Trivia / The Stanley Parable

• Acting for Two: Aside from the Narrator, Kevan Brighting does the voice of an instructor in both "Choice" and "Comedic Timing" PSA's.
• Approval of God: Toby Fox expressed amusement on Twitter towards the number of Undertale and Deltarune riffs in the advertising for Ultra Deluxe, replying to a parody of the announcement threads for Deltarune with "lol" and liking several other Undertale-centric tweets advertising Ultra Deluxe.
• Colbert Bump:
  • To say that people learned about Kevin MacLeod because of the inclusion of his Who Likes to Party is an understatement.
  • In Ultra Deluxe, this is taken up to eleven with multiple Kevin Macleod songs, such as Delightful D and Curse of the Scarab, being included post-game for the sequel title screens.
• Development Gag:
  • In the Games ending, jumping down the elevator shaft after completing the Portal map (or while exploring the Rocket League map in Ultra Deluxe, before OR after the Narrator's left) will bring the player back to the office, as it appeared in the original mod.
  • Another interesting thing to note for the Games Ending is, without counting Minecraft or Rocket League, all the games between versions are based on the original engines they were built off. ^note The original mod used Half-Life 2's first level, based on the mod and game's origin; the HD Remix used Portal, due to both being built on the Source engine; Ultra Deluxe uses Firewatch, since both games are built on Unity
• Dummied Out:
  • Since the HD Remake is built upon the Source Engine build used for Portal 2, several Portal 2 assets are present in the game files, including models for the Turret, textures for the Cave Johnson paintings, and other stuff. Using the console, one can even spawn the Companion Cube.
  • There are a few voice lines that never made it into the final game. Apparently, certain lines where the Narrator becomes separated from Stanley were meant to play in the game's ending, but an error in the script causes the lines not to play.
  • There is unused audio in the Rocket League portion of the Ultra Deluxe Games ending, includes dialogue for the Narrator leaving Stanley in a big, empty box, and the Narrator commenting on how since Stanley is the only player, he is both the winner and loser.
  • The Ultra Deluxe release notably omits the Serious Ending from the game. This is because Ultra Deluxe was released on the Unity engine, which does not have a command prompt console to type cheats into, unlike Source. The Serious Room that the ending takes place at is still exhibited in the Memory Zone during the Skip Button Ending, and the voice clips are still in the game, however.
  • Ultra Deluxe contains unused Narrator lines for a mobile port of the game.
  • According to unused audio files, the bucket variant of the Vent ending in Ultra Deluxe would have played out more closely to the regular variant of the ending, where the Narrator appeared to be a series of tape recordings created by the bucket, only for it to be a prank.
• Fandom Nod: In Ultra Deluxe, neonjays' fan art of the Stanley Parable Narrator, as well as the Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist stage manager, can be seen during the New New Content ending, on a table before the entrance to the expo hall.
• Foiler Footage: Among the brief gameplay snippets found in the Release Date Trailer, one shows the whiteboard from the Whiteboard Ending inside of a decrepit shack falling over to show a new path behind it. In the actual game, this is instead done by a negative Steam review during the Skip Button ending.
• Meaningful Release Date: Ultra Deluxe received a final release date of April 27, 2022, which the trailer notes is the same numerals as Stanley's ID number — 427. Also, there are four twos in that date. What's two times four?
• Prop Recycling: Many props from Valve games are reused, even in Ultra Deluxe despite it not being on the Source engine.
• Schedule Slip: Ultra Deluxe was originally planned to be released in 2019. It was delayed to 2020, then to 2021, and finally to early 2022. Amusingly enough, one of the key factors in this delay was apparently, according to their AMA, the Reassurance Bucket, since the once-minor gag ended up getting more and more content added to it every time the developers revisited it, to the point that it apparently took more than a year to implement all of what made it into the final game.
• Throw It In!: In the demo, the Narrator displays the phrase "The Stanley Parable demonstation" on the TVs. This was a typo, but the devs decided not to correct it.
• Trolling Creator: The developer kept changing the unlock criteria of the achievement titled Unachievable over several patches, driving the community into confusion and anger when they couldn't figure out a reliable way to unlock it. The truth wasn't discovered until he revealed his move in a forum post.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: There are a lot of rumors that it is possible to defuse the bomb in the Countdown ending. Since there are so many useless buttons and other things to interact with in the Countdown Room, this was inevitable.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Museum ending, aside from showing off a lot of the game's assets, demonstrates several unused and unimplemented ideas, including further Ask The Narrator trailers (in the vein of the Raphael trailer) and a battleground ending.
  • A planned ending, where the game turns into a sci-fi First-Person Shooter game with its own narrator who ends up in conflict with the Narrator, was never implemented, but shows up in the Museum.
  • According to Word of God in this Reddit AMA, one ending was originally intended to have the Narrator forcing Stanley into repeatedly jumping off a ledge until he dies. This was scrapped for being too brutal, and replaced with the ending where Stanley commits suicide by the same method against the Narrator's orders.
  • An iOS version of the game (with altered scenarios to fit a mobile environment) was intended to be developed around the same time the HD Remix was, but due to communication issues between the development team and Cakebread, it was scrapped. Screenshots can be seen here.
  • According to this interview, other games that were considered for the revised Games ending in Ultra Deluxe included Fortnite (which was rejected for being too obvious), Return Of The Obra Dinn, and Undertale.
• Word of God: The Narrator does have a canon appearance (two counting his Digital Avatar self), and apparently all Narrators in this universe are humanoids with computers for heads.
• Word of Saint Paul: One of the devs sent a tweet on the official Crows Crows Crows account to declare that The Stanley Parable shares a universe with The Backrooms and the SCP Foundation.
• The creator of the original Half-Life 2 mod, Davey Wreden, is the brother of Doug Wreden, who streams on Twitch.

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