According to James Woods, he went to watch the film at a local theatre and while he was leaving, a refugee from El Salvador knelt before him and kissed his hand, thanking him for telling the story of her family's massacre.

Archbishop Romero is killed at point-blank range by a handgun. However, the real Romero was shot by a sniper. Also, while he was shot while saying Mass, it was in a small hospital chapel, not in a large church as depicted in the film.

According to the Oliver Stone biography "Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker" by James Riordan, the film was originally meant to be a two and a half hour release from a 150 page script, and much extra footage was cut due to box office concerns and by the original studio, Orion, who saw that a lot of the footage was too excessive or violent (one such scene described in the book was of an orgy scene with Rick Boyle and Dr. Rock and a bag of ears casually tossed on to a table). Stone regrets this decision as the film ended up, and was criticized for being, choppy in some of its editing. Some of this deleted footage is included on the Special Edition DVD.

Edited into Salvador: Deleted Scenes (2001)