The film and source novel's title, "The Year That Trembled", is derived from a short Walt Whitman poem called "Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me" from his "Leaves of Grass" (1900) anthology and was first published in "Drum-Taps" in 1865. It reads: "YEAR that trembled and reel'd beneath me! Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me, Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself, Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled? And sullen hymns of defeat?".
The names of the educational institutions featured / referenced in the film included the Kent State University and the Chestnut Falls High School.
This movie was made and first broadcast about four years after its source novel of the same name by Scott Lax had been first published in 1998.
This film was made and first released about thirty-two years after the Kent State University shootings in 1970.