17 Things You May Not Know About The First Independence Day!

There is a scene in the desert, when Will Smith yells "And what the hell is that *smell*?!" while dragging an alien ... They were filming near The Great Salt Lake which is home to tiny crustaceans called brine shrimp. When they die, the bodies sink to the bottom of the shallow lake. When the wind kicks up it carries the smell of millions of these dead critters along with it. Apparently, nobody bothered to tell Will!

The US military agreed to support the film by allowing the crew to film at military bases, use their planes, and by consulting with actors who had military roles. Once they learned about the involvement of Area 51 in the plot they asked the filmmakers to change it. When the filmmakers refused, the military pulled all of its support.

When they were filming the helicopter fitted with communication lighting, the real police in the area received over a hundred phone calls to report it as a UFO sighting!

The plot point of introducing a computer virus to the alien mothership was intended as an homage to "The War of the Worlds". In that the aliens are defeated by a biological pathogen.

The line "Today we celebrate our Independence Day," was not in the original script. It was added because the studio was pressuring Emmerich and Devlin to change the name due to a legal battle with Warner Brothers. All because WB owned the title "Independence Day". They added the line, and approximately two weeks later ended up winning the name.

The diagram of Deep Space Satellite Devlin seen in the SETI office is a an homage to the "death star" space station, with solar arrays attached.

According to producer Dean Devlin well over half of the dialogue Jeff Goldblum shared with Judd Hirsch and Will Smith was improvised.

During the scene in the briefing room at Area 51 there is a night-vision pan of the base. Those are actual shots of the real Area 51 taken by a conspiracy theorist from "Freedom Ridge". That ridge has since been commandeered by the U.S. government as of the late 90's and is no longer accessible to the public.

Director Roland Emmerich was presented with two concepts for the aliens in the film, created by production designer Patrick Tatopoulos. Emmerich liked them both so much he decided to use one as the real alien and the other as the bio-mechanical suit they wore, and so both designs were used in the film!

The movie holds the record for the most miniatures used in a single film! It blew many of these models up to get the big explosion shots. This was (and still is) an amazing achievement and with the uprising of CGI in films of more recent years it might very well stand forever!

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin got the idea for Independence Day during a promotion they were attending for the movie Stargate. A reporter asked why Emmerich made Stargate if he did not believe in aliens. Emmerich told him it was still fascinating, and asked him to imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and discover 15-mile-wide spaceships were hovering over the world's largest cities. He then turned to Devlin and said "I think I have an idea for our next film."

When the large alien ship is moving into position over New York City it seems to be surrounded by smoke or smog. This affect was created by a double exposure with a recording of dirt being dropped into a tank of water.

When Jeff Goldblum (David) shouts "Must go faster! Must go faster!" it is actually audio taken from Jurassic Park when his character Malcolm's jeep is being chased by the T-Rex.

When Bill Pullman is speaking to the alien invaders he conveys fear. He apparently used the memory of a decayed tooth being yanked from his mouth to do so.

The pilot who targets the alien ray and states "I'm on it" only to be blown from the sky just a moment later, is voiced by Dean Devlin!

The drum rhythm heard during the invasion scenes near the beginning spell out D-I-E in Morse code!

The president was originally going to be a "Richard Nixon-like figure", played by Kevin Spacey. Spacey had been a long-time friend of co-writer Dean Devlin. However, an executive at Fox refused to cast Spacey insisting that he didn't have enough potential to be a star.