In a 2005 interview, composer Mike Post said that Joey Scarbury “was an artist that I was producing, and had produced on three different record companies before that – unsuccessfully in terms of hits, but successfully in terms of how great a singer he was.” Post recalled that producer Stephen J. Cannell told him, “This guy’s flying around in a suit and he lost the instructions, and he’s got this right-wing CIA agent for a control guy.” Post responded, “Cannell, this is nuts.” Post had written a theme song with lyrics by Stephen Geyer for the short-lived Cannell series Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, and Cannell suggested doing that again for this show.

We’ll call up Stephen Geyer and see if he can write a lyric where maybe he can make an analogy between love and flying in a suit.”[3] The theme song became a popular hit during the run of The Greatest American Hero.

[5] In the season 8 episode of Seinfeld titled "The Susie", an answering machine message consists of a parody of "Believe It or Not".

[6] As a tribute to the Seinfeld episode, the song appeared in a 2021 TV commercial for Tide that aired during CBS' telecast of Super Bowl LV on February 7, 2021, starring Jason Alexander, whose character George Costanza recorded the parody lyrics as his answering machine message.

In the Gilmore Girls episode "Tippecanoe and Taylor, Too", the show's fictional band Hep Alien perform the song at Jackson Belleville's rally for Stars Hollow Town Selectman.