Trivia / Twisted Wonderland

• Cash-Cow Franchise: While relatively young, it's yet another big earner for Disney.
• The Cast Showoff: The final rhythmic for "Glorious Masquerade" has Idia, Azul and Malleus singing. This is especially notable for Malleus as his voice actor, Kazuki Katō has years of musical acting experience under his belt and showcased it for the event rhythmic.
• Colbert Bump: A huge factor of the game's popularity comes from its association with Disney, one of the world's biggest and most popular corporations, and it is heavily promoted by them in Japan. Because of this, it’s able to regularly dethrone mobile game monsters such as Fate/Grand Order in the App Store rankings and brings in more monthly revenue than most other competing Rhythm Games despite debuting much later.
• Copiously Credited Creator: Yana Toboso is credited for almost every role related to the Twisted Wonderland work.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Prior to the game's release, a number of news websites including Crunchyroll reported on the game as an otome game, much to the consternation of the fandom.
• Creator's Favorite: Yana Toboso confirmed in a 2020 interview that she has become the most attached to Heartslabyul due in part to it being the first dormitory created and the one that the team went through the most trial-and-error with during the beginning stages of the game's development.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Cheka, being a child, is voiced by Mei Shibata.
  • The Seven Dwarves consisting of Dominic, Gran, Snick, Shelpy, Hop, Timmy and Toby are all voiced by women instead of men. They are, so far, the only students not being voiced by male voice actors.
• Defictionalization:
  • A replica of Idia's school uniform hoodie is available to be bought.
  • The characters’ magical pens are real now, sans the magic.
  • You can get yourself Cater's phone case in real life.
• Dueling Works: Despite having a different gameplay style and target demographic (though both games are played by all sorts of people regardless), it has become this with Fate/Grand Order, as Twisted Wonderland skyrocketed in popularity upon release due to its affiliation with Disney and became one of the only Japanese mobile games able to regularly dethrone Fate/Grand Order in the App Store rankings. It later has this with Genshin Impact as games that grew popular and earned a lot in such a short time since it's release in 2020.
  • It also competes with Ensemble Stars!! Music due to both currently being the highest-earning games in the joseimuke genre. They were also released around the same time, at the beginning of 2020.
• Dummied Out: The English release removed the chapter 5 rhythmic where Neige and the dwarves covered an In-Universe version of Snow White's Heigh-ho for reasons undisclosed.
• Fan Translation: While it can’t be emulated due to the nature of the game, Western fans took it upon themselves to translate the stories due to its No Export for You status long before the announcement of the official English version. With that said this is still the case for languages outside of Japanese and English, and English translations are still being made thanks to the gap between the two official servers.
• Fanwork Ban: Being a Disney property, Twisted Wonderland naturally has strict guidelines concerning derivative fan works associated with the IP and restricts the production of commercial fan-made merchandise. Cosplays of the cast that are for profit rather than hobby are also banned.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Twisted Wonderland follows the basic formula of the many Cast Full of Pretty Boys franchises that came before it. It’s a female-targeted work starring a Featureless Protagonist who was transferred to a setting they’re not familiar with (while it’s usually the protagonist being from another school, in this case they’re from another world)—bonus points for it being an all-boys school filled with attractive men that they end up in. There’s a pair of Always Identical Twins, a trope becoming increasingly common in similar works. The Cast Herd consists of characters being sectioned off into different factions that the player can choose (in Twisted Wonderland, they’re separated by dormitories, while in other games they’re usually separated by "units" or classes). Even the personalities of the cast and the way they interact with each other are not uncommon in these sorts of works. However, despite following these trends, it manages to leave a unique impression on the players, which is part of the reason for its popularity compared to some other games that have attempted the same thing and floundered as a result. It also averts some tropes associated with the formula, such as not being a Romance Game (even if it’s sometimes labeled as an otome game by the misinformed), though it is not the first game to have done this either.
