Acting for Two: Gary Lockwood as an assassin and his twin brother who works with him on his jobs to give him a cast-iron alibi in "Eyewitness To Murder". Not to mention Richard Anderson plays Oscar and a robot double in "The Return Of The Robot Maker"; in "Double Trouble" Flip Wilson as a comedian and an African leader, the comedian becomes an Unwitting Pawn in the villain of the week's scheme
The Cast Showoff: For reasons known only to the producers, the decision was made to allow Lee Majors to sing not one, but two original songs (one built loosely around the melody of the SMDM theme) in the original "Bionic Woman" two-parter.
In 1993, Will Meguniot (then on a break between seasons of Exosquad) helped make sketches for a proposed animated series called Bionic Squad, where Steve Austin would lead a new team, which then was captured by aliens called "Rapacians", who then would've subjected them to unwilling transformations in their secret moon base, giving them superhuman abilities. The show never made it past the pitch (Monster Force ended up airing alongside Exosquad's second season; ironically, Meugniot had worked on Bionic Six a few years before, which MCA/Universal had distributed).
There were plans for a film adaptation since 1995 when Kevin Smith developed a screenplay. In December 2001, it was announced that Universal had pacted with Dimension Films on the project after Bob Weinstein saw its potential as a franchise. In October 2002, Trevor Sands was hired to write a new screenplay, titled The Six Billion Dollar Man, but Dimension scrapped it when Jim Carrey pitched a comedic take on the material for him to star in, with Scot Armstrong as writer and Todd Phillips as director/co-writer. Filming was expected to begin in 2004. In a July 2006 interview at Comic Con, Richard Anderson (who played Oscar Goldman in the series) stated that he was involved with producing a movie of the series, but the rights were at the time in litigation between Miramax and Universal.
On November 6, 2014, it was announced that a feature film, tentatively titled The Six Billion Dollar Man, would go into production, with Peter Berg as director and Mark Wahlberg starring. Filming was to begin in early 2015, for a theatrical release the following year. On November 2, 2015 it was reported that Berg had left the film and had been replaced by Damian Szifron, who would also write the script. Filming was to begin in September 2016 with a December 22, 2017 release date. In December 2017, The Weinstein Company sold the rights to Warner Bros.. As of January 2018, they hoped to start filming the movie in mid 2018. In April of that year, a mid 2019 release date was set. The film was moved to June 5, 2020 until Wonder Woman 1984 took over the release date and in April 2019, Travis Knight and Bill Dubuque replaced Szifron as director and writer.
The Other Darrin: No less than three actors play Dr. Rudy Wells during the series, with Martin Balsam playing the role in the original pilot TV movie, Alan Oppenheimer in the other two pre-series movies and then the first two regular seasons, and Martin E. Brooks for the remainder. However, after Brooks had joined the series, Oppenheimer was brought back to play Rudy for a single Season 3 episode, "The Bionic Criminal". The reason for this is that it was a sequel to an earlier episode that the need to include flashbacks required that Oppenheimer be brought back for consistency. Balsam also reprised the role in order to provide narration for the reedited syndicated version of the original TV movie (shown as a two-part episode called "The Moon And The Desert".
When Quicksilver is talking to his mother in X-Men: Apocalypse, his T-shirt has a cartoon print of The Six Million Dollar Man.
Nick at Nite's marathon The Bob, Bob Newhart, Newhart Marathon presented 60-second parodies of Bob Newhart starring in various shows. One of these was The Six Million Dollar Bob.
MAD printed a parody of the show. The opening paragraph leading into the title talked of what a rip-off Steve Austin was to the US taxpayers, concluding with "Just wait 'till you see what we got for The Six Million Dollars, Man!
Goodness Gracious Me gave us the Six Million Rupee Man, about rebuilding an injured rickshaw test pilot. "We have the technology — we don't have the ideal exchange rate."
The Electric Company (1971) featured a recurring "Six Dollar and Thirty-Nine Cent Man" sketch, with a shot-for-shot parody of the opening credits (from Steve Awesome being involved in a skateboarding accident, to rebuilding him to be "Better. Stronger. More fun at parties"). As a bonus, it was narrated by a young Morgan Freeman! Notable also for being a contemporary parody of the series.
An episode of The Venture Brothers featured Brock going on a camping trip and running into Col Steve Sommers, complete with red jumpsuit and Bigfoot.
Steve Sommers: "The Government rebuilt me..made me bigger, stronger, faster. Spent Six million dollars to put me back together...and you know what? They put me to work! They expected me to pay it back! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKES TO PAY BACK SIX MILLION DOLLARS ON A GOVERNMENT SALARY?!?!?"
For a time in the 1990s, Trent Reznor would make hotel reservations using the alias "Steve Austin" after the show, which he was a fan of growing up.
What Could Have Been: Lee Majors almost didn't return for the final season due to a contract dispute. Among those considered to replace him were Harrison Ford (whom the producers felt was unsuitable as an action hero) and Caitlyn Jenner.
Misc. trivia
Probably the closest Real Life has come to the shocking discovery of a Wax Museum Morgue happened when a film crew for The Six Million Dollar Man started rearranging the props in a Long Beach funhouse for a scene they were shooting. Turns out that what the funhouse's owner had believed to be a mannequin was actually a real cadaver: that of Elmer McCurdy, an Oklahoma outlaw shot in 1911. McCurdy's corpse had been embalmed and put on display in sideshows, haunted houses and, yes, wax museums for decades, passing from one owner to the next. Its status as the genuine article was eventually forgotten, until its arm broke off in a crew member's hand. McCurdy was returned to Guthrie, Oklahoma and buried in a Boot Hill cemetery there, under two tons of concrete by order of the state medical examiner so that his remains would no longer be exploited.
called Bionic Squad, where Steve Austin would lead a new team, which then was captured by aliens called "Rapacians", who then would've subjected them to unwilling transformations in their secret moon base, giving them superhuman abilities. The show never made it past the pitch (Monster Force ended up airing alongside Exosquad's second season; ironically, Meugniot had worked on Bionic Six a few years before, which MCA/Universal had distributed).