Between his escape from the insane asylum and his ransom call, the movie's main villain, John Worfin, is not seen for more than 42 straight minutes - over 40% of the film's runtime.
In one scene, Reno refers to Orson Welles as "the guy from the old wine commercials". This is a reference to Welles' popular TV commercials in the 1970s for the Paul Masson Winery (now known as Mountain Winery), where he used the slogan "We will sell no wine before it's time." In the early 1980s, Welles was fired from the advertising campaign after stating on a US talk show that he never drank the company's wine.
During the closing credit sequence with Buackaroo Banzai and the gang walking in the aqueduct, Perfect Tommy is first seen wearing a white jacket and black pants. As they take their final turn in front of the "Buckaroo Banzai" graffiti on the wall, Perfect Tommy is wearing a completely different outfit - gray jacket and red pants.
When Banzai is in the rocket car, and plugs the module in, you can hear them reading out his location as N28º 36' 30.32", W80º 36' 14.8". This is the location of the Saturn causeway at Kennedy Space Center. NOT the middle of a desert, with a convenient mountain to fly through.
General Catburd: The man's been through solid matter, for crying out loud. Who knows what's happened to his brain? Maybe it's scrambled his molecules. All I'm saying is, Mr. President, let's not panic.
Two answers from the Blue Blaze Irregulars fan club (way back in the eighties). We all received a newsletter that had an interview with the makers: 1) they said that they added that line to add a bit of humor to the chase scene and 2) they said that, in the reality of the movie, Buckaroo is always looking to help the poor without having to deal with governments, so the watermelon is being tested to withstand the forces of being air-dropped to the hungry. Can't have our watermelons exploding upon impact, can we?In the DVD commentary, the director states that the watermelon was put in the scene to test whether the studio was actually looking at the dailies.