98 Fun Facts About Twister Movie

Who directed the 1996 film Twister?

Jan de Bont. He had spent more than half a year preparing a Godzilla film, quit when the studio would not meet his budget and jumped straight into Twister.

Which best-selling novelist co-wrote the Twister screenplay with his wife, Anne-Marie Martin?

Michael Crichton. A writer who claimed the film copied his own storm-chaser script took the Jurassic Park author to trial in 1998, and the jury sided with Crichton.

Who plays Jo Harding, the tornado-obsessed meteorologist who leads the storm chasers in Twister?

Helen Hunt. When the shoot overran, her sitcom Mad About You is said to have held up its new season until she was free.

Who plays Jo's estranged husband in Twister, an ex-storm chaser turned television weatherman?

Bill Paxton. The shoot was rough on him: after a day spent filming in a filthy roadside ditch, he and his co-star both had to be given hepatitis shots.

Who plays Dusty Davis, the loudest of Jo's storm chasers in Twister?

Philip Seymour Hoffman. He went on to win the Best Actor Oscar for Capote, yet when People asked fans in 2014 to name their favourite of his films, the runaway answer was Twister.

Who plays Jonas Miller, the corporately funded rival storm chaser in Twister?

Cary Elwes. The English actor loved as the gallant Westley in The Princess Bride plays against type here, as a rival who brushes off a warning and is swept away with his truck.

In Twister, Jonas Miller's copycat of the Dorothy sensor device goes by what name?

Dot3. Jonas tells a TV crew it is the answer to tornado warnings, but the pack is too light to stay put, exactly as Jo and Bill try to tell him over the radio.

Twister's barrel of tornado sensors was based on which real 1980s instrument?

TOTO. The real barrel, named after Dorothy's dog, never got its direct hit: on its closest try, in 1984, the edge of a weak tornado simply knocked it over.

Which machine did Twister's crew use to blast its actors with storm-force wind?

A Boeing 707 jet engine. Trucks also drove alongside the cast spitting out chunks of ice for hail, and the director admitted that some of the bigger pieces hit his leading man.

In Twister, what is the name of Aunt Meg's dog, rescued from her flattened house?

Mose. As she is helped out of the wreckage of her home, Meg asks her rescuers to grab the dog for her, saying he must be a little shaken up.

In Twister, Aunt Meg lives in which real Oklahoma town, partly demolished for the film?

Wakita. Location scouts chose it because debris from a big 1993 hailstorm was still lying around, and the town opened its own Twister museum months before the film came out.

In Twister, what Fujita rating does the mile-wide tornado of the finale carry?

F5. Earlier in the film, when Melissa asks what one would be like, a chaser answers 'the finger of God', and it turns out only one of the team has ever seen one.

How do Jo and Bill survive the final tornado in Twister?

Strapped to pipes in a pumphouse. To show them dangling inside the funnel, the crew rolled the whole set upside down with the actors hanging from a bar, then flipped the footage.

In Twister, which film is playing at the drive-in when a tornado tears the screen apart?

The Shining. Life copied the scene later that month, when a real tornado wrecked a drive-in screen in Ontario hours before it was due to show Twister.

Twister's tornado roar mixed lion roars, tiger growls and the moans of which animal?

Camel. The director said most people who live through a tornado talk first about its noise, so he had real sounds, animal cries among them, morphed into the roar.

Twister's famous flying cow was a CGI model recycled from which animal in the 1995 film Jumanji?

Zebra. ILM's artists then spun the reskinned animal through funnel clouds built from millions of digital particles, using software that could steer every one of them.

Twister's director landed the job on the strength of which 1994 hit, his debut?

Speed. Its star Keanu Reeves protested during the shoot that he was no action hero, and the first-time director later said that reluctance was exactly why he had cast him.

Alongside Warner Bros. and Universal, which company produced Twister?

Amblin Entertainment. Steven Spielberg's company sold the studios on the film before a script existed, with a computer-made test clip in which a flying tractor's tire smashes through a truck's windshield.

Which star read the Twister script, passed on it, and recommended a castmate from his current film for the lead?

Tom Hanks. He told his castmate 'you'd be great for it' while the two were travelling to a shoot, then went a step further and recommended him to the film's producers.

