beating crows with cracked bat. Apprehend at once! (...Or when you get a chance!)", a reference to the game EarthBound.

The idea for the concept of the game came to the game's creator, Ryan Vandendyck, on how certain RPGs feature "the world coming to an end" and "there's a huge evil" storyline, but the people in the game just go about their business and not seem to care. Vandendyck thought that if the game's people knew about this, then they possibly would pitch in to help stop it. Vandendyck wanted the game's protagonist to recruit people but not fight battles and have the people do their dirty work for them, so he decided on making him a politician. To make him feel more useless, he decided to make the protagonist the Vice President.

Some of the game's influences were the games Suikoden, EarthBound, and Pokémon.

One of the game's developers suggested to be able to recruit a "lady of the evening" citizen, but it didn't fit with the tone of the game so the idea was left out.

Multiplayer battles was a feature that was considered to be included, but it was ultimately left out. At GDC 2013, multiplayer was set-up over Steam, despite not being approved yet on the platform, using the Steam credentials of the developer's last game, Waveform. However, the feature was cut due to the game's publisher, Atlus, explaining how hard it would be to implement multiplayer for the game on other platforms and also certification for it.

Rather than leading with a team of unique individuals you encounter in the game, it was originally intended that you would recruit nameless NPCs in town. However due to the over the top designs of the characters, the game changed to focus more on these unique citizens.