Trivia / Sands of Destruction

• Anime First: The story was originally conceived as a video game. Midway through production, they decided an anime would be a good way to promote the game, and so a second team split off to produce it. The anime was released before the game in both Japanese and US markets, despite being started later. The manga adaptation came last.
• Creator's Favorite: Image Epoch devs have gone on record saying their favorite is Taupy, which explains why he appears in more cutscenes than any other character. Luckily, a large part of the fanbase agrees, which keeps him from being The Scrappy.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The game's opening shows Morte looking serious and pensive, praying in a church of some sort before walking out solemnly. The anime version of her is also quite somber. In the game proper, however, Morte is more of a Genki Girl Mad Bomber who jumps up and down with happiness when she wins a fight. The game's opening also shows Rhi'a walking around with Naja, and the anime has them working together in the World Salvation Committee, with Rhi'a angry and indignant that Morte wants to end the world; in the game, Rhi'a joins the World Annihilation Front out of curiosity and sees the end of the world as its unavoidable fate, whether at Morte's hands or not. The anime was created midway through the game's production cycle, and it's obvious they were working with old scripts: the locations and characters are all there, and even in mostly the same order, but characters' personalities - especially the girls - and the precise chain of events are quite different.
• Executive Meddling: The original story draft by writer Masato Kato (also responsible for the Chrono series, Xenogears and Baten Kaitos) was allegedly much darker in tone, but the higher-ups insisted that the game be marketed to a younger audience, resulting in the game's bizarre case of Mood Whiplash.
  • To paraphrase a forum poster from GameFAQs, if it weren't for the meddling, "The developers could have made Xenogears but instead gave us Wild ARMs."
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The DX Pack and DX Pack Deluxe were released in Japan for about double the price of the game by itself. In addition to the game, the DX Pack had a soundtrack and pocket watch (with the American boxart, for whatever reason). The Deluxe version added...a picture card. Yeah. There have also been several variations of bundling the game and anime together.
• No Export for You: The manga was never officially released in English, though both the game and anime were.
• Otaku O'Clock: The anime originally aired at midnight and one AM in Japan.
• The Other Darrin: The English version of the game was dubbed at Webtone in Los Gatos, California. For the anime, the English release was dubbed at Funimation in Dallas, Texas, and everyone was inevitably recast. For example, Kyrie and Morte, who are respectively voiced in the anime by Todd Haberkorn and Luci Christian, are voiced in the game by Evan Wood and Deborah Eliezer.
• Studio Hop: The anime's Japanese home media rights are currently owned by NBCUniversal due to their purchase of Geneon shortly after the series aired.
• What Could Have Been: The original draft was much darker, with possible depictions of ferals eating humans. Alas, Executive Meddling made the game's finalised story as it is. Well, there's hints like the time where Porco Rex threatens to eat that human child, but it's not quite the same. There is also Lacertus Rex's plan to use humans as base material for his ascension to godhood.

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