GameCube discs of Luigi's Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker & the first Pikmin game were originally going to appear in Pikmin 2 as unique treasures to collect. Their textures can still be found in the game's files. This idea would later be revisited in a pared-down form in Pikmin 4, in which the game disc for Wave Race: Blue Storm is obtainable as the Glinty Circular Disc.

Prior to the official announcement of Yoshi's Crafted World's title, a fake leak was posted on 4chan listing off future Nintendo games, containing the title of Yoshi's Crafted World. This leak was humorous in nature, contrasting legitimate sounding titles such as Animal Crossing: Town Founder and Paper Mario: Clay Catastrophe with obvious jokes such as Metroid: Equestrian Races and Rhythm Heaven and Hell. This led to a short-lived theory that the leak was indeed real and slid in the joke names for humorous effect. Over time, reveals of installments in other franchises featured in the leak that didn't line up would show that Crafted World was simply a lucky guess. However, some other articles from the leak, such as a multi-part DLC pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl remakes, a Tokyo 2020 Mario & Sonic Olympics game (albeit without Pac-Man), a Switch port of Overwatch, and the at-the-time-believed-to-be-cancelled Pikmin 4 would come into fruition later by coincidence.

During the pre-release to Pikmin 4, many fans of the franchise were upset that the game did not recieve a larger marketing push from Nintendo, given its spotty sales history. In response, a large swathe of Pikmin fans took to the PixelStar service (which allows individuals to cheaply buy temporary advertising space that would usually be reserved for wealthy corporations in Times Square in New York City) to display Pikmin memes and fan art as a form of unsanctioned advertising. The total amount of money spent by Pikmin fans was estimated by MeriStation USA to be $300 minimum.

Pikmin 4 would end up becoming the best selling installment of the Pikmin franchise. This result most likely has much more to do with the popularity of the Nintendo Switch relative to the GameCube and Wii U, but given how major an advertising space like Times Square is, it isn't completely impossible that the PixelStar advertising could have contributed to the game's sales.