The second level of the game, "Roar at monkeys, Can't wait to be king", was intentionally made to be long and complicated because at the time Blockbuster had a rental program out, and Disney had a rule across its products that a person couldn't get past a certain percentage of a game within a certain amount of time. At the eleventh hour of development, the developers decided to make the monkey puzzle in the level long and tedious and with less prompts for the obstacles so to work with that rule.

Disney believed at the time that if a person rented a game and got through it too quickly, then people possibly wouldn't buy it.

Disney's animation studio, who worked on the game alongside the developers, had qualms with the mechanic of being able to change direction while in mid-air. Their issue is that this move would be physically impossible, and from an animation standpoint, requires the graphics to jump from facing one direction to another. After a number of discussions, it was agreed to keep the ability to switch direction mid-air.

The wildebeest level was originally going to be scrapped due to the requirement for entirely new assets to be drawn as well as the thought that it would be incredibly difficult to create it with 3D-style gameplay. It was kept in after the game's programmers worked solidly day and night to create the level a week prior to the meeting in which it would be discussed, as to make sure that it was decided to keep the level in.

Several levels and characters that appear throughout the game come from deleted scenes from the Lion King movie. During the film's production, the transition from young Simba to adult Simba was originally much longer, and featured a number of the events that occur within the game. Because the game was being produced alongside the film, these levels were being created during the point when it was decided to have these scenes removed from the film. It was decided to keep these levels and characters kept in the game, even though they never appear in the film's theatrical release.

The monkeys featured in the "Simba's Pride" level originally threw obvious feces, however Disney requested this was removed from the final release.

The monkey and bat enemies were inspired by the game Gauntlet.

There was originally a meter for Scar's health during the Pride Rock level towards the end of the game, however this was removed before release.

In the second stage "Can't Wait To Be King", if the player fails to jump over a giraffe using the ostrich, it's possible to trap Simba on a small island with no way to continue the game.