Secrets & Trivia

Alucard is able to visit a confessional in the Chapel. If he sits on the left side, a ghostly priest will come out, and either laugh at him and stab him, or toss some grape juice. This is determined by the color of the priest's robes, pale green for stabbing and blue for helpful. If you jump over to the other side, then a woman will come in. The woman in green will try to stab you, while the one in red will confess her sins.

The yellow Medusa heads, Gorgons, and Stone Roses will normally turn Alucard into a stone version of his body. However, on random intervals, Alucard will turn into a huge gargoyle statue. While he normally takes several times the normal amount of damage if hit by an enemy while petrified, he is invincible to enemy attacks in his stone gargoyle form.

If you have the Rune Sword, you'll notice that a word appears whenever you throw the sword. That word is "verboten" and it means "forbidden" in German.

There is a hidden passage at the beginning of the castle. Presumably, this is an unfinished section that would have led to the Underground Gardens (apparent in the Saturn version). There's even a save point. The area can be accessed by starting a game as Richter, entering the castle, and quickly running back as the gate door closes.

Both Alucard and Richter can quickly go behind the closing gate door when entering the castle. This allows for limited exploration of the area Alucard runs through in the beginning.

A glitch; Alucard can explore the roof of the castle and increase the map percentage above 200.6%. Alucard must have a level 90+ sword familiar, and use the Sword Brothers spell in the bottom-left corner of the first bell tower in the Royal Chapel. Walk to the bottom left exit and cast the Sword Brothers spell. While the spell is being cast, transform into a bat and charge to the left. If done correctly, you should exit outside of the castle. This can also be done in the Anti-Chapel. Using other methods, players can double their map percentage to 400.0%, and higher. A lot of fans still use this glitch to look for undiscovered areas of the castle. This can also be done in other CV games that use SotN's map system, such as Aria of Sorrow.

Players can skip the underground area of the game by flying as a bat through the hallway of spikes, turning to normal, and using a potion to become temporarily invulnerable. By walking through the door at the end of the hallway, the player has bypassed the need for spike armor. The underground area must still be completed to advance in the game.

If you have Alucard sit down in one of the random chairs in the castle, he'll drift off into sleep after a few minutes, displaying multiple "Z"'s above his head.

With Lyric Card equipped, resting in the chair before the Doppelganger fight with the Sylph familiar active results in her sitting on Alucard's shoulder and singing him a lullaby.

Alucard's familiar, the Sylph, will rest upon his shoulder if he stands still for long enough. Moving again will cause her to fall off, and cry out in surprise.

Transforming into the Form of the Bat when the bat familiar is around will produce little hearts above the bat's head, make him follow you around and use Fire Of The Bat when you do. Once the bat familiar reaches high enough levels, more bats will join in and attack similarly when the above is done. Morphing back into Alucard will send the animal into a state of puzzlement, as indicated by a question-mark above its head, and causes any extra bats to leave. Alternatively, if the Form of Bat is used when the Ghost familiar is active, the familiar will leave in puzzlement instead of following Alucard around.

Equipping the Secret Boots will actually increase the size of Alucard's sprite, just as the description of the item says.

In the fight against the three clones of the Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse cast, if Alucard kills Trevor before Sypha, she'll resurrect him as a zombie, and continue to do so any time you kill it.

During the prologue sequence with Richter, if the player attacks the lower part of the stonework at the entrance to the hallway before Dracula's throne, a passageway will open up, allowing Richter to quickly gain hearts, and also some weapons from the later part of the actual game (although they cannot be used as Richter).

Killing the Owl Knight's owl before destroying the knight will cause the knight to cry out in distress, and dash to the wounded owl's side. Upon the owl burning up, the knight will turn around and continuously try to attack Alucard with his sword. Likewise, killing the Owl Knight before killing the owl will cause the owl to enter a rage, swooping at you continuously.

In the Outer Wall, there is some outside wildlife to be seen. Traversing to the Telescope Room and waiting will cause a bird to fly by, and take refuge from the cold or rain in a small nest. If you keep re-entering the room and watching the birds, the mother bird will lay eggs, which will hatch, and the two young birds will grow up, eventually flying off and restarting the cycle. Additionally, if Alucard ventures upwards, and proceeds to the far right, the player can view a mouse scuttling around in an outside structure jutting from the wall.

Nestling into a tight spot as an animal form, and turning back into normal, will cause Alucard to be stuck, though not permanently, and utter a cry of confusion.

Having Alucard stand on an incline or right before a drop-off will have him shift his normal pose to a more rigid manner. Shortly after, he'll readjust his stance and draw his arms nearer.

If Alucard waits around long enough for Cthulhu, the monster will rear back, and release a powerful, ice-based blast across the floor.

There is a secret elevator in a room in the Outer Wall. Break the wall to the left of this room and stand in the hole for a while, and the secret elevator will take you down to the room below which has a grill door and supposedly can only be entered later in the game when Alucard has the ability to turn into mist.
[YouTube video]

In the very long hallway in the Marble Garden, you can see a giant Peeping Eye in the background floating around outside, looking through the window.

