Trivia / Kirby

• Ascended Fan Nickname: The Waddle Dee with a bandana was commonly referred to as Bandana Waddle Dee as fans, and come Kirby: Triple Deluxe, that became his canon name. The developers had initially considered calling him Bandee, but chose Bandana Waddle Dee instead to make it more apparent that he represents Waddle Dees as a whole.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Masahiro Sakurai's favorite Copy Abilities are Fighter and Suplex, owing to his love of fighting games.
  • Shinya Kumazaki has mentioned that his favorite Copy Abilities are Hammer and Ninja.
• Development Gag: A two-part leitmotif was composed for one incarnation of the ultimately canceled Nintendo GameCube platformer, featuring both an introductory segment and a main four-bar passage. Despite the game's cancellation, the leitmotif would become a recurring feature of the series, starting with Yin-Yarn's battle themes in Kirby's Epic Yarn.
• Development Hell:
  • Between Kirby Air Ride and Kirby's Return to Dream Land (Epic Yarn was developed by Good-Feel instead), HAL Laboratory made repeated attempts to create a home console game for the Kirby series. Their most known attempt was the Nintendo GameCube game, announced in 2004, and widely believed to be reincarnated as Kirby's Return to Dream Land. However, an interview revealed that the GameCube game was only the first of four attempts at a home console game, the final being Return to Dream Land.
  • Kirby Air Ride itself was trapped in Development Hell for quite some time. It was originally announced as a Nintendo 64 launch title in 1995, but after spending many years in production (during which it evolved from a sequel to Kirby's Dream Course to a standalone racing game), it quietly disappeared from Nintendo's product lineup. It was eventually moved to the GameCube, but development still wasn't going well, so Masahiro Sakurai was brought on to restart the game's development once last time. This is the version of the game that was shown at E3 2003 and released that same year.
• Executive Meddling: Rumor has it that Masahiro Sakurai left HAL because this happened during the development of Air Ride. He also stated in an interview that he didn't like the sequelization of the gaming industry.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Currently at Stage 4 in the West, but this is a recent development relative to the franchise's lifespan, oddly enough. Despite being a long-running series that sells well, having a very recognizable main character, and being adapted into a generally liked anime series, Kirby barely edged at Stage 3 in the West for most of its life. This can be attributed to the games' limited appeal to the bigger game demographics in the West (which also resulted in some Critical Dissonance for the earlier games), stylistically inconsistent releases throughout the 2000s, and generally being overshadowed by other Nintendo franchises. The series had its first big break when Super Smash Bros. Brawl gave it a large focus, and fully broke into the mainstream around the release of Kirby's Return to Dream Land in 2011. Since then, there's been a steady release schedule of new games and merchandise, and Kirby games are often considered major releases. However, in its home market of Japan, Kirby is at Stage 4.5, where Kirby-themed pop-up shops and restaurants are commonplace in major cities and the Japanese are more receptive of cuteness, regardless of demographic, than in the West. The series has also done collaborations with various Japanese companies, ranging from clothes to stationery to coffee, the latter with awesome jazz music and sweet animation to boot.
• Flip-Flop of God: Does Kirby have red feet, or is he wearing red shoes? Nothing really touches on this question except for a few licensed comics. Among series directors, Sakurai once stated that Kirby does not use shoes, but when asked what Kirby's feet look like without shoes, Kumazaki instead laughed and replied with "the mysterious composition of Kirby’s body is top secret." Another source vaguely refers to Kirby's feet having "gummy pads" allowing him to cling to surfaces, though it also falsely claims that Kirby can get the ability to fire "lightrays" from his eyes, so it may be facetious^note unless one counts the Laser ability, but at this point, Kirby used his arms instead of a visor, and it describes the wrong game. There's also the fact that many other characters and species have similar-looking appendages, including Meta Knight, who started off with what appeared to be plainer limbs which later evolved into padded armor. However, the original Twinkle Popo reveal artwork clearly depicts the red portion as a sock or slipper-like texture with a hint of pink skin, so despite the promotional design being tweaked, it shows that they were at the very least intended to be some kind of footwear.
