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Original
- Blooper:
- At the start of the game, when Luigi checks the mail, there's a brief moment where the L on his cap is mirrored
. - When Grodus threatens Peach to keep Mario and his partner from attacking, you're presented with the option to "Attack" or "Don't Attack"; however, they're listed out of sequence, and so Grodus' reactions to both are swapped by mistake. Try to submit to him and he'll express outrage at your defiance, but move to attack and he'll take it as a surrender and tell you to stop your blubbering and meet your end.
- During the mid-finale Crystal Star cutscene, the Koopa in Glitzville who communicates to Mario is obviously meant to be King K, judging by his speaking mannerisms. But the sprite used is that of one of the blue-shelled Shady Koopas who make up the Shellshockers, rather than the yellow-shelled KP Koopas that King K belonged to. This got corrected in the remake.
- The Sky Blue Spiny's tattle will have Goombella refer to the Spiny eggs as "pipes". This is due to a translation error of the name "Paipo", another part of the same joke Lakitu's Japanese name of "Jugemu" comes from. Oddly, the regular Spiny does not have this issue.
- Rawk Hawk's tattle entry claims he has 3 attack and 1 defense. This is false, as Rawk Hawk actually has 4 attack and 0 defense. The European version fixed this.
- There's an inconsistency with one of the residents of Twilight Town's name; when he's a pig, Goombella says his name is Freddy. After the cursed is lifted, she says his name is Gloomer.
- The description of the Thunder Bolt and Thunder Rage say that they can stun enemies, when they actually can't. The remake fixed this by specifying that they do 5 damage instead.
- At the start of the game, when Luigi checks the mail, there's a brief moment where the L on his cap is mirrored
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The ESRB's website lists this game as Paper Mario 2: The Thousand-Year Door. The game was originally titled Paper Mario 2, but the "2" was dropped from the final title.
- Dummied Out:
- The in-game files show that Luigi's ally Screamy had two other color variants that shared the same name as the Smorg, meaning the final version of Smorg was very likely a last minute change that was made. The very first Smorg in the game is listed as a test enemy instead but has no battle stats.
- Sprites for all of the partners from the original game exist in the game's code, but go unused except for Bow and Parakarry. These sprites would end up being repurposed for the Catch Cards in Super Paper Mario.
- The title screen music for the Paper Mario 2 demo still exists in the final game, but can't be heard anywhere in the game. There's another unused music track whose file name implies it's intended for the interior of Riverside Station, which plays no music in the final game, only ambient sounds.
- Data files indicate that badges such as Mega Jump, Mega Smash and Mega Quake would have appeared. Weirdly, they're still present in the data for the Switch remake despite not appearing there either.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: By the time the remake was announced in September 2023, The Thousand-Year Door had joined the pantheon of other popular Nintendo Cult Classic RPGs from the 2000s that were never ported to next-gen consolesnote . Not only was TTYD the last game in the Paper Mario series to have bear this distinction, but is the only Mario RPG that can't officially be played on eighth or ninth generation systems. note . The last print run of the original game was in 2004 (for comparison the game was just shy of turning nineteen before the Remake's announcement), with absolutely no (official) digital release in the years between. Prices for original game discs - never mind complete or mint full copies - really began to get out of control as the 20th anniversary of the game approached. This lack of accessibility is likely why The Thousand-Year Door was chosen to be remade for the Switch, skipping over the original Nintendo 64 game.
- Market-Based Title: This game is known simply as Paper Mario RPG in Japanese. Most other languages go with something similar to the English title, such as "The Millennium Door" or "The Legend of the Eon Gate".
- No Export for You: The GameCube version was never released in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong or China.
- Orphaned Reference:
- One might notice a random white flash during the Non-Standard Game Over at the end of the game. In the Japanese version, Mario straight-up gets lobotomized by the Final Boss, with the flash hiding Mario's model getting swapped out for Doopliss-as-Mario's. The remake brings this back.
- The visit to Riverside Station in Chapter 6 was originally supposed to conclude with a boss fight against the Shadow Sirens, Beldam and Marilyn, before the player is able to flip the switch and get the train moving. For whatever reason this was cut, with the implication in the finished product that it was the Smorgs that flipped the switch when they infested the station, but the Toad who gives you the key to the station still mentions seeing "suspicious-looking shadowy people wearing hats" walk into the station before the bridge was raised.
- One might notice a random white flash during the Non-Standard Game Over at the end of the game. In the Japanese version
- Technology Marches On: During Chapter 4, you can see a group of crows talk about how their friend got blazing fast internet speeds at 100 Mbps. Nowadays, 100 Mbps is somewhat common and is still fast on its own, but back in 2004 when the game was launched, general internet users would have speeds measured in Kbps, let alone anywhere near 100 Mbps.
- Urban Legend of Zelda: A particularly nasty example crept into the fandom surrounding TTYD based on faulty information that was long present on the Super Mario Wiki, wherein a user claimed to be in possession of a supposed pre-release build of the game called "beta 9" which contained a number of differences that read like fantastic fanfiction, such as an optional fight against Prince Mush, an optional fight with Rocko Pianta accessed from the Trouble Center, made-up enemies such as Burning Bills and Rusty Koopatrols, and a rematch with the Shadow Sirens in Chapter 6 with the implication that the Sirens were responsible for summoning Smorg. Many users were skeptical of the claims, but the information was allowed to stay on the page because the user in question was a wiki bureaucrat at the time. When the user's copy of "beta 9" supposedly underwent bit rot and failed (conveniently enough, before its owner could produce any pictures to substantiate his claims), the information was unceremoniously removed from the page, but not before many saw it and mistook it for legitimate information. Because data which can be traced back to the very beginning of development can be found on the disc of the retail release of TTYD, but no leftovers from the supposed features that existed in "beta 9" exist in the retail release (besides data for two other fights with the Shadow Sirens, presumably meant for Chapters 4 and 6 and the remake having an Optional Boss fight against Prince Mush), the "beta 9" myth can be considered thoroughly debunked. However, the various claims the user made about supposed pre-release features of TTYD have continued to be spread around as pervasive pieces of misinformation.
