Monster Hunter / Trivia

Works with their own Trivia pages:

Ascended Fanon: Deviljho is referred to as a pickle by the Handler in World and Stories, referencing the popular fan nickname it earned.
Cash-Cow Franchise: According to this post, Monster Hunter is Capcom's third-best-selling franchise, trailing Resident Evil and Street Fighter but outselling Mega Man. Most of those sales are in Japan, however; the series, while recognized by Western gamers, didn't exactly have a mass following outside of East Asia until the release of MH4U and especially World. World, though, made it cash cow outside of Japan, too, being Capcom's best selling game (not counting re-releases of the same game) of all time.
Dummied Out:
- Savage Deviljho had a monster icon◊, but it wasn't used in-game. This image is from a magazine scan. However, this icon is the inspiration for the Savage Deviljho's icon in Monster Hunter 4◊.
- Generations Ultimate has the Weakness Exploit skill for Palicos and Prowlers, which works the same way as its Hunter counterpart (increases Affinity (Critical Hit chance) when hitting a monster's weakest areas). But in the Western versions in particular, it cannot be obtained through legitimate means by yourself. Not through Palico scouting and not even through DLC; the DLC Palico that's supposed to carry it was never released for these particular versions. The only way to get it is to hack the game or receive a Palico from another player that has it.
Fan Translation:
- One exists for X, found here. Only essential interface elements are translated, however.
- There's two for Portable 3rd, one by Team HGG for the PSP version and one by Team Maverick for the PS3 version. The Team HGG patch stopped at version 2.3 with a good amount of the text translated, while Team Maverick went belly-up in 2014 after the release of patch version 5.0 due to a lack of translators for the project.
- There's an ongoing one for the Chinese-only MMO Monster Hunter Online.
Genre Turning Point: Monster Hunter is credited with the creation of the "Hunting RPG" genre, with many other developers throwing their hat in the ring such as Koei's Toukiden, Bandai Namco's God Eater and Sony's Freedom Wars among many others.
Killer App: A Monster Hunter game appearing on a particular platform can help turn the tide of the Console Wars in Japan. Freedom Unite (Portable 2nd G in Japan) in particular is often seen, both by fans and professionals, as the game that made the PSP a relevant platform in Japan.
Late Export for You: While Monster Hunter games being released in the West about half to 2/3 of a year after their Japanese releases is the norm, Generations Ultimate is notable in that it took 17 months after its original Japanese release to get a localized release (a little over a year after the Japanese Switch release), and by then World was 8 months old. This seems to have been put to rest starting with the fifth generation of games, with World and Rise getting simultaneous global releases.
Loose Canon: Details regarding the Ancient Civilization as established in various books are neither confirmed nor denied as canon, with enough in-game elements to prove the Ancient Civilization existed but no evidence they ever behaved as described. The Equal Dragon Weapon in particular is of dubious canonicity.
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Due to some games being left in Japan, this trope is inevitable with monsters that debuted in those Japan-only games later appearing in games that do get international releases. For example, Amatsu debuted in the Japan-exclusive Portable 3rd before being officially introduced to overseas players in Generations.
Milestone Celebration: To celebrate the series' tenth anniversary, Capcom released a special video that showed off the most popular monsters in the series at the time and gave out their sizes, from the Felynes to the Rajang.
Newbie Boom: The pitch for World as a big AAA title for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC seemed to work for Capcom, as following its reveal trailer at E3, there was a sudden spike in Western interest in the franchise, many of whom had never heard of Monster Hunter prior and were intrigued by the trailer for World. Within a week of its release, it sold 6 million copies, which is more than the lifetime sales of any prior release in the series except for 4 and Generations. ^note Major numbered sequels also tend to do this in Japan.
No Export for You: A little under half the games are only available in Japan.
- Also, unless you have custom firmware or a friend with a Japanese copy of the game, you can't get some of the extra goodies that come from Japanese-only download quests for the Freedom games. Some are joke items like a giant stuffed animal Hammer (Polytan) while others, like the Jolly Roger set, are quite useful.
