Trivia for
Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) More at IMDbPro »

• The window behind the "Transcendental Air" desk shows the cityscape from Logan's Run (1976).
  
  
• William Shatner's character orders a profile on everyone who's seen The Sound of Music (1965) more than four times. That film was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which starred William Shatner three years earlier.
  
  
• The truck that Ted leaps out of to get into the skyport is named "Ken's Trucking" and has a Canadian maple leaf on it. This is an inside joke since "Ken" is Writer-Director Ken Finkleman who is from Canada, hence the Maple Leaf.
  
  
• The theme music used in this movie is from the TV series "Battlestar Galactica" (1978).
  
  
• The hanging lady in the first airplane movie reprises her role as the first victim of Striker's anecdotes as the vomiting lady.
  
  
• The sound effects as the boy in the control room is "playing" with the incoming plane's radar are from the Atari 2600 game Yars' Revenge (1981) (VG).
  
  
• The music played during the shuttle launch is from the 'Nova of Madagon' sequence in "Battlestar Galactica" (1978). The navigator is played by 'Kent McCord' who played Captain Troy on "Galactica 1980" (1980).
  
  
• The Zucker/Abrahams directing trio (Jerry Zucker, David Zucker & Jim Abrahams) claim (on the audio commentary on the DVD release of Airplane! (1980)) never to have seen this film. They initially agreed to a sequel and then balked at the idea at a later date. The movie went ahead without their permission and despite their protests - thus, they refused to watch a single frame of it upon its release - and still haven't over 20 years later.
  
  
• At one point Stryker, speaking to William Shatner's character Buck Murdoch, says "Roger, Murdoch..." Roger Murdoch was the co-pilot in the first film played by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
  
  
• At the Alpha Beta base, a technician tells Buck Murdock that the piece of equipment he is working on has red lights that go back and forth, but no other apparent purpose. This piece of equipment has been seen in many science fiction movies and television shows (including Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Last Starfighter (1984) and an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987)), but its function is never explained.
  
  
• The car they used to jump-start the Space Shuttle prior to launch is a 1958 Ford Edsel, noteworthy as one of the biggest marketing flops in automotive history.
  
  
• The computer keyboards in Mission Control are from the early home computers, the Commodore Vic-20
  
  
• The "navigation chart" Simon is reviewing in preparation for takeoff is the Thomas Bros. Map Guide for Los Angeles County.
  
  
• The truck that Striker jumps out of contains giant pods similar to the pods seen in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
  
  
• Sonny Bono's briefcase is covered with stickers from his previous destinations, which are all cities destroyed by bombs: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor, and Dresden.
  
  
• The fast repeated electronic bleeping noise, used several times during the movie, is the sound of an Atari home computer loading from a disk drive.
  
  
• The machine whose purpose William Shatner's staff cannot fathom is a prop from the Regula 1 Space Station set of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
  
  
• This film was created with the obligation that its creative team return for a third installment. Expectations were so high that the next film was promised at the end of the credits of this one. When the film was released to mediocre box office, plans for Airplane III was doomed. But, the ad remains in most prints.
  
  
• Following the air traffic controller asking to get Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges), there is a scene that was cut from the theatrical version which shows McCroskey in a mental institution. It opens a nurse getting a phone call from the space center asking for McCroskey. Another nurse worries that the call might disturb him, to which the first nurse replies "It's okay. He just thinks he's Lloyd Bridges." As she walks up to his bed, McCroskey is under the sheets with a snorkel poking out (A reference to Bridges's popular series "Sea Hunt"). After she gives him the phone, McCroskey takes the call and then gets out of bed saying "Looks like I picked the wrong week to go senile!" (A reference to his repeated lines from the first film: "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/sniffing glue...") Though cut from the theatrical version, the scene is often inserted in TV viewings to fill time.
  
  
• Among the original passengers who return for the second film are the hysterical woman who gets slapped (during the courtroom scene), the middle-aged couple who talk about the weird things they've done, and the old lady who endures Ted's boring stories. Also, if you look at the peripheral passengers, you'll see a Asian man in what appears to be a soldier's uniform. This may or may not be a slight reference to the Asian soldier in the first film who commits suicide after listening to Ted's stories in the first film.
  
  

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