According to the synopsis I’ve just read, they were assembling B-17s, which suggests to me that you’re describing the ball turret that hung beneath the fuselage. The two .50 machine guns look a bit like the EVA pod’s gripper arms and the central window is a similar shape. And they both killed people!
The pod design also turns up in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, as kind of background joke, although it’s probably not the same physical prop (might be from 2010, though):
Here’s a website dedicated to recycled TV & movie costumes. Some I think could just be made with the same patterns, others look absolutely the same.
Sets resurface all the time as well. If you watch the Atlanta scenes of Gone With the Wind then watch various episodes of Bonanza, The Andy Griffith Show, the “City on the Edge of Forever” episode of Star Trek, and many other movies and shows you’ll notice the same buildings (particularly the big church and the hotel [two of the most distinctive]) in all of them.
In the burning of Altlanta scene in Gone With the Wind, the director used left over wooden sets in the MGM lot, including the giant wooden gates from Skull Island in King Kong. You can see the gate collapsing at 3:10 here.
Did they not also burn the set from The Thief of Baghdad?
When they made the Charlie’s Angels movie in 2000, they located and used the original telephone speaker from the seventies television series.
The warehouse scene in Indiana Jones IV has a few shout-outs to classical movie props, including Moses’ staff from “The ten commandments”.
