The character design of Tiki appears to be based on Tinker Bell from Disney's 1953 animated film adaptation of the J.M. Barrie stage play "Peter Pan". Aside from general similarities like them both having blonde hair in a bun, an hourglass figure and a green strapless dress with triangles cut out across the hemline, the strongest similarity connecting them is in the form of a logo animation that appears when starting up the game and in several trailers, showing Tiki swiping fairy dust over the Atlus logo to reveal it. This appears to be a reference to a recurring transitional animation commonly used by Disney where Tinker Bell sprinkles or shoots pixie dust at something (oftentimes the Disney logo) to enhance it or cut to something else.

The game was originally planned to be released on Sega Dreamcast in 1998. The developers, however, didn't find a publisher for the game at the time and it remained unreleased until 2013. Early concept art of this version features a female warrior, though in the eventual game the warrior is male.

Dragon's Crown's character select screen is almost identical to the one in Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom. George Kamitani, the director of Dragon's Crown, worked as one of the designers on Tower of Doom, so this most likely is an homage to his earlier work.

The Killer Rabbit boss fight is a clear reference to the Rabbit of Caerbannog from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".