 In his original novel and those that followed, Caidin depicts Austin as being prepared to kill without pause during his missions - for example, he kills a truck driver to prevent the man from identifying Austin to the enemy.The television version, however, is shown stating outright that he has no desire to kill people, even though he still did so on occasion, and tools such as the poison dart gun in the bionic arm were omitted.Also, since actor Majors was right-handed, it was decided that Austin's bionic arm would be his right, not his left as depicted in the novels.