Trivia / Deadly Premonition

• Approval of God: SWERY loves fan content of the game, so much so that making games "fan-friendly" is apparently a core tenet of his game design philosophy. According to him, the best works are the ones that continue to impact the player long after they've stopped playing, and making characters easy to draw/write about/cosplay allows the player to keep interacting with, and experiencing, the game world long after they've stopped playing.

• Colbert Bump: A specific review from Jim Sterling, who ended up giving it 10/10 (partially as a stab towards IGN and their harsh reception of the game), is often mentioned as a point at which the game caught attention of the audience and gradually started to gain cult following - with SWERY himself considering it a "review that turned things around".
• Dueling Games: Depending on who you ask, it's dueling with either Alan Wake or Heavy Rain.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The game originally did not have combat sections, the publishers asked that they be added while playtesting the alpha version of the game.
  • SWERY originally intended the game to take place in Canada, as he had lived there when he was younger. The publisher suggested moving the setting to United States for broader market appeal.
• Flip-Flop of God: Are the "Other World" encounters actually happening, or are they just in York's head (and Emily's)? Not surprisingly, SWERY's been asked this question in multiple interviews... and he's answered in the affirmative to both possibilities. Taking all the interviews into account, the answer seems to be something along the lines of, "The shadows represent malevolent spirits, so their encounters are mostly mental, but because mental states can have a physical effect on people, they can be fought off in a physical sense and can have a physical effect on people by affecting their state of mind." Or something like that.
• The way side missions are handled in gameplay is similar to the missions you get in the Tomba games. This is because Swery65 and many of the developers for Deadly Premonition used to worked on the Tomba games. So in a sense, Deadly Premonition is a Spiritual Successor to the Tomba! games.
• No Export for You: Want to play Deadly Premonition in Australia? Nope, because it's banned! At least, that's what Rising Star Games thought. The OFLC was contacted on the matter where they said they hadn't even been handed a copy of it. The European/Australian publishers said they didn't think they could get away with the content and decided not to ship it.
  • It is available on Steam in Australia, however.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Critically Polarizing Survival Horror Game.◊"
• Role Reprise: Jeff Kramer reprises his role as York and Zach/Old Zach in the Directors Cut.
• Sequel Gap: The original release of the game was in February 23rd, 2010. The sequel, A Blessing in Disguise, releases in 2020, ten years after the original game. Even counting the Director's Cut, which released in 2013, that still means that there were seven years before a new entry in the franchise was released.
• Troubled Production: Many, many websites noted the game's resemblance to Twin Peaks, and the developers noticed this, so they redesigned the characters and rerecorded lines, mostly for the prototype York, David Young Henning.
• What Could Have Been:
  • York's original name was David Young Henning (which would be recycled as a Mythology Gag in this game's Spiritual Successor, D4) and he also bore more than a passing resemblance to Dale Cooper, the Red Room actually did look more like a "Red Room" with the twin angels being Expies of The Man From Another Place, George had a slightly more elderly appearance with less facial hair, and the song "Miss Stiletto Heels" may not have existed in the original version, with the song "Pillow Stain" in its place, which can easily be found in the game in the sound test. The title was also originally "Rainy Woods". The Trailer can be seen here.
    • George's old design was still retained in Deadly Premonition as the model for Richard Dunn, owner of the SWERY 65 bar and father of Quint Dunn.
  • The ability to hide in dumpsters suggests you were to hide from the enemies, rather than fight most of them head on. You can see this in most of the Raincoat Killer segments. Which possibly links up the fact that the combat aspect of the game wasn't originally present and was added early in development to keep the publishers happy. Maybe the game would have been more stealth orientated.
  • The game was originally suppose to take place in Canada, since SWERY was fascinated by the country at the time, even having gone there when he was a kid. When he brought the idea to the game publishers, they forced him to make it take place in America, since doing so would increase sales.
• Word of God: According to an interview with Swery, Willie the Dalmatian is actually Kaysen's handler. Kaysen gets his orders from the Red Tree through Willie.
  • Swery also cleared up some Epileptic Trees as well.
• Working Title: The in-development title of the game was Rainy Woods.

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