Trivia / Conker's Bad Fur Day

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• Acclaimed Flop: Though it received positive reviews and has become a Cult Classic, the game was an expensive affair (all the text and dialogue resulted in it being one of the few N64 games that needed a 64MB cart) that did not sell well at all. The title only moved 55,000 units during its first month, with the blame being laid upon Nintendo of America not advertising the title within gaming publications/websites (including Nintendo Power) and the title coming out at the very end of the Nintendo 64's life cycle when audiences were more focused on the already-released PlayStation 2 and the then upcoming GameCube and Xbox. Some retailers outright refusing to sell it also didn't help.
• Acting for Two: Chris Seavor does almost all of the voices, with Louise Ridgeway voicing Berri and a few of the incidental female characters, and Chris Marlow voicing The Great Mighty Poo.
• Creator Backlash: While Chris Seavor is by no means ashamed of the game, he admitted on Rare Replay that if it were made today, there were some things that he would have definitely changed, particularly the "Sunny Days" part of the game, which he finds extremely embarrassing in hindsight.
• Executive Meddling:
  • While Nintendo was accepting of the tonal shift to a vulgar M-rated game and was actually very hands-off with it — Chris Seavor would later state that the final product is 99% faithful to the original vision — they still ordered the removal/editing of five different scenes:
    • The scene in "Barn Boys" after Conker frees Franky originally had a throwaway gag that took a potshot at the Ku Klux Klan. The final game had the reference replaced with the paint pot and brush wearing generic executioner hoods instead.
    • Conker meeting Don Weaso in "Uga Buga" had a small part of the scene edited at the request of Nintendo, since it took a jab at Pokémon. The unfinished scene and voice clips were Dummied Out, and can still be found in the game's code.
    • "It's War" had three scenes edited; originally, Rodent was accompanied by two soldiers who are killed by firing squad (Rodent is alone in the final game — amusingly, this bit was reinstated for Live & Reloaded), a brief scene where a Tediz stand-in for Hitler appeared was cut, and a horrifying scene where a live squirrel soldier is dissected by the Tediz was replaced by a scene of two Tediz chit chatting, using audio that was originally meant for scrapped outtakes in the credits.
  • The main reason why Conker's Bad Fur Day was created was because the development team began to fear that their original idea for a Conker platformer, Twelve Tales: Conker 64/Conker's Quest, was going to be looked down upon due to being yet another cutesy platformer, and an extremely negative critique/mockery made during its test showing ended up being the last straw, ultimately resulting in this.
  • Nintendo stated repeatedly in promotional material that Conker is 21 years old, in opposition to Chris Seavor view that Conker was no more than a preteen in the original game. The planned sequel would have aged him up to be around 18. The teenage design created for the sequel ended up being used for the Live and Reloaded remake.
  • Microsoft made Rare censor the remake, despite the fact that it was an M-Rated game on a console targeted mostly at teenagers and young adults (and despite initial claims that it'd remain uncensored, with the original title even being Conker: Live and Uncut). The reason was because Microsoft wanted the game to be sold at big retail stores, many of who would have refused to carry it if it was released uncensored. This was averted with Rare Replay, which features an almost completely unaltered version of the N64 original, apart from editing out the bootup cutscene (due to the Nintendo 64 logo), and acknowledging the new button prompts on the Xbox One (although Conker does refer to the original Nintendo 64 control scheme in the voice acting).
• Invisible Advertising: Of a sort. Nintendo of America refused to promote the game in gaming publications, namely their own Nintendo Power. Instead, advertising was limited solely to late-night television blocks, adult magazines like Playboy, and college parties.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original N64 version was this for several years. The original N64 version would eventually be available via Rare Replay, a 2015 compilation of many of Rare's titles, with minor edits to remove all references to Nintendo.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The game was originally a more kid-friendly platformer in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie. At first it was Conker's Quest (which followed Conker and Berri, as they set out to collect a hundred house-warming gifts that had been stolen by magical beings called "The Hoodlums") before changing into Twelve Tales. This younger version of Conker can be seen in Diddy Kong Racing, and the Game Boy Color game Pocket Tales; some Posters released for the remake of Bad Fur Day says both are canon and take place in the past. You can view thirty minutes of gameplay for the unreleased game here.
• Playing Against Type: For Rare. While they had released titles skewed towards more teenage audiences by this point, they were more well-known for their family-friendly collect-a-thon platformers, which made the reveal of such a vulgar game such a surprise.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • Rumor has it that the developers had planned a much darker ending where Conker, who is depressed over his current dilemma and Berri's death, commits suicide via a gunshot to the head. This ending was changed because Rare and Chris Seavor wanted to create a sequel to the game and scrapped this ending because it didn't leave room for one. However, there isn't any evidence of such an ending existing at all.
  • The box with the big "M" ESRB rating (as seen on the main page) was never actually printed; the image floating around online is a mockup leaked by Nintendo of Canada before the game's release. All copies of the game ultimately had a regular-sized "M" on the box. However, the PAL version does indeed feature an extra-large "M15+" rating.
• Reality Subtext: The reason Conker is the only red squirrel you see in the game (every other squirrel is gray) is a commentary on how gray squirrels were introduced to Britain and have caused their native red squirrels to become an Endangered Species.
• Referenced by...: In Minilife TV, Death having a high-pitched voice and his real name being Gregory has been confirmed by Word of God to be an intentional reference to Gregg the Grim Reaper from the game.
