The map for Second Southtown also features the complete map of the first Southtown, however the player can't actually see the full map in-game. The only part missing from the map is a small part of Port Town which is cropped out.

This was the first Fatal Fury game to not feature semi-3D movement. Because of the rise of true 3D fighting games (such as Virtua Fighter and Tekken) at the time, the developers didn't think the feature was unique anymore. So they opted to remove it in favor of a traditional 2D plane.

Hotaru was originally named Ayumi, was originally going to have a bolder design. That changed when the SNK staff wanted to start adding cute "moe" characters into their games.

“Around the time Garou was in development, the term “moe” started to be used. We thought, “We want to add in moe, but what is moe?!” and had a lot of trouble with it. Thankfully, some staff were familiar, and Hotaru was created with the teachings of those staff members.”

Early designs of Rock Howard show that he was originally planned to wear Terry's hat. That idea was likely abandoned when a manga artist who worked at SNK suggested designing Rock's outfit based on the jacket he would wear to work. The game's artist, Nobuyuki Kuroki, liked the idea and implemented that into Rock's final design.

B. Jenet was originally designed to have traditional pirate attire. However, because translating her complex design to pixel art was complicated, her design was changed to have a simple long dress.

Gato was originally designed to look similar to Genjuro from Samurai Shodown. Over time, his design started taking inspiration from Bruce Lee before settling on what was in the final game.

Because the staff was unsatisfied with Freeman's earlier designs, the game's planner, Yasuyuki Oda, opted to create a completely different design for the character which ended up becoming the final design.

Early designs of Kevin Rian show that he originally was going to have a cybernetic arm that turned into a gun.

The game is the first time in the series that the original Japanese title "Garou", instead of its western title "Fatal Fury." However, the game's graphic data contains tiles for an unused, early version of the title screen, showing the name "Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves", which was likely the name intended for the international releases during development.

Kim Jae Hoon and Kim Dong Hwan are named after the then leadership of Viccom, SNK's Korean publishing partner. Jae Hoon was the former president and the son of the acting chairman, Kim Kaphwan. Dong Hwan was the acting president and the chairman's brother.

In a 2001 interview with the game's illustrator Tonko (Aki Senno), found within the Arcadia magazine, she was asked if both Garou: Mark of the Wolves (MOW) and The Last Blade had the same staff working on them. She responded:

"No, it wasn’t. MOW was originally being developed by a very select group; later, a few of the Last Blade staff joined in. The waterfall stage, and several others, were done by The Last Blade staff. Visually I think you can see a bit of The Last Blade’s style in those stages."

The Kyokugenryu Dojo poster, drawn by Hiroaki, is a homage to a poster for the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon.