Croc: Legend of the Gobbos is getting a re-release/re-master in a few days. Here’s a piece of trivia I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere else.
The original manual’s story chapter (at least in in the PC and Saturn versions) paid homage to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
It’s just silly footnotes, you say. But no, it specifically mentions a Year of the Electric Can Opener. Year of the [Consumer Product] was something Infinite Jest did repeatedly.
On top of that, the game was released around a year and a half after the novel.
Probably not useful for puzzles, but maybe DFW-style back-and-forth footnotes are underused as a choice-based IF mechanic.