In Twilight Town, to enter the Le Grand Bistrot cooking minigames themed after the Pixar film "Ratatouille", you have to interact with a book outside the restaurant. The menu that appears before entering the restaurant features the film's main protagonist Remy emerging and standing in front of a page that features a message written in French on it. When translated to English, it reads:


This appears to be a shortened, paraphrased version of a restaurant review written by the critic Anton Ego towards the end of the original film.

Tetsuya Nomura had requested for the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to be used in Kingdom Hearts III, but Disney responded that he would be "too difficult" to use, though they never clarified why. While his plans for Oswald had he been added to the game are unknown, it's worth noting that Nomura has admitted that Oswald is one of his favorite Disney characters.

In 2024, a demo build from Kingdom Hearts III's May 2018 Premium Showcase was leaked online. Within the code, a list of worlds featured in the game was discovered, revealing that a world based on the 2006 Pixar film Cars was planned, but did not appear in the final game.

Pixar's higher-ups almost rejected the prospect of including Pixar content in Kingdom Hearts III, as none of them were gamers or knew what Kingdom Hearts is or how popular it was. Theme park creative director Tasha Sounart managed to convince them on how popular Kingdom Hearts is, and pointed out that catering to the series' teen audience lined up with Pixar's desire to be seen as an all-ages film studio instead of simply being perceived as targeting children and their parents alone. Sounart noted that, while the Pixar studio members familiar with Kingdom Hearts did not need to extensively detail the lore to those that weren't except when needed, it was needed to be clarified that the Pixar characters would not be meeting one another, or any other Disney characters aside from Donald and Goofy, as Pixar has an aversion to crossovers and shared universes outside of their signature Easter eggs.

Tasha Sounart, Pixar's creative director for the Disney Parks and the consultant for Toy Story elements in Kingdom Hearts III, has claimed that she believes the models for the toys in the game were the best they have ever looked in a licensed product that wasn't made in-house at Pixar:

In the climax of Kingdom Hearts III, Spoiler:Donald Duck uses Zettaflare, a previously unseen spell within either Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, powerful enough to destroy a solar system. This made Spoiler:the irritable cartoon waterfowl the most powerful mage in the Final Fantasy franchise at the time, to the humor and ire of various players.

In Final Fantasy XVI, Spoiler:Bahamut, who after Spoiler:Donald's use of Zettaflare became the former most powerful mage in the Final Fantasy series, would use Zettaflare during its battle in the game, regaining its former title.

In 2013, a Kingdom Hearts online mobile game was in development that never saw the light of day. It was to be called "Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys". The game was rumored to feature customizable avatar characters (like Union Cross). It would also have been in 3D instead of Union cross' 2D art style. Most interesting and exciting of all though (gathered from concept art no less) was the Disney world list as the game would feature returning worlds like: Agrabah, Wonderland, a Lilo & Stitch Hawaii world, Space Paranoids/The Grid, London/Neverland, and Dwarf Woodlands. It also included worlds that didn't appear in the series yet but would appear in later games like Union Cross and Kingdom Hearts III, such as: Arendell (Frozen), Kingdom of Corona (Tangled), and Niceland/Game Central Station (Wreck-It Ralph). Finally, and most shockingly, a world based on the Star Wars franchise, although this world's chronology is unknown as concept art show different conflicting eras, such as an image of characters Anakin, Obi-wan, Padme, and Master Yoda in their exact looks from Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie and series in a separatist gunship's hanger as well as a planet that looks similar to Tatooine and an anachronistic Death Star power station room. It is unknown why this game was cancelled.

Grand Chef, the Ratatouille keyblade in Kingdom Hearts III, has two bottles of champagne attached to its handles. While the artwork on these bottles originates from a poster briefly seen in the movie, it is more commonly associated with a controversial cancelled Ratatouille-branded wine that was intended to be sold in Costco in 2007, but was pulled before it could hit shelves due to concerns relating to underaged drinking. While the iteration in the movie shows red wine, the iteration on the wine bottle shows an olive tone of wine. The Grand Chef keyblade features both colors for the wine.

