* ActingForTwo: Notably, all of these episodes feature impersonations of one character by the other.
** In Kinchloe's ADayInTheLimelight episode "The Prince from the Phone Company," Ivan Dixon also plays the title character.
** "Heil Klink" features a financial expert called Wolfgang Brauner who's wanted by the Gestapo; Creator/JohnBanner plays Schultz and Brauner.
** The two-parter "Lady Chitterly's Lover" has Bernard Fox act as both the bumbling Col. Crittendon and the traitorous Lord Chitterly.
** In "Funny Thing Happened on the Way to London" guest star Lloyd Bochner plays RAF Group Captain James Roberts and his German double Lt. Baumann as part of a plot to assassinate Winston Churchill. Also see FakeNationality below.
* CaliforniaDoubling: Made the "perpetual winter" continuity of the series unrealistic, with full green foliage in the surroundings, and the actors sweating in their caps and coats and acting like it's freezing outside when in actuality it was well over 90 degrees outside. In fact the main set was on the Desilu lot near the sets of ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'' and ''Series/GomerPyleUSMC''.
* CastTheExpert: In the first episode, it's mentioned that Newkirk has some training as a magician - hence his skill with pickpocketing and sleight of hand. Richard Dawson performed at the Palladium.
* CompletelyDifferentTitle: The series is known as ''Papa Schultz'' in France, putting the emphasis more on Sergeant Hans Schultz (who became the series' most popular and well remembered character there).
* CrossDressingVoices: Racial variation -- while Carter does the best in-person Hitler, Kinchloe does him for phone calls and radio messages.
* TheDanza
** Bob Crane as Col. Robert Hogan, though this is actually coincidental; the character was named after actor Creator/RobertHogan, who was a friend of co-creator Bernard Fein, and director Gene Reynolds (and indeed appeared on the series himself).
** On occasion, Ivan Dixon as Ivan Kinchloe (even though Kinch's original first name was James).
* FakeNationality: Almost completely averted. John Banner was Austrian, the rest of the regular cast matched the nationality of their characters. Major Hochstetter -- a character not in the main cast -- was played by an American actor, as was French resistance leader Tiger.
** Howrver, many recurring and one-shot characters are played by actors or other nationalities, such as in "Funny Thing Happened on the Way to London", Canadian Lloyd Bochner playing dual roles as an Englishman and a German... who's pretending to be English, making it also an InUniverse FakeNationality.
* FakeRussian: Marya, played by American Nita Talbot.
* HeAlsoDid:
** Both Werner Klemperer and John Banner had appeared in the fact-based drama ''Operation Eichmann'' playing more serious, evil Nazis. Klemperer was Adolf Eichmann himself, while Banner played notorious Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss.
** In 1956, Werner Klemperer and John Banner appeared together on the "Safe Conduct" episode of ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'': Klemperer played Prof. Klopka and Capt. Kriza, and Banner played a train conductor. This was the first time they had starred together on TV or film.
** Klemperer also appeared with Howard Caine in the 1961 film ''Judgement at Nuremberg''.
* IAmNotSpock:
** Averted with Creator/BobCrane and Werner Klemperer; Crane loved playing Hogan and wanted to be remembered as such, while Klemperer mentioned on ''Series/ThePatSajakShow'' that he's perfectly okay with people coming up to him and saying, "Hi, Colonel [Klink]!"
** Inverted with Richard Dawson, who spent a number of years trying to form his own identity, separate from Newkirk; in fact, when appearing on ''[[Creator/DinahShore The Dinah Shore Show]]'' with [[Series/SesameStreet Caroll Spinney and Oscar the Grouch]], Spinney had Oscar ask, "So, Dawson, how's everything over at ''Hogan's Heroes''? Heh-heh-heh!" and Dawson was ''not'' amused. If his long-remembered tenures on ''Series/MatchGame'' and ''Series/FamilyFeud'' are any indication, it worked swimmingly.
* IronyAsSheIsCast:
** Colonel Klink was depicted as an incompetent musician. Werner Klemperer was a highly gifted violinist and came from a long line of musicians.
** Carter, the least romantically successful of the main Heroes, was played by Larry Hovis, who was the only one of their actors to be married throughout the show's run. The reason his hands are never seen without gloves was because he refused to take off his wedding ring while filming.
* JewsPlayingNazis:
** Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz were played by Werner Klemperer and John Banner, both Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Most notably, Klemperer only took the part on the condition that Klink would be perpetually inept and always get outsmarted by the protagonists.
** Two recurring villains are General Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter, who were played by Jewish actors Leon Askin and Howard Caine, respectively. Askin was born in Austria and fled to America in 1940 after persecution by the Nazis.
** Other actors of Jewish descent who appeared in minor roles as Nazis and camp officials include Oscar Beregi Jr. as General Stauffen and Walter Janovitz as Oscar Schnitzer, the camp's guard dog trainer (who's secretly sympathetic to the resistance).
* MoneyDearBoy: Co-creator Albert S. Ruddy wanted nothing to do with the series. When he was offered a position on the show's writing staff, he turned it down to concentrate on writing screenplays for movies; the main reason he co-wrote the pilot episode was at the suggestion of a colleague who said he would be paid rather nicely as the creator of a weekly series, as common practice back in those days was whoever wrote the pilot episode of a series was credited as the creator(s).
