The first release of the PlayStation 2 version is actually an unfinished port. The development team was given two months to port the game, but before the deadline was up, the company's sales general manager asked to borrow a copy of the game and took it to production on that day. This sent the creator, Tomonobu Itagaki, into a deep depression and almost made him quit making video games. Soon after, Itagaki and his team went back to overhaul the game to create the much improved Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore.

Software publishing company Westside, known for making video game code extraction software and gaming hacks, released a hack that allowed users to strip the clothing off of the female character Kasumi. Tecmo brought the company to court on copyright infringement charges and won, forcing Westside to pay 2 million yen in damages.

In Ayane's Story Mode, if the player beats Kasumi with an attack that launches her across the area, the ending cutscene will show Ayane finishing her opponent off with a ninpo attack.

Zack's 5th costume and Tina's 4th costume are references to characters from the 1999 run of the Shadow Man comics.

The code of an early version of Dead or Alive 2 lists Genra and Raidou as being part of the roster, suggesting that they were going to be in the game early on in its development.

Tina's hair color was changed from brunette in Dead or Alive to blonde in Dead or Alive 2.

Helena's 3rd costume is a reference to Reina, the protagonist from the Tecmo game Deception III: Dark Delusion.

Ayane's 6th costume is based on Millennia, the protagonist from the Tecmo game Kagero: Deception II.

By setting the "age" in Options to at least 21, then achieving a top-10 score in Survival, and entering "REALDEMO", the original opening cutscene will be altered to feature a scene of a naked Kasumi being cloned in a tube of liquid.

Inserting the CD-ROM of the Dreamcast version into a PC reveals a readable segment with a folder called "BONUS" containing various pictures of the female cast.

The galleries are different between regions. The Japanese gallery features Ayane and Kasumi wearing a kimono while the other three galleries feature pin-ups of Helena, Leifang, and Tina (the latter wearing cat ears). In the European version all the pictures are pin-ups with only sharing the Helena picture (albeit with a different background). The American gallery is pretty similar to the European one but with three extra pictures.

Alongside being in the same key, Ryu Hayabusa's theme music "The shooted" and Ein's theme "Vigaku" both feature a recurring guitar solo. While "Vigaku" plays a few different arrangements of its solo throughout the song, the solo as heard in "The shooted" is played the same way throughout the majority of the song except for the very end, where a different take on it is played. When comparing the primary solos in both "Vigaku" and "The shooted", while both solos play through a similar scale of notes, there are some individual notes in each solo that are different to distinguish them from each other rather than fully recycling them. In the game's soundtrack released on CD, "The shooted" is placed ahead of "Vigaku", suggesting that the solo heard in Ein's theme is meant to be an interpolation of the solo in Ryu's theme. As such, it appears the entire point of these solos being so similar is to highlight the connection between Ein and Ryu as friends that the amnesiac Ein forgot in the game's storyline. The solo that is repeated in the same way in "The shooted" seems to represent who Ryu is, while the different interpolated versions of the solo in "Vigaku" may represent Ein trying to remember his past or Ryu's role in doing so. In Ryu's Story Mode, he knocks Ein out of the tournament, causing him to regain some of his memories including who Ryu is, and he eventually regains the rest of his memories after battling Kasumi at Ryu's request.