Trivia / A Hat in Time

Actual Trivia

• Astute fans will notice that the music played in Mafia Town in the alpha build is vastly different from the music that played there in the prototype build of the game. According to the dev team, the original music proved to be "too overwhelming" and ended up distracting or irritating players. They changed it to a chiller and more relaxing tune so as to help players feel more laid-back (and not to drive them up the wall).
• In the update for June 20, 2019, one of the notes is "Fixed rare sticker prompts forcing a return to spaceship when it shouldn't (sorry Pat)". This is referencing a then-recent stream by Patrick Boivin where said bug forced him to temporarily stream Doom (2016) instead.
• This is one of the few games where Grant Kirkhope doesn't compose in the key of C.

Trivia Tropes

• Ascended Fanon: The Community Time Rifts added with Death Wish, which were originally fan-made level mods. The Curation System was also used to propose content for the "Nyakuza Metro" DLC, including things ranging from cosmetics to a level that details Rumbi's origins.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: A few characters are voiced by high-profile YouTube celebrities (such as Yungtown, SungWon Cho^note who's actually a professional VA and JonTron).
• Creator's Pest: Timmy, the original co-op character, was disliked by the devs due to his design, and was eventually replaced by Bow Kid.
• Development Gag:
  • Thor is a character who was going to be involved in a mission in an earlier build of the game. His mission was scrapped, but he lives on as one of the many frozen statues in Queen Vanessa's Manor. His hat is also available as a replacement for the Sprint Hat.
  • Science Owls were present in earlier builds as well, but were replaced by Express Owls. However, they are still referenced, such as a doll in one of Hat Kid's Idle Animations being modeled after them, certain paintings in Subcon Forest containing them, and a Mafia mook talking about a science owl hosting a TV show.
  • Some of the songs the Wowls play when they board your ship were meant to be used in the scrapped "Sand n' Sails" chapter.
  • One of the drawings on Hat Kid's fridge is a reference to the alpha/beta ending featuring Hat Adult, the unused adult form of Hat Kid.
  • An Easter Egg added in a 2022 update allowed the player to catch a glimpse of a Rough Patch, an unused catlike enemy from the Subcon Forest, frolicking around atop one of the cliffs overlooking the path to Queen Vanessa's Manor.
• Dueling Works: With Super Mario Odyssey, as both are classic-styled 3D Collectathon platformers with a huge focus on hats released in the same month.
• Dummied Out:
  • Many unused assets from earlier versions remain in the final game’s files, including models and animations of the many unused characters, as well as assets from Sand 'n Sails (the original incarnation of what would become Alpine Skyline in the final game).
  • A scrapped encounter between Mustache Girl and Snatcher is still intact in the game’s files and can be toggled in-game, though it isn't voice acted and most of the text is unreadable. A transcript of what would have been the dialogue is still in the game's files, however, and can be read here.
  • Likewise, an unused epilogue scene in which the antagonists talk about Hat Kid in a cafe can also be toggled in-game. Like the Mustache Girl encounter, It isn't voice acted and the dialogue for the scene is unreadable. Fortunately, like the aforementioned encounter, a transcript of the dialogue is intact and can be read here.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The beginning of the game's digital manual features a silhouette of Timmy, who was originally intended to be the co-op character until he was scrapped and replaced by Bow Kid.
• Executive Meddling: For legal reasons, "Her Spaceship" is not an official part of the original soundtrack. This is because Grant Kirkhope was the person who made that song, not Pascal Michael Stiefel. It is technically in the first soundtrack DLC, but it's been intentionally misplaced to be in the HatInTimeGame folder (where the game assets are stored), not in the dedicated soundtracks folder, as a form of Loophole Abuse it seems. It also cannot be heard on Spotify, or any other streaming service except YouTube, you have to purchase the game via Steam or GOG to hear the track. The Steam page for the soundtrack also lists it as a silent "secret track", as well as a text file in the folder, to act as a nudge to players to find it.
• Flip-Flop of God: There was an insane amount of flipflopping on if the game would be on the Wii U and eventually Nintendo Switch. First it was going to be on the Wii U, but since Gears For Breakfast would have needed to pay a decent sum to use the engine on the system, it took too long and ultimately the Wii U's time passed. For a long time (almost a year) after the game's release, the devs insisted the game would not be on the Switch for unknown (presumably licensing) reasons, before it was very suddenly announced on August 20th that it would, in fact, be coming to that system. In an interview, Gears for Breakfast clarified that their flipflopping was because they weren't sure if a Switch port was even possible, and didn't want to get people's hopes up.
