In the files for Star Fox 64 found in the 2020 Nintendo Gigaleak are references and assets for what appears to be a scrapped level named "Battleship". The string fox_map.c interchangeably calls it "Battleship", "Giant Battleship", and "Ground Ship"; it's possible that the latter could be a mistranslation of "Grand Ship", as they're spelled the same way in Japanese. The stage used a full 3D model, like Area 6 and Bolse, as its icon on the map selection screen. Its intended location was where Sector Y currently sits on the Lylat map selection screen, which is the hard path taken from Corneria, and its two branching pathways were known to be Zoness on the hard route and "Fortuna" (Fichina) on the normal route. According to the string fox_play.h, it was an all-range mode stage, and the audio_game.h string makes it appear that it was going to reuse Bolse's theme for its background music, implying that there would have been multiple phases for the level. This stage also had its own enemy data file, implying that it would have featured other enemy ships of some sort.

In October 2024, a group of modders and hackers responsible for the Star Fox 64 Decompilation Project were able to recreate this discarded stage via a fanmade patch.

Hidden in the files for Star Fox 64 are what seem to be remnants of an unused first-person turret mode. Several files reference a stage with the initials "SB", with its header file, fox_sb_poly.h, being titled "スター ブレード 擬き" (Sutā burēdo ki). This translates to "Star Blade Imitation", named after the 1991 on-rails space shooter by Namco, where the ship's guns can only be used in first-person. Dylan Cuthbert and other developers of the original Star Fox admitted to being heavily inspired by Star Blade, claiming that one of their main goals was to recreate the experience of the game.

The file, fox_play.h, defines 3 scroll types of levels: corridor, all-range mode, and "JYUZA", or "銃座モード" (Jūza mōdo), which translates to "Gun turret mode". This file also defines five player modes: ARWING, TANK, SUB, HUMAN, and P_JYUZA, While the SB stage is listed with the other corridor stages, it still specifies that it's in the "JYUZA" category. The SB stage itself appears to be a shortened copy of the Area 6 stage devoid of any content except for one Moras enemy, suggesting that it and other stages were meant to be played in the turret mode during development.

In the game's source code, stages such as "SB", "CL" or "Colony", and Area 6 are subtitled "Great Fox", suggesting that the Great Fox mothership was also intended to use the turret mode. It would likely have been about firing lasers and guns from the ship while trying not to take damage, as there is a string for the ship's health bar named gfox_life. The game's levels, such as the Landmaster stages, are organized into overlay groups to save on memory; Area 6 strangely isn't grouped within the turret mode stages, but Sector Y is.

This unused game mode was restored via a fanmade patch on October 30, 2024, taking a few liberties to make up for the missing code and assets.

In Star Fox 64's ancillary material, Planet Aquas is said to be an entirely water planet with its surface 100% covered by oceans. Star Fox Command however, would contradict this by showing there to be islands on Aquas in the Slippy's Resolve ending; Command's official Japanese guidebook even claims that Aquas' surface is now only 80% comprised of oceans.

In a Q&A with Takaya Imamura in 2023 on this subject, he theorized that perhaps, somewhere in-between the events of Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command, the islands were created by underwater volcanic belts within Aquas' oceans, likening it to the emergence of Nishinoshima, a volcanic island in the Ogasawara Archipelago.

According to Takaya Imamura in a Q&A in 2024, James McCloud, Fox's father, seemingly returning from the dead to help Fox escape from the depths of Venom at the end of Star Fox 64's hard route was inspired by Obi-Wan Kenobi returning as a ghostly mentor for Luke Skywalker by the end of the 1977 film "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope".

According to Imamura, whether James is actually still alive, or some kind of ghost or vision that Fox saw, is ultimately up to the players to decide. Curiously, while Star Fox Zero (whose story is mostly just a straightforward retelling of Star Fox 64) also contains a sequence at the end where an apparition of James guides Fox through Venom, it appears that Andross can also see him, even shouting:


Which further adds to the ambiguity on whether James is still alive or not.

