The SNES version of Mortal Kombat was developed by Sculptured Software in the conservative state of Utah, an area where the backlash to the game's violent content was at its highest, and whose state legislature previously attempted to outlaw the original arcade version. According to the port's project director Jeff Peters, local children visiting the studio to ask about the game and its development also told their parents, who refused to associate with the developers and speculated that they were "drug dealers" and "Satan worshippers". He also recalled one programmer who asked the development team to lie to his family about what game he was working on.

In the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, the blood is very infamously replaced with sweat. While primarily a form of censorship due to Nintendo's strict content regulations, the sweat also served an extra purpose: unlike blood, sweat quickly evaporates, meaning that less sprites had to be on screen at a time.