During the final scene with the entire school and alumni singing the "Fame" theme song, the cameras pull back until the entire soundstage can be seen, breaking the "fourth wall" in doing so.
The storyline involving choreographer and school alumnus Michael Taftner (played by Russ Tamblyn) refers to a the fictitious movie "Four Brothers," and supposedly shows a dance scene from that movie using an ax as a prop. The scenes shown are indeed Tamblyn, taken from the 1954 film, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," and he duplicates the ax routine dance some 33 years after the original.
Lori Singer is the only one of the ten original main cast members from the first season not to appear during this finale.
Debbie Allen's first cut for the series finale ended up almost 20 minutes too long. The producers tried to convince MGM to air the show as a 90 minute special, but the syndication contracts prohibited any episode longer than 60 minutes. This meant a subplot in which Shorofsky encouraged Ian and Bruno to work together on a classical piece of music had to be cut.
During the final performance, many crew members are visible in the crowd, including former executive producer William Blinn. According to Blinn, he had a small television monitor strapped to his back so that Debbie Allen, who was directing as well as appearing in the scene, could see what the camera was capturing.