Working titles for this episode include: “Direct Impact,” “Crawler Assault,” and “Crawler Commandeers”
The design for the ore crawler is based on the World Devastators, massive flying automated factories unleashed as engines of destruction in the 1991-1992 comics series, Star Wars: Dark Empire, written by Tom Veitch and illustrated by Cam Kennedy.
The TIE defender elite technical specifications read, in Aurebesh, “Technical Readouts Contained in this transmission Have Been Rated Top Secret BY IMPERIAL COMMAND: EYES ONLY.”
Captain Seevor is listening to the same power ballad rock that Zeb favors back in the Season Two episode “The Mystery of Chopper Base.”
The burly guild slave master that Zeb brawls with is named “Proach,” as a nod to Pat Roach, the actor who played the Giant Sherpa and First Mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Thuggee Chief Guard in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Protocol 13 – the evacuation of personnel from an Imperial base or facility – is what the Empire uses to move its forces out of Jedha prior to the Death Star’s test firing.