The MPAA rated Twister PG-13, giving which official reason?

Intense depiction of very bad weather. Newsweek ran the wording as a curiosity before the film had even opened, and its leading man called the result 'traumatic fun for the whole family'.

Warner Bros. moved Twister up a week to May 10, 1996, to avoid which rival blockbuster?

Mission: Impossible. Moving up from 17 May gave Twister two weekends to itself, and it set a record for a May opening before the Tom Cruise film arrived to take first place.

Which film beat Twister to become the highest-grossing release of 1996 worldwide?

Independence Day. Its director, Roland Emmerich, went on to make the very Godzilla film that Twister's own director had walked away from to chase tornadoes.

Which writer did uncredited rewrites on Twister's script, with a break when he came down with bronchitis?

Joss Whedon. He had quietly overhauled the director's previous hit as well, and he turned in his last Twister pages on his wedding day before leaving for his honeymoon.

Twister earned Oscar nominations for Sound and in which other category?

Visual Effects. It went home from the Oscars with nothing, but a month later the same tornado-makers won the British Academy's award for the year's best effects.

Twister was one of the first US feature films released on which home-video format?

The disc arrived in March 1997, eleven days before the film's HBO debut.

Which pickup truck do Jo and Bill drive for most of Twister?

Dodge Ram 2500. Bill's red pickup takes over once Jo's Jeep is wrecked, and is finally sacrificed to send Dorothy into the tornado.

In Twister, what does Bill's fiancée Melissa do for a living?

Reproductive therapist. She counsels clients by mobile phone in the middle of chases, and she is the one who ends the engagement, saying she cannot compete.

What injury did Twister's two leads suffer from the lamps used to make the sky behind them look stormy?

Temporary blindness. One of them said the lamps 'literally sunburned our eyeballs'; a Plexiglas filter was fitted afterwards, and both spent days on eye drops and special glasses.

After Twister's replacement cinematographer was hospitalized by a collapsing set, who shot the remaining footage?

The director himself. A cinematographer by trade, he had already lost his first camera crew, who walked out after he knocked over an assistant, so he shot the final two days personally.

Oklahoma's landscape changed with the seasons, so Twister's finale was shot mostly in which state?

Iowa. The growing season kept spoiling the match between shots: one morning the corn had sprouted tassels overnight, and a producer from ILM recalled that nothing was going to match.

How did storm chasers honor Twister's late leading man in 2017?

Spelled his initials on a GPS map. Hundreds of chasers moved their Spotter Network markers into two giant letters across Kansas and Oklahoma, the heart of Tornado Alley.

Universal Orlando closed Twister...Ride It Out in 2015 to build which ride?

Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon. Fallon broke the news himself on The Tonight Show, and fans gathered days later to watch the old attraction whip up its final storm.

Twister's writers based its plot on a PBS storm-chaser documentary and which 1940 screwball comedy?

His Girl Friday. In both, an ex who is about to remarry is pulled into one last job with a former partner, a debt one of the writers confirmed under oath in a plagiarism trial.

Who directed the 2024 standalone sequel Twisters?

Lee Isaac Chung. The Minari director grew up on a small farm in rural Arkansas, where sheltering from tornadoes was so routine that he says he stopped noticing the sirens.

In Twisters, Glen Powell's YouTube-famous storm chaser goes by what nickname?

The Tornado Wrangler. The heroine writes him off as a glory hound hawking T-shirts and mugs, then learns the merchandise money buys free food and water for storm victims.

What is the name of Daisy Edgar-Jones's meteorologist in Twisters?

Kate Carter. She gives up chasing after her experiment to choke a tornado with the absorbent polymer used in diapers goes wrong and three of her friends are killed.

Twisters' opening weekend passed which film's, widely counted the previous best for a natural disaster movie?

The Day After Tomorrow. Forecasts had Twisters opening near $50 million in North America; it took over $80 million, arguably the best start a natural disaster film had ever had.

In Twister's 1969 prologue, who is torn away by the tornado as young Jo's family shelters in a storm cellar?

Her father. He is pulled into the storm while trying to hold the cellar door shut, the loss that sends the grown-up Jo chasing tornadoes in search of a better warning system.

