Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the 1953 version of this movie, make a small cameo in this movie as Mary Ann's parents. You can see them at the end when the whole family is reunited.

When Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning are hiding out in a basement after the military attack, they meet a character called Oglivy. Oglivy was mentioned in both HG Wells' original book and the highly popular radio play, except then, he was a noted astronomer.

The sequence at the end, when the dying alien crawls out of the damaged machine, arm dangling, is taken directly from the 1953 original. This scene is not at all in either the book or the radio play.

When Ray, Bobbie and Rachel are walking to the ferry, you can see the director, Stephen Spielberg, walking somewhere behind them.

When a group of aliens are exploring in the cellar, one of them spins the wheel of an overturned bicycle, and all are startled when the bicycle falls, making for a moment of comic relief. There's more to it, though. The H.G.Wells book mentions that the aliens probably had no concept of the wheel, as not a single rotating part was found inside the captured tripods. So an upside-down bicycle must have puzzled them a great deal.

In an early scene in which Rachel is watching television, she's channel surfing. At one point, she hits briefly upon a shot of a car being demolished by a speeding locomotive. This is, in fact, a scene from "The Greatest Show on Earth," which Steven Spielberg has reported as the first movie he ever saw.

Unlike other films where old tanks are 'built up' to look like the tanks they represent, this film is the first film to feature real M1 Abrams on camera.

The plane crash scene that was built for this film is now part of the back-lot tour at Universal Studios. Ironically, the plane had to be repainted after the movie, as it had the logo of a real airline company, and pilots flying overhead were calling in an airline crash for that airline.

The top of the Tripods look like the spaceships from the 1953 version. The comic "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" also had Tripods that looked like this.