What Could Have Been has its own page.
- Ascended Meme:
- The secret area theme for Gnome Forest is called "Everybody Wants To Be A Secret"
, in reference to the "Lario" meme that uses the level's title card art. Before the meme was created, the song was called "A Secret in the Trees". Come the Halloween 2023 update, and Peppino as a Gnome even became a Steam emote titled, you guessed it, :lario:. - Peddito and The Doise are a pair of Palette Swaps of Peppino and the Noise who originated from this video by YouTuber Robby1scool and became a meme in the Pizza Tower community. Both would make cameos as Halloween decorations in Pizzascare, and following the Noise Update, the Doise would become a fully fledged boss fight while playing as the Noise. Even its own sub-meme was ascended - in the Bring Your Own Class mod for DOOM, Peddito is depicted as a terrifying monster who will do anything to kill The Doise; in Pizza Tower proper, he swoops in at the end of the Doise fight, permanently killing him.
- The secret area theme for Gnome Forest is called "Everybody Wants To Be A Secret"
- Approval of God:
- The inclusion of Mort the Chicken was fully approved by the character's creator, Ed Annunziata — in fact, he liked the cameo so much he allowed Mort to be used royalty-free.
- The official Pizza Tower Twitter has been seen to retweet fanart of the game.
- Crowdfunder Cameo: $20 donators to the game's Patreon in the first half of 2019 were added as "Pizzasonas" to the secret zones.
- Development Gag: The game's hub world has multiple hidden areas featuring pieces of unused content.
- In older demos, there was a boss fought in the normal level style known as the Cheese Dragon, meant to be an Optional Boss. In the game proper, he’s cut as a boss, but makes an appearance flying around harmlessly in a hidden room in the first hub known as the "Old Tower".
- Another hidden room features a clown transformation not used anywhere in the game with a large circus in the background, referencing an unused power-up and a scrapped circus-themed level respectively.
- One hidden room features the Noise riding on a washing machine, referencing a feature he had during development, but was scrapped in the final game. Next to him is also a Noise Satellite, an unused enemy featured in the game's second demo from 2018 who'd initiate Pizza Time upon being killed.
- The final hidden room is a small part of the cut Mansion stage.
- The Noise's Lap 2 theme — "World Wide Noise" — features a brief section from "Pesto Anchovy", which was a remix of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement" that was intended to be the original escape theme for The Noise before it was replaced by "Distasteful Anchovy" in later builds due to composer ClassyJitto disliking the track.
- Dummied Out:
- The SAGE 2019 build had some buried unfinished content such as the Oregano Desert and Mansion levels.
- The Heat Meter was announced in a development log video, only for the developer to reflect on how it could bloat the game and immediately scrap it (with the log being reuploaded blanking out the entire segment). Months later, the Heat Meter briefly found itself back into the game, largely unchanged to how it was first depicted, only to be scrapped once again for the release.
- There exists a scrapped boss fight against what seems to be a normal bee in the games files that was meant to be the World 4 boss. Said fight was used in streams to cover up Fake Peppino’s existence, and the room seems to contain an early version of Pizzaface’s Phase 1 pattern.
- There's a scrapped Final Judgement screen that has Peppino with an almost-realistic face tinged in red with the message "The Judgement is Final. Please Try A New Save File". This suggested that the player would have been locked out of getting other Final Judgement screens on that save file once completed. This screen ended up being reused for an Easter egg in the Halloween update, minus the text.
- Flip-Flop of God: McPig stated in the past that Peppino was a war veteran suffering from PTSD, even joking at one point that Team Fortress 2 stresses Peppino out because it "hits too close to home," but later changed his mind and said that Peppino probably just imagined it. Despite this, it remains a popular bit of fanon. Either as a reference to this entire situation or another straight example, Peppino's house from the Noise's scenario has what appears to be three war medals.
- Hey, It's That Sound!: The earliest demo 0 being made more to show how the game would work, it used several placeholder sound effects from Wario Land 4 and other GBA games, as well as the level clear theme from Wario World.
- Orphaned Reference:
- Three of the "Peppino Judgement" End-Game Results Screen rankings had nothing to do with the completion percentage. "Confused" (which has Peppino asking the player if they thought not killing enemies granted points) was originally meant for players that actively avoided killing enemies, "That's the One, Officer!" (a battered Peppino identifying the player to a pig cop) was originally given for players that hurt Peppino a ludicrous amount of times, and "No Judgement" (Peppino just shrugging), was originally given for players that did not fulfill the requirements for any other Peppino Judgement.
- The gunshots in Wasteyard’s theme made a lot more sense back when the level had Ranch Shooters. Even moreso when their bullets gave Peppino the ghost transformation. Then again, it could still be seen as either a reference to the fact that Tombstone, Arizona (which the level's song is named after) was the setting for a lot of standoffs or the fact that people famously tended to meet their end in gun fights back in the days of the Old West. Or both.
- For some reason, a calzone appears as one of the treasures in the true ending. This was supposed to be the treasure for the Mansion level, before it was scrapped (it was reused for R-R-F as well in the October 2022 build, but it was changed sometime afterwards).
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
- Due to repeated raids and a large, unruly userbase, the official Pizza Tower Discord server ended up getting shuttered in late March of 2023. The only channels remaining intact are the update channels and an archive of fanworks produced by the server's users.
- There used to be a public design document at Google Docs detailing early concepts for the story and the first few stages. For some reason, it was set to be editable by anyone and people began heavily vandalizing it sometime after the release of the game until it was deleted.
- Word of God: As the game has virtually no storytelling, information such as Peppino (possibly) being a war veteran or Pillar John being a Hive Mind is only found on posts on McPig's Twitter account and the game's official Discord server.
