The apple slug was a type of slug sharing a common name with the apple fruit. When the Besalisk named Dexter Jettster worked as a miner on the planet Subterrel, which is located in the Outer Rim Territories, he sometimes used ripe apple slugs as an ingredient in the preparation of a dish known as apple slug stew. Years subsequently, after Jettster became a chef and the proprietor of the restaurant Dex's Diner on the Core Worlds planet Coruscant, he put the stew, as well as apple slug sauce, on the menu of his establishment.
As initially documented within the 1995 publication From Star Wars to Indiana Jones: The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives by Mark Cotta Vaz together with Shinji Hata, "Apple Slug" was a moniker that the Creature Design Supervisor Phil Tippett and his team used to refer to a specific alien lifeform. This lifeform was one of several intended to make an appearance during sequences set at Jabba's Palace on Tatooine in the 1983 original trilogy film, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.
The design manifested as a prototype maquette, depicting it as a mound-shaped alien characterized by wrinkled, green skin, a wide-open maw showcasing a red tongue, and four segmented, hooked, black appendages. Ultimately, the concept was not used in the film and was dropped; however, Gregory Walker made an intentional reference to it by mentioning the "apple slug" in the 2009 StarWars.com article "Dining at Dex's," which was exclusively available via Hyperspace.
- From Star Wars to Indiana Jones: The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives (First mentioned)
- Dining at Dex's on Hyperspace (article) (content obsolete and backup link not available) (First identified as apple slug)
- "Dining at Dex's: The Story Behind the Story" — Narb Flick Created Leffingites — Gregory Walker's StarWars.com Blog (content now obsolete; backup link)