Trivia / Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox

• Bonus Material: As stated on the main page, the story has a collection of Gaiden chapters (posted on Fanfiction Dot Net as a separate story alongside the main tale) which are presented in non-chronological order and which in some cases introduce characters who don't appear in the main story (including villain Tsuchinoe and side-characters Mikoshi, Ajisai and Omoi) but are still important to the story's overall plot. Some chapters take place prior to the start of the main story, some take place in between the story's various chapters or arcs, and some take place during the 15-year-long Time Skip before the Grand Finale.
• Inspiration for the Work: The author listed Rurouni Kenshin and Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple in Chapter 1's post-chapter commentary as two particular works that influenced the design of the fanfic's plot. Other works which have influenced aspects of the story include Law & Order (seen, for instance, in Iruka's and Ibiki's work as police officers), Knightfall and The Clone Saga (seen in snippets of a story arc from the in-universe comic book Shadow Fox), Trigun (shown in Han's character portrayal being similar to Vash), The Matrix and The 6th Day (influencing the Kyuushingai's back-story and their artifically-ingrained intelligence in particular), and a bit of Jojos Bizarre Adventure (specifically in the outcome of Naruto's fight with Sasuke at the end of the Uchiha Zaibatsu arc).
• What Could Have Been: The author makes some admissions in the post-chapter commentaries about the direction certain chapters were going to go in the initial drafts. Some examples below:
  • The author had intended to give Hidan a tragic back-story similar to that of Anji from Rurouni Kenshin; Hidan would have been a minister of religion whose church got destroyed during the Nine Terrors' rampage. Likewise, Kakuzu was going to be Rin's abusive ex-boyfriend, and his scars would have been the result of one of the Kyuushingai punishing him for the abuse. In the final draft, however, Kakuzu wound up having no connection to Rin and his scars came from a very different incident, plus Hidan wound up being nothing more than an opportunistic douche and being the one who's Rin's abusive ex.
  • The fight between Lee and Chojuro in Chapter 146 was originally going to be much more even, but in the end Lee's tendency to get unpredictable when fighting drunk changed that. They fight a more equal rematch in Chapter 200, with Lee sober this time—and he still wins.
  • In the post-chapter notes for Chapter 147, the author admits that, originally, he was going to have Gato (the Big Bad of the Land of Waves arc in canon) show up as Chojuro's lawyer, but that idea got scrapped because, as it turned out, the lawyer wouldn't make an appearance in the chapter after all. However, the author also notes that the idea of Gato showing up as an attorney hasn't been completely discarded.
  • The story was intended to be completed at 220 chapters. Instead, the story proper has 222 chapters and an ongoing Gaiden series.
• Write What You Know: The courtroom sequences in both the main story and the Gaiden chapters were written based on the author's actual experience as a court reporter (as acknowledged in the post-chapter commentary for the main story's Chapter 112 and the fourth Gaiden).