  • Twisted also takes some cues from Disney's previous work, Descendants, which Yana Toboso confirms was one of the Disney properties she watched for inspiration. As well, there are some similarities to Ever After High which also focuses on fairy tale-based characters in school.
  • Following the "Monkeygate" controversy, Twisted Wonderland follows and uses the "Sparking system" that many recent mobile games had implemented into their gacha so players would still at least obtain one SSR after accumulating a certain amount of rolls.
• Inspiration for the Work: Yana Toboso cites several movies from the Disney Animated Canon as inspiration for Twisted Wonderland, along with Descendants (which tackles a similar concept) and movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• The Merch: Like every successful Japanese gacha-based franchise, it has gotten plenty, from jewellery to scale figures to bath towels.
• Milestone Celebration: To celebrate the first anniversary of the game, the "First Anniversary" event was held from March 8 to March 22, in which the first year students are shown celebrating the anniversary of Night Raven College's founding.
• No Export for You: As of writing, the English server of the game is not available to everyone outside of the United States, Canada, Singapore and Australia.
• Promoted Fanboy: Yana Toboso is a known fan of Disney.
• Role Reprise:
  • Takanori Hoshino, the Japanese voice dub actor of Mickey since 2018, was recasted to voice Mickey in Twisted Wonderland.
  • Kōichi Yamadera, Stitch’s Japanese voice dub actor reprised his role as Stitch for the ‘’Lost in the Book with Stitch’’ collaboration event.
• Schedule Slip: This occurred at least thrice in the first year of the game in the Japanese launch due to it originally being released during the time when the COVID-19 Pandemic is at it's peak. To note the delayed events:
  • Ghost Marriage was originally slated to run at the end of June just after Fairy Gala to follow the popular June Bride theme. However, the event was eventually delayed to start in July.
  • Happened again with the Wish Upon a Star event (an event inspired by Tanabata, meaning it would have run in July if Ghost Marriage had run in June) which was supposed to start in mid-August but was pushed back to late August. This also affected the implementation of Pomefiore's chapter in the main story.
  • Pomefiore's main story chapter also has this as it was released while Japan was facing a second wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic, hence the schedule was adjusted out of concern for the health of those working on the game. Especially the voice actors, due to how extensive recording the main story was due to it being fully voiced.
• Uncredited Role: The voice actors are not credited in-game, but are credited in the official website and art books.
• What Could Have Been: The Magical Archives guidebook released in September 2020 has early concepts and designs regarding the game and characters, along with an interview with Toboso herself. To note:
  • There were originally fifteen dorms in Night Raven College, but this was eventually cut down to seven.
  • The original concept was that the dorm uniforms would be SR cards instead of SSR's; this was changed in the final version of the game.
  • In the book's interview, Toboso states that Riddle's early concept was a rebellious Spoiled Brat whose power was too strong for anyone to reign him in. Toboso eventually rewrote Riddle's character and the early plans for the Heartslabyul scenario because she didn't feel satisfied with it.
  • In the same interview, it's revealed that Cater originally had rabbit ears in his early concept, meaning that he would've been based on the White Rabbit instead of the Four of Diamonds. This is referenced in his in-game chat with Riddle.
  • Early ideas of the game involved the characters being part of the show business as opposed to being in a high school setting, which does eventually pop up in Chapter 5. Another idea was that the entirety of Twisted Wonderland's inhabitants were magic users or supernatural creatures until it was changed to include magicless humans.
  • In this tweet to commemorate the third anniversary of the Japanese launch, Yana mentions that there were initially plans for the students to get their own familiars and Kalim would have a Monkey for a familiar. This plan didn't make it into the final game, but remnants of the plan exist with Trein and Lucius.
  • Another third anniversary trivia from Yana reveals that Idia is initially going to be a Child Prodigy who skipped grades and entered Night Raven College as the youngest student accepted to the academy.
• Word of God: Yana Toboso often uses her official Twitter account to offer insight on her role in creating Twisted Wonderland, as well as occasionally sharing her inspiration for the things within the events.

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