In a 2001 chatroom interview, the game's lead artist Takashi Takeuchi revealed that Arcueid's character design was based on a foreign model that he first saw in a fashion magazine in 1995 and became infatuated with. Two images of the model were posted during the interview, though her identity was still unknown to him and writer Kinoko Nasu at the time. Eventually in 2024, she was identified by fans through more magazine photos from the mid-1990's as a Canadian model named Amanda Dyer, who confirmed that the images were taken from photoshoots of her as a teenager in Tokyo. In an interview the following year, she described the newfound interest and online interactions with fans as "unexpected, emotional, and honestly, a lot of fun", and began incorporating it into her modelling career. She also shared an unreleased photo from the time period of one of her favorite outfits from the Tokyo photoshoots that she felt was "almost prophetic", where she wore a white turtleneck sweater and a grey skirt while holding a cat. Not only did this outfit have a striking resemblance to Arcueid's outfit in the game, but she would coincidentally be parodied as a catgirl in the game through Neco-Arc.