When Kolchak looks at the wrecked car and is told the driver survived, he replies "Lee Petty couldn't survive a crash like that!" Darren McGavin played Lee Petty in 43: The Richard Petty Story (1972).
Kolchak asks if he will be required to sign his name in blood, and Palmer says yes. This is in keeping with the short story "The Devil & Daniel Webster", and the opera "Faust", where contractees with the Devil sign in blood when agreeing to sell their souls.
Tom Skerritt, who plays a man who sold his soul to the devil, later played William Shatner's brother in The Devil's Rain (1975), in which he fights the devil.