In the game Metal Gear Solid for the original PlayStation, during the confrontation before the fight with the psychic boss character Psycho Mantis, he will read the player's "mind" (in reality, the statistics of the player's game up to that point). If the memory card inserted into the PlayStation has a Symphony of the Night save file on it , Psycho Mantis will make a short comment about it, saying "You like Castlevania, don't you?"

In the PlayStation version, an audio of a fifth ending has been found, apparently in which Maria saves Richter, but Shaft turns her into a demon right after. [YouTube video]

Placing the game CD in an audio player will reveal a hidden song on track 2, and Alucard warning the listener not to place the game in a CD player. This is similar to the warning track in Lunar.

On the bottom floor of the Colosseum, the remains of the Behemoth that chased you in Castlevania: Dracula X (both Duo and SNES) as well as Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness is apparent in the background.

There's a one-time use item known as the Power of Sire. This is a magical spell that displays a portrait that kills all the enemies on the screen. The portrait is of Vlad Tepes, the real-life man who inspired the legend of Count Dracula.

With the Shield Rod in hand, press Back, Forward+Attack. Alucard will throw out a little, swirly ball. If you're an astute Konami fan, you'll notice that it's the same exact thing as the shield in the Gradius games. It can be used to block enemy projectiles as well.

The boss, Count Olrox, was known in original Japanese as "Oorokku" i.e. Orlock, the vampire from the classic vampire film, Nosferatu.

Pay close attention to the number of times the clock chimes when you equip both rings in the Clock Room. It rings 13 times; traditionally, a grandfather clock striking thirteen times was said to warn of a death in one's family.

Inside Olrox's Quarters, in the largest room with the buildings in the background, there is a huge fountain in the center on the ground. If Alucard waits around for a few moments, the water will turn to blood. This is from the beginning of Stage 5: Versailles Palace from Castlelvania Bloodlines on the Genesis.

For some indescribable reason, the English version of Symphony of the Night makes constant references to J.R.R. Tolkien's world in its items and equipment. Some make absolutely no sense within the context of the items' descriptions (such as the Ring of Varda containing a description which would more aptly fit the One Ring), while others perhaps are a more abstract reference to Tolkien's creations. Examples include: The Crissaegrim sword, the Gurthang sword, the Mormegil sword, the Sword of Hador, the Fist of Tulkas, the Nauglamir necklace, and the Ring of Varda and Feanor. Despite the blatant use of Tolkien's copyrighted creations, no legal disputes have ever arisen with representatives of his work, such as his son, and Konami.

In the North American version, the prologue sequence is called "Bloodlines". However, Bloodlines is neither the name of the level nor the name of the game it came from. In the Japanese version this part is correctly called "Rondo of Blood" (though the level is called Bloodlines in the PSP remake of Rondo of Blood). Also, if you are familiar with the music, the background music of the fight with Dracula in Dracula X is the same one used in the Prologue of Symphony of the Night, only the music arrangement is a bit different, but musically noted, it's virtually the same one.

In the Outer Wall, on the outside of the area there is a hanging corpse that seems that the person was hung there. It is really a spoof of Simon Belmont, hanging from a ledge.

GamePro Magazine voted this game #10 on its "Greatest 15 Videogames of All Time" list, in issue #150 (between NHL Hockey '94 and Super Bomberman, incidentally).

In the Library area of the Inverted Castle, we meet three interesting foes - the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin man. Their monster encyclopedia descriptions read "The cowardly lion", "Impaled man looking for brain" and "Heartless tin man" respectively - sound familiar?

It's in this game that the 'Stone Mask' item debuts. This mask - and where it's found, the library - is a reference to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. It's a particular Aztec stone mask that turns Dio Brando into a vampire in the first place, and he finds the mask in Mr. Joestar's library. The Stone Mask item is further described as being used in Aztec rituals in Portrait of Ruin, continuing the inside joke.

There are two new sections: Cursed Prison and Underground Garden, which have new songs, new enemies like Gargoyles and Spectres, a new boss called Skeleton Leader and new items like the Alucard Spear.

The entrance music is different depending on the character you play as.

Maria is playable, much different and more powerful than in the Dracula X Chronicles version.

In the original Dracula X, Maria's animal helpers were based off the Chinese animal gods Suzaku (the phoenix), Genbu (the turtle), Byakko (the tiger) and Seiryu (the dragon). They return in the Saturn version, though they are all grown up.

Maria has a dragon spell that is very similar to the blue dragon found in the third stage of the arcade version of the Konami game Life Force.

The Library contains humorous audio clips from the voice cast, replaced by a soundtrack in the US version. Two more familiars are available as in-jokes, Nose Goblin and Sylph, though they are the same as the Demon and Fairy with small appearance differences. Some item locations are different from the US version.

Alucard's stats are influenced by the manner in which Richter killed Dracula in the introduction stage.

The Muramasa sword is actually able to be powered up to be the strongest sword in the game given enough time. Killing enemies who gush out blood in their deaths will increase the sword's statistical power, but it becomes increasingly harder to do so the higher the attack power becomes.

If Alucard equips two Heaven Swords and presses both attack buttons, the swords will swoop around in back of him, duplicate, then shoot out horizontally, ending with a final slice in the middle.