The conjecturally perfect Kirillov-Reshetikhin (KR) crystals are known to be isomorphic as classical crystals to certain Demazure subcrystals of crystal graphs of irreducible highest weight modules over affine algebras. Under some assumptions we show that the classical isomorphism from the Demazure crystal to the KR crystal, sends zero arrows to zero arrows. This implies that the affine crystal structure on these KR crystals is unique.

For nonexceptional types, we prove a conjecture of Hatayama et al. about the prefectness of Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals.

We provide combinatorial models for all Kirillov--Reshetikhin crystals of nonexceptional type, which were recently shown to exist. For types D_n^(1), B_n^(1), A_{2n-1}^(2) we rely on a previous construction using the Dynkin diagram automorphism which interchanges nodes 0 and 1. For type C_n^(1) we use a Dynkin diagram folding and for types A_{2n}^(2), D_{n+1}^(2) a similarity construction. We also show that for types C_n^(1) and D_{n+1}^(2) the analog of the Dynkin diagram automorphism exists on the level of crystals.