Trivia / Don't Look Up

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• Actor-Inspired Element: Randall's live breakdown was added due to a request from Leonardo DiCaprio who wanted to deliver a speech akin to Peter Finch's "Mad as Hell" monologue from Network. Adam McKay initially opposed adding it because he thought it wound wind up sounding preachy but relented when DiCaprio said that they could undermine the speech with comedy.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • This film being a thinly veiled message about climate change means this applies to Leonardo DiCaprio who has famously spent years fighting it, similar to Dr. Randall Mindy's attempts to stop the comet.
  • Riley Bina's animal rights activism is also similar to Ariana Grande's activism in real life.
• All-Star Cast: A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence headline a cast that also includes Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Cate Blanchett, Himesh Patel, Matthew Perry, Chris Evans, Tomer Sisley, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis, Paul Guilfoyle, and Meryl Streep. The trailer revels in listing its cast's Oscar and Grammy credentials.
• California Doubling: When Mindy gets out of his car, disrupting traffic, and spots the comet, he calls Kate. He says he's in Lansing, Michigan, but the street sign behind him is of Petronelli Way, in Brockton, Massachusetts.
• Channel Hop: The film was originally set up at Paramount, before Netflix acquired it in February 2020.
• Creator Backlash:
  • According to Adam McKay, Leonardo DiCaprio objected to the epilogue where President Orlean walks around naked as he lionized Meryl Streep so much he couldn't bear the thought of seeing her that way. Streep, for her part, didn't hesitate to shoot the scene and the shot of Orlean's naked rear was actually accomplished with a body double.
  • Jennifer Lawrence utterly loathed her opening scene in the movie that consisted of her rapping "Ain't Nuthing ta F' Wit" by Wu-Tang Clan, citing the experience as utterly horrendous and the worst day of her life, feeling humiliated having to repeatedly do the entire song over and over. She was more receptive to the scene once she realized the final product was only a few seconds long.
• Dear Negative Reader: Following middling reviews from critics, director Adam McKay and co-writer David Sirota have made tweets insinuating that the more negative minded critics disliked the movie due to indifference towards climate change or the criticisms the movie makes against the media.
• Deleted Role: Matthew Perry originally had a short cameo appearance, but it ended up on the cutting room floor, probably due to time constraints.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Possibly a minor Casting Gag, Meryl Streep is a famously outspoken critic of Donald Trump, while her character, President Orlean, is more-or-less a No Celebrities Were Harmed Gender Flipped Trumplica.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Timothée Chalamet usually plays moody, troubled characters. Here, he plays an easygoing slacker who's prone to shouting in excitement.
  • Tyler Perry's filmography is heavily dominated by his foul-mouthed elderly drag persona Madea. Here, he plays a bland Yes-Man anchor.
• Promoted Fangirl: Jennifer Lawrence has admitted to being a huge Adam McKay fan.
• Throw It In!:
  • Many of Ariana Grande's lines in the film were improvised, including her character's potshot at Fox — sorry, Box news.
  • Jason's "prayer for stuff" was entirely improvised by Jonah Hill.
  • The final line of the film, "We really did have everything, didn't we?" was thought up by Leonardo DiCaprio during shooting. While they did film DiCaprio's character delivering the line, it was almost left on the cutting room floor because they were worried it would be too much of a gut punch in an already emotionally-heavy scene.
• Written by Cast Member: Not the entire film, but Leonardo DiCaprio worked with Adam McKay rewriting Randall's speech fifteen times.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Peter Isherwell was originally a radically different character, being a young Tech Bro set to be portrayed by Chris Evans. The role was then changed into the character seen in the final film portrayed by Mark Rylance, with Evans instead appearing in a cameo.
  • The original mid-credits scene had the elites realizing that the labor force they brought with them to the alien planet were among the journey's many casualties. Being completely unwilling to even entertain the notion of doing the grunt work of putting together this new civilization themselves, they all foolishly try to bribe each other to build houses and the like.

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