The tech stuck behind the ATM is based on a news item out of Corpus Christi, Texas, which took place on June 13, 2017. A similar scenario was depicted in Stuck (2018), which also took place in Los Angeles. In that instance, it was viewed from the aspect of the fire department.
When Nolan (Nathan Fillion) is asked if becoming a cop was his "Plan B" he says "More like Plan D...astronaut, law school, construction, then cop." The 'astronaut' line is a nod to his role as Captain Mal Reynolds of the spaceship Firefly (2002).
When Bishop tells Nolan people do what's right when it's easy but that "when push comes to shove everyone crosses the line," he sarcastically remarks that he "must have missed that chapter in Gandhi's biography." Gandhi's wife died of treatable pneumonia because he refused to show the doctors to give her penicillin, which would have cured her, because it was alien to her body and that was against his beliefs; when sometime later he himself contracted malaria he suddenly had no issue with the alien quinine administered to cure him. An ironic example for Nolan to choose to dispute Bishop's theory.