It Was Pretty Much based on 1957’s ‘Zero Hour!’
Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker were childhood friends from Shorewood, Wisconsin, but moved to Los Angeles to make movies together. They were responsible for the sketch comedy group Kentucky Fried Theater. The comic trio made a habit of recording late-night TV, looking for commercials that they could make fun of for their parodies.
It’s how they discovered the film ‘Zero Hour!,’ which also featured a main character named Ted Stryker (in Airplane!, it’s Ted Striker), they knew they had to make a parody of it. They wanted to make sure the camera angles and lighting on Airplane! matched those of Zero Hour!, so the trio always had the movie in queued on set. And yes, they bought the rights to their semi-source material.