With all the excitement and “buzz” surrounding Kingdom Hearts III, which will even have Skrillexinvolved in the theme song, it is only fair that we explore 10 interesting facts about the series, right? Check them out!
1 - Mickey Mouse and Donald Were Almost the Protagonists
Initially, Square-Enix's members wanted Mickey to be the protagonist of Kingdom Hearts, while Disney wanted Donald in the role. Since the two sides could not reach an agreement, Tetsuya Nomura suggested a new human character, laying the foundations for what would become Sora.
Initially, he would have been a lion-human hybrid. Eventually, he took on the design we know today, with clothing that evokes Mickey Mouse and reflects Square's desire for him to be the protagonist.
2 - Alice's Voice Actress
Actress Kathryn Beaumont voiced Alice in the Alice in Wonderland film when she was only 13 years old during the 1950s. After voicing her, as well as Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, she left the profession and became a schoolteacher.
She would occasionally return for freelance work during Disney productions, and that was also the case with Kingdom Hearts. Beaumont reprised her role as Alice around fifty years later. She is now retired, and Alice is voiced by Hynden Walch.
3 - Vivi from Final Fantasy IX
Originally, Tetsuya Nomura did not want to use Final Fantasy characters that he had not designed himself in the Kingdom Hearts series. The exception was Vivi from Final Fantasy IX, who appeared in the second installment as a member of Seifer's group.
Curiously, the character was voiced by Melissa Disney, who is Walt Disney's fourth cousin.
4 - Riku's Lost Arena
In the first Kingdom Hearts, a battle against Riku while possessed by Ansem was planned for a “dark” version of Destiny Island called Crumbling Island. The area is 100% complete, showing that it was canceled very late in the title's production.
5 - Kingdom Hearts and Star Wars
In 2012, Disney purchased Lucasfilm in a four-million-dollar transaction, leading Kingdom Hearts fans to speculate that a future game in the series would feature a crossover with the Star Wars series.
So far, no game has done so, but concept art from the mobile game Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys shows that some kind of recreation of the Clone Wars had been planned.
6 - Rikku and Riku
Initially, Rikku from Final Fantasy X would have played an important role throughout the story of the first Kingdom Hearts. However, because one of Sora's rivals had been named Riku, Squaresoft ultimately abandoned the idea because the names were too similar and could confuse players.
Rikku was therefore replaced by Yuffie from Final Fantasy VII, who wears the character's outfit from X. Curiously, Rikku appeared in Kingdom Hearts II with the Gullwings from Final Fantasy X-2.
7 - Animated Series
In 2002, there was a project to develop a Kingdom Hearts animated series, with Seth Kearsley, who had previously worked on The Simpsons, The Maxx, and Dilbert, among those principally responsible. He even uploaded the storyboards to his DeviantArt account.
Although the series was successful during testing, it never “saw the light of day” because Disney wanted to focus more on sequels to the games rather than work on a TV series.
8 - Inspired by Mario 64
The original idea for Kingdom Hearts emerged from a conversation between Hironobu Sakaguchi and Shinji Hashimoto, who wanted to create a game that gave players freedom of movement like Mario 64 but would need to be based on something as popular as Disney to “sustain itself” and rival Nintendo's mascot.
Fortunately, Hashimoto met a Disney executive in an elevator, since Squaresoft and Mickey's company had offices in the same building in Japan, and the executive liked the idea. Production of what would become the first Kingdom Hearts thus began in February 2000, with Nomura directing and Hashimoto producing.
9 - Lost Summons
An ability originating in Final Fantasy, Summons are also part of the Kingdom Hearts series, generally featuring Disney characters who are not part of the story. However, an investigation of data from the first title revealed that Bahamut from Final Fantasy would have been one of the Summons. In Kingdom Hearts II, Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story would also have been summons.
10 - The Data from the First Kingdom Hearts Was Lost
During the E3 presentation of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMIX, Tetsuya Nomura said that the data relating to the first game in the series had been lost. As a result, the latter game had to be created “from scratch.”
"Kingdom Hearts was created a long, long time ago. The original data had already been lost. So we had to do research, bring back the original game, and recreate everything again in HD. It was not easy at all."
