History Film / Armageddon1998

* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Kind of. It's a small dog who survives the opening destruction scenes, rather than a child.

* MonumentalDamage: A must have for a disaster films, to start:

** New York City's Chrysler Building and the World Trade Centers get struck by meteors at the film's beginning with the former having its upper half toppling over, the Metlife Building also gets hit and Grand Central Station likewise gets obliterated. While it's not shown, a meteor was about to strike the Empire State Building, implying it too was destroyed.
** Averted for Shanghai, which lacked a recognizable landmark. [[note]]The Oriental Pearl Tower wouldn't be opened for another 3 years[[/note]]
** Paris's beloved Eiffel Tower gets snapped in half like a matchstick by the initial meteor impact, with the blast radius destroying the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Arc De Tromphe is shown badly damaged in the city's aftermath.

* MemorialPhoto: Glossy poster size photos of Oscar, Freddie, Max, Noonan, and Harry, the roughnecks who didn't survive the mission, are placed on the altar at the wedding of Grace and [=AJ=].

* RaceAgainstTheClock: It's one thing to destroy the astroid, but the team has a particular window of time to do so by splitting it in two to avoid a collision with Earth. Blowing it up past that point is GameOver as the two halves could still hit the planet.

* SanitySlippage: Rockhound ends up losing some of his sanity while undergoing the mission, eventually culminating in him using a gatling gun to to shoot everything in sight.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: For all the ways this movie plays fast and loose with reality, the fact that one of the shuttles crashes is probably the most realistic moment in the film.

* StampOfRejection: Played for laughs. The roughnecks are all deemed unfit to execute a space mission (and not without cause). Their paperwork is stamped accordingly.But we wouldn't have much of a film if that stuck, [[IgnoredExpert so the experts are overridden.]]

* PercussiveMaintenance: [[spoiler:[[PunctuatedForEmphasis "This! Is how we fix things! On Russian! Space! Station! Because I don't want to stay here anymore!" ''(Engines finally whirl to life so the shuttle can escape)'']]]]

** Referenced and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "[[Recap/StargateSG1S5E17Failsafe Failsafe]]". Carter {{exposit|ion}}s how a 137-kilometer asteroid is on a collision course with Earth.

The plot: a peaceful summer afternoon in [[BigApplesauce New York City]] is disturbed by meteorites falling, destroying all the recognizable buildings and [[WhatMeasureIsAMook killing a bunch of characters we're not supposed to care about]]. UsefulNotes/{{NASA}} reveals (to themselves) that they're the pebbles before the boulder -- a meteor ''the size of Texas'' is going to hit Earth in 18 days, and nothing, not even bacteria, will survive. The big brains at NASA have come up with a plan to save the world: land a shuttle on the asteroid and drill far enough into it to place a nuke inside and split it like an apple.

* PowerWalk:
** An AffectionateParody of ''Film/TheRightStuff'' when the guys approach Col. Sharp: "Talk about the ''wrong'' stuff..."
** Done two more times. By the roughnecks and astronauts, on their approach to the shuttles before the launch and then again at the end when they return to Earth. The one at the end deserves special mention, [[spoiler:as the line-up is about 60% thinner. The line-up is even organized the same, with gaps where the ones who died would have been.]]

The film also stars Creator/BillyBobThornton as Dan Truman, Will Patton as Chick Chapel, Creator/KeithDavid as General Kimsey, Creator/MichaelClarkeDuncan as Bear Curlene, Creator/PeterStormare as Lev Andropov and Creator/SteveBuscemi as Rockhound.