Portrait of Ruin

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Menu: Stages - Walkthrough - Weirdness - Opening - Ending - Foreign

Weirdness

In Dracula X for the PC Engine, there's an enemy in the pirate ship level that's a picture of a man in a floating painting. If it does you, it traps your character in the portrait and slices it in half, killing them instantly. Although there's no instance exactly like this in Portrait of Ruin, it seems like the concept of the vampires Brauner, Stella and Loretta existing in paintings was at least borrowed from this enemy.

For either character, hold Up for several seconds. Jonathan will do an air guitar pose. Charlotte will toss her cape back, do a sexy little pose, and quip "Well, not bad, huh?" If you do this in Vincent's room, you'll get a small spoken dialogue. Try doing this with Charlotte alone, Jonathan alone, or both together for different results.

The Fedora item description says it goes great with whips, an obvious allusion to Indiana Jones. The Spinach item description says it gives the illusion to strength, which seems to suggest an allusion to Popeye, who would eat the terrible leafy vegetable to bulk up his muscles.

In a hidden section of The City of Haze, you'll find a small area with a bakery, a skeleton bartender, and two amusing secret weapons: the pie and the paper airplane. If you upgrade your paper airplane, you'll occasionally see little stick figures riding it. These guys are Koitsu and Soitsu from Konami's Parodius shoot-em-up series. These guys ride paper airplanes, speak in a gibberish language, and equip condoms (!!) as shields.

Two of the songs for the Egyptian level - Sandfall and In Search of the Secret Spell, are actually remixes from an old Konami MSX2 puzzle game called "King's Valley: The Seal of El Giza" (also known as "Kings Valley 2"). Download the originals here..

The vampire sisters bear a suspicious resemblance to Suiseiseki, a character from the manga/anime Rozen Maiden. Although the sisters have a more gothic-lolita style to them, the red/green eyes seem like a pretty obvious allusion.