Continuity mistake: The green Alfa in the opening minutes has its side, and mirror, wiped out by a lorry. For the next 5 minutes it then drives around in perfect condition. (00:05:43)
Factual error: The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized steel box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one).
Factual error: At the end of the film Rainwood has established his innocence of the drug charges and is happily back at work as a senior mechanic for a large airline. However, part of the sentencing and plea bargain protocols at his arraignment is his previous conviction on a lesser drug charge years before. It goes without saying that he did not advise his employers of this when he started work for them - no airline in the world (even pre 9/11) would hire someone with a drug conviction on their record! Now this is out in the open the airline knows that Rainwood is a convicted drug user (on the lesser, legitimate charge) and that he lied on his original job application. They wouldn't hire him again to sweep the floors.
Factual error: Near the end of the film Knox is flying a Huey helicopter and the Angels hitch a ride by shooting it with a spear gun and dangling on the line behind it. Suddenly adding about 200kgs to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft - the pilot would know immediately that something was wrong. (01:23:20)
Suggested correction: Knox wasn't a trained pilot. Either he had no clue to what was going on, or he thought something may have been wrong, but didn't know what to do about it.
Taking off and landing a helicopter are by far the most intense and difficult part of a pilot's training. Seriously, 99% of learning to fly is learning how to land and take off. If the pilot is skilled enough to take off in a Huey he is easily skilled enough to notice a massive additional drag on his helicopter due to the additional weight of the angels and the air resistance put up by such a bulky protrusion on his aircraft. If he isn't skilled enough to notice that, he isn't skilled enough to take off in the first place.
Factual error: Why is Hilts not wearing a uniform? A serving officer captured behind enemy lines in civilian clothing risked being shot as a spy. If a prisoner's uniform was too worn or damaged to wear, it was routine for the German authorities to replace it - a P.O.W. in civilian clothes is an obvious escape risk. He is wearing a pair of tan chinos, a cut off sloppy Joe sweatshirt, both ridiculously anachronistic - Sixties hipster fashions - and nowhere even close to a World War 2 uniform. He is also wearing Army Type III Service boots - something that would never have been issued to a fighter pilot.
Continuity mistake: When Sam is in his bedroom, after he finds the Cube sliver it falls and dramatically burns a hole through the floor into the kitchen. But Sam's bedroom is over the living room (there is nothing on the ground floor below Sam's elevated bathroom, and in the first movie Jazz hides in this open space), and the kitchen is actually located between the den and dining room, at the other end of the house. If they were to follow the actual floor plan of the house, the Cube sliver would have landed in the area of the piano in the living room, but where would the fun have been in that? (00:12:30)
Continuity mistake: Hooper wears rimless eyeglasses, with the arms either attached at the upper corners of the lenses or at the sides of the lenses. If this didn't happen between shots within the same scenes, it could be presumed that Hooper has two different pairs of glasses and switches between the two, but they do indeed change between shots, such as when Mrs. Kintner slaps Brody, or even later, on the Orca. (00:36:05)
Audio problem: When Luke says, "Now all we gotta do is find this Yoda, if he even exists," if you look closely, his mouth never moves.
Continuity mistake: In the final fight scene on the plane between Jinx and Agent Frost, Jinx is slashed across her stomach, drawing blood. In a later scene, when Jinx and 007 are pouring diamonds over one another in the hut on the cliff, her stomach is unblemished. (02:02:25)
Plot hole: The convicts remove the radar transponder from the Conair aircraft and put it aboard a tour plane to distract their pursuers. That won't work. By law the tour plane will have a working radar transponder of its own, and two working transponders that close together will show up on radar as a collision. Air traffic controllers would immediately alert emergency services who would, obviously, wonder how two aircraft that had collided had managed to stay in the air. Nobody disconnects the first transponder - Pinball carelessly tosses the second transponder under the rear seat of the aircraft (the implication being that it continues to operate, perhaps on backup battery power). He doesn't disconnect the original transponder either - Swamp Thing, a skilled pilot, does that. There is no time for him to do any of this before he is stopped by the female security guard anyway.
