It's the end of the world as we know it, but that doesn't mean we'll have cold hearts before it ends.
- At the beginning of the film, Patricia and Dylan warmly reunite at the White House, still having the friendship they developed towards the end of the first film.
- A major part of the film's backstory is that the world's nations have banded together since 1996 in an absolutely unprecedented era of peace.
- Jake taking the fall for Charlie over something he had no hand in, shrugging it off as a side benefit of his Hated by All status.
- It's said that Charlie and Jake have been friends since meeting at an orphanage in 1996. Both of them lost their parents in the original invasion and have thus helped each other out and are as close as brothers. To put it in perspective: Charlie was threenote when the previous invasion happened while Jake was only seven at the same time and has been looking after Charlie since.
- When Okun awakens from his twenty-year coma, Isaacs is quickly revealed to be his lover and the two happily embrace. The latter has regularly kept his room stocked with well-tended flowers.
- Okun and Isaacs being presented as a gay couple is in and of itself heartwarming, as absolutely nothing is said about it in the film. They're simply a couple. Which makes it a shame when Isaacs dies.
- The Fourth of July ceremony features a tribute to the vets of the War of 1996. Among them? General (and former president) Grey, who gets a standing ovation for his part in the War. All the more heartwarming considering his actor, Robert Loggia, passed away a few months prior to the film's release.
- Whitmore is in a bad state, desperately trying to reach the stage to warn the world of the approaching Queen. However, when he sees his old friend Grey, he stops everything to nod and acknowledge him.
- Seeing how much the public adores Whitmore and Grey. All they have to do is be mentioned or, in Whitmore's case, just walk on stage, and the crowd goes nuts.
- Julius wrote a book about how he saved the world in 1996, which isn't terribly far from the truth considering he not only got David to Washington in time to save Whitmore and the command staff, but gave David the idea about giving the aliens' tech a "cold."
- The relationship between Julius and the kids. Basically Julius comes to rescue an entire herd of children and more or less adopts all of them. Friend to All Children indeed.
- One of the kids stops his older sister and rescues Julius from the wreckage of his ship.
- The kids ask Julius where they'll head to escape the carnage of the aliens. Julius declares that the best place to be in this crisis is with his son.
- When the sister begins to break down a while later, Julius softly apologizes for the death of their parents and takes over driving.
- When the group comes upon a school bus full of kids that were abandoned by their driver, Julius takes charge and begins driving all of the kids to Area 51.
- At the end of the film, Julius turns to the kids and asks if they want to stick with him, and they tearfully accept.
- Warlord Dikembe, a genuine badass who won a war to reclaim his country from the aliens with no help from the rest of the world, treats accountant Floyd as just an annoyance (if not The Load outright). However, they end up fighting side by side against the aliens to save Okun. Afterward:Dikembe: You have the heart of a warrior.Floyd: That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
- Despite Charlie's awkward (and outright bad) attempts to flirt with Rain, she ends up allowing him to take her out on a date after Earth is saved.
- Former President Whitmore telling Patricia that he volunteered for the suicide mission to save her and not the world.
- This is part of an ongoing theme through the entire film of the previous generations feeling an obligation to the next generation, capped off with Julius (the prior generation from the first film) taking on the role of foster grandfather for a whole gaggle of orphaned kids (the next generation compared to this film's heroes).
- On a personal level, when Patricia is confronted by Matthew, her father's bodyguard, he makes it clear that her father asked him to distract Patty while Whitmore took the tug, not as a president asking a subordinate, but as one father to another. Expanded media explains that where some people saw guarding Whitmore as basically just paying lip-service to his past importance, Matthew genuinely regarded this position as important and liked Whitmore as a person beyond his role as a past president.
- After the disastrous assault on the alien mothership, David blames himself for not being able to prepare the world for the second alien invasion enough, thus leaving them no chance to fight back. Whitmore assures him that humanity didn't stand a chance the last time, either, and that it's not his fault that everything ended up as it is, then goes on to give a Rousing Speech to the demoralized base personnel in the hangar, giving them the resolve to fight back again.
- The novelization features a very bittersweet scene where Jasmine checks in on a little boy being treated for cancer and finds him asleep with his favorite doll, which a nurse says he can't fall asleep without. What is it? An action figure of her late husband, Steven Hiller.
- David's reaction when he hears that Julius is still alive after thinking he had died in the aliens' attack. Jeff Goldblum perfectly conveys David's (joyful) surprise and immense relief, showing that no matter how much Julius may annoy him, David loves his dad.
