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Within the data for the Mooncrash expansion pack is an unused texture depicting Dick Butt, a drawing from a 2006 installment of K.C. Green's webcomic Horribleville. The texture's filename, "vfx_temp.png," indicates that it was a placeholder image that simply wasn't removed before the expansion pack's release.
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.
In a 2020 interview, designer Koichi Ishii revealed that despite the NES hardware only being able to display three colors per sprite, he felt that he could not make a believable design for the game's jobs unless he "dug deep into the job's background story and what kind of character it will be." He was surprised when some of these design limitations stuck around for future games he did not work on like Final Fantasy Tactics, and elaborated on what he imagined the White Mage and Dark Knight jobs looked like as he originally designed them:
"The image I had is that the red part of a white mage's robe is embroidered from red threads imbued with magic when spun together, increasing the wearer's magical power. The reasoning for the red threads being on the sleeves is that magic leaves the body through the hands and wrists, so that area is most effective. I was very particular about the lore that equipment like wands and amulets are used as a catalyst to turn natural power into magic, stimulating the user's magic strength. That's why I was adamant about never giving magic users iron equipment; if they use normal metals, their magic power will disperse so at least go with mythril ore...stuff like that.
[...] when [the dark knight is] KO'd in battle only their armor is left, as if the body inside has disappeared. The reason for that, in my imagining, is that they have a dark pact where their body is engraved with dark magic runes, and when they're KO'd the dark magic runes take their soul and body so only the empty armor remains. I had that kind of unique image for each job as I was creating it."
Concept art for Star Fox 64 3D suggests that the development team at some point considered creating an all new Arwing model design, one that appears to be a mixture of the classic Star Fox 64 design and the sleeker, sharper Star Fox: Assault design, similar to how the Landmaster was redesigned to resemble its 64/Assault amalgamated design from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
During 2004, Next Level Games was working on a game based on the WWE franchise called "WWE Titans: Parts Unknown". Planned to release on the Playstation 2 and Xbox as a 1-vs-1 fighter, the game was planned to have a radically different direction from past WWE titles, featuring a new art style that focused on exaggerated character designs and cinematic locales. Settings for the game included urban environments (i.e. rooftops in a city) and an old castle located in the snowy wilderness. Additionally, one stage concept was labelled "Cena Stage", likely in reference to wrestler John Cena. This suggests that some individual wrestlers would have received arena dedicated to them.
While the game would have featured several established wrestlers, Next Level also considered adding original cast members made specifically for the game. One piece of artwork for the game shows that there were plans for anthropomorphic characters (such as crocodiles and bears) and sorcerers. Not much is known about the gameplay, though art for the game suggests that destructible environments were intended to be a key focus. For unknown reasons, the pitch was rejected by the game's publisher, THQ.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be.
Content creators who got early access to the game on February 23 confirmed that both Lesnar and McMahon were no longer playable characters in WWE 2K24. While the extent of McMahon's removal is unknown, Brock Lesnar’s data remains locked away in the game due to his matches with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 30 and Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31 being featured in the "Showcase of the Immortals" Showcase mode, and it being too far into development to remove them.
Sneakers' graphical style was originally going to look more like a picture book or two-dimensional cartoon, but after seeing a realistic fur CGI demonstration at SIGGRAPH, it was decided to use a more realistic style instead.
The instruction booklet for the game pays homage to the video game box art style used for games released on the Sega Master System. This also ties in with the original series where the lead characters Mordecai and Rigby can sometimes be seen playing games on a Sega Master System. Series creator J.G. Quintel revealed in a 2016 interview that it was his favorite video game console during his childhood.
In 2021, a 15-second clip of early animation tests for the game dating back to 2006-2007 was discovered on the website of animator Michael Daubert, who worked on animations for an early iteration of the game, but went uncredited in the final release as everything in the test footage was scrapped. These tests showcase a completely different art style from the final game and unused gameplay elements, with Mickey shooting ink out of his body to quickly surf around, and jumping and slamming the ground to summon a tidal wave of ink to attack large Blotling enemies. This tidal wave attack also causes Mickey to lose all of his colors, turn white and become exhausted, suggesting that the known early idea of ink/paint/thinner usage changing his physical appearance was going to involve a stamina meter tied to his attacks. Mickey's early design was more stylized compared to his traditional appearance in the final game, featuring a prominently tall forehead, a lanky, stretched body, no visible mouth, and crooked oval ears. This early design would live on through an emblem used in promotional materials and as a recurring icon throughout the final game, with the inky black outline of the early design's head forming an "M".
