The Day After Tomorrow

Revealing mistake: Very near the end of the movie, when the NOAA director is viewed in the helicopter as it approaches NYC, the image is reversed, verified by the David Clark logo on his headset being reversed. There are two different shots of this just a few seconds apart, and they are both reversed.

Revealing mistake: When a newscaster is mentioning that two airplanes were caught up in the storm and crashed, they show footage of the AVIANCA (Colombian airline) Flight number 52, which crashed in New York on January 25th, 1990. (00:30:00)

Revealing mistake: During the tornado scene there is a part where you see lots of cars on the highway flying and crashing and if you look carefully at the second car falling it doesn't touch the ground, yet it manages to cause sparks and dents.

Revealing mistake: In the scene where Dennis Quaid jumps over the ice crevasse to the other side, note the position of his ice axe, which is strapped to the right side of his hip. When he jumps back over with the metal tubes in his hands, he balances a little, then falls. We see his gloved hands disappear as he falls into the crevasse. The next shot shows he is holding onto the ice axe, which is embedded into the ice with his left hand. In reality he would not be able to unhook the ice axe so quickly and then put it in his left hand and thrust it into the ice. Remember what gravity does.

keiko

Revealing mistake: When the tornadoes are hitting Los Angeles you hear a woman say,'Is anyone hurt?' The angle is high and you can see the Capitol Records building, the tornado and the helicopter. If you look very closely at the bottom right you see lots of cars on the road driving like mad and one of them drives under a large truck trailer, betraying that they are CG cars. (00:26:35)

Other mistake: At the end of the film when they arrive in NYC looking for the library, we know that they survived because they are inside with a roaring fire burning. But where is the smoke up above, as Jack Hall approaches? There must be a chimney, or else they would have all died of asphyxiation.

kiazersoza

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

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.

More mistakes in The Day After Tomorrow

Sam Hall: Look, I got every question right on the final, and the only reason Mr. Spengler failed me is because I didn't write out the solutions.
Jack Hall: Why not?
Sam Hall: I do 'em in my head.
Jack Hall: Did you tell him that?
Sam Hall: I did. He said he didn't believe me. He said that if he couldn't do them in his head, then I must be cheating.
Jack Hall: Well, that's ridiculous! How can he fail you for being smarter than he is?
Sam Hall: That's what I said.
Jack Hall: You did? How did he take it?
Sam Hall: He flunked me, remember?

More quotes from The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow trivia picture

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)

More trivia for The Day After Tomorrow

Question: Why would Sam and his friends go to the library?

Answer: Possibly because it was the closest building with height to it as they are about to be hit by a gigantic wave of water. There was no snow yet, so I don't believe burning books or snow was on anybody's mind yet. It turned out to be a great idea as snow soon starts to fall and those books were literally a life saver.

Susan D. Santos

Answer: It was the closest building they could access. While the smarter move would have been to just go back to JD's apartment (which Brian and Laura suggest) it may have been too far a walk to get out of the flooding streets.

Answer: Big building with lots of space and lots of books to burn for heat.

Ssiscool

Why did they burn the books and not the wooden shelves that the books were on?

As for burning books rather than shelves, it was just easier. They would have had to expend more energy to break down the shelves into manageable size.

More questions & answers from The Day After Tomorrow

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