• Fountain of Expies: Dark Matter and Zero kickstarted the trend of Kirby final bosses having giant eye motifs, which carries on to this day, and later bosses have emulated the species in varying degrees of ways. It thus led to theories that the majority of the final bosses are connected to Dark Matter or Zero in some way. Given the implications of Kirby Star Allies' Void Termina, there may be a degree of truth to that theory.
• God Never Said That:
  • It is often said by fans that the reason why Adeleine disappeared between Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Kirby Star Allies was due to Masahiro Sakurai imposing mandates that prevented humans from appearing in Kirby. While there is some truth to the mandate, the no humans mandate only applies to the anime adaptation, not to the games or even other adaptations (as Adeleine appeared in several manga adaptations). Why Adeleine disappeared for nearly two decades remains unknown.
  • Though the Kirby: Planet Robobot Miiverse Ask-a-thon confirmed that — at least for that game — extra games like Meta Knightmare Returns and The True Arena are "what-if" scenarios, it doesn't necessarily mean elements within them are non-canon (i.e. Galacta Knight's existence), which some fans initially thought to be the case. Shinya Kumazaki later clarified in a Kirby and the Forgotten Land interview that the Kirby series itself essentially operates on a Loose Canon; the games are generally canon to each other in terms of basic plot points and character development, but the specifics are negligible to avoid restraining future plot ideas too much.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: The series frequently uses the Fairlight CMI's "ARR1" sample in its soundtracks, to a downright memetic degree among fans. The sample was previously a staple of popular music in the '80s, being audible in songs such as "Shout" by Tears for Fears, "Moments in Love" by Art of Noise, "Zoolook" by Jean-Michel Jarre, "Domino" by Genesis, and "The Family and the Fishing Net" & "Lay Your Hands On Me" by Peter Gabriel (among many, many others).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For a long while, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble was one of the very few Kirby games to not receive a re-release of any kind, thanks to difficulties with translating the game's motion controls to another format (even third-party emulators have yet to make them work outside of the original cartridges). The game would finally return to official availability in 2023, when it was included as part of the first wave of handheld titles on Nintendo Switch Online.
  • While the original Kirby Super Star saw repeated re-releases over the years via Virtual Console and Switch Online, the same can't be said of its DS remake, Kirby Super Star Ultra, which was the only DS Kirby game to not come to the Wii U Virtual Console.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonalds in Japan would release several small plushes of Kirby and Waddle Dee in February 2024.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • The official soundtrack for Kirby Star Allies lists "Decisive Battle With a Mighty Boss" as originating from Kirby's Blowout Blast despite appearing in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe first. This implies that the song was originally composed for Blowout Blast, as it fits better with that game's style of music.
  • The soundtrack for Kirby: Right Back at Ya! got replaced in the west thanks to 4Kids Entertainment, so the reused songs in Kirby Air Ride ended up making the anime soundtrack's sole appearance in the west in said title, as even Super Smash Bros. Brawl credits "Strong Star Warrior" as "Checker Knights" from Air Ride.
• The Merch: Kirby has a surprisingly huge and diverse range of merchandise (although most of it bar plushes are Japan-only, unless you frequent import shops). Aside from the typical plushes and keyrings, Kirby merchandise has taken the form of towels, blankets, stationery, bento boxes and cups, sweets, and even make-up kits. He also has a range of picture books, which, while nominally in Japanese only, has been officially translated for the Nintendo channel as part of the franchise's 30th anniversary celebrations. The success of the merchandise can likely be put down to Kirby's cute and simple design, making it easy to put his face to practically anything, as well as Japan's love of Kawaisa in general.
• Newbie Boom:
  • While it didn't make a Cash-Cow Franchise out of the series the same way the Pokémon anime did, quite a few Kirby fans will admit the anime for the games, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, is what introduced them to the series and it shows. The anime still maintains a dedicated following to this day. So much so that, since its conclusion, HAL has brought various things from the show into the games and even included several of its episodes in the 20th anniversary Compilation Re-release Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition. In Japan, the anime is enduringly popular enough that it received a complete box set release 20 years after its initial airing, a rarity for a serialized The Anime of the Game.
