The Chris Carter Effect: Seasons 3 and 4 were regarded as suffering from this, due to lack of any real plot development and repetitive storylines. The writing team picked up on this as the ratings dropped and wrote out a Grand Finale that actually solved the mystery and gave the show a proper conclusion.
The series also played a big role in creating the entire idea of TV shows having a Grand Finale. While largely just as episodic as most other shows of the time, the fact that Kimble had such a solid Series Goal in finding the One-Armed Man and proving his innocence allowed the final episode to be built around that very thing, which led to it becoming the highest-rated TV broadcast for more than a decade and convinced many other shows to do the same thing, rather than the more rerun-friendly setup of ending on just another regular episode. It took many years before it became common.
Robert Duvall in "Never Wave Goodbye (Parts 1 and 2)" and "Brass Ring".
Bruce Dern in five episodes: "The Other Side of the Mountain", "Come Watch Me Die", "Corner of Hell", "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" and "The Devil's Disciples".
Jonathan Goldsmith in "There Goes the Ball Game" (billed as Jonathan Lippe).
Special Effect Failure: The train derailment, shown in the Season 1 opening, is very obviously done with a miniature model. It doesn't help that it's clearly a French train.
Spiritual Adaptation: The series shares several plot and thematic elements with the novel and film Dark Passage, to the point where the novel's author (unsuccessfully) sued the show's producers for copyright infringement.
The Un-Twist: The series finale is a two-part story. In Part 1, the One-Armed Man is caught and held in jail for an unrelated crime, but is inexplicably bailed out by someone else. He tells the bail bondsman that he didn't kill Helen Kimble but saw who did and it wasn't her husband. When Kimble breaks into the bondsman's office later, he finds the bondsman dead, murdered, and sees in the bondsman's file that the name of the person who paid for the One-Armed Man's bail is... Leonard Taft, Kimble's own brother-in-law! In the week that passed in between the initial airing of both parts, speculation that Len would turn out to be the killer was so rampant that Las Vegas oddsmakers picked Len to be the odds on favorite for being Helen's killer. In Part 2, it turns out that, nope, the One-Armed Man was just lying to the bondsman whom he then murdered. He really did kill Helen. It even turns out that Len wasn't even the guy who paid the One-Armed Man's bail. Instead it was a next-door neighbor who had witnessed the One-Armed Man murdering Helen and told no one about it, who paid the bail using Len's name.
As one of the producers said later, "If it hadn't been the One-Armed Man who did it, it would have been a joke. (Kimble) would have looked like a jerk. What was he doing for four years, chasing the wrong guy?"
Values Dissonance: On the night of Helen Kimble's death, she and Richard had a shouting match over whether or not Helen could love an adopted child, reminding us that adoption was once less widely accepted than it is now.
The Woobie: Kimble, of course. It's an essential part of his Plot Armor. Everybody Kimble meets will either 1) instantly believe he's innocent, 2) will realize he's innocent by the end of the episode, or 3) be a guilty criminal. And Gerard.
The 1993 film
Adaptation Displacement: At least to some extent, since the film was made 26 years after the TV show ended, although most viewers were at least aware that the show existed.
Award Snub: Two major ones were highlighted at the time that the movie received its Academy Award nominations including Best Picture: Harrison Ford not given one for Best Actor and Andrew Davis not given one for Best Director.
Catharsis Factor: Throughout the movie, the CPD have done nothing but accuse, chase, and hunt down Kimble like some preordained criminal. Even when they brought him in for questioning, he was guilty in their eyes before they started to investigate the crime scene. At every conference, they respond to their interviewers with hard-nosed pride that Kimble is a killer who murdered his wife because she was "more rich". By the end, when Kimble clears his name, the CPD are left battling questions from interviewers about their glaring incompetence and poor judgement (and that's not even getting into the questions they're going to face once the press finds out that Sykes is a former CPD cop). Not to mention they'll have to answer for trying to get an innocent (and grieving) widower executed for the rest of their career.
A drug company doing its best to sell a drug they know is toxic? Ridiculous!
Ho Yay: Subtle but there with Sam Gerard and Richard Kimble. Sam refuses to believe in Richard's guilt, Richard calls Sam's office despite having no reason to trust him, Sam's blatantly lying when he says he doesn't care, and Richard lampshades it at the end of the film. There's a reason these two won "Best Onscreen Duo" at the MTV Movie Awards despite their adversarial relationship.
The novelization takes it even further, explicitly stating that Kimble calls Gerard because despite everything, he's come to respect him and realize that he needs them on his side. Gerard himself begins to feel sincere concern for Kimble's wellbeing, even as he still thinks he's guilty, which kicks into high gear upon realizing that he's innocent. By the end, the two of them share a Meaningful Look after Kimble becomes so overwhelmed with gratitude that Gerard is now his ally that he can't even speak.
Iron Woobie: Kimble. Between grieving his wife and literally running for his life, you can count on one hand the number of times the poor guy doesn't seem to be this close to bursting into tears. The iron comes from his relentless determination to clear his name and find his wife's killer.
Someone who's obviously, visibly guilty of something blaming "the one-armed man" (also doubles as Analogy Backfire, seeing as how Kimble was telling the truth).
Helen's murder. Imagine that you're supposedly safe in the comfort of your home, preparing for a romantic evening, only to be suddenly and brutally attacked by an intruder, with all your efforts to fight back in vain.
During the train crash scene, the way the train cars decouple and smash into the ground make it seem as though the train is actively trying to kill Kimble as he scrambles to safety.
The whole scenario. A loved one is murdered and you're wrongly convicted and sentenced to death—it is estimated that 1 out of 9 death row inmates are innocent.
Out of the Ghetto: On paper, the film is a rather straightforward action thriller, making no overt attempts at being Oscar Bait or anything more than a popcorn-chewing suspense ride to close the summer. But because it was so well-acted and developed, critics almost unanimously praised its craftmanship, with several notables like Roger Ebert unequivocally deeming it one of the best films of the year. On top of being an expected box office smash, the film wound up with sevenAcademy Award nominations and netting Tommy Lee Jones a statuette for Best Supporting Actor, accolades rarely doled out for action movies.
Neil Flynn as the cop on the subway, especially due to the scene's appearance in Scrubs.
L. Scott Caldwell (Rose from Lost) is one of the marshals in Gerard's team.
Jane Lynch has four lines as a doctor being questioned by the marshals, who Richard later goes to talk to.
One of the reporters in the climactic scene interrogating the Chicago cops is future NBC News anchor Lester Holt. He was a Chicago journalist at the time, and the filmmakers roped him and some other local reporters in to do what they did best.
Signature Line: "I didn't kill my wife!" "I don't care!"
Signature Scene: The dam jump and the prison bus / train wreck escape.
Special Effects Failure: Although the visual effects overall are good, especially for the time (see below), there are a few moments that don't hold up quite so well.
The shots where Kimble falls from the waterfall use a very obvious dummy.
When Kimble drives the ambulance into the tunnel, the shot of the dam is a still shot (notice that the water isn't moving?)
were recycled