Trivia: The main characters are taken from other sci-fi movies. The Missing Link is meant to be The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954); B.O.B. is meant to be The Blob (1958); Ginormica is based on Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958); Dr. Cockroach is copied from The Fly (1958); and Insectosaurus is based on Mosura (1961).
Trivia: When the planes bombard the desert ruins, the explosion, which holds the Guinness record, took 8 months to be made, more than principal filming took! Also, the planes used while filming in fact bombarded the set, as explosives detonated for the massive explosion. Seems Michael Bay enjoyed the high budget of this film.
Trivia: Reese's introduction isn't the only thing that stays the same about the character between movies. Here he uses his preferred weapon - a sawed-off shotgun. Marcus isn't keen on having a gun aimed at him though, so he snatches it out of Reese's hands, then teaches him a trick to keep that from happening - fashioning a safety strap. Reese puts that same trick to use after he steals a police shotgun in The Terminator. (00:49:55 - 01:49:58)
Trivia: In the scene where Ripcord and Duke are in the transport and Ripcord pats Heavy Duty on the back and gets his arm twisted as a result, Ripcord makes a crack about Heavy Duty having a "Kung Fu Grip". This refers to some of the earliest G.I. Joe's action figures who were advertised to have the Kung Fu Grip.
Trivia: It's not an accident that Wisconsin was chosen as the new South Pole in the movie, its position being 44N/90W, 44 being a number that Roland Emmerich tries to sneak into every movie he makes since his 'Moon 44' days. (01:37:25)
Trivia: 1 tells 9 that he led the others to their current hideout, which he refers to as "sanctuary". The building happens to be Notre Dame church, famously referred to "sanctuary" in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
Trivia: During the Battle of Vulcan, as Sulu goes under a piece of another starship, you can see R2-D2 go flying past just over his shoulder. (00:47:35)
Trivia: Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards, who played Tony and Tina in the original Escape to Witch Mountain, make cameos as a sheriff and waitress, respectively.
Trivia: The topic of xenophobia runs strongly throughout the film. This is a very real issue for South Africa as evidenced by the xenophobic violence in early 2008 where approx. 30 foreigners living in South Africa were murdered and hundreds left injured and/or destitute. In fact there are still displaced foreigners living in homeless shelters, churches, etc today.
Trivia: This is Dennis Quaid's third time playing an astronaut.
Trivia: When Wong drains Flamingo Lake to water his golf course and the flamingos are sucked down the plughole, in amongst their startled squawks you can hear one yelling "SH*T!". Listen for it - it's very clear.
Trivia: In a deleted scene, we are shown so-called "actual footage" from when a lone police officer is staking out the Tyler residence. In the beginning of the scene, another voice shouts "Action!" before anyone moves. If this was actual footage from the police car's dashboard camera, who is doing the shouting?
Trivia: The house used in the film as the one where the master lives, is the house in the news called the "nail house," where the owners refused an order to move because of construction. In the southwestern Chinese municipality of Chongqing, the modest two-story brick structure - a dot on the decimated landscape - is called the "nail house" because it seems to be nailed to the ground by its owners' stubbornness.
Trivia: When the Bone Hunters get trapped under the falling rocks, you can hear the Wilhelm scream.