In style, attitude, and pushing the envelope of violence, the film can be seen as a major precursor to modern-day action films, particularly those that feature a group of unlikely heroes banding together for impossible missions.

Critics have noted that sections of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) borrow heavily from this picture, not least the violent wish-fulfillment fantasy of a sneak attack on Hitler and his high command during a social occasion.

The movie inspired three loosely connected sequels, all of them television movies. The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985) featured Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel in their original roles in a story once again revolving around convicted soldiers recruited for a deadly mission. Borgnine turned up as General Worden again in The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987), in which Telly Savalas had the lead, not as his character from the first movie, who was killed, but as an Army major leading his misfit band to destroy a nerve gas manufacturing plant. Borgnine and Savalas reprised their roles one last time in The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988) with yet another renegade soldiers plot. There was also a short-lived TV series that aired in 1988 with none of the original cast or characters.

Some shots and sequences from the original were edited into the first (1985) sequel.

The Dirty Dozen bears close resemblance to an earlier movie about criminals and misfits being recruited for a dangerous covert mission. Although a B movie in just about every respect, The Secret Invasion (1964) was director Roger Corman's most expensive project to that date. Corman later said he had heard that the producers of The Dirty Dozen actually postponed production for a year because of the story similarities. Corman noted that both films shared some plot points with his first directorial effort, Five Guns West (1955), in which a group of condemned Southern prisoners are promised pardons if they undertake a mission that could prove suicidal.

A remake of The Dirty Dozen has been bandied about for a few years. Reportedly, Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006) is writing the screenplay.

In the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Tom Hanks compares his emotional reaction to the combat scene in this movie to the way Rita Wilson's character reacts to An Affair to Remember (1957).

The term "dirty dozen" is now in fairly widespread use, generally for a group of undesirables, such as the 12 most contaminated types of produce or the IRS list of the most common tax scams. The National Recreation and Park Association also uses the term for the 12 most common playground safety concerns, and the League of Conservation Voters groups under that title the members of Congress who consistently vote against environmental causes.

There is a popular music group in New Orleans known as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Across the U.S., several foot races with mud pits and obstacles, usually for charity, are termed The Dirty Dozen.

A book published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, examining the 12 so-called "worst" Supreme Court cases from the authors' point of view is called The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom.

Jake McNiece, one of the Filthy 13 whose exploits inspired the novel on which this film was based, wrote a memoir of his war years (with historian Richard Killblane), The Filthy Thirteen: From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest - The True Story of the 101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers (Casemate, 2003).

Trini Lopez's recording of the song he sang in the movie, "The Bramble Bush," reached number 4 on the US adult contemporary charts.

The "Last Supper" scene is similar to one used in another Vietnam-era anti-war film set during an earlier war (Korea), M.A.S.H. (1970). It's not clear if Aldrich's scene influenced Robert Altman a few years later since evocations of the Last Supper appeared in other films before The Dirty Dozen, notably Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (1961).

The scene with Jim Brown running through the chateau grounds, dropping grenades to blow up the building, played on the audience's awareness of his famous touchdown runs as a pro football player.

Four of the actors in this movie--Clint Walker, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Brown--were cast as the voices of the animated figures in the film Small Soldiers (1998).

Director-actor Ron Howard told Moviefone.com that despite being a child star for several years on television and in the movies, it was The Dirty Dozen that really got him excited about film craft. "It was perfect. I was twelve, thirteen years old; going through puberty. Here was this totally macho rock 'em-sock 'em, heroic action movie--one of the best 'mission' movies ever made. Everything about it, top to bottom, was cool. And it turned me on to the movies. In a lot of ways, it made me want to go to the movies every single week to try and have the kind of experience that would just take you away."

By Rob Nixon