The grandfather of the film Western was a primitive but landmark ten-minute movie made in New Jersey, The Great Train Robbery (1903). Its plot is said to have been inspired by the August 1900 hold-up of a Union Pacific train by Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall Gang. The bandits forced the conductor to uncouple the passenger cars from the rest of the train and then blew up the safe in the mail car to escape with about $5,000 in cash.

William Goldman said many young people saw the superposse as a metaphor in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the government/authority during the years of anti-war protests. He said his students said the similarity lay in the relentlessness by which both "would hunt you down."

The huge popularity of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is evident in the publishing of the screenplay in a mass-market paperback, not a common practice at the time.

Such was the popularity of Newman and Redford as a film team that they were paired again for another comic adventure as a couple of con men in the period caper film The Sting (1973), a multiple award winner (including Best Picture Oscar) and a huge box office success. It was also directed by George Roy Hill.

When he founded his now famous and internationally respected independent film institute and festival in Park City, Utah, Robert Redford named it Sundance after his character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Paul Newman's charity for children with serious medical conditions is named Hole in the Wall Camp after Butch's gang

Callie Khouri acknowledged that her script for Thelma & Louise (1991) was "winking to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and that her characters were meant as female versions of the outlaws.

The characters of Butch and Sundance have been referenced innumerable times: in songs by such musicians as Bon Jovi and Robbie Williams; in such TV shows as The West Wing, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Stargate SG-1; the comic book "Hitman"; and in the movie The Way of the Gun (2000), in which the protagonists are called Parker and Longbaugh (the real names of Cassidy and the Kid).

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is specifically referenced in the video game "Max Payne"; the films A Little Romance (1979, also directed by George Roy Hill, in which one character raptly watches a French-dubbed version of the Hill film), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Mallrats (1995, with a menacing security guard character named La Fours, a variation on the name of the officer leading the superposse pursuing Butch and Sundance), Anger Management (2003), and Spider-Man 2 (2004); on the TV show The Simpsons," in an episode showing Homer and Marge riding a bike while "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" plays; and in Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing, in which the female lead references the characters jumping off the cliff.

For obvious reasons, a sequel was out of the question, but a prequel was made by director Richard Lester, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979), with Tom Berenger as Butch and William Katt as Sundance. Jeff Corey reprised his role as Sheriff Ray Bledsoe.

Another version of the story was filmed for TV, The Legend of Butch and Sundance (2004).

Etta Place was the protagonist of two fictional accounts of what may have happened to her after the end of this story. She was played by Elizabeth Montgomery in Mrs. Sundance (1974) and by the originator of the role, Katharine Ross, in Wanted: The Sundance Woman (1976), in which she teams up with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Both were made for TV.

Hal Holbrook narrated a documentary about the real Butch and Sundance, Butch Cassidy and the Outlaw Trail (2003).

Either or both of the characters have appeared numerous times in movies and television shows. Charles Bronson played Butch in a 1958 episode of the series Tales of Wells Fargo. Neville Brand played him twice, in The Three Outlaws (1956) and Badman's Country (1958). In the first movie, Sundance was played by Alan Hale, Jr. and in the second by Russell Johnson, both of whom later starred in Gilligan's Island, as the Skipper and the Professor, respectively. Robert Ryan played the Sundance Kid in Return of the Bad Men (1948), which featured a number of legendary outlaw characters, including the Daltons, the Youngers, and Billy the Kid, but not Butch Cassidy. Butch did appear as a minor character in Cat Ballou (1965), a comic Western that may be seen as a stylistic forerunner to this movie.

Although singer B.J. Thomas's agents thought the use of the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" in the movie would ruin his career, it actually became his biggest hit.

Elements of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have been seen as homages or references to two Francois Truffaut films. The relationship of Butch, Sundance, and Etta has been compared to the romantic triangle in Jules et Jim (1962), which also featured a similar bicycle scene, and the final freeze frame has been linked to the landmark shot at the end of Les quatre cents coups/The 400 Blows (1959).

It has been noted that the burro that plays a part in the duo's betrayal at the end bears an identical brand to the one that also has a hand in the betrayal of Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

by Rob Nixon