Naughty Dog's name was inspired by their first company mascot Morgan, a Labrador/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix born in 1989 who was the pet dog of co-founder Jason Rubin starting with the development of Rings of Power. During the development of Way of the Warrior, Morgan lived with both Rubin and co-founder Andy Gavin in poor living conditions and she was often fed some of their meals from the fast food chain McDonald's. While she first appeared in a game as a Special Thanks credit in Rings of Power, Morgan technically became part of the company when she was given her own photo ID card after Naughty Dog moved onto the Universal Interactive Studios premises for the development of Crash Bandicoot. She was credited as a member of Naughty Dog on their four Crash Bandicoot games and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. She died in 2002 at the age of 13 during the development of Jak II, and several tributes to her were put into Jak II and Jak 3.
Jak II's manual and end credits feature a standard In Memoriam dedication for Morgan, but there are two more hidden tributes in the game. There is a green neon sign spelling Morgan's name written in the Precurian language inside the Hip Hog Saloon located to the left from the door. Additionally, in the Power Station in New Haven City, a set of random scrolling Precurian messages can be found on the large computer monitor. Translating these to English will reveal the following:
• "Morgan I miss you" • "Morgan" • "Thirteen years hard time" • "There will never be another" • "Good dog" • "I will always love you"
Another message can be found on computer screens you can view at eye-level, which reads "Morgan is still missed even after a year has passed". These computer screen messages are re-used on the monitors in both the Power Station and the Freedom League buildings in Jak 3. Since Morgan's death, Naughty Dog have credited more pets as members of their team and/or company mascots, with the first successor being a Labrador puppy named Osiris who first appeared in the credits of the first Jak and Daxter game alongside Morgan.
At the end of the game's manual is a page demonstrating how to save your progress with an 8-digit passcode, with the pilot in the manual showing his own passcode: #1BC3904. Trying to use this passcode in the game will deliver the following message:
"USAF REGULATIONS DO NOT PERMIT SAVE CODES TAKEN FROM GAME MANUALS."
However, if you enter this code backwards as 4093CB1#, Invincibility will be enabled and every mission in Theater mode will be available to select.
The Kentrosaurus notably has a unique quirk in that it will panic if placed in the same enclosure with other large herbivores, barring some exceptions like the Stegosaurus. This is in contrast with the Prima guidebook that makes no mention of this behavior and even recommends to house the Kentrosaurus with all other herbivores in the game, which suggests that this was either a glitch or an oversight on the development team's part.
In the prototype of Hotel Mario, walking Toads are used as Super Mushrooms and 1-Up collectables. The final game changes these Toad sprites to bouncing mushrooms, but the manual still refers to them as Toads.
In the original Dinosaur Planet, Krystal would come across a pachycephalosaurid dinosaur at CloudRunner Fortress, who is revealed to be one of the SpellStone guardians, who also gives Krystal the Illusion spellpage to bypass the SharpClaw guards within the dungeon. In-game hints and task summaries reveal him to be of the "BoneHead" tribe.
This individual would appear in the final Star Fox Adventures, with his role slightly rewritten as the chief engineer at CloudRunner Fortress (The Queen CloudRunner took over his original role as the SpellStone Gatekeeper for this area). Talking to him in a cutscene will reveal his name to be "Gradabug". While not mentioned anywhere in-game, the Star Fox Adventures Nintendo Power guidebook reaffirms him belonging to the BoneHead tribe.
The hand-operated puppets utilized in Japanese promotional material for the first Star Fox game, as well as the cover of one of its guidebooks, were created by Takashi Yamazaki, a Japanese filmmaker and visual effects supervisor best known internationally for his 2023 film "Godzilla Minus One".
After killing the Swirl in mid-flight, a black vertical line appears across the spot where the Swirl was shot. This line is referred to under the Helpful Hints section in the game's manual as the "Ghost of Yars" and warns the player to stay off its "mean streak". If the Yar is in the lower third of the screen and the black spot on its back is aligned across the vertical line at the moment the explosion vanishes, the game ends and goes into the "Game Select" screen with "HSWWSH" in place of the player's score. These are the mirrored initials of the game's creator Howard Scott Warshaw.
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.
Q: According to the guidebook for "Star Fox 64," Aquas is said to be made entirely of water. However, in the guidebook for "Star Fox Command," Aquas is described as being 80% water, and one of the endings with Slippy and Amanda depicts the presence of islands. Is it permissible to speculate unofficially about what happened between '64' and 'Command'?
A: It's a recent memory, but the emergence of Nishinoshima, a volcanic island in the Ogasawara Archipelago, happened in the blink of an eye. Perhaps such a natural phenomenon occurred. Their environment is much more volatile than ours. It wouldn't be surprising if there were underwater volcanic belts on Aquas.
