Trivia

The characters of Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks) appeared on this series and its spin-off, The Bionic Woman (1976). When the spin-off moved to another network, this practice continued. This was the first time the same continuing characters appeared on two different television series broadcast on two different networks at the same time.

The aircraft seen crashing in the show's opening sequence was an M2-F2, a "lifting body configuration" built by Northrop. The audio sound effects are from a crash that occurred on May 10, 1967, at Edwards Air Force base in California (although the dialogue heard was recorded by Lee Majors). The test pilot, Bruce Peterson, hit the ground at two hundred fifty miles per hour, tumbling six times. He lost use of his right eye following an infection, and had to stop flying, ending his career. Understandably, Peterson has said that he hated reliving his accident, week after week, courtesy of the show.

Early episodes of the series had Austin killing villains on occasion. As it became clear that Austin was becoming a role model for kids, the level of violence in the series decreased, with Austin rarely (if ever) actually killing anyone.

According to Lee Majors, he did ninety percent of his own stunts.

An unexpected effect of the show's popularity was that the producers discovered that some children who were fans of the show were deliberately trying to seriously injure themselves in the hopes of getting bionic parts. This led to the producers and Lee Majors writing a letter to at least one such child to tell him that the show is purely fictional.