France's podium streak in the event extended to four Games.

[2] Three of the eight quarterfinalists from 1988 returned: gold medalist Arnd Schmitt of West Germany (now competing for united Germany), bronze medalist Andrey Shuvalov of the Soviet Union (now competing for the Unified Team), and fourth-place finisher Sandro Cuomo of Italy.

Manuel Pereira of Spain was another World Champion (1989) competing in Barcelona.

France, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States each appeared for the 19th time, tied for most among nations.

The repechages (but not the main brackets) used a complicated reseeding mechanism.

Ciszewski, Wong, Tanabe, Paz, and Normile were eliminated after the round of 64.

Sandegren, di Tella, Lenzun, Al-Hamar, and Kuhn were eliminated after the round of 64.

Maroto, O'Brien, Milan, Ječmínek, and Zuikov were eliminated after the round of 64.

Hegedűs, McLean, Kim, Pereira, and Pantelimon were eliminated after the round of 64.

For example, original seed #2 Mazzoni would have been reseeded as #9 because he was the top-seeded fencer who had advanced through the repechage qualifiers.

Seeds 1–4 were given to round 8 losers, based on their original seeds (Vánky and Felisiak, who had been swapped to avoid having two German fencers in main bracket 1, were reseeded as if they had not been swapped).

Seeds 5–8 were given to the winners of the second round of the repechage, based on their original seeds—except that Henry was moved from #6 to #5 to avoid a rematch with Felisiak.