- Reversed in Monster Hunter Tri, in which you can get three exclusive fan-designed weapons only in the international version of the game. And the WiiSpeak support for online play.
- Any event items in the game that aren't the same between regions each have a Japanese and a foreign variant. While the two versions are different in appearance, they have the exact same stats. For example, the Pirate Axe J has the exact same stats as the Sinister Saints. In Monster Hunter 4U, however, modders found that many quest items (including said Pirate J gear) are actually Dummied Out instead of being given replacements.
- Hori produced and released a special Slide Pad / Circle Pad grip for the basic (i.e. non-New) 3DS XL/LL carrying the Monster Hunter license that works similar to the Circle Pad Pro, except with the second Circle Pad on the left, intended to be manipulated with the left index finger rather than the right thumb.^note It was only produced for the Japanese market, although unlike games, it has no Region Coding and can connect to a non-New 3DS XL/LL of any region.
- Monster Hunter Online is Chinese-only, despite Tencent releasing a very early statement saying that it'd receive an English release. Although like with Monster Hunter Frontier, the game is region free.
- Generations Ultimate was eventually exported, but only the Switch version. The 3DS version remains Japan-exclusive.
- In an inversion of this trope, the Xbox One version of World is not available in Japan, where the Xbox One is an utter commercial failure.
Official Fan-Submitted Content: Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate features a King Poogie Hunting Horn and a Clockwork Insect Glaive designed by a European and an American fan, respectively.
Portmanteau Series Nickname: モンハン (monhan) or "MonHun".
Production Lead Time: This is typically less of an issue between the console and handheld installments in the series, which are each handled by separate development teams, since there's a lot of communication and idea sharing between them; this allows a game to include monsters and hunting areas from another that was released a year or slightly less prior (for example, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate quickly adopted many monsters and features from Monster Hunter Portable 3rd which was released just one year prior and developed by the handheld team).^note However, Monster Hunter: World (released in 2018) was very unlucky in this regard: Its development began in early 2014, but because of its secluded planning phase and the time required to incorporate the monsters' skeletons into the physics of the then-new graphical engine for the series, the game prescinded from all sorts of content featured in the fourth-generation and late third-generation games, with the exception of the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade weapon classes. For this reason, someone who hasn't played too many MH games would have thought at first that the game's predecessor was Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) (released in 2009) due to the presence of Barroth, Uragaan and Deviljho; rather than Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (released in 2017, only one year before World itself). The Iceborne expansion rectified this by adding newer veterans like Zinogre, Raging Brachydios and Glavenus.
Promoted Fanboy: "Evanko" is a pre-made name for Poogies and a randomly chosen name for Palicoes. This is in honor of Adam Evanko a.k.a. "Gaijinhunter", who is well-known for his various Monster Hunter tutorials and guides. In Generations, the Wycandemy Gal makes reference to "some foreign hunter-guy that has all of the info," referring to the same person ("gaijin" being an informal term for "foreigner" in Japanese).
Referenced by...:
- In The Dangers in My Heart, Anna Yamada's father, Yuki, hands Ichikawa his friends code so they can play the game together.
- In Disgaea 5, one of the animations for 4-unit Team Attack shows the units setting up a Pitfall Trap with explosive barrels around it, catching the target in it, and then blowing the bombs up, referring to a common hame/"lockdown" strategy amongst MonHun players.
- Tár ends with the title character conducting an orchestra playing the Monster Hunter: World theme as an audience of cosplayers watches.
Saved from Development Hell: An animated special titled Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild was announced in July 2018 and slated for release in 2019, only for 2019 to come and go with no sign of what happened to it. It wasn't until July 15, 2021 that a trailer was finally revealed for it, along with a release date and news that it will be on Netflix.
Sequel First: In the West, World (January 2018 WW) was released before Generations Ultimate (July 2017 JP, August 2018 NA/PAL).