Beta Star Fox 64 footage circa 1996 shows that Corneria was originally covered in snow. Early footage of the boss fight with the Granga robot even showed it capable of blowing snow as an attack, possibly indicating that it was responsible for Corneria's current state in this build.

Planet Zoness was originally a beautiful water planet similar to its twin planet, Aquas. It was famous for its resorts and was where Peppy Hare had taken his wife, Vivian, for their honeymoon. However, Andross' forces would invade and pollute its waters with their bioweapons, mutating the local wildlife to become larger and violent.

Early footage of Star Fox 64 circa 1996 actually show Zoness in its pure, unpolluted state, which seems to indicate that making it polluted was decided on later in development. There's actually appears to be dialogue remnants of this cleaner version in the developer's dub:


When finishing the stage:


But in the final polluted version, this exchange in the JP version goes:

The go-to term for the initial conflict of the Star Fox series, as told in three different installments (Star Fox on SNES, Star Fox 64, and Star Fox Zero), is the "Lylat Wars". This name originates from the original PAL release of Star Fox 64, where it was renamed to Lylat Wars due to trademark issues (similarly to why the first Star Fox was renamed to "Starwing" there as well). In comparison, its 3DS remake, Star Fox 64 3D, would retain the Star Fox 64 moniker in all regions. Nintendo would later actually canonize the "Lylat Wars" moniker as the official name of the conflict against Andross' forces in the opening prologue to Star Fox Zero.

In a June 1997 Nintendo Dream interview with Shigeru Miyamoto regarding Star Fox 64, when asked if he would produce a sequel, Miyamoto responded with:


Funny enough, both of these ideas would come to fruition with future titles such as Star Fox: Assault, which hugely emphasized its multiplayer battle mode, and Star Fox Command, which revisited many of the real-time strategy elements that were previously experimented with in the then-unreleased Star Fox 2.

Many Star Fox 64 players have referred to the Venom army general piloting the mecha boss encountered in the Easy Route Corneria path as "Granga", presumably because of the Star Fox 64 Nintendo Power Official Strategy Guide referring to him as such.

In reality, or at least going by the official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook and also Star Fox 64 3D, the name "Granga" actually refers to the aforementioned mecha itself. Like most of Andross' lieutenants (with the exception of Caiman), the pilot himself seemingly never had a proper name.

In Star Fox: Assault's campaign, it is revealed by Beltino Toad, Slippy's father, that the Aparoids had already attacked the Lylat System 17 years prior, where an entire Cornerian fleet was destroyed by a single Aparoid, the same type that destroyed Oikonny's flagship and attacked the Star Fox team on Fortuna.

In a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview with Takaya Imamura, he explained that rather than having the Aparoids suddenly appear, he felt that it would be better have something that was already there in the past so there would be a connection and give the story more depth. This is also why it was decided to have Beltino, who was previously stated to have worked for Space Dynamics in ancillary material for Star Fox 64, to be in charge of the Cornerian army by the time of the events of Star Fox: Assault.

Imamura explains that, with Beltino being a genius scientist, he was doing various military commissions and Space Dynamics work in the form of a commissioned employee over the years, explaining how he fought against the Aparoids as apart of the Cornerian Army 17 years priors, later joined up with Space Dynamics by the time of Star Fox 64, and then eventually returned to the Cornerian Army by the time of Star Fox: Assault.

Despite the English version of Melee using Star Fox Adventures' voice cast in the game's Corneria and Venom stages, the Japanese version uses all of the original Star Fox 64 voice actors. Shinobu Satouchi, Hisao Egawa, Kyoko Tongu and Tomohisa Aso all reprise their roles as Fox, Falco, Slippy and Peppy respectively. The former two's voice clips are also used for Fox and Falco as fighters even abroad.

