First you draw a circle
Pointless trivia about everyone's favourite pink puffball, Kirby.
Kirby's character design was initially a placeholder, but developers liked it so much that it was made into the final design for the character.
Initially there was disagreement over what colour Kirby should be - series creator Masahiro Sakurai thought he should be pink, while Nintendo thought he should be yellow. (Or the other way around, I'm going off memory here). Since the first game was released on the Game Boy, which doesn't use colour graphics, the box art designers compromised by making Kirby white on the box art, which is the colour he appears in the game.
Kirby is the trope namer for American Kirby Is Hardcore, which is when something portrayed as cute and innocent in Japan gets an "attitude boost" in the US, named for the fact that, while in Japan the box art for Kirby games portrayed him as smiling and happy, the US versions made him look angry and serious.
Another trope, known as Hard Levels, Easy Bosses, was formerly known as Boss Dissonance (Kirby Type), due to the Kirby games' tendency for the levels to be quite a bit harder than the bosses (which are, with some exceptions, fairly simple to beat).
Kirby himself was named after John Kirby, a lawyer who successfully defended Nintendo after Universal Studios sued them over the name of their character Donkey Kong, claiming it infringed on the trademark of King Kong. Kirby's name was also a playful jab at the fact that in Japan, normally cute characters are given cute-sounding names, and Masahiro Sakurai thought that the juxtaposition between the cute design and the harsh-sounding name of Kirby was amusing.
Kirby's Epic Yarn was originally supposed to be a standalone game called Fluff of Yarn, but was changed into a Kirby game with the original main character, Prince Fluff, taking a supporting role.
In Japan, all Kirby games are referred to as Hoshi no Kirby: (whatever the game's subtitle is), which translates as "Kirby of the Stars". This is also the title of the Kirby anime, which is known in the US as Kirby: Right Back at Ya!
In the Super Smash Bros. video games, King Dedede is voiced by Masahiro Sakurai himself.
The confusion between whether to pronounce Dedede's name as Dee-dee-dee or Day-day-day is poked fun at in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in which the crowd chanting Dedede's name alternate between the two pronunciations in a somewhat confused manner. The announcer (who is the same for both the English and Japanese versions, and is an American) also pronounces Dedede's name as Dee-dee-dee in the English version and Day-day-day in the Japanese version. The Japanese dub of the anime pronounces it Day-day-day, while the English dub pronounces it Dee-dee-dee. In short, it seems that the pronunciation changes depending on whether you're speaking Japanese or English.
Another confusion is whether Meta Knight is written as one word, hyphenated, or two words. In the SNES game Kirby Super Star (known as Kirby Super Deluxe in Japan and Kirby's Fun Pak in the UK), the game mode Revenge of Metaknight uses the "one word" spelling, while his trophy in the Smash Bros. games uses Meta-Knight. Other games use Meta Knight, so it seems that the correct spelling is whichever you prefer, though later games have more consistently used Meta Knight.
In Japan, Marx is called Mark, and Galacta Knight is known as Galactic Knight. As far as I know, these were the only names that were changed in the games - all other characters have the same name in Japanese as they do in English. Many names were changed in the anime (naturally, since it was dubbed by 4KiDS Entertainment), most notably, Fumu and Bun being changed to Tiff and Tuff respectively, and Dedede's loyal henchman Escargon becoming Escargoon.
The enemy name Mr. Frosty is misspelled as Mr. Flosty in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, a case of Japanese R/L confusion.
While it's not unheard of for 4KiDS to air episodes of a Japanese anime out of order, or even skip episodes, an extreme example came when they aired the two-part "Crisis of the Warp Star", episode 91 and 92 in the original airing, as episode 49 and 50 (my numbers may be slightly off, again, I'm doing this from memory) and retitled them "Air Ride in Style" in order to advertise the then-upcoming GameCube game Kirby's Air Ride. That episode featured four new abilities - Water, Iron, Top and Baton Twirling - which were designed and submitted by Japanese fans as part of a contest to design your own Kirby ability.
