Hidden Details: Dear Mr. Iwata

Today, I'll reveal some Hidden Details in what might just be our most popular comic ever: Dear Mr. Iwata. This comic performed absolutely phenomenal, especially on Twitter and Reddit. Which shows how intensely the community loved Satoru Iwata. As usual, we put in a few hidden jokes and references that may not have been noticed by everyone yet.

Firstly, the most obvious reference are the bananas that are hidden throughout this comic. The bananas are a direct reference to Nintendo's E3 2012 conference, which featured Iwata looking at a bunch of bananas in silence for several seconds.

This quirky moment immediately became a huge meme and ever since, I've associated bananas with Satoru Iwata. So I thought it'd be nice to hide at least one banana in every single panel. Which is exactly what I did. Take a look:

In the first panel, there's a banana-shaped cloud drifting by.

In the second panel, you can see a bowl of bananas on Iwata's nightstand. It's a get-well present from Donkey Kong! The laptop Iwata is using has a banana logo as well, which tells us Iwata preferred Bananas over Apples.

In the third panel, Iwata is pointing at a sketch of bananas on the paper that also features the Switch prototype.

In the fourth panel, you can see a bunch of bananas drawn on one of the pages in Cole Phelp's notepad.

In the fifth panel, there's a banana peel lying on the floor of the train.

In the sixth panel, there's a Warhol-like painting hanging above the TV, which features nine brightly colored bunches of bananas. I actually imitated the colors and positioning of an existing Warhol piece:

In the seventh panel, there's a little banana beneath Iwata's name in the credits on the 3DS.

And finally, in the eighth panel, Iwata's famous bunch of bananas is lying next to him on his cloud in heaven.

And there you have it. A whole bunch of bananas, popping up here and there!

Now, let's move on to general, non-banana-related details!

There's an Alolan Exeggutor behind the window in Iwata's hospital room. This isn't a reference to Iwata himself, but to the Young Adult Red comic series we made a while ago. In every single one of those comics, which are about Red (the famous Pokémon trainer) having a midlife crisis in Alola, there's an Exeggutor hidden. He's making a guest appearance here!

This one is very hard to make out due to text being in front of it in the comic, but I removed the text and effects to make it more easy to read for you guys. Behind Iwata in the second panel, there's a bulletin board with get-well cards from a bunch of Nintendo characters. They all wish him well in their own typical ways.

The piece of paper on the table in the third frame features some obscure jokes and references. The Switch-dog is the most obvious one. When you put two Joy-Cons in a Joy-Con holder, the result looks a bit like a dog. I thought it'd be funny to reveal that the dog was a very deliberate part of the design process.

On the right side of the paper, you can see a sketch of a Joy-Con with directional pad. There are a lots of Switch users clamoring for a Joy-Con with a directional pad and even though I'm not one of them, I thought it'd be nice to make a joke for this select group of people.

Lastly, the "screenshot" on the sketch of the Switch is the same screenshot that was seen in an early Switch-related patent that Nintendo trademarked:

In the same panel, you can see that the Switch is not only earning dollars, but Coins (Super Mario) and Rupees (Zelda) as well.

Another one that was hard to make out because text was obscuring the image: Mario is actually standing on top of a huge pile of money in this panel, referencing the strong Switch sales.

In the sixth panel, one can see a very accurate background of New Bark Town (Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal). Although this isn't really a "hidden detail", I just wanted to point out how good of a job Arnold Berssenbrugge did while making this background:

The TV screen on the second half of this panel isn't particularly "hidden" either, but I'm pretty proud of the emotion I captured here. If you've ever played a Smash game and you've missed a Rest with Jigglypuff while playing against Captain Falcon, you'll know what I'm talking about.

This is one of those rare hidden details that NOBODY seemed to notice. Behind the text in the seventh panel, if you look hard enough, you can see Sakurai and a Smash Bros Melee HD poster hanging on the wall. I removed the text for you so it's easier to see here.

And lastly: the clouds in the final panel all represent a Nintendo franchise which Iwata helped create. Again, not very well "hidden", but still a nice image, if I may say so myself!

And there you have it: every single hidden joke/detail/reference in the Dear Mr. Iwata comic revealed! I hope I was able to show you some stuff you didn't know yet. Have a great weekend, see you next week!

Cheers!

Abel