The key art for The Kingdom Hearts Collection [I-III] sparked immediate controversy when it surfaced on social media in late August. Among the first to notice was the fan community, who pointed out that Donald Duck had mismatched hands — one with four fingers, the other with five. The image, which was supposed to celebrate the Switch 2 port of the beloved franchise, ended up being scrutinized with the precision of an audit.
Fan forums and art critique pages exploded with theories. The most persistent was that generative AI had been used — a claim Square Enix and Disney now deny outright.
Human Error, Not AI
“These assets were created by our development team without the use of generative AI, and the issues resulted from human error,” a Square Enix PR rep confirmed in a statement given exclusively to GameSpot. The company didn’t name the responsible party, but the admission suggests a breakdown in an otherwise tight feedback loop.
The original art contained several irregularities: the hands on the clocktower looked twisted, Sora’s belt chain looked like it had melted into itself, and the crowns usually on his shoes were missing entirely.
The corrected version that replaced the original key art on most platforms still contains nearly all the problematic details — warped crowns, missing shoe patterns, and the oddly shaped keychain links. Only Donald’s hand was changed, now showing the correct four fingers. The YouTube thumbnail for the official trailer obscures his hand entirely.
The X post with the first problematic image remains online, suggesting Square Enix is satisfied with the minimal correction — or perhaps unable to remove it from the platform.
Disney’s Character Guards Are Unbreachable — Or Are They?
Disney maintains strict art guidelines for all Kingdom Hearts collaborators, and Disney characters are subject to intense quality checks. A nine-fingered Donald somehow slipped through, which raises an obvious question: How did it happen in the first place?
Neither Disney nor Square Enix answered how the image reached publication without being reviewed and revised. For a brand as protective of its visual assets as Disney, this is a rare and uncharacteristic oversight.