The Dawn Till Dusk keyblade was a pre-order bonus in participating 7-Eleven stores in Japan, having the green and orange color scheme resembling the 7-Eleven brand. Its name also references the store's hours of operation: Dawn (7:00AM) Till Dusk (11:00PM).

However, In the U.S., it was a pre-order bonus for those who bought the game through the Amazon website. It was later made available as purchasable DLC through both the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store.

Two characters,Spoiler:Roxas and Xion, were originally never going to appear in Kingdom Hearts III but Nomura decided to feature them in the story eventually due to him fearing massive fan backlash if he didn't.

The unique style of ending for the Spoiler:Yozora secret boss battle at the end of the ReMind DLC, where players obtain a different ending depending on if they win or lose the boss battle, was because Tetsuya Nomura and his team thought the fight was too extremely difficult and so wanted to give something to players that lost even if it did nothing for the series' canon.

The game was originally going to be run on Square Enix's Luminous Engine, but due to problems that arose during development that involved the Kingdom Hearts team not getting used to the engine in enough time, the game was moved to the much more familiar Unreal Engine 4, a move that caused a delay in development.

Outside Merlin's House in Traverse Town in the first Kingdom Hearts game, the likeness of an owl can be found on the broken archway in front of the house as well as in the form of several small statues surrounding the building. Outside Merlin's House in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden in subsequent games, this owl's presence is reduced to two emblems hanging over Merlin's front door both inside and outside the house. These owls are a reference to Merlin's pet owl Archimedes, a character from Disney's 1963 adaptation of "The Sword in the Stone", who does not appear in the Kingdom Hearts series.

Pixar were heavily involved in the creation of the Toy Box and Monstropolis worlds based on their properties. They collaborated with with Square Enix on the story, character design, and look of the worlds among other things and helped to design the Infinity Badge Keyblade. They even negotiated to have the story of Toy Box be set between Toy Story 2 & Toy Story 3. This went so far as to have Pixar suggest Andy's Room have the Starfield wallpaper instead of the iconic Cloud wallpaper, so the area can be chronologically accurate to the film series.

Arendelle's Boss, the giant wolf Heartless "Skoll", is named after and based on the figure of the same name in Norse (Viking) mythology. Specifically, the Vikings believed that two wolf figures, Hati and Skoll, were in constant pursuit of the Moon and Sun in order to devour the two celestial bodies, thus creating the day and the night. Skoll can also be seen trying to darken the boss arena at times in reference to Skoll successfully devouring the Sun during the Ragnarok, the end of all of the realms of the universe in Norse mythology.

When using the Classic Tone keyblade's Shotlock, Sora actually turns into the same exact cartoony monochrome form that he had donned when he was in the retro Timeless River world in Kingdom Hearts II. In addition, the 'portals' he comes out of and goes into during the Shotlock are extremely similar to the doorways that lead to different areas of the world that are used by the characters in Timeless River's story.

During a scene with the character Demyx, he spouts the line "Yes, Demyx time!" This may be a reference to the web-series "Demyx Time", which released in the late 2000's and followed a cosplayer dressed as Demyx going over Demyx's daily life and events inside Organization XIII.

The team behind Square Enix's Einhander helped develop the expansive Gummi Ship aspect of Kingdom Hearts III. They even included references to Einhander, including an unlockable Gummi Blueprint obtained by scanning a constellation in the Misty Stream area that greatly resembles Einhander' Endymion ship. One of Einhander's bosses, the Schwarzgeist, also cameos as a boss in Kingdom Hearts III, and a remix of Einhander 'Thermosphere' plays when the boss is fought with most Gummi ships. However, if the boss is fought with the Endymion blueprint, then the original PlayStation 1 version of the Thermosphere theme will play.

Spoiler:Scala Ad Caelum, the name of the game's final climactic world, means "Stairway to Heaven" in Latin.

On the game's box-art, the clock on the tower to the left of the characters actually has thirteen roman numerals instead of twelve, and they are out of order. In addition to that, the two hands on the clock are pointing to 13 and the 7, representing the 7 lights and 13 darknesses that play a major role in this game's story. The clock tower itself bears a striking resemblance to the NTT Docomo building in Shinjuku, Japan.