At the level select menu, the time it takes for the planets to revolve around the Sun is exactly accurate to real life, although sped up. It takes the Earth 1 minute to orbit the Sun, which represents a year, and within that time the Moon revolves exactly 13 times around the Earth. With Mercury, it takes approximately 14 seconds to revolve around the Sun, which is equal to 88 days, with Venus 37 seconds which equals to 225 days, Mars 1 minute and 53 seconds, which equals to 687 days, and Neptune 2 hours and 45 minutes, which equals to 165 years. Apparent retrograde motion also occurs when viewing the planets from a certain vantage point.

The cover artwork for the Japanese release, known in Japan as 'BlastDozer', was originally intended to be used for the cover of the Blast Corps comic by Dark Horse Comics, but went unused.

The developers ran out of polygons on the Thunderfist, so they just chopped off one of its arms.

The game contains several unused sounds:
• There are several unused copies of the "Warning!" sound that gets played when the Carrier is in danger of colliding with an obstacle.
• Another is a voice clip of Spike asking the player "What's the matter with you?". It is not used in the final version of the game, but can be found between the voice clips of "Give me a break!" and "You keep this up!".

Walking into water while on foot immediately ends the level and saves your progress. If the missile carrier is present in the stage, it also explodes. Entering water is only possible using certain tricks or glitches.

Donkey Kong Land's boss battle theme was repurposed for the Skerries stage in Blast Corps, a Nintendo 64 game also developed by Rare and also composed by Graeme Norgate. According to an interview with Norgate, he claims that he reused the track "through laziness", though he also admits that he couldn't remember why. This track was removed from the Rare Replay release of Blast Corps in 2015 to avoid any legal issues with Nintendo, who have since retained the rights to all of Rare's Donkey Kong games and content, but was re-instated in the Nintendo Switch Online release of the game in 2024.