I enjoyed the moment when Slim Summerville pokes his head in a doorway and exclaims: "All quiet on the western front!" Seeing as how he acted in that movie two years earlier, viewers of the day would have realized he was plugging one of his own credits.
shareAnother inside joke occurs when Pat O'Brien, seeking to find an aviator's coat and headgear for the impromptu planejacking to rescue Bellamy, looks for an unlocked locker in the pilots' area and finds one marked "Paul Mantz," the name of the stunt pilot who actually flies the plane in O'Brien's flying scenes.