On the Graveyard stage, the gravestone statue of Kull in the background will change depending on if Kull is one of the participants. If Kull is not present, the statue will be unchanged, but if Kull is present, the statue and gravestone will have crumbled as Kull re-emerged from the statue in his introduction cutscene in Tournament mode. In addition, there is an alternate continue screen if you lose to Kull.

Dragon, Shaky Jake, Nobunaga, Major Gaines, Fox, and Crimson Glory each have a "Cool", a special hidden continue screen where they will make cool poses and faces, sometimes while dressing up in sunglasses or a wig. To see their respective cool screens, you need to do the following tricks during the second victory round of a match (the second round in which your Warrior wins), in Versus mode:

• Dragon - Win the second round without taking any damage and do not use Left Shift, Right Shift, B, sweep-forward, or sweep-backward. Dragon will also say his special message about the losers of the internet.
• Shaky Jake - Hit your opponent with three fireballs during the second round.
• Nobunaga - Win the second round using only the A and C buttons.
• Major Gaines - You must let eight grenades explode on the ground during the second round. This means that the fuse on the grenades must expire on their own, and grenades that hit your opponent do not count.
• Malcolm Fox - Hit your opponent with the voodoo dizzy dust 10 times, but do not use voodoo dizzy dust until the opponent recovers during the second round.
• Crimson Glory - Win the second round without using the A, C, Right Shift, or Left Shift. This means that you must use only Crimson's block attacks to win.

Nikki Chan has a hidden alternate victory animation. If you wiggle the D-Pad and press buttons rapidly during her "drop to the ground" win sequence, she will show a peace sign.

A secret magic antenna can be summoned on the Roof stage if your character has 100 Skull Points during the match. To make it appear, taunt and press A and C very fast while taunting (starting to press A and C fast before beginning the taunt helps). If done correctly, skulls will fly out of the character and the antenna will appear.

Two of Konotori's moves have hidden placeholder voice clips that can still be heard in-game. The moves in question are the Swan Dive (Down and R in the air) and the Blade Roll (Down, Down-Back, Back, and R), the latter of which is called the Super Roll in its placeholder clip. To hear them, you must press both A and C very fast while doing the respective move. This can be performed easier if you rapidly hit A and C before performing the move.

Malcom Fox is the only fighter in the game who does not have any catchphrases like the other characters, because his live-action actor Chris Sandford went on vacation and the developers couldn't get in touch with him. Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin is credited for providing his voice lines in the final game.

A port of Spacewar!, an early video game developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962, is hidden in Way of the Warrior and can be activated by pressing a complex series of buttons at the character selection screen in Tournament or Versus mode. Two players should each take a joystick and go to the character selection screen in the aforementioned modes. Player 2 should pick a character and hold Down-Right, A, B, C, and Start. While player 2 is holding these buttons down, player 1 must hold Up-Left, Left Shift, and Right Shift. While both players have the correct buttons held down, player 1 should press Start. When Spacewar! launches, up to four players with four linked joypads can join the game by pressing Start. Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin thought it would be a cool addition, because during Way of the Warrior's development, he was studying artificial intelligence as a graduate student at MIT, where the original Spacewar! game was developed.

Major Gaines' actor T. Mike Gaines was an old fraternity brother of Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin. He was the only actor in the game who was not from Boston, Massachusetts, but instead flew out from Traverse City, Michigan to appear in the game. Gaines wanted to portray a large muscular character, but complications arose with how they increased the size of his sprites:


On top of this, the developers forgot to shoot still shots of his face, forcing them to fly him out to Boston a second time. However, by this time he had grown a goatee and insisted on leaving on small patch of it intact due to how long it took to grow in. This remnant of his goatee can be seen in most of Major Gaines' still shots in the final game.

