Trivia / Paper Mario: Color Splash

• Blooper: When Mario lands on the Warp Pipe in Cobalt Base for the first time, Huey says that "it looks like this pipe does down even deeper...", rather than "goes down" in the English version.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The eShop's description for this game erroneously refers to "Snifit or Whiffit" as "Whiffit or Snifit", swapping the first and third words from their proper positions.
• Executive Meddling: In a 2016 Game informer interview, Kensuke Tanabe revealed that Shigeru Miyamoto asked not to use characters and species exclusive to the previous Paper Mario games, and Tanabe honored his request.
• Flip-Flop of God: The final Game Informer interview had Tanabe declare the game "proved" the series didn’t need original characters anymore. With Origami King's release, though, he silently backpedaled on that stance, as that game featured more full original characters than this game did.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The game is one of the few Wii U exclusives that wasn't rereleased on Switch, with a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door taking its spot. Combined with the Wii U eShop's closing preventing any new digital copies from being sold, it will likely be a while before any version of this game returns to a wider market.
• Market-Based Title: Averted; it's called "Paper Mario: Color Splash" in all English-speaking regions, even those where "color" is spelled "colour".
• Meme Acknowledgement: After dropping Mario and Huey off at Bowser's castle, Huey tells Luigi to give people that "mean stare" if they give him any trouble.
• Streisand Effect: The game was accidentally leaked on the Nintendo eShop when an error with digital pre-orders allowed players to access the full game two weeks ahead of its intended launch date, prompting Nintendo to pull the pre-order file down within a day. This didn't stop buyers from posting videos of the game and livestreaming it, though.
• Word of God: A joke seen in the E3 2016 demo where a Toad comments on possibly being involved in a scandal called "Shufflegate" involving five other Toads called the "Five Fun Guys" lead to some people thinking this was a reference to the infamous "GamerGate" controversy that erupted in the gaming world in late 2014. Nintendo of America actually responded to the accusations by clarifying it was really a reference to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, and the group name for the five Toads in question was a reference to Mario Party 8.
• What Could Have Been: The game includes developer commentary which includes some concept art.
  • Huey went through a variety of designs before ending up as a bucket. In particular, he was a paint spirit of sorts (having bird-like and bat-like designs), various different paint jars and an ink pot. The former two concepts also had noticeably miserable eyes.
  • Rather than being covered in black paint, Bowser was initially going to wear it like a cape. And unlike the game proper, where it is a Greater-Scope Villain and fought by proxy, the Black Paint itself was going to have a Phantom Blot-like physical manifestation, disguising itself as Bowser's cape. Later concepts would have Bowser's color scheme altered, as well as have his horns and spike visible through the paint.
  • Rock Paper Wizard's outfit◊ initially had a Bedsheet Ghost theme similar to a Duplighost or Lantern Ghost, making the fact that he's actually a Toad less obvious.
  • There's also some◊ images◊ about a couple of levels that were removed from the game, one of them being Decalburg.
  • Deep Cheeps were going to reappear in this game, but unlike the returning Ptooies, they were cut.
  • A seemingly unused feature would have drained people's colors with black paint. Modding Mario's hammer to use black paint allows him to drain colors in the same way.

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