• Milestone Celebration: To celebrate the game's 5th anniversary, Gears for Breakfast would host an event in the game that decorates the Spaceship with various birthday decorations, introduces a rare and special sticker effect, doubles the amount of stickers dropped and a special birthday effect for all stickers.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • Some of the various Game Mods for the game have made it into the game officially, with both the "Seal The Deal" update and "Nyakuza Metro" DLC's (which both put a new level each, the former being "The Arctic Cruise", the latter being "Nyakuza Metro"). Some content from the "Death Wish" mode officially implemented alternate costumes that users had created for Hat Kid into the core game (a process that had already begun months prior, with costumes being classified as dyes, but there were technically no official alternate costumes, aside from outfits Hat Kid wears during specific missions, at that point).
  • In November 16, 2021, Gears for Breakfast announced The Creator DLC project, which consists of DLC packs made by the community and published by Gears for Breakfast. The first DLC pack released under this project, Vanessa's Curse, would release on November 27th, 2021.
• Orphaned Reference: The switch in the piano room of Queen Vanessa's Manor that opens a dead-end staircase. Before the Time Rifts were introduced, the levels they contain would've been accessed via secrets found in the levels themselves, and this is a holdover from that concept.
  • The option at the end of the game to give a Time Piece to Mustache Girl notes that if you do so, Hat Girl's ship may not have enough power to get back home. Nothing comes of this, as it is a leftover set-up for the game's original True Ending where Hat Kid grows up.
• The Other Darrin: The Vanessa's Curse DLC features Vinton Bruno and Pikmingirl as Snatcher and Queen Vanessa, respectively, rather than their usual voice actors, Luke Sizemore and Eileen Montgomery. This is largely due to the DLC not being developed by Gears for Breakfast, but by the fandom, with Gears for Breakfast only publishing it.
• Refitted for Sequel: The developers already had the basic idea for Nyakuza Metro in the beginning, and considered putting it in the base game, but decided against it. They would eventually revisit the concept in the second DLC.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: The game's Twitter account made a post that described the game as playing as "a heckin cute girl who gets put in messed up situations". One sarcastic reply then stated that the game would be like a Hentai Doujin, much to the PR's comedic dismay, and the amusement of everyone else. And yes, the following response below does contain that many exclamation marks.
  no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Schedule Slip: An inverted example. The Switch version released on time on October 18th, 2019... on the eShop. The retail release was pushed back to November 8th, with the developers being told a manufacturing delay was the reason why.
• Staff-Created Fan Work:
  • Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the developers of Gears for Breakfast have a history of making mods for other games prior to founding the studio, several of the game's developers have contributed to the game's modding community on Steam Workshop, including Jonas Kaerlev himself, who has made several unofficial mods for the game, which you can view here.
  • Shortly before and after the game's release, lead 3D artist, William Nicholls, created an (now private) ARG in the form of several videos that when analyzed and translated, featured a elaborate story being told towards Hat Kid by a character known as Cavus, that expands on several things not brought up by the game itself, such as the lore of the time pieces and Hat Kid's species. It is later confirmed by the devs however that they are officially non-canon and that it's purely the work of Nicholls. This didn't stop nods towards it from being snuck into the game in the form of Easter Eggs though.
• Trolling Creator: When asked about Hat Kid’s real name on the official Discord server, Jonas Kaerlev responded by giving out a Korean sentence resembling her signature in-game◊. Fans quickly found out that when they translated the sentence into English through Google Translate, it translated to, "Hat Kid’s name".
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Word of Saint Paul: Shane Frost, one of the concept artists who worked on the game and the character designer for the Snatcher/Prince, revealed through a backstory on Twitter on the first meeting between Vanessa and the Prince that the Prince's (and by extension The Snatcher's) real name is Neth. This is unlikely to be canon to the final game though.

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