Kirby's character design was initially a placeholder, but developers liked it so much that it was made into the final design for the character.
Initially there was disagreement over what colour Kirby should be - series creator Masahiro Sakurai thought he should be pink, while Nintendo thought he should be yellow. (Or the other way around, I'm going off memory here). Since the first game was released on the Game Boy, which doesn't use colour graphics, the box art designers compromised by making Kirby white on the box art, which is the colour he appears in the game.
Kirby is the trope namer for American Kirby Is Hardcore, which is when something portrayed as cute and innocent in Japan gets an "attitude boost" in the US, named for the fact that, while in Japan the box art for Kirby games portrayed him as smiling and happy, the US versions made him look angry and serious.
Another trope, known as Hard Levels, Easy Bosses, was formerly known as Boss Dissonance (Kirby Type), due to the Kirby games' tendency for the levels to be quite a bit harder than the bosses (which are, with some exceptions, fairly simple to beat).
Kirby himself was named after John Kirby, a lawyer who successfully defended Nintendo after Universal Studios sued them over the name of their character Donkey Kong, claiming it infringed on the trademark of King Kong. Kirby's name was also a playful jab at the fact that in Japan, normally cute characters are given cute-sounding names, and Masahiro Sakurai thought that the juxtaposition between the cute design and the harsh-sounding name of Kirby was amusing.
Kirby's Epic Yarn was originally supposed to be a standalone game called Fluff of Yarn, but was changed into a Kirby game with the original main character, Prince Fluff, taking a supporting role.
In Japan, all Kirby games are referred to as Hoshi no Kirby: (whatever the game's subtitle is), which translates as "Kirby of the Stars". This is also the title of the Kirby anime, which is known in the US as Kirby: Right Back at Ya!
In the Super Smash Bros. video games, King Dedede is voiced by Masahiro Sakurai himself.
The confusion between whether to pronounce Dedede's name as Dee-dee-dee or Day-day-day is poked fun at in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in which the crowd chanting Dedede's name alternate between the two pronunciations in a somewhat confused manner. The announcer (who is the same for both the English and Japanese versions, and is an American) also pronounces Dedede's name as Dee-dee-dee in the English version and Day-day-day in the Japanese version. The Japanese dub of the anime pronounces it Day-day-day, while the English dub pronounces it Dee-dee-dee. In short, it seems that the pronunciation changes depending on whether you're speaking Japanese or English.
Another confusion is whether Meta Knight is written as one word, hyphenated, or two words. In the SNES game Kirby Super Star (known as Kirby Super Deluxe in Japan and Kirby's Fun Pak in the UK), the game mode Revenge of Metaknight uses the "one word" spelling, while his trophy in the Smash Bros. games uses Meta-Knight. Other games use Meta Knight, so it seems that the correct spelling is whichever you prefer, though later games have more consistently used Meta Knight.
In Japan, Marx is called Mark, and Galacta Knight is known as Galactic Knight. As far as I know, these were the only names that were changed in the games - all other characters have the same name in Japanese as they do in English. Many names were changed in the anime (naturally, since it was dubbed by 4KiDS Entertainment), most notably, Fumu and Bun being changed to Tiff and Tuff respectively, and Dedede's loyal henchman Escargon becoming Escargoon.
The enemy name Mr. Frosty is misspelled as Mr. Flosty in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, a case of Japanese R/L confusion.
While it's not unheard of for 4KiDS to air episodes of a Japanese anime out of order, or even skip episodes, an extreme example came when they aired the two-part "Crisis of the Warp Star", episode 91 and 92 in the original airing, as episode 49 and 50 (my numbers may be slightly off, again, I'm doing this from memory) and retitled them "Air Ride in Style" in order to advertise the then-upcoming GameCube game Kirby's Air Ride. That episode featured four new abilities - Water, Iron, Top and Baton Twirling - which were designed and submitted by Japanese fans as part of a contest to design your own Kirby ability.
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