While development on Kiss of the Spider Woman was taking place in 1983, Puig wrote a stage version of his novel. It was first staged in London in an English-language production starring Mark Rylance and Simon Callow. This version, translated by Allan Baker, was revived in 2007 in London with Rupert Evans and Will Keen.

In the scenes of Molina at home, particularly the one in which he makes his decision to bring the message to the revolutionaries, pictures of Rita Hayworth are prominent in some shots. Manuel Puig's first novel was titled Betrayed by Rita Hayworth.

Sometimes a movie opens at a moment when a real-life event draws more attention to its subject, particularly if it's controversial. Such was the case with The China Syndrome (1979), a film about a near-disastrous incident at a nuclear power plant released less than two weeks before an accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. On the day Kiss of the Spider Woman opened in New York, July 26, 1985, the front page of the city's papers carried the story that Rock Hudson had AIDS. The movie, of course, was not remotely about AIDS, but the producers found it an odd coincidence that their film about an openly gay man, played by one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading men, would open just as this word broke about a major male star of an earlier era.

In a wry comment about the awareness of AIDS raised by Rock Hudson's illness, a periodical cartoon showed two people passing a movie theater and one of them commenting, "I hear they're worried about AIDS in Hollywood." The marquee of the theater advertises the title "Handshake of the Spider Woman."

Kiss of the Spider Woman was made into a stage musical with music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb and book by playwright Terrence McNally. The play ran in London's West End in 1992 and on Broadway in 1993, to mixed reviews, certainly nowhere near the praise heaped on the film version. Nevertheless, it won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Broadway legend Chita Rivera as the Spider Woman.

Parodies of the title have turned up as episode titles for some television sitcoms, including Burt Reynolds's Evening Shade ("Kiss of the Ice Cream Woman"), Living Single ("Kiss of the Spider Man"), and Married with Children ("Kiss of the Coffee Woman").

There really was a Spider Woman in old movies but not the same as the one Molina describes in the story. She first appeared as a villain in a Sherlock Holmes movie, The Spider Woman (1944), played by Gale Sondergaard. The character in that Universal production, described as a female Moriarty, was named Adrea Spedding. The studio did a sequel of sorts, The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946), but with a different story and no Sherlock Holmes. Sondergaard played the character again, but this time her name was Zenobia Dollard.

Michael Deaver, White House deputy chief of staff in the Reagan administration, requested a print to be screened for the President and First Lady at Camp David. Nancy Reagan was shocked and horrified and insisted the movie be stopped part way through and later demanded that Deaver explain why he would even think of screening the film. Deaver pointed out that the performances were wonderful and that once you got past the subject matter, it was an incredible picture. Mrs. Reagan's response: "But how can you get past that?!"

by Rob Nixon