History Trivia / ClubPenguin

** PSA mission #10 references the famously rumored "golden puffle", with it instead being a literal golden puffle statue.
** The Halloween party had a painting showcasing the iceberg being tipped.

*** In the mobile versions, the Iceberg would tilt very slightly depending on how many penguins were on either side, though it would never completely tip over.

** One of the early emoticons was a skull, which was meant to be used for ignoring other players. It was removed in November 2007, when players started using it to pretend to be dead or, like the aforementioned postcard, use it as a form of death threat. The emoticon only remained as the symbol for the ignore list. The heart emoticon was removed at the same time, although it was brought back a couple months later.

** In 2007, the laughing emoticon had to be redesigned because it resembled an emoticon from another unspecified website (speculated to be Yahoo!).

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: This was the reason why ''Club Penguin Rewritten'' was forcibly shut down in April 2022. In the lead-up to said shutdown, the developers implemented [[InternetAds advertisements]] in the Rockhopper's Daily Treasure that players were ''forced to watch'' and could not skip with an adblocker. They also patched a workaround for that to ensure this happens. Monetizing the game like this gave a law enforcement group called "Operation Creative" means to take control of the website and shut down the server, resulting in the arrests of at least three of its developers by the City of London Police.

* AscendedMeme: During the game's earlier years (2005-2007), there were several memes showing edited player cards with the penguins wearing costumes of pop culture characters, such as WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants or Franchise/SpiderMan. Specifically, the latter example ended up coming true in 2012, when the Marvel Takeover happened and a Spider-Man costume was included among the items for the party. [[https://twitter.com/redkeytar/status/1162220007125741568 According to Polo Field]], the game's developers possibly even included that 2006 Spider Man meme when pitching the party to Marvel.

* CreatorBacklash: Former staff member, Chris Hendricks (known by his username Screenhog), who worked in lots of things during the game's initial years, regrets making the penguin's design on the player card the way it is. While he does appreciate how iconic and loved that drawing has become, he's pointed out in some videos that he sketched and finished the drawing in under 15 minutes, on his first attempt, back when ''Club Penguin'' did not have a definitive art style yet; by his own words, it looks "dumpy-looking, with a clueless expression its his face, and its beak is a weird shape", and besides [[NonStandardCharacterDesign stuck out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the artwork seen on the game's later years]]. However, [[TheArtifact it had to stay for the remainder of the game's duration]] because it would be ''insanely'' hard and time-consuming to redraw every item on the player card if the penguin paper doll was changed.

** The Costume Catalog was moved to the Puffle Berry Mall, after it permanently replaced the Stage in 2015. The store's sign that contains it even has the comedy/tragedy masks that used to be seen above the theater.

* FranchiseKiller: The negative reception of ''Club Penguin Island'' caused the game to be shut down by the end of 2018, putting the lid on the series. Attempts to continue it unofficially by fans were mostly squashed by Disney sending out DMCA takedowns in 2020 after predatory allegations were made towards the owner of ''Club Penguin Online'', leaving ''Club Penguin Rewritten'' the sole option of Club Penguin living past Flash until it was forcibly shut down on April 13th, 2022. That was one month before ''Club Penguin Legacy'' opened and became the sole option as well. Time will tell for how long CPL is going to be up for.
* MilestoneCelebration: While an anniversary party was held each year, the 10 Year Anniversary Party from 2015 was probably the most effort put into a party in years, with most rooms having the decorations of parties from every previous year, and even going so far as to have a dedicated yearbook in the book room.

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: The sole reason why ''Club Penguin Rewritten'' was forcibly shut down in April 2022. In the lead-up to said shutdown, the developers implemented [[InternetAds advertisements]] in the Rockhopper's Daily Treasure that players were ''forced to watch'' and could not skip with an adblocker. They also patched a workaround for that to ensure this happens. Monetizing the game like this gave a law enforcement group called "Operation Creative" means to take control of the website and shut down the server, resulting in the arrests of at least three of its developers by the City of London Police.

** There were many rumors stating how to get to Rockhopper Island. One of the more popular ones was to stay on the Migrator past its leaving date.

WordOfGod states that Rockhopper Island was to be implemented in the game at one point, but was never put in.
* WordOfGod: The reason why there weren't any bed furniture items in ''Club Penguin'' was to prevent players from simulating inappropriate actions (although some players improvised their own beds by mixing-and-matching existing furniture). When kids asked about it, the mods gave the excuse that they didn't have bed furniture because "penguins sleep standing up".

** There were many rumors stating how to get to Rockhopper Island. One of the more popular ones was to stay on the Migrator past its leaving date. WordOfGod states that Rockhopper Island was to be implemented in the game at one point, but was never put in.

** The Costume Catalog was located in the Puffleberry Mall, which replaced the Stage. The store's sign that contains it even has the comedy/tragedy masks that used to be seen above the theater.

* CreatorBacklash: Former staff member, Chris Hendricks (known by his username Screenhog), who worked in lots of things during the game's initial years, regrets making the penguin's design on the player card the way it is. While he does appreciate how iconic and loved that drawing has become, he's pointed out in some videos that he sketched and finished the drawing in under 15 minutes, on his first attempt, back when ''Club Penguin'' did not have a definitive art style yet; by his own words, it looks "dumpy-looking, with a clueless expression its his face, and its beak is a weird shape", and besides [[NonStandardCharacterDesign stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the artwork seen on the game's later years]]. However, [[TheArtifact it had to stay for the remainder of the game's duration]] because it would be ''insanely'' hard and time-consuming to redraw every item on the player card if the penguin paper doll was changed.

