In one scene, David ('Bill Bixby') does a magic trick and "magically" finds a quarter behind the Louie's ear. In real Life, Bill Bixby was an accomplished stage magician and was a respected member of the Hollywood magic community, belonging to The Magic Castle, an exclusive club for magicians. Bixby also starred in a short-lived TV series called The Magician (1973), in which he played a former stage magician and amateur crime solver. In that series, Bixby insisted on doing all of the magic tricks without resorting to trick photography.
Features a very realistic Voodoo ceremony, complete with candles, fire, trance music, drummers, chants and trance dancers. In reality, this religion is (or was) called Hoodoo, which is the name given in USA to the religion originating in Haiti, or Vaudou in French. Voodoo is a derivative from the French, originally strictly used in Hollywood productions, but nowadays has long made its way into mainstream culture to replace the word "Hoodoo".
When David Banner takes leave and shakes hands at the end, he pronounces Bill Bixby's catch phrase "Be good to yourself", which was a credo Bixby lived by, for he believed "if you are good to yourself, then you'll be kind to everyone else", as he said in one of his final televised interviews on E.T., adding "and I'd still like to see that".