Factual error: Trevor - a Professor of Geology - boasts about having an article published in Scientific American, and that is not something any scientist would do. Scientific American is looked upon with slight disdain by the scientific community, considered to be a populist crowd pleaser. It is not even peer reviewed. Considering that he has just turned the geological and archaeological worlds on their heads he would have been better off publishing in Journal of Geological Research or Geology, both prestigious professional journals.
Factual error: Basic physics - Hancock throws Michel from a dead stop to above cloud level in about eleven seconds. The clouds are bog standard cumulus which form at around 7,000 metres in temperate zones. This means that Michel accelerates to about 700 metres per second instantly, from a dead stop. Obviously he cannot accelerate during his ascent, so his starting speed has to be at least that. (In fact he would have to start his ascent much, much faster than 700 metres per second as he would be constantly decelerating due to gravity and air resistance, but it will do as a start point.) Michel accelerates from 0 to 2,520 kilometres per hour - twice the speed of sound - in zero seconds. He would be accelerating at around 5000 Gs, turning him into a very long streak of fine, pink mist.
Factual error: During CONTROL's paintball training session, a barrel view of a bullet exiting the gun is shown as it travels to its target. However, the entire bullet is shown, casing and all, instead of just the bullet. (00:09:10)
Factual error: In one scene they are playing on an Xbox 360, but the Xbox 360 did not come out until 2005, and the game being played, Gears of War, wasn't released until 2006. The movie takes place in 2004.
Factual error: The moon is full every night the highschoolers are at the lake house.
Factual error: During the boat chase scene, Bond throws a grappling hook/anchor from the old boat he is driving onto the deck of the rubber boat "riding" his. The rubber boat is then violently yanked off of Bond's boat and crashes. This makes no sense. For the rubber boat to be yanked off that way, the other end of the anchor line would have to be tied to something stationary. However, the other end of the line is just lying in Bond's boat. There's even a shot of it sitting there.
Factual error: During the scene where everyone runs outside, the Statue of Liberty head crashes into the street. The head is scaled too small and its size can be compared to the people taking pictures. In real life the statue head is large enough for people to walk into (17' from chin to cranium).
Factual error: The aircraft used to fly to Shangri-La is a Bristol Beaufighter, a single seat long range fighter bomber. It was not a transport aircraft and could not carry passengers. Some variants of the Beaufighter were two seaters but none at all could be used as small airliners as they do here. It is not possible to simply reconfigure the aircraft as shown here - the centre of gravity, balance and trim would all be thrown out. The resulting jury-built aircraft would be uncontrollable in flight.
Factual error: After the boat has blown up and sunk, Ben swims over to it and checks it out, very little to anything is even a little charred, with that big of an explosion everything would be burnt, and black.
Factual error: At the end we see a soldier replacing the canister that the Zyklon B is kept in. However, he is not wearing an SS badge as all SS soldiers did. Zyklon B was only handled by members of the SS, as no other unit had authorisation to carry the sensitive stuff. (01:28:00)
Factual error: We see Jason Statham walking into a shop in 1971 which has a Visa/Barclaycard logo on the door. Only problem with that is that the name Visa wasn't brought in until 1977.
Factual error: There is no possible way to cause a power line to drop from its support pylons and hit a person on target. These wires are fastened extremely securely, designed to withstand extremely high tension through all kinds of weather, and they are not equipped with some sort of explosive charges to release them.
Factual error: When John is going back to the pirates boat to set it on fire you can hear his boat's engine running. However in the closeup the pulley for the water pump is not turning. This means the engine isn't running.
Factual error: The flag on the outer left of the square keeps changing between the correct flag for Germany (horizontal black, red, yellow) as seen from the aerial shot when the bomb explodes, and a wrong version (horizontal red, yellow, black) which can be seen when Howard Lewis first accesses the square. (00:34:25)
Factual error: Walt's medical records contain an error - on the left side of the folder, his address is listed as "Detroit, CA" and it's correctly listed as "Detroit, MI" on the right side, although as pointed out in another entry, the house number is completely wrong in the medical records.
Factual error: When Iron Man catches the Audi SUV, the front wings/fenders don't bend when he catches it, the car weighs close to 2 tons, some damage should occur to them as they are made of such thin metal.
Factual error: At one point during the final battle, Betty puts her hand on the minigun. Having been recently fired for long periods, that thing would be scalding hot and would badly burn her hand.
Factual error: Shortly after David and Griffin jump to Japan, Griffin goes to a car dealership and takes a Mercedes. Griffin then drives on the right side of the street rather than on the left as he should in Japan.
Factual error: The electrical power grid fails, depicted by a series of shots of city blackouts and equipment shutdowns. When the power goes out, the lights of an oil refinery go out as well as the flare. In actuality the exact opposite happens to a flare when powered equipment such as compressors and cooling devices fail simultaneously. The flare is not an electrically powered device and is designed to stay lit during power outages. All excess pressure is immediately vented to the flare stack within a second, causing an enormous flame and smoke cloud that will be visible for several miles.
Factual error: When you see the blind Syndey walk through her appartment she keeps touching the walls to feel where she is. A person who has been blind for over 20 years (as is mentioned in the film) knows the way around their own home. They know preciseley how many steps it is from room to room. They wouldn't keep touching the wall like this.