In Twister, which phrase does Dusty teach Melissa, admitting it is not the technical term?

The suck zone. Roger Ebert borrowed the phrase for his review, and the 2024 sequel Twisters brings it back as its own chasers pull on harnesses to drive into a storm.

The name 'Tornado Alley' is usually traced to a 1952 study by two forecasters from which military service?

The U.S. Air Force. The same two officers had issued the first successful tornado forecast in 1948, hours before the second twister in five days struck their own base.

Twister is set in Oklahoma, but which state records the most tornadoes in an average year?

Texas. Its size helps: counted per square mile, Florida comes out on top, partly because the hurricanes that come ashore there spin off tornadoes of their own.

Twister's cast visited Oklahoma's storm laboratory in 1995 while which real tornado experiment was in the field?

VORTEX. Short for Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, it ran in 1994 and 1995, and its scientists took the film's actors out on a real chase.

In which 1999 tornado did a Doppler on Wheels radar clock winds above 300 mph, the fastest then measured on Earth?

Bridge Creek–Moore, Oklahoma. With the funnel bearing down on the state's biggest city, forecasters issued a warning of a new kind: the first 'tornado emergency'.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory, which advised Twister's makers, is based in which Oklahoma city?

Norman. A scientist there got out a map to show the filmmakers that the script's tornado lasting a day and a half could never happen, and suggested an outbreak of many instead.

The real instrument barrel that inspired Twister's Dorothy is displayed at the National Weather Center on which campus?

University of Oklahoma. The barrel was retired because it was too heavy and awkward to set down safely in a tornado's path, and it now stands in the weather center's ground-floor atrium.

Which Ferris Bueller's Day Off actor plays Rabbit, the navigator of Jo's storm-chasing team in Twister?

Alan Ruck. A decade after playing the anxious Cameron, he is the chaser who insists that maps be rolled, never folded, because a crease has already ruined Kansas near Wichita.

Twister stood as Warner Bros.' biggest worldwide earner until which film passed it?

The first Harry Potter. At home Twister never beat 1989's Batman; it was the overseas takings, from a release Universal handled, that made it the studio's biggest until late 2001.

Which Twister cast member received a 1997 Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Supporting Actress?

Jami Gertz. She lost to Melanie Griffith, but the film did 'win' a Razzie of its own that night, for the worst-written movie to gross over $100 million.

Which NBC sitcom delayed production by over two weeks so its star could finish filming Twister?

Mad About You waited because its creator and co-star Paul Reiser agreed to push back the fourth season when the tornado shoot ran over schedule.

Which executive producer of the original Twister suggested that Twisters end without a kiss?

Steven Spielberg favored the take without a kiss because it kept the heroine's story about her returning passion for storm chasing. Both endings were filmed.

Work on Twister stopped in April 1995 while cast and crew helped relief efforts after which tragedy?

The Oklahoma City bombing struck on April 19, 1995, in the state where the film was to be shot, and the production stood down so its people could help.

Twister's Dutch-born director was earlier the cinematographer on which landmark 1988 action film?

Die Hard was one of several hits he photographed, along with Basic Instinct, before he moved from behind the camera into the director's chair.

The actress who plays Jo in Twister won the Best Actress Oscar for which 1997 romantic comedy?

As Good as It Gets cast her as a single mother, not long after a studio had doubted she had enough big-film experience to lead a tornado blockbuster.

Which hard rock band recorded 'Humans Being' for Twister and took it to the top of the Mainstream Rock chart?

Van Halen made it their last recording with singer Sammy Hagar before his 1996 departure, and brothers Eddie and Alex also wrote the soundtrack's instrumental 'Respect the Wind'.

Folklore links which sky color to an approaching tornado, though no evidence ties it to twisters?

Green skies can come with severe thunderstorms, which is where the belief started, but no evidence connects the color to tornadoes specifically.

In Twister, what does weatherman Bill bring to Oklahoma for storm chaser Jo to sign?

Divorce papers are his reason for coming, since he plans to remarry, yet Jo does not sign them until the team stops overnight in Fairview.

Night of the Twisters retells a real 1980 night when seven tornadoes struck one city in which state?

Nebraska is home to Grand Island, where the seven tornadoes hit on June 3, 1980; the author built the story on her cousin's family, whose house was destroyed.

