Lovejoy, You are rather generous with that observation - I would like to expand that to the rest of the flight deck as well. They must have loaded a cannon with switches and fired it at a cockpit mockup - where one stuck, it remained.
With regards to the power levers moving rearward to increase power, I seem to remember that the Luftwaffe operated some FIAT G-50 as advanced trainers. They had a remarkable number of accidents on this aircraft, as pilots were used to quickly closing the throttles when landing by pulling the lever back, which on this craft resulted in a power surge often flipping the aircraft over with undesired results.