Similarly Named Works: The game shares a name with a 2001 PC game, Monster Hunter (PC).
Urban Legend of Zelda: For years, players around the world were convinced that Deviljho would eat their own tails when another food source wasn't nearby and they were hungry. As of October 2022, after a Twitter user asked for footage of the act, no one could produce any that wasn't faked via meat or other food sources being placed in or around the tail, suggesting this was never the truth at all.
What Could Have Been:
- The HD PS3 port of Portable 3rd was supposed to be released outside of Japan. Sony of America vetoed it due to a combination of no trophy support and the multiplayer component using ad-hoc networking rather than the regular PSN. Addressing these needs would eventually lead to the development of World.
- Some of the monsters in 3 Ultimate went through different names during the localization process.
  - Arzuros was derived from azure and ursus, resulting in various Punny Names before they could settle on the final spelling.
  - "Zeograth" was considered for Zinogre at one point, being a combination of Zeus and wrath. However, because Zinogre's name already appeared on some merchandise in English, the director requested that its name stay Zinogre.
  - The Stygian Zinogre's initial name was "Scarlet Zinogre", but the Japanese development team wanted its name to have more emphasis on its Hellhound appearance.
  - The translators wanted to call the Purple Ludroth "Purple Royal Ludroth", but the maximum length a monster's name can be was 16 characters, so they had to drop the "Royal" part.
  - The Baleful Gigginox's initial name was "Copper Gigginox" due to its normal skin color, but the dev team wanted to emphasize its electrical attacks.
  - "Rouge Qurupeco" was considered for Crimson Qurupeco at one point, but due to how easy it was to mix up "rouge" with "rogue", they decided to stick with crimson.
- The localization director of 4 Ultimate posted on his blog about several things that Could Have Been regarding localized monster names. For example, Shrouded Nerscylla could have been Reaper Azravel.
- The official art book for Generations revealed concepts for two scrapped weapon types in the Hunting Hound and Wyvern Boomerang.
- A two-headed, undead cobra monster called the Crypt Hydra was planned to be in the original Monster Hunter, but was removed after negative reception from fans who didn't want to see a supernatural monster in the game. However, it does get referenced from time to time; 2's logo and one of the ships in 3U have images of it on them. One of the new Elder Dragons introduced in Generations, the Nakarkos, seems to be a reworked version of it with a more lore-friendly theme (it's a cephalopod-style monster that simply covers its arms in bones to be intimidating).
- Crystalbeard Uragaan was originally intended to be a Variant, like Raging Brachydios or Chaotic Gore Magala. However, the dev team wanted it to be more of a threat, and turned it into a Deviant instead.
- Nerscylla would have appeared in Generations, but due to a Game-Breaking Bug the devs couldn't fix in time, it was delayed until Generations Ultimate.
- The Frontier-exclusive Dyuragaura was originally going to be modeled after dark heroes, but this idea was scrapped, and the development team decided to model it after kitsunes instead.
- Kamu Orugaron was originally intended to be a Flunky Boss, with Nono Orugaron as his flunkies.
- The Sky Corridor from Frontier was originally a Gimmick Level with puzzles instead of monsters. This was scrapped because testers couldn't figure the puzzles out.
- Ray and Lolo Gougarf were originally intended to be released in Frontier G4 along with the Bamboo Forest map, but the map wasn't done yet while the monsters were. The Gougarfs apparently were going to have much more interactivity with the level.
- Mi Ru would've had ten additional forms. Five was plenty.
- Lagiacrus was supposed to be in World, and later on, Rise, but technical issues with implementing it in the fifth-generation's more complex environments (the amount of nodes it needed for proper inverse kinematics apparently required so much processing power that it caused PS4 dev kits to overheat) led to it not making the cut in both games.

Non-trope Trivia:

To date, Monster Hunter 2 (dos) and Monster Hunter Portable 3rd are the only mainline games not to receive Updated Re-releases that add G/Master Rank. They are also the only mainline games not to be released in foreign markets in any form.^note
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate currently holds the mainline series' record for most monsters in a single game, with 127 — 93 large monsters and 34 small monsters.

Trivia / Monster Hunter

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