Accidentally-Correct Writing: In the concept art book, Dan Salvato noted that "'Sayori' was some kind of unholy fusion between 'Sayuri' and 'Saori', and to this day I’m not even sure if it could pass off as a real Japanese name." However, "Sayori" (さより) is an actual Japanese girls' name (as well as the name of the Japanese halfbeak fish), albeit an uncommon one, as seen with voice actress Sayori Ishizuka and the pseudonymous artist behindNekopara.
Due to fanbases waifu-ing particular characters, many fans were concerned about Natsuki, as her younger appearance would make certain people seem like lolicons. Dan Salvato himself stated that "all of the characters were 18" (including Natsuki). In Plus, it's outright stated that all of the characters are "over 18".
Originally, if the player attempted to quit the game during Sayori's death scene, the quit dialog box would be distorted. However, this effect was patched out in a later update, because Salvato didn't want to give players an extra scare as punishment for trying to quit during an emotionally distressing part of the game.
The original story received some flak for how the protagonist responds to Sayori's depression. The DDLC+ side story "Trust" tackles the subject matter a lot more tactfully.
Content Leak: The existence of the Updated Re-releasePlus was leaked through some composer credits that were inadvertently posted online well before its official reveal, leading to a member of Team Salvato addressing the issue on the game's subreddit.
Writer Dan Salvato stated in his Reddit AMA thread that to him, all the girls are precious and deserve to be loved.
Game artist Satchely's favourite girl is Natsuki.
One of the new CG artists for the Plus expansion known as SquChan has Yuri as her favourite girl.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Shortly after a 15-year-old boy killed himself after playing Doki Doki Literature Club!, British news outlet BBC listed the game as an online psychological horror game aimed at kids due to the anime graphics and that it promotes suicide. This despite the fact that both the Steam page and the actual game itself upon initial boot up/after Act 1 warns that the game was clearly not made for children or the easily disturbed in mind. It even has you confirmed if you were above the age of 13 to play. The game isn't even online either as it's perfectly functional offline. The only thing BBC got right was that it's free-to-play, and that the game takes a drastic shift in tone towards the end of Act 1.
Doing It for the Art: The game is free because Dan Salvato feared people might feel being ripped off for paying for a game whose plot swerves completely in content and tone after the end of Act 1. Fortunately, the merchandise sales have more than made up for it. The Plus version is sold at a cost, so it is promoted with the horror elements as a selling point.
Feelies: The physical edition of the Updated Re Release comes with tiny standees of the main four characters, a download code for the soundtrack, a set of 17 stickers, a club membership card, and a copy of an exclusive poem written by Monika. The Nintendo Switch port also got a special inner coversheet resembling a notebook.
The game itself has a follower of sorts in How To Date A Magical Girl!, an animesque game about romancing typical anime-style girls in a magic academy setting, which hides some creepy and disturbing secrets. After a certain point murders and suicides abound, the girls' past often revolves around bullying and predators, and ultimately an AI is behind everything that happens.
Reclusive Artist: According to Dan Salvato, Jillian Ashcraft, Monika's voice actress and the singer of "Your Reality", "prefers staying private" for now. There are a fewvideos online of her singing (she also plays guitar), but not much else.
When Tyalie joins the team in BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, a short, remixed snippet of “Your Reality” plays instead of the normal “new party member” theme, serving as an early hint to the character’s self-awareness.
SCP Foundation: In the testing log for SCP-914, one of the numerous experiments involves putting a memory stick with the "monika.chr" file and a bucket filled with human tissue into the machine on the Very Fine setting. The result...
Output: [DATA EXPUNGED], promptly terminated after breaching the walls of SCP-914's containment. Junior Researcher Murray, showing an almost memetic attraction to the entity, was also terminated after trying to shield said entity from the bullets of the guards' assault rifles. Note 3: Alright, who else wants to create a fucking sentient reality bender waifu with SCP-914? For those that fail, your prize will be Class E amnestics. - Senior Researcher ██████
A Skype conversation snippet shown in the art booklet for the game indicates that Dan Salvato considered Sayori being "the crazy one" before they shifted that characterization to Monika. There is some reference of this idea in the epilogue, as the player's interactions with post-Monika deletion Sayori show that anyone who becomes the Literature Club president gains the same Fourth-Wall Observer powers as Monika had. A Developer's Foresight moment involving deleting Monika before starting the game also leads to a moment like this.
According to a tweet by Dan Salvato, he originally wanted to release the game on April Fools' Day as the game was already a subversion of a dating sim. However, he felt like the game wasn't fully ready at that point.
In a Twitch stream celebrating the 4th anniversary of the game's release, Dan Salvato stated that the theme "Play With Me" was written in mind for Yuri only, and was originally planning to compose themes tailored to Sayori and Natsuki's CG scenes. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, those proposed themes were dropped- and "Play With Me" was used instead for all of the CG scenes. Luckily, he managed to make character themes for those two (alongside Yuri herself) in the Plus expansion, and its also the reason why Yuri's leitmotif in said expansion is a remix of "Play With Me".
Considering his history as a competitive Super Smash Bros. player (plus his involvement in Project M), he even confirmed "mains" for each of the characters if each of the girls were to ever playMelee.
Dan Salvato confirmed that Sayori's suicide occurred before the main character even woke up, so there truly is nothing he could do to prevent it, even if he wanted to.
Dan Salvato has confirmed his distaste for the Trapsuki meme, considering it disrespectful that some people would constantly do it, even to confuse some people as well. Additionally, he himself has stated that "all characters are 18".
Dan Salvato posted on his Twitter account that he disliked Gaia Online making a parody character of Monika (that was very non-transformative) and forcing players to pay for it. He stated his game was free and found it mind-boggling that they would force their players to pay to be able to buy a parody of the character.
on the game's subreddit.