Nicktoons MLB's loading screens include cameos from a variety of Nicktoons characters, including those from cartoons not featured on the playable roster. One of these characters is George Liquor from The Ren & Stimpy Show, a character that series creator John Kricfalusi retained the rights to after being fired from the series, and would use in a variety of cartoons up until his blacklisting from the animation industry in 2019. Since Kricfalusi is not credited in the game's copyright screen (though he is still listed in the special thanks credits alongside all other show creators), it seems that Liquor was included by mistake.
The cancelled Atari Jaguar game Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky Duck in Hollywood Hijinks ran into trouble with its art direction. It originally used photorealistic backgrounds, uncharacteristic of the cartoon and described by a developer as "build and[sic] engine and insert your favorite licensed character here." Despite a complete reset being done to the game's art direction following this iteration, the art did not live up to Warner Bros.' standards for how the Tiny Toon characters and world should look, lacking color and brightness. After Warner Bros. provided model sheets with specific instructions for drawing the characters, the development team instead switched to taking photos of the TV show and converting those into sprites, which caused issues as the sprites would come out corrupted. Atari ultimately concluded that no artist at Telegames was able to create proper Tiny Toons art, requiring art duties to be swapped out to Digital Delirium, which also failed to deliver Warner Brothers-quality animation, which caused the game's development to start implementing pencil tests into their animation process, which slowed down the game's development significantly. Eventually, all of the art for the first 2 worlds was finished, however Telegames stated they did not need the art at that point, with the art (and its respective levels) not being implemented over a year later. Telegames laid out an offer where they would only release a milestone document if a fully laid-out stage map could be provided, something the developer who released this story believed was a stalling tactic, as they already had the art and mockup stage layouts. Shortly after this, the artist assigned to complete the level layouts was laid off, requiring Digital Delirium to be brought in-house, and some music was made for the game that was completely unfit for the source material.
One of Ditto's Sleep Styles, called Rock-Formed Sleep, has it turning into a stone. This is a reference to its Pokémon Gold Pokédex entry: "It can transform into anything. When it sleeps, it changes into a stone to avoid being attacked."
Kira's photo unlocked at "Sweetheart" level was originally going to feature her holding a frothy mug of ale, but this was scrapped in favor of having her tug the player's shirt.
According to former Capcom illustrator Akira "Akiman" Yasuda, one of the game's promotional illustrations depicting Chun-Li performing her Spinning Bird Kick move was based on the first pencil drawing of the move made for the game.
In the files of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, one can find concept art graphics for NPCs and objects on the Sweet Dreams stage, including the walking food that would appear as enemies and in Garfield's super move in the sequel. The cotton candy sheep is pink in the concept art, but white like a real life sheep in the game. It is not known who illustrated these graphics, and whether they were from Paws Inc. or the NASB development team.
According to series co-creator Ed Boon in a video/interview on Mortal Kombat's YouTube channel on May 19, 2023, Liu Kang was chosen to be on the cover of Mortal Kombat 1 to signify a new story arc, in turn diverting from Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were regularly chosen for the games' covers.
The infamous American Mega Man 2 box art, where Mega Man wields a pistol instead of his signature Mega Buster, was not an attempt to make Mega Man appear more "edgy", but was actually born from a misconception where Capcom's art director believed Mega Man was using a gun too small to be seen in sprite form rather than transforming his arm. Artist Marc Ericksen would say to Nintendo Age in 2012:
"So we're talking about the infamous Mega Man 2 where Mega Man is actually running around waving a pistol! Okay so, the question on everyone's mind is 'how could the illustrator be such a complete idiot that he didn't realize that Mega Man had a cannon for an arm, and why is he holding a pistol for God's sake.'
What happened was I had to go down to Capcom and do a game they just got in from Japan. They had a beta version; they were in a hurry to get this thing out. So I went down there. The gentlemen was the art director was there with the beta guy and they were waiting for me and I came with my pad and they started running the game. What we saw was this little pixelated figure of the famous Mega Man running around on the screen shooting. Bang, bang, bang, he's shooting obviously like this with his arm [Marc points his arm forward]. So I said to the art director, 'what is he shooting? What is he shooting with?' The art director said, 'he must have a pistol because I don't see that he's got a rifle so he must have a pistol.'
'So... a pistol? You want me to do a pistol?' And he said, 'yeah, let's put a pistol in there.' So I did what I was told and I put the pistol in there. Add to the fact that they only had, like, a day and a half for me to do the painting and what you wound up with was not the greatest result but certainly a result that was not my fault. It was one of those things. Here's my opportunity: I'm saying to everybody now that was not my fault! Talk to Capcom about the pistol."
