Trivia: Director Taika Waititi has a cameo as the local church minister who delivers the sermon at the funeral.
Trivia: Despite receiving fifth billing, Andy Garcia is only on screen for 10 seconds and has no lines at all.
Trivia: During the several scenes where the pilots are communicating with Air Traffic Control, they are always addressed as flight 1549. During the real incident, however, both the pilots and controllers misspoke, labeling the flight number as both 1529 and 1539. This was likely due to the intensely stressful situation.
Trivia: Michelle Williams was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Randi Chandler, even though she's only in the film for 12 minutes.
Trivia: Scarlett Johansson is the first woman to play Kaa the python.
Trivia: Even though they play mother and daughter, Michelle Borth is only eleven years older than Nichole Bloom.
Trivia: At the Oscar ceremony in 2017, the film was accidentally named Best Picture, instead of true winner Moonlight, when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were accidentally handed the wrong envelope. Such a gaffe had never occurred in the Oscars' history before.
Trivia: During the real Deepwater Horizon oil spill, actor Kevin Costner offered his services, claiming that a small company he bought from the U.S. Department of Energy could clean up 90% of the oil in a week, using poorly-tested technology. His offer was accepted, despite zero evidence that the technology ever worked; and it failed miserably, of course.
Trivia: On Paterson's bed stand, there is a photo of a younger Paterson during his military service. This is an actual photo of Adam Driver from his time in the United States Marine Corps. (00:01:40)
Trivia: Despite receiving prominent billing, Jonah Hill is only in the film for three minutes.
Trivia: Eddie is given a heartfelt pep talk by his idol Matti Nykänen, the Finnish ski jumper. Nykänen actually spoke no English at all.
Trivia: Although they play mother and daughter, Laura Linney is only 10 years older than Amy Adams.
Trivia: When Lockhart is in the sensory deprivation tank, the nurse that does a poor job of keeping an eye on him is reading "Der Zauberberg" by Thomas Mann, which obviously has at that point a common premise with the movie (the main character goes to a sanatorium in the Alps just as a visitor but ends up as an inmate). The novel was inspired by Mann's visit to his wife at a Swiss sanatorium which happened in 1912, same year as the picture fully unveiled in the finale.
