Trivia: Before the film was released, N.A.S.A. sent a memo out to all of its employees stating that they were not allowed to comment on the likelihood of the events portrayed in this movie.
Trivia: The man who offers a 100 dollars to the bus driver to get on the bus is the same guy who is on MTV's Boiling Points, and hands out 100 dollars if you pass the test. (00:45:20)
Trivia: There is a party at J.D.'s school after the academic decathlon. Most of the students are wearing name tags. Sam's name tag says "Hello my name is Yoda." (00:21:50)
Trivia: The meteorologist (Mark Thomson) forecasting the storm for Fox 5 New York is really the meteorologist for the 10:00 p.m. news for Fox 11 Los Angeles. Also related to this in the tornado scenes in Los Angeles it shows the Fox 11 news report from the helicopter, the helicopter seen is white. In real life Skyfox 11 is black.
Trivia: In January 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf, which was where the opening scene took place, did collapse as portrayed in the movie.
Trivia: Many of the scenes we see of the numerous hurricanes are stock footage of Hurricane Andrew and Hugo, names of deadly hurricanes of the last 15 years.
Trivia: Casting Kenneth Welsh as the Vice President was controversial due to his physical resemblance to US Vice-President Dick Cheney, but Roland Emmerich insisted on it for that very reason, likely to highlight the Bush/Cheney administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Trivia: In 2002, during pre-production, a deadly hailstorm struck central China in July, and in August parts of Europe were ravaged by what became known as the "Floods of the Century."
Trivia: The reporter in El Paso reporting the large numbers of people crossing the Rio Grande to get into Mexico is actually one of the weekend anchors on El Paso's KVIA channel 7 news.
Suggested correction: As already corrected, just because we can't see an outlet for the smoke doesn't mean there isn't one. White smoke against white snow is very hard to see.
Nik Rolls
But they were still burning the books, which meant the smoke should be black, if they stop burning the books, the smoke would have been white, which isn't the case in the movie.
Just looked at a boatload of videos of burning books, including one in a fireplace, and the smoke was indeed white.