Contrary to the Western version of the game, which more or less started over with a completely new and different cast, Star Fox: Assault's Japanese voice cast would actually bring back quite a few of the voice actors from Star Fox 64's Japanese dub:

• Hisao Egawa (Falco)
• Kyoko Tongu (Slippy)
• Tomohisa Aso (Peppy)
• Daisuke Gori (Pigma)
• Shinobu Satouchi (Leon)

Of the returning cast from Star Fox 64, the only characters to be recast were:

• Fox (voiced by Shinobu Satouchi in SF64, now voiced by Kenji Nojima)
• General Pepper (voiced by Daisuke Gori in SF64, now voiced by Michihiro Ikemizu)
• Wolf (voiced by Hisao Egawa in SF64, now voiced by Mahito Ōba)
• ROB 64 and Andrew (both were voiced by Daisuke Sakaguchi in SF64, now they're both voiced by Yusuke Numata)

According to Takaya Imamura in a Nintendo Dream interview regarding Star Fox Assault, Fox's new voice was meant to represent a middle ground between Steve Malpass' nasal sounding voice from Star Fox Adventures and Shinobu Satouchi's voice from Star Fox 64. Apparently, Satouchi was saddened when he discovered that he'd be returning to only reprise his role as Leon in Star Fox: Assault.

Barring the mistake with calling Fichina "Fortuna" in Star Fox 64, there is only one other main planet in all of the Star Fox series to have a slightly different English name from their original Japanese counterpart, that being Katina, which in Japan is called カタリナ, or Katarina.

In comparison, Katina directly translated into Japanese would be カティナ.

While Star Fox 64 would mark the debut of Star Wolf, the rival team of Star Fox, they were originally meant to debut in Star Fox 2, which was cancelled for twenty years before seeing an official release for the SNES Classic in 2017.

Something that's very peculiar in the final build of Star Fox 2, however, is how most of the mainstays of the Star Wolf team, such as Wolf O'Donnell, Pigma Dengar, and Leon Powalski, are present, all except for one: Andross' nephew, Andrew Oikonny. In his place is what appears to be a lemur character named "Algy", who is described by SF2's online manual as being rumoured to be "the most devious creature in the cosmos".

What makes this even more strange is the fact that Andrew actually was initially conceived for SF2, as a piece of concept art drawn by series' character designer Takaya Imamura portrays him along with Wolf, Leon and Pigma. In fact, there actually exists evidence that, by the time of Star Fox 2's gold build, Algy was still internally referred to as Andrew in the game's source code, which makes it all the more clear that Andrew was indeed planned to be in SF2 before being changed out for Algy.

It's worth pointing out, however, that despite being the main character designer for the first Star Fox, as well as future games like Star Fox 64, Imamura actually had very little to do with Star Fox 2's development, outside of the aforementioned initial Star Wolf concept art and also play-testing and advising towards the end, being only listed as under SF2's "Special Thanks" credits. Another staff member at Nintendo, named Masanao Arimoto, took over his duties as character/sprite designer for SF2. Comparing his final spritework to the original concept art, one could see that Arimoto took a lot of creative liberties with Imamura's initial designs, the latter of which look more closer to how the Star Wolf characters would look in Star Fox 64, with the most glaring example being Andrew transformed into an effectively different character.

It's pretty obvious that when Takaya Imamura returned for Star Fox 64 as its art director, Algy was reverted back into Andrew Oikonny.

In Star Fox 64 3D's ending, the conference hall where the Star Fox team meets General Pepper after Andross' defeat was changed from its original appearance into a hangar, with fewer, more spread out Dog soldiers.

More notable, however, is how the generic planet Corneria image and lettering at the back of the room has been replaced by the Cornerian Army logo that first appeared in Star Fox: Assault.

Star Fox Zero has a side mission in that can be accessed in Titania after obtaining the Landmaster's Flight upgrade. In this mission, you play as Peppy Hare, facing off against the Salvadora alone. Notably, every time Peppy performs a barrel roll, he literally shouts "barrel roll!". This is obviously a reference to his iconic line from Star Fox 64, "Do a barrel roll!" that has become an infamous internet meme over the years.

