History Film / TwoThousandTwelve

* IgnoredExpert: Played straight for about ten seconds as Anheuser blows a frantic Adrian off, then subverted as he actually takes the young scientist seriously after flipping through his manuscript.

* CarMeetsHouse: Or rather, limo meets crumbling high rise.
** And there's aircraft carrier meets White House.

* DeweyDefeatsTruman: Obviously.

* BadassBeard: Charlie and Sasha sport these.

-->'''Jackson:''' ''(after his ex-wife mentions that the news are saying the earthquake that preludes the "sinking of L.A." sequence is no cause for panic)'' When they tell you ''not'' to panic - ''that's when you run!''

* DisneyDeath: Jackson has one in Yellowstone when the RV he's in falls into a fissure. [[spoiler:And this is just after he has found the map to the Arks.]]

%% * TakeMyHand: About a dozen times.

* SkewedPriorities: When the Curtis family is frantically getting into the limo as Los Angeles is collapsing all around them, Lily looks back at the house in agony because she lost her hat collection. It takes her mother to snap her out of it and get in the limo.

* AlohaHawaii: The characters planned to stop in Honolulu to refuel. The city, and the rest of O'ahu, is [[spoiler:completely covered in lava.]]

* SkewedPriorities: When the Curtis family is frantically getting into the limo as Los Angeles is collapsing all around them, Lilly looks back at the house in agony because she lost her hat collection. It takes her mother to snap her out of it.

* AppliedPhlebotinum: The destruction of the Earth is caused by the heating of its core, caused by excess neutrinos being emitted by the Sun. However, since neutrinos almost never interact with matter, these are neutrinos that are "mutating into some other subatomic particle," presumably ones that can interact with matter more often. Why these new particles don't interact with the Earth's surface is unclear. Lampshaded when Adrian, listening about the neutrinos, simply declares "That's impossible". He's right.

* EarthquakesCauseFissures: Good Lord, do they ever.

*** The Earth is being destroyed because solar neutrinos are "mutating" into a form that heats the interior of the Earth like a microwave oven. In reality, solar neutrinos '''do''' mutate -- they change between electron, muon, and tau flavors during their travels in a process called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillations neutrino oscillation]]. However, '''none''' of these neutrino flavors is capable of interacting with the Earth's interior. Or any form of normal matter.

*** According to most, if not all, geologists and volcanologists, Anything within 100 miles of Yellowstone is screwed, though the rest of the world isn't any safer from the Ashes and more than likely imminent volcanic winter and possibly the next ice age.

*** The Yellowstone eruption. It manages an explosion probably measured in gigatons without any significant blast overpressure. Trees are flattened, but it abates within a mere mile or two - helpfully before obliterating all the major characters. Geologists say that in an eruption of that magnitude, anyone close enough to ''see'' it with the naked eye would not survive.

** The scientist who helped Jackson with his book just so happened to be one of the people involved in the conspiracy and he was killed when he tried to come forward.

* ArtisticLicense: Roland Emmerich does this everywhere, as usual

* ConspiracyTheorist: Charlie Frost again. Of course, he is right about what's happening, and sets into motion the race to get to the Ark. He ''is'' wrong on one thing: the Arks aren't spaceships to get completely off the planet, just super-armored carriers. He references several other theories he has, including some about Creator/MarilynMonroe that he soesn’t go into.

-->'''Noah:''' Now that's a big plane.
-->'''Yuri:''' ''(smiling proudly)'' It's Russian. [[note]]It's technically (Soviet) Ukrainian, as only one model exists. An-225 is a one-off (essentially a stretched An-124 ''Ruslan'') built to carry the Buran shuttle in mid-80'es. There's a lot of talks about series production (or completing the second airframe, which was never finished), but as Antonov design bureau lacks production facilities and must rely on Russian plants, which are still in a pretty bad shape, nothing has come of it as of now.[[/note]]

--->'''Adrian:''' We're geologists.
--->'''Jackson:''' Do you usually go digging with machine guns?

-->'''Adrian:''' (''After hearing about the tickets to the Arks'') What about these workers? Do they get tickets?
-->'''Anheuser:''' What, [[SarcasmMode life isn't fair?]]

* SpannerInTheWorks: A literal example. The Curtis family nearly doom the passengers of Ark 4 when they accidentally sabotage the gear system with an electric drill. Fortunately, Jackson and Noah Curtis manage to remove it just in time.

* InfantImmortality: Averted with [[spoiler:Tony and Satnam's families,]] along with a lot of other off-screen child deaths.

* TheUnmasquedWorld: Like in the real world, the 2012 phenomenon and significance of the Mayan Long Count Calendar was considered a myth by everyone except world governments...until the apocalypse actually occurred.

* TheUnmasquedWorld: Like in the real world, the 2012 phenomenon and significance of the Mayan Long Count Calendar was considered a myth by everyone except world governments...until the apocalypse actually occurred.

* TheUnmasquedWorld: Like in the real world, the 2012 phenomenon and significance of the Mayan Long Count Calendar was considered a myth by the general public...until the apocalypse actually occurred.

* TheUnmasquedWorld: Like in the real world, the 2012 phenomenon and significance of the Mayan Long Count Calendar was considered a myth by the public...until the apocalypse actually occurred.