  • The Super Smash Bros. games also caused this, as Kirby is one of the central characters in each game, and is also one of the most popular characters for his character-based Copy Abilities and multiple floaty jumps. Lots of players became enamored with the pink puffball, which raised visibility and sales for his own games. This was taken even further when Meta Knight and King Dedede were added in Brawl, each bringing their unique personalities and abilities to the fray and providing different perspectives on Kirby's universe. Meta Knight in particular became well-known due to being universally considered the best character in Brawl, which — for better or for worse — raised his profile and paved the way for his role to be increased in future Kirby games.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot also resulted in an influx of newcomers to the series thanks to positive reception and word-of-mouth, interestingly despite the game being much more continuity-based than previous titles. SiIvaGunner making its mark on the same year as Robobot's release and featuring the game in many rips also likely helped the game reach a wider audience than it would have otherwise.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land is yet another Kirby game that produced a large influx of newcomers, especially given that it's the first Kirby game with full 3D platforming. The initial trailer for the game was the second-most trending YouTube video when it was posted. Forgotten Land became the fastest-selling Kirby game of all time, and eventually displaced the original Dream Land as the top-selling game in the franchise.
• No Export for You:
  • The Super NES version of Kirby's Star Stacker never got released outside of Japan due to being released there in 1998, two years after the Nintendo 64's release and one year after the discontinuation of the SNES in North America. However, it is regularly given call-backs in later installments, starting with Kirby: Planet Robobot including a sticker of its final boss Gryll and some of its music in the EX stages. It eventually got an international release through the Nintendo Switch Online app in 2023, making the leap alongside fellow Japan-only SNES puzzle games like Panel de Pon and Mario's Super Picross.
  • Conversely, Kirby's Avalanche never got released in Japan, since it was just a Dolled-Up Installment of Super Puyo Puyo.
  • For lesser-known reasons, the 20th anniversary compilation-game Kirby's Dream Collection Special Edition didn't get a European or Australian release.
  • Once the Kirby series started getting Korean translations beginning with Kirby: Squeak Squad, the only games to never get official Korean translations were Kirby's Dream Collection Special Edition, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (due to the Wii U itself never being officially released in South Korea), and Team Kirby Clash Deluxe.
  • Most Kirby merchandise, as well most of the manga, light novels and picture books, have never been released outside of Japan.
  • An English release of the Story of Dedede Who Lives in Pupupu manga was planned by Viz Media in 2010, but was ultimately cancelled. They would pick it back up again in 2021, releasing it under the name Kirby Manga Mania.
• Permanent Placeholder: Kirby was originally just programmed in to develop the game around him and come up with a character design later on, but then the developers began to grow attached to the cute little blob, and the design was decided as final.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • In the late 2000s, there were a bevy of Fan Wank all centered around "plot elements" that allegedly only existed in the Japanese versions of the games. Most of these centered around Dark Matter being The Man Behind the Man to just about every Kirby villain under the sun, with a particularly notorious one claiming Dark Matter was present in Kirby: Canvas Curse and gave Drawcia her powers via Deal with the Devil becoming widespread enough that it had to be wiped from this very Wiki several times. Funnily enough, some concept art later revealed Dark Matter (along with Nightmare) really was going to be in Canvas Curse albeit as a playable character rather than a boss, making it an enemy of Drawcia rather than an ally as the rumor claimed.
  • The Japanese 25th anniversary Art & Style Collection book does not explicitly confirm that Ado and Adeleine are the same character. This stemmed from a page in the art book describing reference material for Ado's design in the Kirby's Dream Land 3 manga, which was misinterpreted by a Japanese fan as describing Adeleine's design; this misinterpretation was then carried to the English-speaking fandom by way of, of all things, the ProtonJon community, one member of whom publicized the misinterpretation in English on Twitter. Currently, the closest to a direct statement on the matter is in 20th Anniversary Hoshi no Kirby Pupupu Taizen, which suggests that Ado may be a nickname for Adeleine but does not officially confirm either way.
  • A number of wild fandom rumors surrounded Shinichi Shimomura, a leading designer for the series credited with directing Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, and Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (the latter with Masahiro Sakurai). Because of a lack of publicly available documentation and the fact that he disappeared from the public eye after Nightmare in Dream Land, fans started theorizing that Shimomura was either dead or flat-out nonexistent, with some believing that "Shinichi Shimomura" was actually a pseudonym for Satoru Iwata. Eventually, photos of him from a Japanese Kirby's Dream Course guidebook surfaced in 2022, proving that he is indeed real; most fans nowadays believe that he most likely retired.
