The official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook reveals that Pigma Dengar, who became a subordinate of Andross, was effectively the real mastermind behind the creation of Star Wolf: he goated and manipulated Wolf into becoming its leader and also working for Andross as a means to combat the newly formed Star Fox team led by Fox McCloud, taking advantage of Wolf's supposed honorable, "magnaimous" side and also his prior rivalry with Fox's father, James McCloud. It is said that he manipulates the entire team behind the scenes in accordance to Andross' orders. It also reveals that Pigma had already been working underneath Andross during his time as a researcher at the Corneria Defense Force Scientific Research Institute. It's also revealed that both Pigma and Andross had custom engineered the Wolfens that the Star Wolf team utilize in their battles against the Star Fox team's Arwings.

In Super Smash Bros. 4, the trophies for Pigma and the Wolfen would reiterate this information, as would the official guidebook for Star Fox Command. The Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide would similarly allude to Pigma being the root cause of Fox and Wolf's rivalry, claiming that, without his influence, perhaps they could have been friends in another timeline.

Prior to Star Fox Zero, there were two attempts in previous installments to revitalize the concept of the Walker from Star Fox 2, or at least the idea of the Arwing transforming into a robot form, those specifically being Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command, games that both aimed at preserving ideas from the then-long-lost Star Fox 2.

• For Star Fox 64, according to Shigeru Miyamoto in an interview at the end of the Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide, he wanted to have the Arwing transform into "a human-type craft". This was rejected by other staff members of the SF64 development team. In response, Miyamoto told his team to come up with better ideas, and from there they created the Landmaster and Blue Marine for additional vehicles.

• For Star Fox Command, according to Takaya Imamura in an interview in 2007, the dev team experimented with having the Arwing and other spacecraft transform into robots, but this was ultimately dropped.

Katt Monroe, a female feline character who first appeared in Star Fox 64, had undergone a notable change in appearance from that game going into Star Fox Command, most notably now having black fur instead of pink. According to Takaya Imamura in a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, he changed her appearance to be more "fashionable".

On the Japanese website for Star Fox 64, Slippy mentions certain background characters who would appear in future installments:

• Peppy's wife, Vivian Hare. According to Slippy, Peppy took her to planet Zoness for their honeymoon, which explains why Peppy is so distraught at its polluted status in SF64. Vivian would appear in-game for the first time in Star Fox Command, where it's revealed that she and Peppy had a daughter named Lucy, and that Vivian had died of a disease several years prior.

• Slippy's father, Beltino Toad. According to Slippy, Beltino works as an engineer for Space Dynamics, the manufacturer of the Arwing and many of the other vehicles the Star Fox team utilize. Beltino would later appear in-game for the first time in Star Fox Assault, and would later appear in Star Fox Command.

It's worth pointing that unlike Vivian, Beltino was mentioned in western ancillary SF64 material, that being both the official western Star Fox 64 website and the Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide, where it states that he helped his son Slippy create the Blue Marine.

Much like the original Star Fox on Super Nintendo, Star Fox 64's stages are split into three difficulty routes: Easy, Normal and Hard. However, unlike the original, SF64 only features two versions of Venom, one for the Easy Route and one for the Hard Route, the latter of which is where the Star Fox team has a final rematch with their rivals, Star Wolf.

It turns out the development team had planned on including another variation of Venom for the Normal route, where Fox McCloud would jump out of his Arwing and battle Andross on-foot with a bazooka. According to the staff, this was scrapped due to time constraints. The pilot mode option seen in Star Fox 64's battle mode is actually the repurposed remnants of this idea.

The green planet Peppy's Arwing is shown hurdling towards in the prologue for Star Fox 64 (and also its 3DS remake, Star Fox 64 3D) is actually meant to represent Papetoon, his and also Fox and James' home planet. The Japanese prologue even refers to it as such, and various Japanese SF64 material also mention it. However, when Star Fox 64 was localized for Western audiences, Nintendo of America completely wiped out all specific mention of Papetoon in both the prologue and also manuals/guidebooks.

One of Peppy's most well known lines, "Never give up. Trust your instincts.", was added because one of the developers, Mitsuhiro Takano, wasn't very good at the game and wanted to get some encouragement.

In the Japanese Versions of the game, after being shot down one of Fox's Teammates will shout out his name, similar to Star Fox Assault, but in the Western Versions, they instead shout "No!!!".

The game's opening features the phrase "Star Fox in Nintendo 64". This was a translation error and is supposed to read "Star Fox on Nintendo 64". This was fixed in the 3DS remake.

In the European version, there is an extra language called "Lylat", a made up language which is similar to the gibberish spoken in the original Star Fox.

In the Japanese version, the character icons do not sync with their voices and simply animate the whole way. This was changed in the western versions of the game where the icons would sync with what the characters are saying.

If the player takes too long to defeat the Golemech boss at the end of Venom's easy path (about seven minutes), the fight will end and the player will run into a wall, killing themselves and making the fight restart.

In the Macbeth level, there is a time limit to fighting the boss even if the player missed the Supply Depot ending that leads to Area 6. If the player gets far enough, the boss will state that the player was too slow, and dive bomb the player, killing them instantly. If using a cheat to have infinite health, then the boss will continue to bounce the player upwards until the game crashes.

On the title screen, you can use the analog stick to move the "64" part of the logo around. Fox and his crew will watch it as it moves.

The planet of Katina is a clear reference to the movie "Independence Day". Similar to the movie, you have to dog fight aliens that are invading the world and if you do not finish off the mother ship in time, it will destroy the base with a blue laser. The new partner you get in this fight, Bill Grey, is a reference to the General William Grey from the movie.

The way the characters in the game talk by opening and closing their mouths was inspired by Thunderbirds and other "English puppet dramas" (called "Supermarionation" by Thunderbirds co-creator Gerry Anderson). Shigeru Miyamoto was a fan of these shows and imagined that if the Star Fox series became popular enough, AP Films themselves would come from England to talk about turning it into a "puppet drama".

After obtaining a gold medal on all levels, Expert mode will be unlocked. In Expert mode, Fox wears his father James McCloud's glasses.

According to former Nintendo character designer Takaya Imamura, Wolf O'Donnell was inspired by his grandfather, who he described as being a "bad man".

Originally, the development team behind Star Fox 64 themselves actually tried to provide the voice lines for the characters:


As mentioned by Takaya Imamura above, this was met with negative reception internally and thus they switched over to using professional voice actors. What remains of this lost developer dub was recently discovered within the Nintendo gigaleak from 2020.

The official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook reveals that it was programmer Nobuhiro Sumiyoshi who provided the original voice for Leon Powalski, who is voiced by Shinobu Satouchi (who also voices Fox McCloud) in the final Japanese version of Star Fox 64. Takaya Imamura later revealed in a tweet in 2024 that he provided the initial voice for Fox.

One of Falco Lombardi's most famous lines in Star Fox 64 is "Hey, Einstein! I'm on your side!"

This line is somewhat controversial because it implies that there exists some version of scientist Albert Einstein within the Star Fox universe. It is worth pointing out that this was added in for the Western localization of Star Fox 64, as in the Japanese version of the game, Falco simply just says:


Ultimately, the Western version of Star Fox 64 3D would have this line be changed to: "Hey, genius! I'm on your side!"