The game has four secret characters that can be unlocked in Tournament mode after having beaten all of the previous characters. The four characters must be fought in sequence, and the matches between each character need to be triggered on a particular arena by performing a special trick. All of the tricks are done during the second round of each match and require that the character you are playing as wins that round. In addition, all of the tricks require that your player character possesses a Second Wind, acquired by performing a "perfect round" in a previous round (this can be seen over your character's health bar). The following are the tricks for each of the unlockable characters:

• Black Dragon - triggered on the Graveyard (second match). Do not use C or Right Shift to kick for the entire round.
• Major Trouble - triggered on the Lava Pit (fourth normal match). Do not use B to block for the entire round.
• Voodoo - triggered on the Roof (sixth normal match). Do not use A or Left Shift to punch for the entire round.
• Gulab Jamun - triggered on the Cliffs (eighth normal match) by taking no damage in both rounds.

Nobunaga's design is based on Goemon Ishikawa XIII, a recurring character in the Lupin the Third franchise and specifically based on his appearance in the 1979 film "Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro".

All of the bosses, along with the alternate versions of fighters where they are possessed by Gulab Jamun, can be playable in Versus mode. To play as each one, a special name needs to be entered for each character in the "NAMES" entry box in the main menu along with a specific birthday. This will unlock the characters, but none of them will be visible on the character select screen. To actually play as the character, you must move the cursor to a spot due east of Crimson Glory to access an invisible character select screen, and the special character will appear above (continue pressing right to scroll through the rest of the characters). It is possible to enter more than one secret code and play matches between two special characters. The names and birthdays in question are:

• Kull - "A GAVIN" 6/11/70 (in reference to Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin and his birthday)
• High Abbot - "J RUBIN" 1/6/70 (in reference to Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin and his birthday)
• Black Dragon - "WYVERN" 3/9/27
• Major Trouble - "BAD BOY" 2/4/8
• Voodoo - "EVIL" 6/6/66
• Gulab Jamun - "GULAB" 2/29/00

Pressing Right Shift and Left Shift at the same time while in the "NAMES" entry box in the main menu will clear all the high scores from memory.

There are several secret stages in the game. To unlock these stages, a special name must be entered in the "NAMES" entry box in the main menu along with a specific birthday. These stages can only be played with two players and must be selected in the "ARENA" selection area of the main menu to be able to play them. The names and birthdays in question are:

• The Alley - TUGAWAR 4/16/64.
• Psychedelic World - PARANOID 5/5/75
• Turbo World - SPEED 8/8/80.
• The Garden/Taj Mahal - TAJ MAHAL 1/1/01.

In the December 1994 issue of VideoGames magazine, a screenshot can be found implying that an early version of the stage The Pit can be found in the game. This is actually an unused stage called Cave (distinct from another stage interchangeably called The Cave mentioned later in the magazine), and unused graphics for it can be found within the game's files, though the stage itself cannot be accessed normally.

Kull is the only fighter in the game to not have an introduction animation.

Within the game's files are unused menu graphics for a planned mode where players could connect to the internet over a modem connection and fight each other online. This mode was never implemented into the game due to the imminent cancellation of AT&T's proposed modem for the 3DO.

Nobunaga has a hidden alternate victory animation. To see it, you need to win two rounds as Nobunaga and charge up the Magic Star ten times. To charge it, perform the normal Slow Star move and mash A rapidly.

Dragon and Crimson Glory each have unique codenames in the game's data. Dragon's codename is "CHAR_BRUCE", indicating that the character was meant to be a reference to martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. Crimson Glory's codename is "CHAR_CAROL", referencing her actress Carole May.

There is an unused animation of Major Gaines lifting an opponent, pulling the pin off of a grenade with his mouth and then shoving it into their mouth. It was likely meant to be a Fatality.

For the 1995 Japanese release of the game, all of the dialogue was re-recorded in Japanese, and several small changes were made to in-game text graphics. The only new graphic added to the Japanese version is a warning screen for if the 3DO does not have enough free memory space to use for the game.