Trivia / Airplane II: The Sequel

• B-Team Sequel: Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker initially agreed to a sequel to Airplane!, and then balked at the idea at a later date. Airplane II: The Sequel went ahead without their permission, and despite their protests - thus, they refused to watch a single frame of it upon its release - and over four decades later say they still haven't seen it.
• Deleted Scene: There were many deleted scenes and gags in the shooting script for the movie that got cut out of the theatrical versions but were often seen in syndication, on television networks like CBS and basic cable channels like TBS, TNT, USA Network and Comedy Central in order to fill time. Among those gags cut from the theatrical film and not made available on DVD, Blu-Ray or digital streaming are...
  • Mission Control clearing the no-frills charter flight 794 to deplane her passengers by way of tether and slide wire
  • The rich Texan passenger giving a $1000 donation to the Heart Charity causing their representative to keel over dead from a heart attack.
  • A night orderly at the Ronald Reagan Hospital finds Striker's newspaper with a back headline "Elaine on shuttle too!" and pulls the covers off the patient's bed to reveal a black and white cardboard standee of Striker in place of the real one. The orderly shrieks his head off thinking Striker has either died or killed himself as our hero escapes to Houston Airport.
  • The bomber, Joe Seluchi, talks with his wife at the Pan Universe check-in desk as we learn why he is what he is and why he is supposed to catch a flight to Des Moines instead of the Moon.
  • A quick scene of Seluchi boarding the Mayflower followed by the rich Texan as they are greeted by the stewardesses Mary and Testa.
  • Another quick scene in Mission Control as the black Controller reports a "Condition Green" as a green-faced controller (played by Frank Ashmore - Flight Engineer Victor Basta from the original Airplane!) is given some pills and water by a doctor played by Earl Boen.
  • Once the Mayflower is underway to the Moon, Mary hands the rich Texan all the volumes of the Talmud and Striker an issue of "Modern Electronics" which sparks as he reads before Striker gives the Texan the magazine to go off for some oxygen.
  • Another good Who's on First? routine as Testa takes the flight crew's breakfast orders but confusion about the order of steak and eggs comes when first Testa confuses Captain Oveur's egg order to be poached and over when he just wants them poached, and then Navigator Unger and First Officer Dunn perk up when Oveur tells Testa he wants his steak underdone.
  • When Testa is serving coffee to the middle aged couple of Dave and Edith Walters, the door to the computer room opens as Unger tries to escape being sucked out the airlock by ROK 9000. Testa shrieks and tries to save Unger while accidentally dropping the coffee on Edith, but only gets Unger's line of laundry as he and Dunn are finally ejected out into space.
  • Two nurses at the old folks' home are called by Mission Control who give the phone to McCroskey as he parodies his actor Lloyd Bridges' other famous show Sea Hunt ^note By that time, his lungs were aching for air! and snaps out of his decline saying "Looks like I picked the wrong time to go senile!".
  • McCroskey and the controllers at Mission Control get increasingly frustrated in trying to contact the Mayflower that they start destroying the CAPCOM console like how Mrs. Hammen was shaken down in the original.
  • As the Mayflower shuttle continues towards the Sun, Elaine removes her uniform jacket as Striker sees they are closer to the Sun than he originally estimates. Back in the cabin, the passengers drop like flies from the heat with two businessmen conversing in only sauna towels.
  • The Sarge arrives to explain the damage Seluchi's bomb could do over diagrams of the lunar shuttle with no point being made to McCroskey.
  • McCroskey demands to know if Striker and Elaine have got Seluchi's bomb. When they reply they do, McCroskey and the controllers each sound off "He's got the bomb!" in a round. Controller Jacobs calls it just like an election in Iran. Meanwhile, the Commissioner gets on the phone to the White House where he briefs presumably President Reagan (played by Kruger's actor, Rip Torn) on the Mayflower's distress.
  • Simon Kurtz, having lost both the ship and Elaine due to the disaster, dirtily deserts his duty and bails out taking the Mayflower's only Escape Pod in a premature ejection to an unknown fate.
• Franchise Zombie: ZAZ has made it quite clear that they had no part or interest in the sequel (in the first movie's DVD commentary, they admit they've never even seen it), thinking that all of the good ideas had been used.
• Prop Recycling: Lampshaded with 'The thing with red lights that go back and forth' which has appeared on many sci-fi shows and movies before and since (including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Next Generation).
• Real-Life Relative: The woman at the information desk asking if she should fake her orgasms was played by Marcie Lafferty, then-wife of William Shatner.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker were courted by Paramount for an Airplane! sequel, and after initial hesitation, cooked up a concept: Airplane II: The Godfather. Rather than rehash the airplane setting, this one would focus on the revelation that Ted was a member of the Corleone family, and Elaine struggling to deal with it, and all the other main characters from the first film would somehow end up as part of the story. The legal hassles in getting permission to spoof The Godfather consigned it to Development Hell, and ZAZ dropped out at that point, but Paramount pushed ahead with a sequel anyway. Jim Abrahams would eventually direct and co-write a mafia spoof on his own, Jane Austen's Mafia!.
  • Leslie Nielsen turned down an offer to return as his character Dr. Rumack because of his commitment to Police Squad!. His character only appears in flashback sequences to the first film and his role was replaced by the character of Dr. Stone.
• You Look Familiar: Several passengers from the first movie return as different characters (with pretty much the same personalities).

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