In Capsule Corp, a yellow hovercar can be found to the left directly after entering the building. A scientist working on the hovercar reveals that it's a prototype model that he predicts will be a "huge hit" when it's finished and released. According to the game's official strategy guide, this hovercar is the same one used by Goku and his driving instructor in the "Dragon Ball Z" filler episode "Goku's Ordeal", where Goku and Piccolo are forced by Chi-Chi to take driving lessons.
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.
The manual for Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! is a bait and switch, as it is only 6 pages long and has a giant sticker obscuring the detailed text on pages 4 and 5 reading "REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS", intended as a joke in theme with the original TV series. This manual has been posted around on the internet frequently over the years, but often without the context that the game did come with a poster, stylized as a blueprint, containing game hints. The last two sentences in the bottom-right corner of the manual do reference this poster:
"Although it's frowned upon by the most macho of the breed, some real men actually refer to blue prints for help. If you find yourself in need of - dare we say it? - instructions, you can refer to the enclosed poster blue prints for hints."
According to the Scandinavian manual for Mr. Gimmick, the girl Yumetaro must rescue is named Mary. In all other releases of the game, she is unnamed. During development, she was planned to be named either "Kasumi" or "Ayaka".
Both Mach Rider's identity and gender are ambiguous. They are portrayed with a muscular build, and the NES and Famicom versions' manuals never use any gendered pronouns to refer to them. The arcade port Vs. Mach Rider's stage clear screens slowly introduce piece-by-piece an image of a skimpily-dressed woman (bearing similarities to Jane Fonda's appearance in the 1968 film Barbarella) holding a dagger, but it is never specified if this character is Mach Rider, or one of the other wasteland survivors. However, Mach Rider's trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Melee years later lists them as a male character with he/him pronouns. Even later on, Captain Rainbow, a game centered around obscure and neglected Nintendo heroes, has an unused model for Mach Rider that, while not having visible breasts due to wearing armor, portrays them with a feminine skinny waist.
Star Fox Adventures' Japanese localization marks the first and only instance of the Star Fox team's robotic operator, ROB 64, actually being referred to as such in-game (at least through the Japanese subtitles) by his teammates (ロブ), as opposed to by his usual Japanese name, NUS (ナウス). This also occurs in Farewell Beloved Falco, the Japan-only manga prologue to Star Fox Adventures.
Donkey Kong 64 features a unnamed bat enemy found within certain stages such as Fungi Forest, Creepy Castle and Crystal Caves. This enemy would reappear in future games such as DK: King of Swing but under a seemingly new name: Flipflap.
It turns out that this particular name was already used for this enemy back in the Japanese localization of Donkey Kong 64. In the bestiary within the official Japanese DK64 guidebook, they are named フリップフラップ (Furippufurappu), which of course translates to Flipflap in English.
The story section of Sonic Underground's manual has numerous inconsistencies with the plot of the show it's based on, though are still featured in early production documents. These include:
• Robotnik at one point being referred to as "Sheriff Robotnik", likely a reference to the Sheriff of Nottingham from the legend of Robin Hood. He does not bare this title in the show itself; early leaks to the show's plot prior to release also reference his role as a sheriff, suggesting it was a scrapped concept from early on in development. • The Oracle of Delphius being banished to the Frozen Wastes by Robotnik and passing away from unknown causes sometime after, telling Sonic how to reunite with his siblings in his dying breath. While the Oracle does take up residence in Ice Cap in the final show, he was not banished there, nor does he ever die. • The Medallions being stated to be golden, but in the final show they bare a more silver coloration. Another detail stated in the manual but not in the final show is that they each possess three notes engraved into them. • Robotnik's given motive for finding Queen Aleena is so that he can marry her and make her his consort, as he believes that by doing so he can become the rightful ruler of Mobius. While not his overall motive in the final show, the episode "Wedding Bell Blues" did use a similar premise for its plot. • While not in early production documents, the game's manual states that it ends with Sonic, Manic and Sonia reuniting with their mother, which never actually happened in the original show, making it the only piece of Sonic Underground-related media where this goal is actually accomplished.
The main antagonist Damien attempts to cause trouble for the Snowboard Kids throughout the game after his entrance and declaration to conquer Snow Town are completely ignored. Following along with this, a sprite animation of Damien yelling can be found hiding in the sidelines of seven of the game's courses. Damien's irrelevancy is joked at further in the game's manual, where the first six pages after the Table of Contents appear to show him "crash-landing" into the manual and observing some of the instructions and story events from the top-left corner before entering the story himself, as well as the background image of these pages (and also the very last two pages of the manual) being a close-up shot of Damien hopelessly yelling for attention.
Action 52 came with a leaflet explaining that the games Alfred and the Fetucini's[sic] and Jigsaw could only be unlocked by completing Ooze. In reality, the prior two games are not playable on NES hardware and the latter game is unwinnable.
Spot: The Video Game has a hidden credits scene that can occur after watching an all-CPU game, taking place on the game's victory screen. Virgin developers were not allowed to put credits inside games, only in manuals, so this was a way of hiding the credits in the game. The Japanese version adds credits to the game.