Which country star's 'Ain't No Love in Oklahoma' was the lead single from the Twisters soundtrack?

Luke Combs led an album of 29 songs drawn mostly from country acts, among them Miranda Lambert, Jelly Roll and Megan Moroney.

Twister's leading man played treasure hunter Brock Lovett in which James Cameron film?

Titanic was at least his fourth film for James Cameron, after The Terminator, Aliens and True Lies, and four years later he joined an expedition to the real wreck.

Which future Spy Kids star plays the young Jo in Twister's 1969 storm-cellar prologue?

Alexa Vega played the part five years before Spy Kids made her known worldwide as Carmen Cortez.

In Twisters, a tornado hits which Stillwater event, a college baseball game in early scripts?

A rodeo was the director's suggestion, and the crew built a metal-roofed grandstand, a ticket booth and concession booths to stage it.

In Twisters, which 1931 monster film is on screen when a tornado rips open the movie theater?

Frankenstein was picked as a nod to Universal's classic monsters, and the scene was shot using vintage seats from a closed Colorado cinema.

Twisters' director won the job with a reel mixing Twister and which small drama of his own?

Minari cost about $2 million and has a scene in which a family faces a tornado watch, which he intercut with footage from the 1996 blockbuster.

Which filmmaker pitched the Twister follow-up in 2020, left to direct F1, and kept a story credit?

Joseph Kosinski imagined a new generation of storm chasers, and the finished film is credited as based on his story even though he never directed it.

Which Twister storm chaser, the actor behind Beltzer, went on to direct In the Bedroom and Tár?

Todd Field's three films as a director earned a combined fourteen Academy Award nominations, years after he rode along with Jo's crew.

Which Twister actor, the storm crew's Laurence, later played Corporal Upham in Saving Private Ryan?

Jeremy Davies later played physicist Daniel Faraday on Lost and won an Emmy in 2012 for his guest role in Justified.

Which actress, who made her film debut in East of Eden in 1955, plays Aunt Meg in Twister?

Lois Smith kept working for decades and won a Tony Award for The Inheritance, becoming the oldest performer to win one for acting.

Which Casper star plays teenage artist Danny in the 1996 TV film Night of the Twisters?

Devon Sawa had just played the friendly ghost's human form, and here his character clashes with a stepfather played by John Schneider.

Which singer wrote 'Twisted' for Twister's soundtrack and shared its vocals with Lindsey Buckingham?

Stevie Nicks asked him to produce the track and called in Mick Fleetwood on drums, putting three members of Fleetwood Mac on one film song.

Which country star's chart-topper 'No One Needs to Know' features in Twister and on its soundtrack?

Shania Twain wrote it with her producer Robert John 'Mutt' Lange, and it became her third single in a row to top the US country chart.

Which In the Heights star plays Javi, who talks the heroine back into storm chasing in Twisters?

Anthony Ramos plays a survivor of the opening disaster who has gone to work for a mobile radar company and offers his old friend a one-week job.

Which actor, later cast as Superman, plays Javi's business partner Scott in Twisters?

David Corenswet had only a supporting part here; a year later he rose to prominence as the title hero of James Gunn's Superman.

After shooting Twister's first chase in a filthy ditch, its leads needed shots for which disease?

Hepatitis shots were not the only cost of that sequence: the lead actress also hit her head repeatedly while filming it.

In Twister's first chase, where do Jo and Bill take cover after Jo's pickup runs off the road?

Under a bridge is where they hold on as the tornado destroys the pickup and the first of the four Dorothy machines.

In Twister, how does Melissa overhear Bill admit his feelings for Jo after Dorothy II is crushed?

Over the CB radio, Melissa hears every word without his knowing, and she later ends the engagement and urges him to reunite with Jo.

In Twister, which of Aunt Meg's creations inspire the aluminum wings added to Dorothy's sensors?

Her wind sculptures give Jo and Bill the idea after two machines have been lost, and the winged sensors in the last two prototypes are more aerodynamic.

Which company built Twister's digital tornadoes from millions of tiny computer-generated particles?

Industrial Light & Magic had to more than double its 150 planned sky-replacement shots, because so many chases were filmed in bright sunshine.

