Bill Ash escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film "The Great Escape"". The character Hilts, nicknamed "The Cooler King" because of the time he spends in the prison camp's punishment block (which the prisoners call the "cooler") for his persistent escape attempts, steals a motorbike and tries to escape to Switzerland but is caught while using it to jump
The Great Escape (2003 video game) characters escape in the end, whereas in the film, only Sedgwick escapes, Hendley and Hilts are recaptured, and MacDonald is executed. Also, despite the cover showing Hilts with a gun hiding from a guard in the camp, this never occurs in the game or film. Sound bites of Steve McQueen as Hilts were taken from the film and used in the game, famous lines such as "250", "Walking down the road" and "20 feet short" were used to recreate iconic scenes from the film. Two sounds bites of McQueen replying "Yeah" were also used to respond in the affirmative when