Starting Prologue: World of Chaos and Chapter XVI: Sovereign Power while wearing the Star Mercenary costume, which resembles Fox McCloud from the Star Fox series, will turn Jeanne's jet plane into an Arwing. Wearing the costume during the former chapter will feature Jeanne wearing it as well, with a swapped color palette from green to orange. Wearing it during the latter chapter on top of turning the jet into an Arwing will replace the jet's reticle, weapons and sound effects with those from the Star Fox series including being able to fire Smart Bombs, charged shots, and replacing its Umbra Climax with the Hyper Laser. The cutscene at the end of Verse 2 will also switch the receiver sound effect with that of an Arwing's, as well as add three additional Arwings flying behind Jeanne towards Fimbulventr as a nod to the original four-pilot Star Fox team. Additionally, scanning a Fox or Falco amiibo in the Nintendo Switch version will display a message from Rodin implying that Slippy leant the Arwing to Jeanne.

One of Bayonetta's taunts, "If you need to learn how to talk to a lady, ask your mum", is a reference to Hideki Kamiya's Twitter responses, where he responded to questions being asked with "Ask your mom."

When it was announced, Bayonetta 2 was met with a negative reaction from fans on the basis of it being a Wii U exclusive (whereas the first game was published on the Xbox 360 and PS3). In response, Atsushi Inaba, one of the co-producers of the game, and executive director at Platinum Games, said that the game would not have existed without Nintendo's involvement.

During the years in between the first game's release and the second game's announcement, the publisher of the first game, Sega, had been scaling back on the number of games to be released/localized, and Bayonetta had been in danger of never receiving a sequel. Nintendo then approached Platinum about publishing Bayonetta 2 for their new console.

All of Noatun's designs were inspired by the palaces, cities and waterways of Italy and Belgium.

In the news report shown during Bayonetta 2's opening cutscene, the mission complete music from Wonderful 101 can be heard in the background.

Bayonetta's creator Hideki Kamiya hated the final cover artwork for the game. The original artwork featured a crescent moon in the background instead of a full moon, and the "2" in the logo was yellow instead of red.

Kamiya posted on Twitter his outrage over the cover saying "I hate the logo of WiiU ver. Junk." and "The Bayo 2 package is shit. Who's the damned bastard who changed it..." Kamiya had no control over the change of the artwork.

When asked about Bayonetta's new hairstyle, producer Yusuke Hashimoto said that the change had more to do with Bayonetta's personality, rather than just an arbitrary cosmetic change.