Trivia for
Chain Reaction (1996) More at IMDbPro »

• The motorcycle in the movie is a 1976 Kawasaki KZ1000, requested by Keanu Reeves himself. Fox bought five bikes for different scenes, all painted flat black to prevent the spotlights from being reflected.
  
  
• There is a sequence in the movie that is supposed to take place in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The exterior of the D.C. landmark is shown, but the Wisconsin State Capitol, located in Madison, Wisconsin, was used for the interior shots. Two scenes were filmed there: one in the first floor of the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda, and one in the building's Supreme Court chamber.
  
  
• The public booth phone call just prior to the ice hovercraft chase was made from George Williams (now Aurora) College Camp.
  
  
• The chase scene at the observatory was filmed at Yerkes Observatory which is on the hill directly above College Camp.
  
  
• The early scenes in the movie were filmed at the Inland Steel plant in East Chicago, Indiana.
  
  
• Scenes filmed at both the Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry, both in Chicago (about five miles apart), were combined to suggest a (fictitious) museum located outside of Washington, DC. The action did not occur in Chicago.
  
  
• The lecture at the beginning of the movie was filmed in Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago.
  
  
• The actors could not do more than a couple of takes a day while shooting the ice hovercraft chase because of the unpleasant combination of cold air and high speed.
  
  
• Two of the computer readouts are the Batch Recipe readout from On Deadly Ground (1994).
  
  
• The Lyman Collier role was originally to be played by Tommy Lee Jones. He was replaced by Brian Cox.
  
  
• Elements of the original script of the film written by Josh Friedman entitled "Dead Drop" in which Morgan Freeman's character in the film frames Keanu Reeves' character for murder and industrial espionage were kept with subsequent rewrites, with the final shooting draft of the script having Freeman playing more of a mysterious mentor-like government agent and Reeves' character still a scientist plus adding the Rachel Weisz character.
  
  
• The characters that Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn play in the film are loosely based on the characters of U.S. Marshals Sam Gerard and Cosmo Renfro (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pantoliano) from The Fugitive (1993), which was also directed by Andrew Davis.
  
  
• Prior to the start of filming, Keanu Reeves had injured himself playing a pickup game of hockey in his native Canada. He injured his neck and back areas causing him to gain weight which explains his look in the film.
  
  
• Filmed almost extensively in the winter of 1995 and early 1996 in Chicago, the hometown of director Andrew Davis, where his other films Code of Silence (1985), Above the Law (1988), The Package (1989), and The Fugitive (1993) were also filmed.
  
  
• The massive explosion seen early in the film caused by the botched cold fusion project was shot with miniatures with an old abandoned steel factory acting as both the interior and exterior for the shots.
  
  
• The scene in which Keanu Reeves barely escapes on the motorcycle was shot mainly with blue screens and explosion effects added in post-production. The live sequences had Reeves riding a motorcycle hooked up to the back of truck with a camera filming tight close ups.
  
  
• The drawbridge sequence where Keanu Reeves is being chased by the Chicago P.D., F.B.I. and Brian Cox's henchmen took approximately one week of night shoots to film with temperatures ranging from five below to twenty below zero.
  
  
• Mira Sorvino was originally cast as Dr. Lilly Sinclair, but left the project to star in Beautiful Girls (1996).
  
  
• The water tanks used in the film to act as the "cold fusion project" are similar to those used in hydro and massage therapy.
  
  
• The ramp Keanu Reeves runs down during the explosion is located at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. The ramp is located at the IPNS (Intense Pulsed Neutron Source) facility and can be seen in aerial photos on the division's website.
  
  
• "I'm your friend, Eddie" is the only line of dialogue in the film that originated from Josh Friedman's spec script "Dead Drop".
  
  
• Several references are made to an "Ice Hovercraft" it's actually an air-boat such as ones used in the everglades or swampy regions.
  
  
• Right at the start of the film, during the speech held by the Scientist, behind him is a Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Map.
  
  
• The aerial view of the particle accelerator at C-Systems Research supposedly in Leesberg, Virginia, is really the APS (Advanced Photon Source) at Argonne National Lab in Argonne, Illinois.
  
  

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