Scenes from this episode (mainly the ending where Crockett shoots down the helicopter and when the Revilla warehouse is blown up) were used in the music video for "Miami Vice Theme" by Jan Hammer. Many of the shots of New York buildings were used in the music video for "Crockett's Theme".
With 14 different songs used, this episode includes the most pop songs of any episode in the series.
Paul Michael Glaser suggested to Michael Mann that the second season opener needed to be another two-hour episode, like the pilot was, because the show was red-hot at the time. Mann agreed, and the episode was scripted as a two hour opener.
The episode was repeated as the NBC Sunday Night Movie on March 23, 1986, the second time (of three total) that Vice aired on Sunday.
Crockett and Tubbs fly home on Eastern Airlines, one of the "big four" airlines in the US until deregulation in the 1980s. It shut down permanently in 1991.