The player character was originally meant to be Luke Skywalker, and the events of the game were originally meant to follow the events of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). The game designers instead decided to create a unique character and set the stage before the first film.
The sound effect of a hawk screeching was used for when the player hits a trandoshan.
According to developer interviews, one of the weapons in the game, the Packered Mortar Cannon, got its name as an homage to the game designer Justin Fisher's devotion to the 1950s Packard automobile. The Bryar pistol was named after composer Gavin Bryars.
According to pre-release developer interviews, the game's protagonist Kyle Katarn was named after the Katarn Commandos, a team of renowned soldiers featured in several Star Wars-based books and comics and although his bio says he was a member of that team prior to the game's events, he has nothing to do with its name. The original idea was that the team was named after a widespread creature of the Star Wars world, named "Katarn", which is also featured on the team's insignia.
The game was released in a censored version in Germany. While the game itself remained unchanged, dialog was altered to remove any references to killing. For instance, Kyle's blaster pistol was reclassified as a stun pistol, and extra dialog was added in the briefing for the first mission to point out that the player is required to stun enemies (which is not possible in both the uncensored and censored version). Although it received an 18 certificate, it was later indexed as the content was considered too similar to Doom (1993). Ironically, Doom (1993) has been removed from the index in 2011 while 'Star Wars: Dark Forces' remained there until September 2020.