San Serriffe was one of the most famous and successful hoaxes of the 20th century; it has become part of the common cultural heritage of literary humour, and a secondary body of literature has been derived from it.

"[5] In an era before the widespread use of desktop publishing and word processing software, much of the terminology was little-known, the jokes were easily missed, and many readers were fooled.

[6] Editor Peter Preston received letters of complaint from airlines and travel agents due to the disruption caused by customers who refused to believe the islands did not exist.

A Friends of San Serriffe club was established, with its "life president" writing annual April Fools' Day letters to the paper.

[7] Donald Knuth offers a reward to anyone finding a mistake in one of his publications; from October 2008 onwards, this has been in the form of a "certificate of deposit" from the fictitious Bank of San Serriffe.