Salina -- Notable natives and residents

• Lucas French - MLB player for the Seattle Mariners
• James J. Bulger a.k.a. Whitey Bulger - is a wanted fugitive and alleged leader of the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish-American crime family operating in the region of Boston, Massachusetts. After completing Air Force basic training, he was stationed at the Smoky Hill Air Force Base in Salina, Kansas.
• Deborah Daulton-Morton - Miss Kansas USA 1995^[14]
• Marlin Fitzwater - White House Press Secretary, 1985-1987
• Dwight Frye - Hollywood actor in early horror films.
• Bill Graves - businessman and 43rd Kansas governor, 1995-2003
• Paul Harvey spent three years as a station manager for a local radio station in Salina.
• John F. Hayes, Kansas politician
• Steven Hawley - astronaut
• Terry Kirkman-musician, songwriter, member of the pop group The Association and composer of their hit song "Cherish."
• Wayne Laugesen, American writer, columnist, editor
• Gene Mauch, major league baseball player and manager
• Pat Meares - Major League Baseball player
• George Murdock - Hollywood Actor, born and raised in Salina.
• Terence Newman - NFL player, Dallas Cowboys
• Shane Rudman - Senior national Sales Director, Primerica Financial Services
• Dennis Rader - BTK serial killer, Rader attended Kansas Wesleyan University in 1965–66.
• Ben Romans - musician, member of The Click Five
• Bill Snyder - Kansas State Football Coach
• Brent Venables - Defensive Coordinator, University of Oklahoma Sooners^[15]

In popular culture

• The 1980 teen comedy film "Up the Academy" was filmed entirely in Salina, mostly on the campus of St. John's Military School,^[16]
• Scenes of the 1955 movie Picnic, starring William Holden and Kim Novak, were filmed in Salina (arrival of the train at the beginning of the movie, The Bensons' mansion)
• Millie Dillmount, the fictional main character in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie is from Salina. She leaves home for New York City, determined never to return, as depicted in the opening number "Not for the Life of Me".
• In Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo, the character of Judy Barton, played by Kim Novak, comes from Salina.
• Bluegrass band The Avett Brothers have a song titled "Salina."
• In Shawn Colvin's song, "Wichita Skyline" (from the 1996 album A Few Small Repairs), she sings "As far as Salina I can get that good station from LaRue / I'm searching the dial while I'm scanning the sky for a patch of blue / And I watch the black clouds roll in, chasing me back again / Back to the flat fine line, the Wichita skyline." (LaRue is in Texas.)
• The Cowboy Junkies song, "Townes' Blues" (from the 1992 album Black Eyed Man), describes a trip from Boulder, CO to Houston, TX through Salina, though Canadian lead singer Margo Timmins uses a pronunciation familiar for Salinas, CA rather than that used in Kansas.
• The invitational supergroup The Book of Knots have a song entitled Salina on their sophomore album Traineater.

• Salina, KS was destroyed by the Russian villain in Ted Bell's 2008 novel TSAR.