  • A common rumor is that Masahiro Sakurai and Shigeru Miyamoto fought over Kirby's color scheme (the former wanting him to be pink and the latter wanting him to be yellow), and that this indecision led to the international box art of Kirby's Dream Land featuring a white Kirby until the issue was decided. However, Kirby was always intended to be pink from the beginning, with early concept art◊ making this clear, and the two never fought over it.^note It also fails to hold water because the Japanese version, which features a pink Kirby on the box, came out three months before the first international release (April 27, 1992 in Japan, August 1, 1992 in the US). The misconception stems from Miyamoto saying that he thought Kirby was yellow until he saw the color artwork because of similar characters such as Pac-Man. Sakurai believes that the international version's white Kirby stemmed from a miscommunication with the artists, while Satoru Iwata stated in his GDC keynote that he believed it was an attempt to make the character more marketable in the west.
• Reclusive Artist:
  • Despite his sizable contributions to the franchise through directing the Dark Matter Trilogy (Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards) and working as a map designer on several other games, developer Shinichi Shimomura suddenly disappeared from the public eye following the release of Nightmare in Dream Land (which he co-directed alongside Masahiro Sakurai) in 2002. He hasn't been seen or credited on any games since, and is so elusive that a sizable contingency of people assumed that he was actually Satoru Iwata operating under a pseudonym, which was eventually debunked when two pictures of Shimomura from a Japanese Kirby's Dream Course guidebook surfaced online in 2022.
  • Longtime series composer Jun Ishikawa, who has composed many of the series' iconic tunes since the very first game, is notoriously camera-shy and refused to give interviews or make public appearances for many years. After a brief interview for Iwata Asks: Kirby's Epic Yarn in 2010, he finally began speaking more publicly about his work beginning in 2017, though he still is more withdrawn than the series' other composers.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: While the Kirby series itself has trucked on continuously since 1992, the "Dark Matter Trilogy", as the nickname implies, only occupied three games: Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Their creator, as mentioned, is a Reclusive Artist who faded from the public view after 2002. Despite this brevity, the three games have had a tremendous impact on the Kirby series since their release, introducing a greater level of "show, don't tell" storytelling, emphasis on more intricate puzzle solving (compared to the Sakurai-directed games' action-oriented approach), and willingness to delve into surprisingly dark and disturbing imagery and subject matter that later games would follow. This is most noticeably displayed with Kirby's Return to Dream Land and the games that followed its example, which despite orienting the games back in a Super Star-esque direction owe much of their puzzle-solving elements, atmosphere, and storytelling styles to the template that the Dark Matter Trilogy first set.
• Shrug of God:
  • Are Ado and Adeleine two different people? Or is Adeleine just Ado having grown out of the SNES days? While it has been suggested that Ado may just be short for Adeleine (which is more evident via Japanese Romanization), a straight answer has never been given.
  • Are the Three Mage-Sisters actual sisters, "sisters" in the sense of being priests, or some combination of both? (Given that they're part of a cult.) It's acknowledged in Star Allies' Nintendo Switch Channel as a "mystery" (along with Kirby and Meta Knight's relation). Later hints in the DLC (namely, their Soul Melter EX pause screen descriptions) suggest that they were disparate girls with no relation to each other before Hyness saved them and took them in.
• Uncredited Role: Many of the series' characters are voiced by HAL Laboratory staff members rather than professional voice actors, so they are not credited for their voice work. Director Shinya Kumazaki as King Dedede and sound composer Hirokazu Ando as Magolor, for instance, have only been identified through outside material. The designer who has been voicing Meta Knight since Kirby's Return to Dream Land still has not been identified as of 2023.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page
• Word of God: A 2023 interview with Polygon had Shinya Kumazaki offer input on several questions about Kirby.
  • Nothing would happen if a Kirby were to swallow another Kirby.
  • If you cut Kirby open, Kumazaki thinks he would be "filled with dreams" on the inside, though he also considers the concept intentionally a mystery.
  • Creatures that Kirby swallows aren't actually digested, and will resurface elsewhere in the world; the concept of Kirby digesting the creatures he eats was thought to make the games less approachable.

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