Trivia / Dark Parables

• Approval of God: Eipix's social media marketing has included a Powerpoint about the games, which was made for Tumblr by Lady Norbert.
• Ascended Fanon: According to the end credits of The Thief and the Tinderbox, Eipix was inspired by various fanfic writers to make the "Gwyrda" pairing canon.
• Bonus Material: All the games have some, but The Queen of Sands has a truly noteworthy addition. Upon completing the bonus chapter, the player receives access to a short film made by the creators... in which the opening animation of the main game is rendered in the style of a 1990s-era computer game. It's as enjoyable as you'd imagine.
• Genius Bonus: A few of the games offer these.
  • There's one in Curse of Briar Rose, but you have to really look for it. While most characters in the series have Only One Name, Princesses Briar Rose and Ivy avert that trope. According to their father's tombstone, which is an item that must be found, their family name is Stewartson. As the game takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, this would suggest that they are members of (or at least related to) The House of Stuart. This is further implied by the fact that there is a recurring lion motif throughout the Stewartson castle, and the lion was/is the symbol of Scotland and its kings for centuries.
  • Seen repeatedly in The Final Cinderella:
    • The Cinderella who married the Frog Prince is named Agnes, and according to her parable, she fled home before she could be forced into an incestuous marriage with her father. This is likely a reference to St. Agnes, who was martyred after refusing a forced marriage. Her fairy tale is also based on Donkeyskin (though there are many, many fairy tales in which fathers want to marry daughters).
    • Bianca Pace's story seems to be based on The Bluebird. Jealous of her beauty, her stepmother imprisons her in a tower so as to avoid her giving competition to her stepsisters. A prince tries to rescue her, only to end up a Forced Transformation victim. They're only able get a happy ending thanks to the Godmother.
    • Shan Mao's story seems to be based on Beauty and Pock Face, an early Chinese variant of Cinderella. Instead of being murdered and reincarnated as animals, Shan's wicked stepsister, the Spider Witch, Chi, turns her into a kitsune by means of witchcraft, and imprisons her in a temple. Her prince rescues her with the help of the Godmother.
  • There's a nice subtle one in Sky Kingdom, which overlaps with Shout-Out. While fighting with Prince Leonard, the prince accuses Jack of running away. Jack replies, "I prefer to call it a strategic retreat!" This is a quote by the legendary playwright Tennessee Williams, who wrote in a letter that "I am running away but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat."
  • Ballad of Rapunzel has a young girl named Belladonna, which is another name for the plant we call deadly nightshade. Almost any animal which eats nightshade will die from the poison; rabbits are one of the only exceptions. Belladonna is frequently shown holding a stuffed toy rabbit throughout the game.
    • In the bonus chapter, Gerda needs to brew a reviving elixir for Thumbelina. The required ingredients are parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme - four herbs whose names are repeated in an old English ballad. (Modern audiences would more likely recognize the recorded version called "Scarborough Fair," by Simon & Garfunkel.) For medieval herbalists, these were significant ingredients; parsley removed bitterness, sage represented strength, rosemary was for love and faithfulness, and thyme represented courage.
  • The Little Mermaid and the Purple Tide has a few:
    • On the balcony outside of Princess Althea's room, the detective can view a painting of a much-younger King Alexandros with his five daughters. The portrait of the king is clearly that of Henry I of England◊.
    • One of the five mermaid sisters is Calliope, whose room in the underwater palace is filled with musical instruments. In Greek mythology, Calliope was the muse of epic poetry and song.
    • Another is named Daphne, and this sister is shown to have had an affinity for gardening and plant life. Daphne of Greek mythology was a wood nymph and the daughter of Earth, and was turned into a laurel tree rather than consent to be wooed by Apollo.
    • A third mermaid sister is Naida, a Croatian name which is most likely derived from the Greek word Ναιαδ (naiad), a water nymph who dwelt in rivers. "Naida" is also an anagram of "naiad." (A naiad is not a sea nymph, however; sea nymphs from Greek mythology are called nereids.)
  • The Swan Princess and the Dire Tree: the women warriors from the Swan Kingdom aren't simply a case of Xenafication, they are valkyries. Valkyries in German mythology are associated with swans, and in one particular story (Volundarkvida), Wayland the Smith marries a valkyrie by stealing her swan feather dress.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Each game is available in a Vanilla Edition and also one of these. The collector's editions provide bonus content, such as wallpapers, a Concept Art Gallery, and music. More importantly, however, they include a bonus chapter to each Dark Parable which reveals more of the story. Essentially, while the Vanilla Editions will give you the basic games and are satisfying in their own right, you almost have to play the collector's editions if you want to get the entire story.
• Missing Episode: Requiem for the Forgotten Shadow has (ironically enough, given its name) become this; for unknown reasons it has been removed from the iOS App Store, the Epic Games Store, and Big Fish Games. It's also the only game in the series with no Steam port. All of this means that if you had not already downloaded it prior to that point, there is now no way of playing it.^note However, Big Fish users who have the game in their purchase history can still download it, even though it's no longer available for purchase on the site.
• Similarly Named Works: The Exiled Prince shares its name with a DLC for Dragon Age II. Even more coincidentally, they were released within ten days of each other in 2011.
• Suggested by...: Word of God confirms that the game series was inspired by the Fables series of comic books.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the unlockable bonus content for Exiled Prince, there are two movies depicting alternate possible opening sequences for the game. One of them has Ireland as the setting instead of Germany, with the Prime Minister's daughter as the person you must rescue.
  • It's hard to think about what we might have gotten if the series had been given a true finale.
• Working Title: Rise of the Snow Queen was referred to as Snowfall Kingdom for some time.