Trivia / New Yankee in King Arthur's Court

• Genius Bonus:
  • The insignia on John's armor is a red cross, which is the symbol of St. George, the patron saint of England. As a knight of Arthur's Round Table, he would have had to invoke St. George as part of his oath.
  • The games are occasionally prone to Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, using large words like mellisonant and troglophobia without actually explaining what they mean. It's a neat way to increase the player's vocabulary if they trouble themselves to look up the words.
  • In the eighth game, the talking spell book advises the heroes to place an offering of gold in a certain location in order to gain the strength of "the old and powerful magician Gwydion." Gwydion was one of the ancient gods of the Welsh Mabinogion, a trickster deity who is sometimes compared with Merlin. The book had previously belonged to Merlin, who had been revealed to be Arthur's Evil Chancellor back during the first game. It's an early hint, for those who recognize the name, that the book is playing the heroes for chumps.
  • In the ninth game, the heroes are introduced to Arthur's court bard, Taliesin. In Welsh tradition, Taliesin was the Chief of Bards, who really is thought to have performed in Arthur's court (though not exclusively) and whose work may have survived in the form of the ancient manuscript The Book of Taliesin.
  • Having an understanding of Arabian Nights gives the player extra appreciation for several of the references in the tenth game, not least Scheherazade herself.
  • In the tenth game's bonus levels, while the heroes are searching for Morgana, Mary laments that the whole thing is ending "with Cherchez la femme again!" As the main page notes, this means "searching for the woman." On the surface, it's a reference to how some of their adventures really are resolved by finding specific women - Morgana, Penelope, and so on. However, it's also a reference to the fact that Cherchez la femme is considered a very tired cliché in detective pulp fiction, wherein the entire mystery can be solved by identifying the female love interest. The use of the phrase has come to mean explanations which always have the same root answer even if the problems are different.
  • The plot of the eleventh game centers around helping a relative of Arthur's, Culhwch, woo a young woman named Olwen through a series of trials. This is actually based on an extremely obscure Welsh legend about King Arthur, in which his cousin Culhwch wants to marry Olwen, the daughter of a fierce giant, and is forced to complete a series of impossible-sounding challenges in order to win her.
    • Also in that game, completed levels are represented on the map by red roses. The red rose was, in the real world, the emblem of The House of Lancaster.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Zigzagged. Starting with the fourth game, most - but not all - of the games are available in one of these. They include a bonus chapter with extra levels, downloadable wallpapers, strategy guides, and various other goodies. All of the games, meanwhile, are available in a Vanilla Edition, which is just the main game; however, even some of these include extras like unlockable achievements and character profiles.