Infestation: Origins is one of the first video games announced to feature the character Mickey Mouse following his entry into the public domain on January 1, 2024. Originally, the game was announced as "Infestation 88", in reference to the fact that the game takes place in the year 1988. However, many began to accuse the game of including Neo-Nazi references due to the usage of the number 88, often used by Neo-Nazis as a code to signify their ideology since the letter H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, thus meaning "88" stood for "HH", or "Hail Hitler". Not helping matters, the game's Discord server was noted to feature several instances of Neo-Nazi and anti-transgender comments. In response to this, a spokesperson said:


The game's title was later changed to "Infestation '88" to better reference the year 1988, before ultimately being changed again to "Infestation: Origins".

Similarly, the game was criticized for its use of what appears to be pre-paid assets (i.e. the WereRats from the Unity Store) and usage of an A.I. voice-over. While Nightmare Forge Games did not deny these accusations, they noted that there was a lot of work going into the project, and that due to time constraints they did use a premium version of Elevenlabs AI as a placeholder until they could hire real voice actors.