Factual error: Denham is obviously shooting a sound film - he has a sound recordist with him along with the bulky and awkward recording equipment typical for the era, and they discuss the problems of recording dialogue on board. But not once do we see him filming with sound. We see the crew recording dialogue - synchronised sound, recorded on location, which is utterly impossible given the equipment they have and the circumstances under which the fim is being shot. We never see a microphone, a boom pole or a tape recorder. His camera isn't even 'blimped' - soundproofed - and it's handcranked, which makes a racket. They can't be planning on adding the sound later - why have the sound recordist and his bulky and heavy equipment there with them if they are? We see the crew recording dialogue - synchronised sound, recorded on location, which is utterly impossible given the equipment they have and the circumstances under which the fim is being shot. The whole point of post dubbing dialogue is that you don't need a sound recordist in the first place.
Factual error: Twice in the movie a Jumbo Jet (a Boeing 747) from Pan Am appears. The movie is set in 1969, when that plane had its maiden journey, but it wasn't flown commercially until 1970.
Factual error: In the scene where Admiral Kimmel is inspecting the crew of the battleship an aide comes up with a message to send some ships to the Atlantic. Admiral Kimmel starts complaining about the orders. No Admiral would ever do this especially in front of enlisted men. In fact he was placed in charge of the Pacific fleet when his predecessor complained about moving the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
Factual error: During the gun battle, Gary Cooper runs behind a building that has an air-conditioner or swamp cooler installed in a second-floor window. (01:17:30)
Factual error: In the final scene, where Fonda and Holbrook are looking over the carrier at the crowds on the dock, you can see that only the first rows of people are dressed in period clothes. The rest of the crowd are dressed as they would have been in 1976 when the film was made. Also, between them in the background is a yellow Ford Pinto.
Factual error: The poem Isolde recites, John Donne's "The Good-Morrow", is a 17th-century work, which is centuries later than the movie's time period.
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: Tom Hanks is driving his car over a bridge in downtown Chicago in 1931. In the background is the elevated train structure. An aluminum bodied train passes on the trestel in the background. This aluminum bodied train is of 1980's contruction. In the 1930's the train cars were of wood construction and painted brown. They were still in service in the 1950's.
Factual error: When Sandra Bullock and George Clooney manage to get to the ISS, she gets entangled with some ropes and manages to grab Clooney's safety rope. Clooney's speed should be very close to Bullocks' and the ISS', hence. The parachute ropes should be able to withhold the forces of deceleration (the mass of two people is very small, compared to Soyus or ISS), so no more pulling or having to sacrifice himself... This is due to the fact that there's no drag in space to constantly change Clooney's velocity (revert to Newton's First Law).
Suggested correction: The parachute ropes are of course strong enough to hold the relatively low kinetic energy of the drifting astronauts, but that is not the reason why Clooney detaches. The rope is not attached firmly to Bullocks' leg. There are some loops loosely wrapped around her leg, and while both astronauts are still drifting away from the ISS (seen in a shot a few seconds earlier), those loops slip away from the foot one by one. Before the last loop slips away from the foot, untethering and condemning both astronauts, Clooney detaches himself to lessen the kinetec energy that pulls on the rope by reducing the total mass of the "system of two astronauts", so that there is a better chance that the last loop will remain attached to Bullock.
Once Clooney had stop moving all that would have been need was a slight pull from Bullock to pull him towards her. The momentum was lost when he stopped moving. So no need to cut himself loose.
It all happens in free fall. As soon as the cord withstood inertia resulting from George's body mass pulling on it, George would bounce back towards Sandra. The entire scene was completely unrealistic.
Clooney stopped moving in relation to Bullock. But both were still moving in relation to the ISS (look at the scene again; there is a wide shot that establishes this), with both their masses pulling on the parachute cords, straining the tenuous connection of the cords looped around Bullock's foot. To lessen the strain, Clooney detaches itself from the two-astronaut-system, reducing the mass and kinetic energy pulling on the cords.
Clooney and Bullock - when they were connected to each other - never actually stopped moving in relation to the ISS.
Actually parachute cords can withstand hundreds of pounds of force, making them very difficult to snap.
The danger wasn't the ropes snapping, the danger was that they would slip off her foot, and they would both be lost to space.
