Question: Who was "Nimrod"?
raywest
17th Sep 2021
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
10th Jun 2021
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
Question: What exactly is the "cooler"?
Answer: It's a solitary cell. Steve McQueen, star of 'The Great Escape' is known as the 'Cooler King'.
6th Mar 2021
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
Question: Many times Hogan and company manage to actually escape Stalag 13, especially at night. If they can escape so easily, then why doesn't everybody in the whole Stalag do it and head to an American Embassy?
Answer: The core POWs regularly escaped and returned to the prison camp because they made it their mission to conduct espionage and commit sabotage in the surrounding German territory. They also collaborated with different underground resistance groups and used a network of secret tunnels to help prisoners from other POW camps to escape, who then relayed vital information back to the Allied forces. Hogan and his men maintained the illusion that Stalag 13 had never had any prisoners escape in order to avoid their covert operations being shut down. Being that the prison camp is set in Germany during WWII, there were no American embassies.
Hogan has mentioned to different characters that they are actually stationed at Stalag 13 to help allied soldiers and prisoners from other Stalags to escape Germany.
6th Jul 2020
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
Question: Why do they use gas lamps in the tunnels when they have electricity?
Answer: They would need to have access to a large amount of electrical wiring, lights, and other supplies to rig a usable lighting system. Using electricity could also drain power from the rest of the camp, alerting the Germans that something is going on.
Also. The power would go out during air raids and the like. Whereas oil could be used to stay lit no matter what (despite the fact that it uses oxygen from the tunnel and the fumes would probably kill you).
19th Sep 2017
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
Question: In this episode, Hogan and company used gold bars disguised as bricks to replace the destroyed wooden steps. However, the next episode, "Hello Zolle", the steps are back to wood. Is this considered a Continuity mistake or was it cost a cost cutting measure?
Chosen answer: It was neither of those. In earlier TV shows, it was typical that each episode was a self-contained story, and the plots and non-regular characters were rarely carried over from previous shows to the next. Any problems or situations were resolved at the end, even if some plot threads were illogically left unexplained. This allowed episodes to be aired in any random order. Today's TV series usually have ongoing linear timelines and continuous plots that are played out over multiple seasons.
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Answer: Nimrod's actual identity was never revealed in the series. It was only known that he was a British intelligence agent. Nimrod was not Colonel Klink. Hogan had only implied it was him as a ruse to get Klink returned as camp commandant, not wanting him replaced by someone more competent who would impede the Heroes war activities. The term "nimrod" is also slang for a nerdy, doofus type of person, though it's unclear why that was his code name.
raywest ★
"Nimrod" is originally a king and hero mentioned in the Tanach and taken into the Bible and the Koran. His name is often used in the sense of "stalker," "hunter," and sometimes figuratively as "womanizer" as in "hunter of women." I've never seen it used to denote a nerdy person, and although I cannot disprove that connotation, I think given his role, the traditional meaning is more likely the intended one.
Doc ★
It's widespread enough that Wikipedia has an entire section on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#In_popular_culture