The movie's most famous quote and catch phrase, "If you build it, he will come," was ranked No. 39 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotes. It's also one of the most misquoted lines in movie history (with such classics as the never-said "Play it again, Sam"). It's often quoted as "If you build it, they will come."

The phrase is now common even among those who have never seen the film. Variations of it have been used in many movies, television shows, and advertising.

The movie has been spoofed in various TV shows and films, including Wayne's World 2 (1993), Muppets from Space (1999), and in the series that has parodied countless aspects of popular culture, The Simpsons.

During a collective bargaining dispute in 2011, owners of the National Football League's 32 teams locked their players out of facilities and shut down league operations. The lockout lasted from March to July that year, leaving the new football season in doubt. Writers Alex Fernie, Ryan Perez, and Eric Appel, who often make shorts for the comedy web site Funny or Die, created a short trailer parody, under Appel's direction, called Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout (2011). Taylor Lautner plays a young Iowa farmer who hears ghostly voices instructing him to clear out his corn crop and build a football field. Several real-life NFL players show up to compete until the lockout is over. Ray Liotta, who plays Shoeless Joe in Field of Dreams, appears as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Dennis Haysbert plays a version of the character played by James Earl Jones, and Kevin Costner appears at the end as Lautner's father, offering a game of catch.

The land where the field was built, owned by farmer Don Lansing, was never replanted in corn. He maintained it as a tourist destination, drawing up to 65,000 people per year and earning revenues from souvenir sales. In 2011, the property was sold to a company called Go the Distance Baseball LLC for a rumored sum of more than $5 million with the intention of building a 24-field youth baseball and softball tournament facility called All-Star Ballpark Heaven. Neighbors of the site formed the Residential and Agricultural Advisory Committee in opposition to the development. In 2012, the company sued the citizens committee for interfering with the project, and a year later, the committee launched a counter suit. In October 2013, both parties mutually agreed to drop the suits. Although no construction had begun at the time of the dismissal, the company expressed hope that dropping the litigation would attract more investors to move forward. Among the current backers of the project are Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs and actor Matthew Perry.

A Facebook page called "Save the Field of Dreams" was created in October by film trailer editor David Blanchard opposing the company's development plans. Blanchard and his wife are big fans of the movie and visited the site in July 2012. The Facebook page says, "No words can describe the serenity one feels when you step out onto that baseball diamond and hear only the corn stalks rustling in the wind. But all of that is about to change if this development is allowed to be built, unless people take a stand and say NO!!"

In the novel, Ray Kinsella seeks real-life reclusive author J.D. Salinger. In Salinger's 1947 story "A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All," there is a character named Ray Kinsella. In Salinger's most famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye, a classmate of the main character, Holden Caulfield, is Richard Kinsella, the name of Ray's twin brother in the book on which this film is based. That character and story line were not included in the movie.

Many myths and baseless stories have grown up around the legend of Shoeless Joe Jackson and his involvement in the 1919 World Series scandal. His complicity in "throwing" the series for money has long been in doubt and many efforts have been undertaken to reinstate him to baseball after his 1920 expulsion and place him in the sport's Hall of Fame. In 1991, the Hawaii state legislature passed a House resolution calling for Jackson's exoneration, referencing a quote from James Earl Jones's character in the movie about "the essence of an American tradition, baseball." Copies of the resolution were sent to director Phil Alden Robinson, producers Charles and Lawrence Gordon, and cast members Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, and Jones.

The story of the infamous Chicago "Black" Sox was told in an earlier movie by John Sayles, Eight Men Out (1988). D.B. Sweeney played Shoeless Joe Jackson in that film.

Shoeless Joe, played by actor Biff McGuire, was the focus of one episode of the early 1960s television series The Witness, in which a committee of real-life lawyers each week cross-examined actors playing actual people who had been connected to some criminal activity, including mobsters Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Arnold Rothstein, the man widely reputed to have arranged the 1919 World Series fix that got Jackson expelled from pro baseball.

By Rob Nixon