Factual error: The old percussion double barrel shotgun is firing modern shotgun shells, which would never work or fit in that gun, and furthermore are also made of plastic, wrong for the era.
Factual error: An An-12, the aircraft the main character uses to fly all over the world, has a maximum range of about 3,500 miles. Hardly enough to fly from the US to South Korea or from South Korea to Israel. The An-12 also miraculously transforms into a C-130 in a couple of filler scenes. And why is this ex-Soviet aircraft marked in USAF markings, assigned to McGuire AFB?
Suggested correction: Can't speak to the second half of your paragraph (should really post as 3 separate mistakes) but as for the first, a range of 3500 miles, aircraft such as the kc-135 exist and aerial refueling is fairly common place. Considering it's a mission supported by the acting UN Secretary General to stop a world crisis, resources could have been diverted for refueling.
The initial launch from the carrier is a C-130 which can do this (if empty, minimal fuel, has the full length of the flight deck and the carrier is steaming full ahead into the wind). It then morphs into an AN-12 and back to a Hercules. They make the point that this small fleet is what is known to remain of allied forces so not sure where any tanker support will come from. Many movies have ridiculous range issues with aircraft anyway.
Factual error: It is not possible that Pitt could have gone up to the ship when it was already blasting off. There was literally fire in the tunnel.
Suggested correction: It was a bit confusing, but what I saw was a shower of sparks or hot particles and some fumes, and no fire in the tunnel until he was through the hatch. The makers may have been influenced by seeing vapour prior to a rocket launch, and then some rockets use a shower of electric sparks to ignite the engines. It was implausible, but no fire in the tunnel.
This movie is nonsense on stilts! It's got so many mistakes because it's sci-fi fantasy.
Factual error: At the point where Jared Leto is released from prison he is picked up in a 1960 Black Chrysler Imperial. As the camera rises it shows the date as 1954. The car is used a few more times in the movie.
Factual error: The movie takes place during the 1990s, but throughout the movie cars are shown with Illinois license plates with "Illinois" written in cursive. These plates were not introduced until 2001. (00:24:45)
Factual error: When the B-52 is flying low over Russia, the shadow on the ground is a Boeing B-17G, a World War II propeller driven bomber.
Factual error: In the scene when Michael visits his father in the hospital in 1945 there's a NYC Fire Dept. sign on the wall with the name of the Commissioner, Robert O. Lowery, who was commissioner from 1966 to 1973.
Factual error: When they are at Aunt Meg's the first time, they get word that a tornado has been spotted and somehow they already know its rating. Tornadoes get their ratings from the amount of damage they do. This is determined after the tornado is gone.
Suggested correction: The scale back then was based on the size of the tornado, it's only more recently it is based on damage. So during the time of the movie, the scale was being used correctly for size not damage.
The Fujita scale was introduced in 1971 and was in use during the 90's when this film came out. The Fujita scale measured the damage caused by a tornado to man-made structures after ground or aerial surveys, it was not a measurement of tornado size (an F5 tornado is a tornado that's rated on the Fujita scale). It is true the Fujita scale was replaced by the enhanced Fujita scale in 2007, but that was only to align the ratings to the damage better, it did not change rating tornadoes from size to destructive powers.
Factual error: There is no possible method of "fusing" the genetic material of a common housefly (Musca domestica) and a human. The housefly has twelve chromosomes, humans forty six. There is no way to combine the two in order to produce a viable organism. Thirty four of the human chromosomes would have no matching chromosome to "fuse" with, meaning the physical characteristics coded by those genes would not form. The Brundlefly would be missing three quarters of his human body.
Suggested correction: There's no possible way of teleporting physical objects either, but it happens in this movie. This is science fiction. These kinds of "factual errors" are not valid.
The film presents no scientific explanation for "teleportation" but does for "genetic merging." Teleportation is possible in this film's universe, but "genetic merging" is impossible in any universe.
Genetic merging is possible in this film's universe; that's the whole point. It doesn't matter if the explanation doesn't stack up, it still works.
Factual error: In a scene in 1980, Brian May is teaching everyone the beat for his new song "We Will Rock You." However that song was released in 1977.
Factual error: In the montage sequence showing Drew Barrymore hanging out with the math club, they have a Pi poster with 3.1457869986. Only the first 3 digits are actually correct. (Pi = 3.1415926535897...) (00:25:20)