• Saved from Development Hell: The game was in development alongside Banjo-Kazooie and was first shown off as Conker 64 in 1997. It took several years and a genre shift before it was finally released in 2001.
• Screwed by the Network: When Nintendo discovered Rare's provocative change in direction, while they still funded development, they declined to publish the game and refused to acknowledge the game's existence in Nintendo Power (though not in their foreign associated magazines from Mexico or Brazil). Nintendo of America did still advertise it through late-night TV commercials and print ads in adult magazines like Playboy, and at college events, and would ultimately distribute the game while Rare self-published, but the lack of ads in the usual gaming news sources is believed to have contributed to the game's low sales (among other factors). Meanwhile, Nintendo of Europe refused to even touch the game at all, giving both publishing and distribution duties to THQ instead, and the game never saw a Japanese release.
• Stillborn Franchise: An interview with Chris Seavor revealed that not only did they plan on making a sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day, aptly named Conker's Other Bad Fur Day, but the plotline of the game was actually finalized. However, Microsoft decided against doing a sequel, so development was shelved. The only known parts of the plot revealed to the public was the introduction — Conker is dethroned, imprisoned, and awaiting execution because he wasted the entire royal treasury on beer, parties, and hookers, so the first stage has him escaping from the castle's highest tower — and that Berri would return, now as the main villain.
• Throw It In!: The scene in "It's War" where the two Tediz doctors are talking out of character was originally meant to be a joke outtake used for the games credits. When the original scene before it — which showed the Tediz dissecting a live squirrel — was ordered to be edited out, the outtake was used in its place instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game was originally a kid-aimed collectathon platformer called Conker's Quest and then Twelve Tales: Conker 64.
  • Chris Seavor mentioned that a cutscene mocking Pokémon was removed due to Nintendo's request. Amazingly, those who hacked the files of the beta version actually found said scene.
  • As seen in this video, there was originally a scene where two Tediz surgeons are experimenting on a squirrel soldier while he's still alive not unlike the Nazi experiments during the Holocaust. It was replaced with the Tediz Breaking the Fourth Wall by talking about the game before turning their attention to Conker. In turn, the replacement scene was originally going to be part of an outtake reel planned for the credits.
  • According to Chris Seavor, the Xbox remake was going to have a gate character called "Bill Gate" who owned a house whose windows kept breaking. It seems Microsoft didn't appreciate the joke.
  • The music that plays during the Count Batula sequence was originally intended as the battle theme for an unused vampire character in Killer Instinct 2.
  • In regards to a sequel, Chris Seavor posted a few pages from a design document for Conker's Other Bad Day.
    • Berri would be the Big Bad out for revenge on Conker, being behind an invasion of space faring Tediz. She'd return from her fate in Bad Fur Day courtesy of space aliens retrieving her and Ze Professor, rebuilding her into a cyborg so she can go help her fellow chipmunks (possibly connected to the chipmunk refugees in multiplayer). She'd threaten the world with the shamelessly named Death Starfish and use a robotic duplicate of Ze Professor as her pawn. She'd arrange the creation of a clone of herself so she could transfer herself into it instead of remaining in her cyborg body. This clone would survive the original's final defeat and show up at the ending to crash Conker's wedding with his new flame Bunni.
    • The Panther King would return from the grave for a scheme made by the Grim Reaper to kill Conker once and for all. They succeed at this, setting up Conker to be beheaded after getting framed for robbing the feline king's money, the squirrel's execution coming right after him killing Don Weaso at the Federal Reserve. The PK would impersonate Conker through a body swap, traveling around reclaiming his wealth until he's back on his throne. Then The Panther King/Conker Doppelganger slays Franky, Raptor and new friend Camembert since they realized the Conker on the throne is an imposter. In the end, he and the real Conker would form an alliance against Cyborg Berri with the Panther King (still in a copy of Conker's body) becoming Emperor of the Known Universe.
    • As noted above, Gregg schemes with the Panther King to ensure Conker's demise. He'd take advantage of a clause that says if a squirrel received a death by state executed beheading it'd kill said squirrel. This sends Conker right into The Basement, where he encounters both old enemies (such as Don Weaso who now runs the place) and his slain friends. Together with his friends, he triumphs over Gregg and the Panther King in battle (taking down the former using that which the reaper hates: cats).
    • Planned levels included a haunted church, a factory ran by the Wankas, a Titanic parody that was the bridge between the living and dead where Conker meets Bunni (his new flame), a kingdom of cheese ruled by Marvin's cousin, another island of Tediz where Ze Professor performed experiments and dumped defective Tediz at, and Berri's base on the moon.
  • A scrapped ending had Berri certainly survive, but be used as a leg for Conker's table (which he'd drink off of).
  • The famous "giant M" version of the box art. It never reached print, but after a leak online, it became ubiquitous. Most notably, it implies that either Nintendo or Rareware at one point heavily considered releasing the game with a rating so huge that even the most absent-minded parent would have to notice it. By the time of the game's release, it had been decided that it could release as-is with a typical sized rating. The implications of the mockup version made it popular among the fanbase. Given that Nintendo refused to promote or publish the game, the limited advertising and fears over the kid-friendly design of Conker himself, it was assumed that this was just another example of people getting too sensitive.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: There was no formal script written for the game. Chris Seavor improvised the games entire story and cast as he went along. This was also the reason why he did almost all the voices in the game himself.
  "It would have meant writing a script and I'm far too lazy for that, so I made it up on the day. That's how most things get made...(Hitchcock was an anomaly)"

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