Trivia / The Halloween Hack

• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Megalovania" was actually written for this game's Final Boss. Most people associate it with Homestuck and Undertale instead, since those works are far more popular.
• Creator Backlash: Toby Fox has admitted that he finds a lot about the game embarrassing now, particularly the excessive swearing and the other overly "edgy" aspects of it. This isn't that surprising, considering he made it when he was in high school. He has stated that nowadays he wouldn't recommend anyone to play it — though he also knows that's unlikely to stop anyone's curiosity.
  I guess I should just accept "bad rom hack with swears" as part of my eternal legacy.
• He Also Did: Imagine stumbling onto an old, edgy EarthBound hack and discovering it was created by the guy who created the enormously popular Undertale. (Or, before 2015, the guy who was one of the major contributors to the Homestuck soundtrack.)
• Shrug of God:
  • There were several hints in the game that Varik was supposed to be (a future?) Ness. The game calls you "Giygas slayer" at times, and people mistake you for Ness a lot. Toby Fox said that it just started with him "wanting to look lazy" by not editing Ness's death sprite, but then decided to keep going, since Ness and Varik are both blank, mute heroes. He said it's up to you to decide if they really are the same person.
  • There were also hints that Varik's intrusion upon Dr. Andonuts' Magicant was corrupting it, since there were places and people only Varik/Ness would remember. Toby Fox also said this just sort of happened.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Toby Fox originally planned to have Dr. Andonuts steal people's souls in order to bring back Jeff. He decided it sounded too goofy. A similar concept would end up becoming a huge plot point in Fox's later work, Undertale, where Asgore attempts to collect the souls of fallen humans to free monsterkind from the underground.
  • He also planned to change the intro song. You can hear the would-be intro if you go to southern Onett from Twoson.
  • Toby Fox was originally going to lift "Megalomania" from Live A Live wholesale to use as the game's final boss music. As clarified in this 2022 interview (Japanese-only), he realized partway through the process of copying the song by ear that it would be faster to compose a similar-sounding original song instead, thus leading to the creation of "Megalovania".
• Word of Gay: Toby Fox said on his site that the NO! NO! NO! boss was Dr. Andonuts' repressed homosexuality.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: According to Toby Fox, "Megalovania" was composed by shouting into a microphone at random and cobbling together the results.

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