- Working Title: Paper Mario 2.
- What Could Have Been:
- All of the partners from the original were going to have cameos, but were scrapped bar Parakarry's at the beginning and Lady Bow in Poshley Heights. Their sprites can still be found in the game's data files.
- Admiral Bobbery had a different design that made him look like a soldier instead of a sailor.◊
- The kiosk demo of the game once playable in GameCube displays at stores is a snapshot of What Could Have Been with the game's English localization. There are some very minor dialogue differences, the Dull Bones are referred to as "Koopa Skeletons", and the X-Nauts were originally called "Boomer Gangers".
- Luigi had a Spinia partner that was abandoned a month before the game was completed. One design was based on a hamburger, while another was based on an ice cream cone.
- Leftover dialog found in the game's code seems to indicate you were supposed to have fought Beldam and Marilyn at the Riverside Station. They were replaced at the last minute by a pair of Goombas, explaining why such low-level enemies appear on this area. There is also data suggesting that you would have had to fight them again at Twilight Town.
- X-Nauts in the audience were originally intended to throw bricks at Mario. For whatever reason, they throw rocks in the final game.
- The remake showed off quite a few ideas for the original game. For instance:
- Flavio was conceptualized as a Toad at one point.
- The Punies were originally more bird-like, with their antennas being flower-like tails instead.
- The Shadow Sirens/Sisters were once conceptualized as jester-like Bedsheet Ghosts instead of Living Shadows, and Beldam was much younger-looking. Vivian in particular had a ton of preliminary designs, including some vaguely male-looking ones.
- Flurrie had some radical designs beforehand, including one as a Bub-ulb from the first Paper Mario that used her flower antenna as a spinning fan.
- The Shadow Queen looked NOTHING like how her final design ended up as.
Remake Exclusive
- Demand Overload: Around a week after the remake became available for pre-order, the game had already topped Amazon's best-seller list and sold out after 5,000 copies were pre-ordered. Unfortunately, all orders would be mysteriously cancelled by Amazon a month before the game's release for unknown reasons.
- Milestone Celebration: The remake was released in May 2024, which is a few months shy of original's twentieth anniversary.
- Pre-Order Bonus:
- A European exclusive example. Pre-ordering the game will include keychains of Mario, Goombella, and Mini-Yoshi with a diorama of the battle stage offered as a premium pre-order bonus.
- Pre-ordering the game from GameStop in Canada includes a slipcase that features the box art from the GameCube version.
- Remade for the Export: South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong never saw a release of the original version. The remake will be the first time it's ever seen a release in these countries, and also marks the first official translations into Dutch, Canadian French and Latin American Spanish.
- Saved for the Sequel: An unused tattle log for Whacka exists in the code of 64, which implies he would attack Mario after getting whacked one too many times. The remake adds Whacka as an Optional Boss.
- Sequel First: The original Paper Mario got skipped over for a remake, with this treatment going to its sequel, The Thousand-Year Door, instead. There are two likely reasons for this. First, the former is already available on the Nintendo Switch Online service and the latter is by far more popular amongst the fanbase. Second, with Super Mario RPG also getting a remake earlier in 2023 and Paper Mario being very close to the former in general plot structure due to the circumstances behind its development, the latter was likely skipped to avoid releasing a similar remake so soon after the former. However, the original game is available on the premium tier of Nintendo Switch Online, and has been since 2021, meaning it wasn't skipped entirely.
- Technology Marches On: Mario still uses the Mailbox SP, which is modeled after the Game Boy Advance SP. The GBA SP was released in 2003, and the Mailbox SP is more or less a PDA, which fell out of use with the invention of smartphones.
- The terminals in the Glitz Pit locker rooms are still clearly based on the Game Boy Advance, which was released in 2001, rather than being updated to resemble a more modern system like the Nintendo DS or Switch.
- What Could Have Been: According to concept art, there were plans on making the graphic style similar to Color Splash (i.e. the white outlines around the characters).
Other trivia
- The North American commercial for this game features the song "You're So Cool" from True Romance. In June 2008, almost four years after the game came out, Morgan Creek filed a lawsuit against Nintendo for allegedly not getting permission to use the song. Nintendo was able to prove they had indeed licensed to use it, and the case was soon dropped.
- Inputting XBRBYL on the title screen will enable debug mode. Holding Z will reveal the game's build date: September 9th, 2004 at 09:34:02 AM.
- The Happy Lucky Lottery isn't actually a lottery as it's rigged against you. Every night at midnight, the lottery will generate a new number, but the new number generated isn't entirely random. The number that's generated will be determined by how much time has passed since you've bought your ticket. You're guaranteed to win fourth prize within 4 to 10 days, third within 25 and 35 days, second within 85 and 115 days, and the grand prize between 335 to 395 days. Lucky won't accuse you of cheating if you move the clock forward, but he will if you move it backwards.
- The release day for the remake was announced on Mario Day 2024. The Thousand-Year Door is the second game that Nintendo released on their new Thursday release schedule, following Endless Ocean: Luminous.
- The clock at the Riverside Station displays the current time on the system's internal clock.
