According to Takaya Imamura in the Nintendo Dream magazine, before Star Fox became the name of the series, they thought of other names for the series, like 'Star Glider' and 'StarCraft'. The idea for the 'Star Fox' title came from Star Wars' title 'Star', and the main protagonist Fox McCloud's 'Fox' race.

Nintendo once teamed up with Kellogg's and Nelsonic to develop and release a promotional LCD-based Star Fox Game Watch, which was only available through the mail order form that came with a box of cereal. Nelsonic later released the watch in stores with a different appearance.

Fox, along with the other characters, was originally going to have a minor role in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. When he came to the Starbeans Cafe to get a cup of coffee, he would get an incoming call from Peppy asking where he is. It's not known why he was taken out of the game. When he left, he would give the player a gold ring. The image attachment shown here is Fox as he would appear.

Star Fox was originally a 3D tech demo converted into a rail shooter. Fox's concept and the idea of flying through rings came from Shigeru Miyamoto visiting a shrine of Inari (a Japanese deity associated with foxes and also believed to fly) that is located right outside of Kyoto, Japan.

Pigma Dengar's surname is a reference to people in Japan with a Kansai dialect. In the Japanese version of Star Fox 64, Pigma speaks with a Kansai dialect. People with the dialect tend to end their sentences with the word 'dengar'.

ROB 64 in Japan is called NUS64 and is named after the Nintendo Ultra Sixty Four, the original name given to the Nintendo 64 console. NUS also appears in serial numbers of various Nintendo products.

According to an interview with Dylan Cuthbert in the British Official Nintendo Magazine, the renaming of the game from Star Fox to Starwing in European territories was done to avoid confusing the game with an unrelated European company called Star Vox, as the letter "V", in some languages like Dutch and German, is pronounced as the letter "F".

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask contains a reference to the Star Fox characters. Once you have all of the Happy Masks on the second row, you can see the Star Fox team (and one of the enemies, though he used to be a member of the team before betraying them).

In order:
Keaton Mask = Fox
Bremen Mask = Falco
Bunny Hood = Peppy
Don Gero's Mask = Slippy
Mask of Scents = Pigma

All of the Star Fox pilots have robotic legs. It is theorized that they had their legs amputated to prevent blood from rushing down to them in the high G-forces they would experience, causing them to pass out. Modern day pilots wear tight fitting clothing around their legs for the same reason.

There were three canceled Star Fox games.

The first, planned for the SNES, was a sequel to the original game and titled "Star Fox 2" and shelved in order to continue the series in 3D on the N64.

The second was a Virtual Boy release titled "Star Fox" which was canceled to the poor sales of the Virtual Boy.

And the last was an arcade version (also titled "Star Fox"), though very little is actually known about it or why it was canceled. The only known image of this game is shown in the attachment.

The barrel roll as seen in Star Fox is not a barrel roll at all, but rather an aileron roll. It's only in Star Fox: Assault that you can actually perform a barrel roll.