Twister was pitched to its studios with no script, only which proof of concept?

An animated test clip showed a pickup driving toward a tornado that pulls up a tractor, one of whose tires smashes through the windshield.

Twister's director took the job after quitting which film project, later made by Roland Emmerich?

Godzilla lost him in December 1994, five months after he was announced, and reached cinemas only in 1998, two years after his tornado film.

Which Hamilton star co-wrote an unmade Twister sequel in 2020 with the original film's leading lady?

Daveed Diggs and his Blindspotting partner Rafael Casal wrote it with her, about storm chasers from a rocket science club at a historically Black college, but the studio passed.

In 1996 a real tornado wrecked a drive-in screen due to show Twister that night, in which country?

Canada saw it happen twice: after the Ontario screen fell in May, a July tornado blew down a Saskatoon drive-in screen that was also booked to show the film.

Twister's score joins 'Oklahoma' to which famous overture in one cue, at the director's insistence?

William Tell and 'Oklahoma' run at different tempos, which the composer said made the medley difficult to pull off.

How did Twister's crew film Jo and Bill being pulled skyward inside the final tornado?

By rolling the set over in a gimbal, the crew put the ground on the ceiling while the actors hung from a metal bar; the footage was then flipped.

Which tornado alert means a twister has been sighted or radar shows rotation, so take cover now?

A warning is the urgent one; a watch only means conditions favor tornadoes and may be issued hours before any storm forms.

Most of the strongest tornadoes come from which kind of thunderstorm, the rarest of four types?

Supercell storms are built around a mesocyclone, a deep and persistently rotating updraft, yet only about 30% or fewer of them go on to spawn a tornado.

Tornado survivors popularly compare the sound of an approaching twister to which rumbling vehicle?

A freight train is the classic comparison, though people also describe the noise as rushing rapids or a waterfall.

The head of which federal agency delivers a message at the end of Twister's 1996 home video release?

FEMA director James Lee Witt appears after the film on the VHS and LaserDisc edition, the first Warner Home Video release to carry THX certification.

Twister took the May opening-weekend record from which 1992 sequel that its own director had shot?

Lethal Weapon 3 had opened to $33.2 million with him as its cinematographer; four years later his own film beat that with $41.1 million.

Which company released a Twister pinball machine in April 1996, a month before the film opened?

Sega Pinball themed the table to the film, with modes that include Canister Multiball and Chase Multiball.

In Twisters, which compound does the heroine add to her polymer beads to finally weaken a tornado?

Silver iodide is the fix she works out after a first attempt with sodium polyacrylate beads alone fails to break up a tornado.

The 1996 TV film Night of the Twisters was made for and premiered on which cable network?

The Family Channel, later renamed Freeform, kept airing the film until 2004, by which time it had been both Fox Family and ABC Family.

Which radar signature, shaped like the number six, was first tied to a confirmed tornado in 1953?

Hook echo shapes were found by accident, when an engineer testing a rain-measuring radar recorded an odd blip for meteorologists to study.

Twister's leading lady quit which 1996 John Travolta action film to chase tornadoes instead?

Broken Arrow went ahead as director John Woo's second American film, with Samantha Mathis and Christian Slater in its cast.

Ted Fujita, whose tornado scale Twister uses, also discovered which sudden wind hazard to aircraft?

Microbursts and downbursts were his other great finding, shaped partly by his study of the damage patterns left by the nuclear explosions of 1945.

In the novel Night of the Twisters, police take evacuees to which store that escaped the tornadoes?

Kmart has its parking lot turned into an emergency command post, and by morning the people sheltering inside have been moved on because of high water.

The deadliest tornado on record killed about 1,300 people in 1989 in which country?

Bangladesh has had at least 24 tornadoes that each killed more than 100 people, almost half the total for the rest of the world.

America's deadliest tornado crossed Missouri and Indiana in 1925 but killed the most in which state?

Illinois lost 234 people in the town of Murphysboro alone as the Tri-State tornado killed 695 in all, more than any other in American history.

A 2013 tornado that grew a record 2.6 miles wide struck near which Oklahoma city seen in Twisters?

El Reno's tornado killed four storm chasers, three of them professionals, the first chasers known to have been killed by a storm itself.