The back of Jimmy's jacket says "King Louis". King Louie is the name of the Borden orangutan in Walt Disney's 1967 animated film "The Jungle Book", as well as the Gigantopithecus in the 2016 adaptation.
As the emotional sounds that chimps make do not in any way resemble those of humans, it was decided to create their vocalizations using actors. Every chimp sound in the picture, other than one very brief outburst, is ADR. The role of Goliath, the giant ape, was voiced by the African-American actor Arthur Burghardt, who played Dr. Jack Scott on One Life to Live (1968) and the smallest female chimp, Daisy, was voiced by Anne Lockhart of Battlestar Galactica (1978) fame. Norman B. Schwartz was the vocal effects director.
In the scene where the security guards are watching the game, the second guard refers to the first guard by the surname Froman. Abe Froman is the alias used by Matthew Broderick's character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).
James Horner used elements from his "Aliens" score, most notably when "Blue Beard" is first taken downstairs. The music played is almost note for note the main theme to Aliens.
The flight simulator program used appears to have been based on the Northrop F-20 Tigershark, a low-cost, light weight fighter aircraft developed in the early 1980's from Northrop's older F-5E. First flying in 1982, the Tigershark gained widespread media coverage, including publicized flights by USAF legend Chuck Yeager, and a cameo in a commercial for Diet Coke. Despite the attention, the Tigershark failed to win enough orders to warrant production, and was abandoned by 1986.