At the airfield, several of the planes are American AT-6 Texan trainers painted in Luftwaffe colours. The Luftwaffe did indeed have AT-6s in service, captured from Belgium, who had purchased them from the United States.
Some viewers initially thought that having one of the escapees disguised as a German soldier was a notable and rather unfortunate mistake, since this was completely against protocol due to the fact that the punishment for being caught in such a disguise would be far more severe than being disguised as a civilian, but the source book indicates that one escapee really was disguised a Luftwaffe Unteroffizernote this actually caused a brief panic on the escape night as the other prisoners, unaware of the planned disguise, initially believed a guard had entered the hut before realizing it was one of their own guys.
Award Snub: The film only received one Academy Award nomination for Best Editing. It was snubbed for Picture, Director and even Score.
Complete Monster: Preissen is a Gestapo officer who is the most evil of the Nazis in the film. Regularly capturing POWs to be thrown into camps, Preissen is distasteful of Von Luger's comparatively professional, merciful methods, as Preissen prefers a more brutal approach to dealing with prisoners. After the titular great escape, Preissen oversees the re-capturing of 50 POWs, has them brought into a field, then massacres them all with machine gun fire as a statement of the Gestapo's power. Von Luger himself is disgusted by this action, and it is implied Preissen has him executed for his "soft touch" soon after the film's end.
The close friendship between the "Tunnel Kings" Willie and Danny reeks of this. They're always together and quick to stand by the other - especially Willie, who is always ready to comfort the claustrophobic Danny and refuses to leave him behind in the most difficult of situations, like escaping from the camp the final time. Even the ending has them rowing a boat together with pretty music playing in the background before boarding a Swedish freighter to freedom.
Several of the other POWs have a rather close relationship with each other as well, especially MacDonald and Bartlett. Nothing brings out the slash quite like a Nazi POW camp filled with Allied prisoners, apparently.
There is a subtle whiff of this between Yank "Scrounger" Hendley and German officer Werner who befriend each other as well as "Cooler King" Captain Hilts and the gentlemanly Kommandant von Luger.
A good portion of the leads are American, whereas in Real Life, there weren't even any American POWs in the camp at the time of the escape. It makes the whole July 4th celebration scene a lot more cringeworthy to watch.
The film as a whole falls uncomfortably between two stools — the original source book contains various scenes involving the American POWs who are involved in the early stages (including the July 4th scene) but are subsequently redeployed to their own compound. This wasn't regarded as sufficiently "box office" so the American characters remain in the film, with some originally British characters recast as American.
No Problem with Licensed Games: The 1987 isometric action-adventure by Ocean is a classic 8-bit era game with a complex gameplay for its day, including an "auto-pilot" feature where the player character follows the camp routine by himself.
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