The game was once taken off the selves of Toys "R" Us and F.A.O. Schwarz stores for being too violent and sexual. This was in response to the Senate Judiciary and Government Affairs Committee hearing on video game violence in 1993.

Footage of the never released VHS-based NEMO can be viewed in the Mega-CD version of Night Trap by entering a button code when the credits read "In Memory of Stephen D. Hassenfield". This footage shows Hasbro executives taking a look at Scene of the Crime (the prototype for Night Trap) in December 1987.

According to a SEGA.jp interview with Ryoichi Hasegawa, the game was banned in Germany for its “excessive” content. While not banned in Japan, Ryoichi mentioned that there were news reports about the game in Japan, describing it as “a game where you chase around and try to capture women in their underwear”.

Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition, an expanded 2017 re-release of the game for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch and PC, uses the full uncompressed video footage recorded for the original game. Additional bonus content includes deleted scenes like an introduction scene for the game's story and a death scene featuring Danny (which was most likely cut due to Danny's young age), as well as a behind-the-scenes developer commentary, a "theater mode" to watch all of the game's story, a "survivor mode" that will randomly place Augers in the house, and a playable version of "Scene of the Crime", the first prototype of Night Trap created in 1986 to pitch an unreleased console called the Control-Vision to Hasbro.

In 1993, then chairman of Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln told the U.S. Senate that Night Trap would never be released onto a Nintendo system. Despite this famous quote, 25 years later in 2018 the game would be released onto the Nintendo Switch with the Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition.