[1] The design of the Cactuar's face resemble haniwa, a type of terracotta clay figure traditionally used for ritual and funerary purposes during the Kofun period in Japanese history.

One of the notable errors he corrected prior to the game's release was the original in-game description for the Cactuar, which was translated from Japanese to English as "It ejaculates needles!".

[2] For Final Fantasy XV, the developer team noted that they had to make careful considerations on how to deal with the inclusion of comical or cute characters in a game designed to be more realistic than its predecessors.

[3] Cactuars are typically depicted having stiff arms and legs without hands or feet, three black dots on their faces (representing two eyes and an oblong mouth) and three yellow quills at the top of their heads.

[9] In their first appearance in Final Fantasy VI, Cactuars (called "Cactrots" in American translation of the game) are found in a small desert west of the town of Maranda in the World of Ruin.

[5] Like the Moogle and the Chocobo, the Cactuar has been subject to numerous licensed merchandise connected to the Final Fantasy theme, sometimes in collaboration with third parties such as Universal Studios Japan and Sony Interactive Entertainment for the 2017 video game Everybody's Golf.

Examples of merchandise which feature the Cactuar as its iconography include caps, hooded jackets, stuffed toy key chains, Christmas-themed cakes, wedding confectionary, and so on.

[23][24][9][7] Jason Wilson of VentureBeat called the Cactuar his favorite video game monster, saying that, while "kinda cute", they "can be scary [...] especially when these cowardly creatures stick around instead of running away and launch its devastating 1,000 Needles attack", also saying that they can easily cause a total party kill.

[6] James Stephanie Sterling called the Cactuar "everybody's favorite perennial mascot" in a 2009 post published by Destructoid, and praised its design for Final Fantasy XIII which was unchanged from previous iterations.

[7] GameFan called the Cactuar "one of the most popular Final Fantasy enemies of all time, despite its inability to talk", saying "his 1000 Needles attack can be quite painful if your characters don't have triple-digit hit points".