* NoBudget: The budget for the very first versions of ''Club Penguin'' was minuscule, the game effectively being an update to an experimental chatroom program that Lance Priebe had made in his spare time. Chris Hendricks recalls that they used Swift 3D as their modelling tool mainly because they couldn't afford the $1,000 licence for 3D Studio Max.
* ScrewedByTheLawyers: The sole reason why ''Club Penguin Rewritten'' will '''never''' return. In the lead-up to its forced shutdown in April 2022, the developers implemented [[InternetAds advertisements]] in the Rockhopper's Daily Treasure that players were ''forced to watch'' and could not skip with an adblocker. They also patched a workaround for that to ensure this happens. Monetizing it like this gave a law enforcement group called "Operation Creative" means to take control of the website and shut down the server and resulted in the arrests of at least three of its developers by the City of London Police.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** Early on, it was considered that the game's moderators would take the form of polar bears, complete with their own costumes and animations. This was cut primarily because making the moderators highly visible came with its own set of problems; namely that when a moderator was around players would change their behaviour or treat the mod as a celebrity, while if a moderator was noticeably absent players would be more inclined to feel like they can get away with breaking rules.
** The space between the Pet Shop and the Pizza Parlor was originally intended to be the location of the Dojo, but the slow pace of development for the Dojo's associated content meant that spot got filled by the Stage first.
** Rockhopper was originally envisioned as a parrot rather than a penguin, and he would have had a crew of other birds.
** From 2009 to 2011, the team was working on a place named the "News Room", which would have became the new main room of the island instead of the Town. From it, players could access several other rooms of the island, visit others' igloos, and read a news board announcing important events. The room was ultimately scrapped as it was decided the Town already served its purpose perfectly fine, although many elements of it were later RefittedForSequel for the Island Central in ''Club Penguin Island''.
** According to Rsnail, at one point there was an idea that banned players, instead of getting entirely stopped from playing the game while they were banned, were instead going to be locked in a single-player jail cell room, which would have been located behind the Lighthouse.
** The penguin's design on the player card was originally going to be just a 2D stylized version of its in-game model, but this idea was turned down and it was replaced by a 2D penguin. Six years later, in 2011, [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/clubpenguin/images/8/88/Player_Card_Concept.png/revision/latest?cb=20130223120233 the team was planning to redesign the player card penguin]]; while its basic shape would be retained in order to avoid having to redraw every single item's appearance on the player card, its shapes would look smoother, and its eyes and beak were remade to look closer to the newer art style.
** Sony was interested in purchasing ''Club Penguin''; this ultimately didn't happen, but a cross-promotion with ''WesternAnimation/SurfsUp'' did happen as a result of those discussions.
** The first concept for the Clock Tower at the Snow Forts had it as an actual snow fort, being made entirely of snow. The clock itself was analog rather than digital, and the plaque explaining about Penguin Standard Time was absent (although it was later removed in 2012 anyways, after the room was redesigned).
** There were several items that were modeled, but never made it to the game, such as an "arrow-to-the-head" hat, which was going to be the free item for April Fools' Party 2006 but scrapped for being "too violent".
** Originally, some game devs were insistent on there being NoAntagonist because they wanted the game to be a perfectly safe place. However, this was changed when the PSA missions were developing, as by mission three the creative team felt like it was already getting hard to come up with obstacles without there being some sort of villain behind them.
*** Even when they introduced the unidentified white fur in episode four, they still weren't sure if they were going to add a villain. If the players reacted negatively to the missions hinting at an antagonist, then the plan was to reveal that the white fur was actually a white puffle. If this had been the case, this also would have been their debut, as white puffles weren't in the game yet. However, they didn't need to go that route as players were ''ecstatic'' over the idea of a villain.
*** There were also originally going to be ''three'' polar bear antagonists with a BigThinShortTrio theme. However, they felt like that was too many characters, so they molded them all into the one character of Herbert P. Bear, along with giving him a sidekick, Klutzy.
** The antagonist for ''Puffle Launch'' was originally be supposed to a character named "Scowly the Owl", but he was later replaced by a crab named Klepto.
** At some point after the original game's closure, the original creators of ''Club Penguin'', Lance Priebe and Lane Merrifield, tried to buy the rights back from Disney in order to bring the game back, but Disney did not agree to it.
** ''Club Penguin Island'' had several updates planned for the future that never came to pass due to the game's closing in December 2018. The most notorious were the addition of Puffles and Card-Jitsu, which were too hard to implement and such were going to be added much later into the game.
** For ''Club Penguin Rewritten'', there was the Operation Swarm party, which never got off the ground due to not being completed in time. All that the players got in game was a month long rainstorm in November 2020 meant to be a lead up to it. According to some notes, Klutzy would have been adoptable as the last prize, though Klutzy would walk around the island as a mascot the following month as compensation.

* WorkingTitle: The original 2000 program by Lance Priebe that would evolve into ''Club Penguin'' was named ''Experimental Penguins'', followed by the more recognisable ''Penguin Chat''.
* WriterRevolt: In a video by artist and musician Chris Hendricks titled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSxgjQpVCg 5 Things I Didn't Want in Club Penguin (but got in the game anyway)]]", he explained that the game's implementation of realistic hair was this. Chris was against this idea, feeling that it looks weird on the penguins and that it humanises them too much, in spite of hair being a popular fan request. The 'Clown Hair' wig was first implemented as a protest against this idea, before the Big Wigs catalog was introduced with three major conditions: The hairstyles would explicitly be named "wigs", they would look like wigs rather than natural hair, and a vote would be held in the newspaper as to whether the wigs should stay in the game. Eventually the pro-hair side won out, and more realistic-looking wigs were added down the road.

* ''Club Penguin Island'' had several updates planned for the future that never came to pass due to the game's closing in December 2018. The most notorious were the addition of Puffles and Card-Jitsu, which were too hard to implement and such were going to be added much later into the game.