Trivia / Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Vergil's memetic battle quote from DMC3 is sometimes remembered as "Now I'm motivated!", but the actual line here is "Now I'm a little motivated!". Either the word "little" is forgotten (likely because it's hard to hear in-game), or the source is incorrectly attributed to DMC3, especially since Vergil does say "Now I'm motivated!" in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
• Development Gag: A 2007 Tales of Anime convention revealed that Jester was named "Joker" when the game was still in development. The Jester boss fights in the Special Edition include a voice clip where he refers to himself as "Joker" instead of Jester.
• Dueling Games: Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden are two Action Game series that came from Japan, and are seen as some of the best, oldest and most popular in the history of the genre. The comparisons became more common when Ninja Gaiden became a major franchise of Team Ninja because of its 2004 revival, while Devil May Cry 3 was released on 2005. Luckily, there isn't much of a hatedom between the two games' fandoms.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Reuben Langdon, Dante's Ink-Suit Actor, had his hair dyed for the Japanese commercial of the third game and he looks almost exactly like Dante does in 3.
• Fandom Nod: Between the two revival item options, most players choose Gold over Yellow because reviving on-the-spot is more convenient than reviving on a previous room. Capcom is aware of this; the HD Collection has an achievement titled "The Path Less Travelled" for clearing every mission in Yellow Orb mode.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Hell Vanguards from Devil May Cry 3 have the same creepy laughter (alongside other recycled sound effects) as the Sin Scissor demons from Devil May Cry, though this also overlaps into being a Continuity Nod due to both demon types sharing a lot of visual and gameplay-related similarities apart from the audio.
• Inspiration for the Work: As detailed in the excerpts of the Devil May Cry 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, character designer Daigo Ikeno cites the external sources of inspirations for some concepts present in this game:
  • Lady's appearance was inspired by "the black-haired Julia Volkova of the Russian girl group" t.A.T.u.
  • Ikeno said Dante exposing more skin with "nothing but a jacket" in this game was partly inspired by the live performances of Johnnys, originally a Japanese boy band that was active in the 1960s.
  • He also mentioned Beowulf's design was based on the depictions of the Sumerian demon Pazuzu.
  • Taken from page 207, Ikeno portrayed the Temen-ni-gru tower's moving parts based on the floating rocks in the movie Castle in the Sky, "with gears and such".
• Meme Acknowledgment: When the "Easy Mode is now selectable" phrase got popularized in 2018, even Dan Southworth (Vergil's VA) got in on the act and referenced the meme on 2019 using Devil May Cry 5 photos.
• No Dub for You: Like the previous two games, Devil May Cry 3 was released in Japan with the original English dialogue.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Reuben Langdon replaces Drew Coombs and Matthew Kaminsky as Dante.
  • Dan Southworth replaces David Keeley as Vergil.
• The Other Marty: While Stephanie Cheeva provided the motion capture for Lady, her lines were looped in post-production by Kari Wahlgren.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A rumor claimed Dan Southworth had a cold while recording Vergil's voice lines in DMC3, and it was passed around as "trivia". It became widespread and persistent enough in the fandom for a long time, to the point where Dan himself talked about, and finally debunked the rumor during an AMA livestream on 2019.
• Prequel in Another Medium: The DMC3 manga details events that happened before the game, notably about Dante's job involving Alice, and his "reunion" with his brother Vergil before Temen-ni-gru even resurfaced. However, only two volumes were released; the third would've focused on Lady, but was never published due to the artist quitting before it was finished.
• Production Nickname: Model designer Jun Ikawa created the unlockable wallpaper obtained from getting SS ranks on all Normal mode missions. Because it was deliberately made as an homage to the Super Sentai series, he personally called it "Devil Trigger Sentai".
• Promoted Fanboy: Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne features a guest appearance by Dante from the Devil May Cry series. In exchange for this being done, the SMT series' character and demon artist Kazuma Kaneko (who's also a fan of the DMC series) designed the Devil Trigger forms of the Sons of Sparda in Devil May Cry 3. This game also listed Kazuma Kaneko as a "Special Guest" in its credits.
• Uncredited Role: Kari Wahlgren and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn provided the uncredited voices of Lady and Nevan, respectively.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Arkham was supposed to be named Hyne (pronounced "Hai-neh"), but Reuben Langdon (Dante's voice actor) didn't think it would work in English and convinced Capcom to change it. His alter-ego Jester was also named Joker early on in production. A small amount of audio was even recorded with the original name, as Jester refers to himself as "Joker" in one of his otherwise recycled lines during his optional boss battle.
  • According to Daigo Ikeno's statement from the 3142 Graphic Arts interviews, there was an early design that had Dante's jacket closed in front, but it was scrapped because it "would be a waste of Dante's incredible, chiseled abs". This led to Dante's DMC3 appearance being shirtless under that coat.
  • Vergil was initially supposed to have shorter hair than Dante, but Daigo Ikeno and his team were told to make Vergil's hair the same length as Dante's. This was specifically done so that the twins would have identical appearances during their Battle in the Rain, save for their identifying red and blue coats.
  • Beowulf originally had a different concept and name. However, Daigo Ikeno didn't specifically mention what they were when he revealed this tidbit in page 207 of the 3142 Graphic Arts interviews.
  • In page 209 of the 3142 Graphic Arts interviews, Scenario Writer Bingo Morihashi revealed additional character-specific concepts that were scrapped:
    • Jester and Arkham were originally not the same person; the former was meant to be just a "subordinate" of the latter, but that created complications, gameplay-wise. Someone suggested combining the two characters into one, hence the alter-ego/other persona plot twist.
    • Bingo would've wanted a scene in the second half of the game showing Jester's real-time transformation into Arkham, but the "technical limitations" at that time made it impossible. Mission 13 of the final product does show Arkham constantly swapping between his regular form and Jester persona, but his transformation completely relied on the Offscreen Reality Warp camera trick.
    • Lady was originally meant to be a cigarette-smoking older mentor of Dante, but Director Hideaki Itsuno objected to that idea because he wanted her to appeal to the Japanese audience. Thus, Lady's DMC3 version looks like a high-school girl.
  • As mentioned in page 223 of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, Director Hideaki Itsuno wanted to include ordinary human NPCs in DMC3, but wasn't able to do so due to hardware constraints; the PS2 lacked the necessary processing power to render many of them at once.
  • According to the Note of Naught material archive, Nevan was called "Morrigan" in early development and her resemblance to the infamous succubus Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers in earlier sketches is even more obvious. She still has similar traits and concepts that make her an Expy of her fellow Capcom character, however.
• Word of Saint Paul: Dante calling himself Vergil's "little brother" in Mission 7 isn't just a simple part of their affectionate banter because it's actually a reference to their canon backstory. In page 209 of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook interviews, scenario writer Bingo Morihashi mentioned or re-iterated that Vergil is indeed the older twin brother; he's older by several hours.

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