Trivia / Distorted Travesty

• Fandom Nod:
  • In the third game's True Ending, when discussing the fact that the heroes had already fought the Warmaster in what is effectively another timeline, he snarks that he bet Claire did most of the work. Most players find Claire's movesets more convenient and effective than Jerry's in the fight against Warmaster, so she is often the character used for most of his fight.
  • Helmethead from the Zelda area is frequently considered That One Boss: he's not all that tough compared to later bosses, but many think he was too difficult for how early he appears in the game. In the Developer's Room unlocked after beating the game, Zephyr jokingly added a rematch with the boss, except now with his difficulty jacked up to endgame levels.
• Throw It In!: Several examples from the third game.
  • During his Let's Play of the game, raocow got mixed up and forgot that the health restore stations don't save your progress. When informed of this, meaning he'd have to do part of the day's video over again, he jokingly accused Zephyr of confusing him on purpose. Zephyr responded by patching the game that very night to include a checkpoint at that health restore, and added a sign with raocow's accusation next to it.
  • In another raocow-related example, raocow at one point rambled about how the message that appears when Jerry is swapped in should read "Jerry, let's get hairy!" One update later, and that message is among those that appear upon Jerry swapping in.
  • The Monster Bats had a glitch in testing where they would occasionally dash away from the player rather than towards them. Zephyr found this amusing, so he programmed it in as a random occurrence, complete with a humorous text box.
• Trolling Creator: ZephyrBurst makes it quite clear in his developer commentary and the names of the various screens in the games that he knows he's being overly difficult in his game design, and doesn't care. There are a few levels that it's clear he included a gimmick just because he knew it would frustrate the players (the tilting screen map titled "You're going to hate me for this room" comes to mind).
• What Could Have Been: Zephyr stated that he wanted the worlds to work similarly to how they did in their original games (Like being able to use the Goomba Stomp in the Mario worlds), but he had trouble programming many of these aspects. This idea was later incorporated into Distorted Travesty 3: Saved Game.
• Write Who You Know: The names of the protagonists, Jerry and Jeremy, are the names of Zephyr's roommates.
  • Also the game is an extremely challenging platformer, take a wild guess as to Zephyr's taste in games.
• Word of God:
  • Chao is Jeremy's adoptive sister.
  • Regarding the third game's standard ending: Zephyr has denied any kind of "statement" inherent in the ending, saying that it's simply where he saw the story ending up and, while he knew it probably wouldn't be well-received, he was curious as to what the fan response would be. He later introduced a happier ending in an update.