Production notes

Hercules in New York was the acting debut of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was 22 years old. At the time he was living in Los Angeles and making ends meet by running a bricklaying business with fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu, while weight training and participating in bodybuilding competitions. Schwarzenegger, who had expressed interest in pursuing an acting career, auditioned at the encouragement of his friend Reg Park, a successful bodybuilder who had starred in a series of successful "Hercules" films produced in Italy. According to Schwarzenegger, during his audition his agent said he had years of "stage" experience, implying theater, when he had only appeared on bodybuilding stages. The film was also the directorial debut of Arthur Allan Seidelman, who up until then had only directed theatre. The film was independently produced on a low budget, and filmed entirely in real locations in New York City. Several scenes including an elaborate chariot chase were shot without permits. Playing the film's title character, Schwarzenegger, because of his long last name and to play off the name of fellow cast member comedian Arnold Stang, is credited as "Arnold Strong 'Mr. Universe'". At the time filming began, Schwarzenegger had just come in first place in both professional and amateur Universe Championships. Production of the film coincided with his training for the competition for the second year in a row, and after it ended, he won the professional title again, beating Park. Schwarzenegger had all his lines dubbed by an uncredited voice actor due to his thick Austrian accent, although the Trimark DVD has an "Original English Dialogue" audio track with Arnold's voice. However, in that version's final scene, Schwarzenegger's voice is not restored when Hercules speaks to Pretzie through his small transistor radio, since that scene was shot without Schwarzenegger present and the voice was added via ADR.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 14% of 7 critics' reviews are positive. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 23 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally negative" reviews.