According to former Clover CEO Atsushi Inaba, the series' trademark Celestial Brush mechanic was directly inspired by the ukiyo-e art style. In a 2006 interview with GameSpy, Inaba stated "Once we fixed ourselves on a graphical style and got down to the brushwork, we thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get the player involved and participate in this artwork instead of just watching it?'" These comments also explain why in both games, activating the Celestial Brush renders the current frame as a scroll of washi paper.
In a 1997 interview with Famimaga 64, Satoshi Tajiri said that the Pokémon Porygon was made due to people saying that he should develop a 3D game instead of a sprite-based game on the Game Boy:
"I wanted to add something real into the world of Pokémon, and thought it’d be interesting if the game had an artificial Pokémon. I made that decision specifically because it’s on Game Boy. Everyone kept telling me 'Tajiri, you need to start making polygon games for next generation consoles.' But I was designing Pokémon for Game Boy, where it’s impossible to use polygonal 3D graphics. But people kept hounding me about it, so I thought it would be ironic to include a Pokémon called Porygon."
The life bar icons for the SnowHorn and HighTop in Star Fox Adventures sport different, more cartoony designs from their respective in-game models. The reason for this is because they're clearly based upon their original N64 Dinosaur Planet models, which too are much more cartoonier than the final SFA models that go for a more semi-realistic look.
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.
In a 2020 interview, designer Koichi Ishii revealed that despite the NES hardware only being able to display three colors per sprite, he felt that he could not make a believable design for the game's jobs unless he "dug deep into the job's background story and what kind of character it will be." He was surprised when some of these design limitations stuck around for future games he did not work on like Final Fantasy Tactics, and elaborated on what he imagined the White Mage and Dark Knight jobs looked like as he originally designed them:
Concept art for Star Fox 64 3D suggests that the development team at some point considered creating an all new Arwing model design, one that appears to be a mixture of the classic Star Fox 64 design and the sleeker, sharper Star Fox: Assault design, similar to how the Landmaster was redesigned to resemble its 64/Assault amalgamated design from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be. 
The instruction booklet for the game pays homage to the video game box art style used for games released on the Sega Master System. This also ties in with the original series where the lead characters Mordecai and Rigby can sometimes be seen playing games on a Sega Master System. Series creator J.G. Quintel revealed in a 2016 interview that it was his favorite video game console during his childhood.
In 2021, a 15-second clip of early animation tests for the game dating back to 2006-2007 was discovered on the website of animator Michael Daubert, who worked on animations for an early iteration of the game, but went uncredited in the final release as everything in the test footage was scrapped. These tests showcase a completely different art style from the final game and unused gameplay elements, with Mickey shooting ink out of his body to quickly surf around, and jumping and slamming the ground to summon a tidal wave of ink to attack large Blotling enemies. This tidal wave attack also causes Mickey to lose all of his colors, turn white and become exhausted, suggesting that the known early idea of ink/paint/thinner usage changing his physical appearance was going to involve a stamina meter tied to his attacks. Mickey's early design was more stylized compared to his traditional appearance in the final game, featuring a prominently tall forehead, a lanky, stretched body, no visible mouth, and crooked oval ears. This early design would live on through an emblem used in promotional materials and as a recurring icon throughout the final game, with the inky black outline of the early design's head forming an "M".
Nicktoons MLB's loading screens include cameos from a variety of Nicktoons characters, including those from cartoons not featured on the playable roster. One of these characters is George Liquor from The Ren & Stimpy Show, a character that series creator John Kricfalusi retained the rights to after being fired from the series, and would use in a variety of cartoons up until his blacklisting from the animation industry in 2019. Since Kricfalusi is not credited in the game's copyright screen (though he is still listed in the special thanks credits alongside all other show creators), it seems that Liquor was included by mistake.
One of Ditto's Sleep Styles, called Rock-Formed Sleep, has it turning into a stone. This is a reference to its Pokémon Gold Pokédex entry: "It can transform into anything. When it sleeps, it changes into a stone to avoid being attacked."
According to former Capcom illustrator Akira "Akiman" Yasuda, one of the game's promotional illustrations depicting Chun-Li performing her Spinning Bird Kick move was based on the first pencil drawing of the move made for the game.
In the files of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, one can find concept art graphics for NPCs and objects on the Sweet Dreams stage, including the walking food that would appear as enemies and in Garfield's super move in the sequel. The cotton candy sheep is pink in the concept art, but white like a real life sheep in the game. It is not known who illustrated these graphics, and whether they were from Paws Inc. or the NASB development team.
The life bar icons for the SnowHorn and HighTop in Star Fox Adventures sport different, more cartoony designs from their respective in-game models. The reason for this is because they're clearly based upon their original N64 Dinosaur Planet models, which too are much more cartoonier than the final SFA models that go for a more semi-realistic look.