Katawa Shoujo/Trivia

"Crud: Money would kill us."
 * California Doubling: Most of the backgrounds for Yamaku High are actually pictures of the Brown University campus (located in Rhode Island).
 * Doing It for The Art: One look at this blog post should tell you everything you need to know.
 * Special mention goes to Mike Inel, the man single-handedly responsible for all of the wonderfully-made animated sequences you watch to kick-start Act 2. You can read more about his involvement here.
 * Fan Nickname: Kenji Potter for Kenji. The reason should be obvious.
 * Jossed: Word of God says that Molly is not a Katawa Shoujo character and her appearance was merely a cameo.
 * No Budget: The dev team is creating Katawa Shoujo for free, on their spare time. They also refuse donations, instead encouraging people to donate to a charity.


 * Parodied in the April Fool's joke, which showed it being loaded with Revenue Enhancing Devices, Product Placement, and being on Steam.
 * Word of God says that being an international team, splitting the any possible donation money fairly would be impractical.
 * Promoted Fanboy/girl: Many developers started as fans of the project.
 * Saved From Development Hell: The project, until its 4th January 2012 release, was in development for 5 years, a period of time landmarked by at least one almost-total restart, several script re-writes, members of 4LS leaving/shown the door for one reason or another and a few art revisions. It also was very close to death within the first few months of its conception, resulting in the aforesaid restart.
 * Of the 21 or so developers at the end, only three were there from start to finish.
 * Shrug of God: They are Teasing Creators after all. They even say some Blatant Lies to troll.
 * Sure Why Not: Said word for word by Aura in response to the question of whether Yamaku's mascot was a fish.
 * What Could Have Been: According to Word of God, there were massive amounts of content that were ultimately cut from the final version of the game. The following comes from snippets of interviews and Q&A sessions with the devs.
 * Kenji was going to have his own route at one point, but it got cut due to technical difficulties and time.
 * Or rather, the whole route was trimmed down to a near-immediate and strangely hilarious Bad End in which.
 * One of the writer's wordpress account has some writings that were considered in early versions of Hanako's route. Among them are Hanako's father saving her from the fire (which fits in with early character descriptions that only mentioned her father being dead), as well as a Left Hanging Distant Finale involving a reunion between Hisao and a much more mature Hanako, many years after she vanished from his life following a second heart attack. Also, one of the entries involves a possible ending for a theoretical Misha path.
 * The final image of Hanako's good ending was originally meant to represent that
 * Originally, Lilly would have played the cello as a hobby, and her favorite song would have been Sarabande. However, this feature was cut and the song was instead changed to be the theme of the music box.
 * She also had a guide dog called Niji; after a while, however, the writers thought he added nothing to the story and ditched him.
 * She was originally supposed to be the oldest of 5 children in the family, with Akira being a younger brother. They eventually scrapped the other three siblings, gender flipped Akira and made her the older sister instead, although she did retain the male mannerisms.
 * In a very early version of Hanako's route, one of her bad ends would have involved Hisao having sex with a heavily medicated Hanako, which would have been the equivalent of date rape. In fact, her good end would not have involved any sex at all.
 * Her route writer admitted that the first draft written for Hanako was heavily inspired by Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni.
 * This wasn't completely scraped. At some point ; and later
 * Early bad ends past Act 1 would have involved Hisao dying, but they were ultimately removed because the writers felt that having to come up with convenient accidents for each death would feel too much like an Ass Pull. Hanako's writer wryly notes that he reconsidered killing off Hisao in Hanako's bad endings because he believed that the thought of a life without Hanako worked better as a Fate Worse Than Death.
 * Misha was originally conceived to be as bland and uninteresting as possibile, so that players wouldn't miss her if she was pushed aside during Shizune's path. Very different from how she came out in the end, both in terms of personality (which also led to her popularity) and role - her presence and importance stay strong in Shizune's path. The revelation that, may be a nod to the old concept.
 * She was also originally planned to be blonde, and lacked her signature Drill Hair.
 * Miki was originally planned to have a much larger role in the game; among that, a short bonus route with her as the main character, showing some events from her point of view.
 * Several older sketches and drawings from 4LS members (both former and current) show ideas that floated around during development.
 * Two or three different school uniforms were considered throughout but the final design ended up staying close to the original sketch, even in the color scheme. One of the alternate designs (shown in the Art Evolution sequences after the good endings), with jackets and long skirts, would have been justified however, since the story originally took place in Winter.
 * Same with the hairstyles. The only heavy departure from the colored sketch is Shizune's hair color.
 * At least one dev thought of making Lilly The Ditz. However, it may have sent Unfortunate Implications (like that she was clumsy because she was blind).
 * Other sketches show Hanako having suffered even more extensive damage from the fire on the right side of her body, with a blind eye and the leg supported by a crutch.
 * A compromise for Rin wearing a female uniform and keeping decency was thought in having her wear training shorts under the skirt. She also seems to have been envisioned as much taller at first. In general, while the basic design stayed the same, she was more feminine and delicate in appearance.
 * The Wiki Rule: There is one here, although it has 14 articles as of now. And the site looks a bit bland.