Writer Richard Matheson said he was mostly pleased with Twilight Zone's version of his short story - except for the gremlin. He'd conceived it as a dark, creepy and nearly-invisible humanoid figure. "But this thing," he complained, "looked more like a panda bear."
William Shatner played an elaborate prank on set when he conspired with a friend who was visiting the filming, actor Edd Byrnes, to trick director Richard Donner into thinking Shatner died. During a filming break, and when Donner was off set, Shatner and Byrnes staged a fake fight on the set, which was suspended some 30 feet above the studio floor. When Donner ran back in the studio to see what was happening the two men chased each other around the back of the airplane set and wound up atop the plane wing. Donner saw a body falling off the wing and Byrnes yelling in terror as it impacted the concrete floor. Donner said when he ran to the fallen, motionless figure, thinking it was a dead or grievously injured William Shatner, he was greeted with laughter the moment he realized it was just an articulated human dummy the two men had found in another part of the studio and threw off the wing. Donner later joked, "Honestly, my first reaction was, 'Don't tell me I have to shoot the whole show over again.'"
This episode was one of four to be remade for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). The relevant segment was directed by George Miller. In the movie, John Lithgow played the William Shatner role. Shatner and Lithgow appeared together in Dick's Big Giant Headache: Part 1 (1999), where both characters insist they have been on an airplane that a gremlin tried to crash.
One of six TZ episodes directed by Richard Donner. According to Donner, due to scheduling constraints and technical issues with the simulated weather, airplane engines, and a multitude of other special effect challenges, it was also one the show's most difficult shoots. Filming crammed three days of work into two and demanded extraordinarily long hours from the cast and crew.
Richard Matheson originally wanted Patricia Breslin to play Bob Wilson's wife, because she had played the wife of another William Shatner character very well in Nick of Time (1960), a story also written by Matheson.