There is a texture for the sanctuary entrance that can't be seen in normal gameplay.

After draining the water surrounding the Swamp Dungeon, Link can pick up the fish that are flopping around as a result of the reduced water levels. If Link throws a fish back into the pond, it will verbally thank Link and give him some Rupees. However, if Link carries a fish to Kakariko Village and gives it to the Street Merchant, he will give Link an assortment of Rupees, Bombs and Arrows.

In a Japan-exclusive Shogakukan Wonder Life Special guidebook authored by Nintendo and Ape Inc., there is artwork depicting Link praying before a Crucifix, contrasting the game's origin story of the three Golden Goddesses, but also fitting with the Japanese version of the game calling the Sanctuary a Church. The Church's name was changed to the Sanctuary outside of Japan, presumably due to Nintendo's international policy on religious imagery, although this artwork and the rest featured in this guidebook were never republished internationally as other publishers released their own guides instead.

In a 2020 interview about Luigi's Mansion 3, the game's lead producer Kensuke Tanabe (who was also the scenario writer for A Link to the Past) compared a shift during the game's development to an early idea that was scrapped during A Link to the Past's development, revealing that the game originally had multiple parallel worlds but it had to be cut down to just two—those being the worlds of Light and Dark.

"When that happens, I try not to cling to that initial idea too much. For example, this is when I was working on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. At first, we were thinking about structuring the game with numerous parallel worlds. However, in order to establish the gameplay in the end, we decided that it would be better to narrow it down to two worlds: Light and Dark. I think game development involves much work where you never know unless you actually test it out."

In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he revealed that him and his team began developing the game at the same time as Super Mario World. Even back when they initially revealed the Super Famicom at the company in July, 1989, their plan had always had been to make and release the game alongside Super Mario World as a launch title for the new system. They were hoping to release the game in March of 1991, but it was delayed into the Summer, until it was finally released on the one-year anniversary of the release of the Super Famicom on November 21, 1991.

In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he was asked if the SNES version of Zelda would be the same as the Super Famicom version. He responded that him and his team thought about making some improvements to the SNES version, including a number of things they could not complete in time for the Super Famicom release. Zelda makes full use of the available 8 MB of ROM space, but they knew they were going to need extra space for the English translation. They initially planned to increase the ROM size by 1 MB to solve this, until the compression routine their programmers wrote actually allowed them to fit everything in the original 8 MB storage. Miyamoto joked that they would save those aforementioned improvements for the next game.

In a similar way that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link revealed that the entirety of the map from The Legend of Zelda was just a portion of the former game's map, the entirety of the first game's map makes up where Death Mountain is located in A Link to the Past.

The Master Sword being a sword that would get pulled out from its pedestal by those chosen appears to be derived from the Arthurian Legend of Excalibur, also known as the "sword in the stone". Similar to how King Arthur was divinely chosen to be able to pull out Excalibur, Link was given the power by the Goddesses to pull out the Master Sword. Because of these similarities, the Master Sword was renamed to "Excalibur" in the French localizations of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.