* PropRecycling: The jacket Hogan wears is the exact same one worn by Music/FrankSinatra in ''Film/VonRyansExpress''.
* RealitySubtext:
** Hogan's womanizing took on a new light when the seedy details of Bob Crane's private life came out. Crane also married Sigrid Valdis who played Hilda, the secretary with whom Hogan had an implied relationship.
** Carter almost never takes off his gloves. If you look at one of the very rare scenes where he's bare-handed you can see that he's wearing a wedding ring. Larry Hovis, his actor, refused to remove it even while he was acting.
** [=LeBeau=] is never seen in short sleeves for a very sobering reason: Robert Clary is a Holocaust survivor. The long sleeves hide the number tattooed on his forearm.
** Related to the above, although the series is often criticized for lampooning Nazis and prisoner of war camps, in fact many of the actors involved in the series were direct survivors of Nazi oppression. Aside from Clary, John Banner was an Austrian-born Jew who lost family in the concentration camps, while other actors in the series, including Klemperer and Leon Askin, left Germany and Austria as Hitler rose to power. Askin's scar, in fact, was genuine, a result of a beating that he had received from SA thugs shortly after the ''Anschluss'', and shortly before he was able to flee to America.
* RealLifeRelative: Axis Annie was played by Werner Klemperer's then-wife, Louise Troy.
* RecycledSet: It's subtle, but if astute viewers pay really close attention, anytime the heroes are doing business in a different barrack, it's clearly the exact same set as Hogan's barrack, with the bunks and lockers and such rearranged. Even the interior of the new Rec Hall in Season Six, the front wall is the same, a bookcase is inserted in the doorway.
* ReferencedBy:
** In the ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E9TheLastTemptationOfHomer The Last Temptation of Homer]]", Werner Klemperer's ghost is Homer's GuardianAngel. Homer, of course, thinks it's Colonel Klink. Klemperer plays along with it in his final cameo.
** In one episode of ''Series/GreenAcres,'' Oliver mentions he had a stint in Stalag 13.
** The series has a shared reality with ''Series/GreenAcres''. During a flashback from Oliver's World War II years, both Colonel Hogan and Stalag 13 are mentioned. Colonel Klink also showed up in -- of all places! -- the ''Series/{{Batman|1966}}'' TV show and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.
* UnfinishedEpisode:
** Both Werner Klemperer and Richard Dawson have hinted that a seventh season of the series, which would have included a proper finale in which the war ends and the prisoners of Stalag 13 were liberated, was in the works at the time UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge happened, thus axing the series for good after its sixth season.
** In TheSeventies, Larry Hovis began work on an AfterShow that would have focused on the original Heroes' children fighting in Vietnam; plans for the series were abruptly halted when Bob Crane was murdered.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen
** In separate interviews, both Werner Klemperer and Richard Dawson have hinted that there was a possible seventh season in production, but was more than likely stopped, due to the series falling victim to UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge. There has also been some hinting that the supposed seventh season was to be the real last season, including a final episode in which the war ends, the [=POWs=] are liberated.
** Richard Dawson wanted to give Newkirk a Liverpudlian accent in order to avoid the stereotype that all British characters speak in a cockney accent. However, people were having a difficult time understanding his dialogue, and he was asked to give Newkirk a cockney accent after all, to which request he relented. Ironically, shortly after the pilot was filmed, ''Film/AHardDaysNight'' was released and went over really well with audiences, leaving Dawson to ponder that if audiences could understand what Music/TheBeatles said, surely they could've understood Newkirk.
** Co-creator Albert S. Ruddy said that the show was originally set in a modern-day American jail (though the premise of the prisoners carrying on operations under the guard's noses was still intact), but when he got wind of another series being developed for Creator/{{NBC}} set in an Italian prison camp in [=WW2=], he reworked the series' setting into a German prison camp. In fact, when the other pilot (''Campo44'') finally made it to air in 1967, it was heavily criticized as being a rip-off of ''Hogan's Heroes''.
** Ruddy was also offered to be a staff writer on the series, but turned down the offer, as he didn't even want to be involved with the show's production anyway; he wanted to write movies instead, and only co-wrote the pilot episode to have a series creator credit to his name.
** Early production had intended for Schultz and Langenscheidt to be a "Creator/LaurelAndHardy" type comedy pair. This was scrapped in favor of having Schultz play off Klink instead.
* YouLookFamiliar:
** Howard Caine played three different German officers, Major Keitel in "Happy Birthday, Adolf" (S1/E17); Col. Feldcamp in "The Battle of Stalag 13" (S2/E5); and Maj. Hochstetter in 37 episodes.
** William Christopher appeared as an extra in four episodes, playing a German officer, and a Stalag 13 prisoner.
** In addition to his recurring role as camp guard Corporal Langenscheidt, Jon Cedar appeared in three episodes as other characters (a GuiltRiddenAccomplice to a government-sanctioned counterfeiting ring, a BeleagueredAssistant to a Gestapo officer and Oskar Danzig, a MasterOfDisguise in LaResistance). Given that last one there are occasional EpilepticTrees that the other two identities (and possibly Langenschneidt himself) were some of Danzig's disguises, or that Langengschneidt and Danzig are brothers or cousins.
----