It's worth pointing out that this only occurs in the Western version of Zero, as Peppy remains silent even when barrel rolling in the Japanese version. This is because "Do a barrel roll!" never really became a meme in Japan, as Peppy has a different, less iconic line in the Japanese version of Star Fox 64 when instructing Fox how to roll: ローリングで弾くんだ!, which seems to translate to something along the lines of "use a rolling technique!".

Fichina, the ice planet that was introduced in Star Fox 64, is infamously erroneously called Fortuna in the English version of the game. Fortuna was previously the name of the jungle planet from Star Fox on SNES filled with monstrous and primordial creatures. It was also infamously dubbed "the Dinosaur Planet", years before the Star Fox series would incorporate another Dinosaur Planet with Star Fox Adventures.

However, looking through leaked SF64 files from the Gigaleak, there does seem to be evidence that Nintendo dubbed Fichina as Fortuna for most of SF64's development, only to change the name to Fichina at the tail end of it. Almost all of the source code refers to it as Fortuna, and the internal file system has “FO” appended to all of the stage’s assets. The image file Nintendo provided for the stage name to be translated is also labeled FO_E_FO. With the decision to rename it to Fichina seemingly being a last minute one, it's possible Nintendo of America were not brought up to speed by Nintendo's Japanese branch of this lore change when they were originally localizing SF64.

Nonetheless, Nintendo has since firmly established Fichina and Fortuna (as it was in the SNES game) as being their own distinct planets, with both appearing together in Star Fox: Assault and Star Fox Zero. Strangely, in the former game, Fortuna's Japanese name フォーチュナ (Fōchuna) was slightly modified to フォーチュナー (Fōchunā), which would translate into "Fortuner" in English.

Star Fox 2 features gigantic battle cruisers deployed by Andross' army known as Cannon Betrayers that feature the "Planet Cannon", a massively powerful laser cannon that, hence its name, can easily destroy planets like Corneria. This ship or at least a ship of a similar design would also appear in Star Fox Zero, known as the Salvadora.

Interestingly, the official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook claims that both Gorgon, known in Japan as デス・ボール (Desu bōru), or Death Ball, and Bolse are also equipped with Planet Cannons, with the former using it in battle against the Star Fox team at the end of Area 6 in Star Fox 64.

The combat robots known as the Shogun Troopers in Star Fox 64's Sector Y stage are called サルジャー (Sarujā) in the Japanese version of the game. This can be translated as "Sarger".

It appears this name is meant to be a pun and mashup of サル (Saru) and ソルジャー (Sorujā), the Japanese words for Monkey and Soldier respectively.

The Official Star Fox Missile File Printout guidebook released alongside the original Star Fox on SNES in Japan mentions two pilots, Desla Koba and Bear Noguccini, who don't appear anywhere in the game proper. They were said to be two of the most capable members in the Cornerian Defense Force, who had previously embarked in cutting-edge Arwing scouting vessels.

Both were said to have mysteriously disappeared. It is said later on in the guidebook that Desla Koba had disappeared in the Asteroid Belt when he came across a mysterious giant space bird, and upon trying to inspect it, he ended up being warped into another dimension, known in-game as "Out of this Dimension". Similarly, Bear was last seen in Sector Y, where he encountered the mysterious space whale before losing all contact, never to be seen again.

Desla Koba would actually be mentioned again in Star Fox 64's official Japanese guidebook, with a similar backstory that he had in the Missile File Printout guidebook. Here, it is said that he led a unit conducting an investigation in Meteo (SF64's equivalent to the Asteroid Belt from SF1), only for communications to suddenly be cut off as he'd apparently entered the stage's warp zone, which simultaneously led to him crashing his aircraft on the nearby planet of Katina. This was said to have occurred more than 10 years prior to the events of Star Fox 64.

Both Desla Koba and Bear Noguccini's surnames seem to come from two of the editors of the Mission File Printout guidebook: Hitoshi Kobayashi and Yukata Noguchi.