1. Ikehara mentions a novel, Ryu Murakami's "Gofungo no Sekai," ("A World Five Minutes Later") as having influenced his concept for the setting of BoF V.

2. Ikehara notes that, if you think about it realistically, the layout of Shelter is the opposite of what it should be - as the population would expand, they would have to go deeper underground, meaning that the *lower* sections would be newer and therefore probably where the wealthy would live. But then again, that wouldn't be very useful for the game mechanics.

3. It's supposed to be a sort of "very near future" setting.

4. Odjn started out as a cutesy companion to Ryu and his group, and in some early pictures, an early design of him can be seen on the characters' heads. Eventually, this turned into Oncotte.

5. The lines you hear Odjn say in the opening are in Russian.

6. The dragons that appear during the game are different from the ones that destroyed the world a thousand years before. Those dragons were a product of extremely advanced technology (Ikehara suggests maybe long-forgotten artifacts or weapons developed by some country, but it doesn't really matter), and it was because people used that that the world was destroyed. People couldn't live underground without using that same technology, however, so just like before, they ended up creating dragons. The dragons themselves, however, aren't at fault for anything - it's the people who use them that are to blame. Ikehara mentions that, to him, the theme that it's not power itself but the person who posesses it that can be good or bad defines the dragons throughout the series.

7. The dragons in the game are known as "Dragon Halves" (D-Ratio 1/2). They were created based on the original (D-Ratio 1/1) dragons.

8. When asked about things related to the setting that they would have liked to put into the game but weren't able to, Ikehara said that he had wanted to show how the world aboveground had been put to waste, becoming unliveable.

9. Apparently one of the most frustrating things about the SOL system, to the staff, was trying to explain to people what it is! ^^;

10. Until the final version of the game, the locked room in the Biocorp Lab was accessible, but according to Togawa, since the SOL scene that takes place there (with the headless Ninas) is such a "shocking" one, they decided that letting players access the room might be a little much.

11. Part of the reason that they made the game difficult (maybe a little *too* difficult, as Togawa says at one point) is to distinguish it from the previous games, which were fairly easy. They didn't, however, start out trying to make the game as hard as it ended up being. During development, they just kept gradually upping the difficulty level.

12. Ryu is supposed to seem like an average person like you might find anywhere, with the only outstanding things about him his strength of will and sense of justice. His D-Ratio is also an average one.

13. Ryu doesn't really have a family, nor do many in Shelter. Even parents and children are subject to the rules governing where people with certain D-Ratios can live. They didn't put anything about this in the game, thinking that it might be a little too dark.

14. Nina originally had a D-Ratio, an extremely low one (far lower than Ryu's). She could only live in the deepest, worst parts of Shelter - places where it wouldn't be too noticeable if a single girl disappeared.

15. The mark on Nina's forehead is supposed to be like a serial number, marking her as a thing rather than a person.

16. The doctor who altered Nina was originally planned to be a sort of sadistic mad scientist (with a design that looked like Hitler!), but they decided on a "salaryman"-like character who sees what he does as just another job, not anything wrong.

17. Just to settle any debate, Lin has cat ears.

18. Though they weren't able to put anything about it in the game, Ryu and Zeno were supposed to be somewhat close. She was his instructor, which is why both of them can use the "Deathbringer" skill. To Ryu, the sword she drops is kind of a memento.

19. In the Japanese version, at least, if you take the first letter of each of the useless items that can only be sold for money, you get "Breath of Fire V."

20. Although he ends up saying that he'll leave the details up to the players' imagination, Ikehara suggests that Mebeth, a former Regent, and Elyon are still working together behind the scenes. Trinity, in turn, may be nothing more than an outlet for the frustration the people of Shelter feel, to keep them from turning effectively and destructively against the government.

21. "Negative" ("Dark Rangers" in the English version) refers more to Tantra himself and not to the other two, who are less partners than tools to him.

22. The dragon that Deamoned lost his eye to was actually Elyon. When Elyon, the first Chosen, appeared, Deamoned was the leader of the Regents, though after losing to the transformed Elyon, he lost that position. (Actually, he shouldn't really have remained a Regent at all, but Elyon decided to be kind to him. It's in return for that favor that Deamoned decides on his own to leave and fight Ryu.)

23. Vexacion is supposed to be a "Dragonkiller," covered in scars from the dragons he has fought. The room in which you fight him is sort of like a grave for all the Chosen he has killed, with the countless swords showing the number of dragons that he has defeated.

24. Something Ikehara said: "I think Vexacion probably knew that his son had the potential to be a Chosen and waited, hoping that he would quickly be accepted by a dragon and defeat himself."

25. Ryked and Nalaka are twins and Vexacion's apprentices. They're sort of quasi-Regents.

26. Cupid is supposed to be a boy.

27. Elyon was supposed to open the gate to the surface, but since he gave up before then, his link to the dragon was severed. By the time Ryu appears, he has watched numerous Chosen link to dragons and then fail to reach the surface. He's dying, and worrying what will happen to the world if he dies, he gives Ryu one last chance, even though Ryu isn't a Chosen. (Elyon was responsible for Odjn linking to Ryu.)

28. The reason Elyon gave up on opening the gate was that he was too worried that he wasn't doing it of his own free will and that he might be doing something that could risk the lives of all the people in Shelter. Afterwards, he decided to become a Regent and waited for the next Chosen.

29. Elyon was created as sort of a BoF V version of Fou-Lu. Yoshikawa said that he wanted to use the same character again, a sort of alternate reality version of him that wasn't a god.

30. People with a D-Ratio of 1/4, like Elyon, are the Chosen. (And also the Dragon Quarter from which the title comes.)

31. They had originally planned for there to be a fishing minigame, but finally gave up on it about three months before the game was finished.

32. At first, they were considering making BoF V an online game, but abandoned that fairly quickly for a number of reasons.