In the SNES game, Mario and Luigi can not spin jump on some enemies that they can in the Game Boy Advance game, such as Boos and Podoboos. Also, in the Game Boy Advance game, Yoshi can jump off of fish enemies.

Yoshi can spit the key out after entering a keyhole in the SNES game. This was removed from the Game Boy Advance game.

Yoshi turns into Blue Yoshi if he has wings when a level is completed in the SNES game. In the Game Boy Advance game, Yoshi will not change into Blue Yoshi if he has wings when completing a level.

Points awarded in the SNES game are lower than the Game Boy Advance game for defeating Charging Chuck. Also, in the Game Boy Advance game, coins are awarded for defeating Charging Chuck with fireballs.

In the SNES game, punching a Climbing Koopa awarded 100 points. In the Game Boy Advance game, this was changed to 400 points.

The player can re-play a castle by simultaneously pressing the L and R buttons in the SNES game. In the Game Boy Advance game, the player cannot re-play a castle until Bowser is defeated; after Bowser is defeated, the player can then re-play the castles by entering it the same way they enter any other level.

In both versions of the game, the seventh room of Bowser's Castle contains statues that spit out flames. The first statue in that room, which appears in the SNES game, is missing in the Game Boy Advance version.

In the SNES game, when fighting Bowser, only the box with the reserve item appears at the top of the screen. In the Game Boy Advance game, the full HUD is displayed.

A power-up can be found lying on the ground in the last room of #3 Lemmy's Castle. In the SNES game, the power-up is super mushroom; in the Game Boy Advance game, the power-up is a feather.

In the Game Boy Advance game, Princess Peach has blue earrings, lighter hair and a lighter pink dress. These changes more accurately represent Peach's current look. In the SNES game, Peach has pink earrings along with a darker pink dress and hair.

In the SNES game, all of the Yoshi eggs have dull brown spots on them (besides Green Yoshis). In the Game Boy Advance game, the Yoshi eggs all match the color of the Yoshis inside them.

Bowser and the Koopalings all have 3 fingers on their hands in the SNES game. In the Game Boy Advance game, Bowser and the Koopalings all have 4 fingers. His arms were also recolored.

In the SNES game, the Boos and Big Boo are light blue. In the Game Boy Advance game, the Boos and Big Boo are white.

In the Super Mario World & Yoshi's Island Developer Interview with Nintendo, Takashi Tezuka stated that Mario was originally going to ride a horse instead of Yoshi. However, it felt out of place for a "reptile" world, and was changed to look both like a crocodile and a turtle. A similar concept was almost given to Mario in Super Mario 64, but was later given to Link in Ocarina of Time as Epona.

An anime re-telling of the game was produced titled Mario to Yoshi no Bouken Land (translated to Mario & Yoshi’s Adventure Land), and released exclusively in Japan in 1992 for the Bandai VHS system Terebikko. Using the fake phone device, players would interact with it when prompted to answer questions and press one of four colored buttons. The VHS animation ran for twenty-eight minutes.

If you stare at a Boo for around 13 seconds, the Boo will make a funny face back. If you stare at a Big Boo for around 25 seconds, the Big Boo will briefly peek out from hiding in its hands to see if you are still looking.

Among the files included in the Gigaleak, a massive 2020 content leak of internal data from Nintendo, is a tileset associated with Super Mario World depicting a Bullet Bill variant so big that it nearly occupies the entire screen. While the idea was scrapped in favor of the much smaller, but still large Banzai Bill, it would eventually be revisited in New Super Mario Bros. Wii with the King Bill enemy.

In the western localization of the game, the Special World's levels are all named after 90's American surfer lingo, with the names being Gnarly, Tubular, Way Cool, Awesome, Groovy, Mondo, Outrageous, and Funky.

However in Japan the first two levels are named "Fun Course", third and fourth are named "Even the Mario Staff is Shocked Course", fifth and sixth are named "Specialists' Course", and seventh and eight are named "Championship Course". None of the shared names are even differentiated through numbers, like "Fun Course 1" or "Fun Course 2".

Whether intentional or coincidental, Luigi’s updated sprites in the Super Mario All-Stars re-release of Super Mario World reference two common misconceptions about Mario’s sprites from the original Super Mario Bros.: spitting fireballs from his mouth and hitting blocks with his head.

Blue Beach Koopa Troopas launch themselves off slopes to ostensibly demonstrate momentum physics. However, the physics are actually faked, and instead of using actual momentum, the Koopas are simply programmed to jump whenever they reach an upward slope. This only happens to Blue Koopas who spawn into the level without a shell, and those knocked out of their shells will operate as normal when approaching similar slope configurations. While these Koopas appear shell-less in a handful of courses, only Cookie Mountain and Groovy include ramps they can jump from.