Continuity mistake: After chasing down Sully, the yellow Porsche is totally wrecked on the left side, until Arnie drives it away, and it's fine. Later, when Arnie and Cindy arrive at the hotel, the car is wrecked again. (00:39:50)
Factual error: While handling the ignition coil cable to the distributor cap, Joe Pesci tells De Niro that the timing chain needs adjustment in his truck. A truck of that year with an inline Chevy motor would not have a timing chain at all, instead this truck would be equipped with a direct drive timing gear. Even if it had a timing chain, it would be behind the water pump and a cover. It would have been a several hour job to replace, not possible to adjust it.
Factual error: It is impossible for a stream of burning jet fuel to follow a plane through snow and catch up. Not only is jet fuel extremely hard to ignite, almost as soon as the plane was off the ground the fuel stream would be too dispersed for the flame to climb up into the tank, and even if not it wouldn't burn fast enough to catch the plane.
Continuity mistake: Right before they rob the police car, a Boeing 747 (four engines) is seen in shots of the plane coming into land. When the plane is shown from behind, it is a Boeing 767, with only two engines and fewer main landing gears. (00:30:10)
Suggested correction: It's for effect to show they were hanging out around the airport for more than a bit.
There's no evidence this was meant to be a montage scene of various planes. The cuts they did have in the first angle were of the same plane getting closer to build suspense. Same for the other angle. Plus, there's no scenes or shots of "them" waiting.
Visible crew/equipment: When Melissa dodges the truck that has fallen from sky and Dusty rushes to open a door and help Melissa get out of the truck, the reflection of a camera is seen in the bottom right corner of the truck window. As they move out and pan to the right, you can see a reflection of the same camera and cameraman at the bottom right corner of the truck door as they move away. (00:33:50)
Factual error: In the scene when Will is opening the drawer of films from the Leeds home, there is clearly a copy of Mrs. Doubtfire in the left column of tapes. How can that be? Red Dragon is clearly set "several years" after 1980, as the caption says, but before the 1991 Silence of the Lambs, but "Mrs. Doubtfire" came out in 1993.
Factual error: The movie starts in 1985, jumps '5 years later' and then back to Sasha Luss, then '3 years earlier'. So, in her crusty apartment in an impoverished neighbourhood of 1987 Soviet Russia, Anna is filling a form on her notebook-style laptop, too modern for the era. It looks like a NEC UltraLite (considered the first notebook style laptop) which didn't even come out until 1989, let alone the likelihood of someone in the USSR having one.
Other mistake: Interior Minister Roger Frey advises Commissioner Lebel that all members of the police, military and other security forces attending the ceremonies on the day the Jackal is expected to strike will be issued with lapel badges at the last moment, in case he is going to try to masquerade as one of them. We see hundreds of such people in the next part of the film, including Lebel himself and the CRS private who allows the heavily disguised Jackal through the barricades around the site of the ceremony DeGaulle is due to attend. Only the CRS private wears a lapel badge. Not one of the other police or military officers in attendance is wearing a lapel badge of any kind. (01:58:15)
Character mistake: After Pookie is killed (with his eyes open) and the bomb is strapped to him, he blinks his eyes.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, when Anderton arrests the jealous husband, he notes that he is being arrested on April 22 - that day - for the future murder of his wife and her lover. Later, while Anderton is jogging, we see billboards advocating a "Yes" vote on pre-crime on April 22. The next day, Anderton's boss Lamar notes that the vote is in a week, which would make it April 15, making the day that the jealous husband was arrested April 14, not April 22. (00:13:05 - 00:15:15)
Suggested correction: Even today in 2023 felony convictions might not show up on a background check. Not all information has been uploaded to the internet yet. It was extremely easy in the 1980's for a conviction to be missed by a background check especially if there was no prison time served or it occurred in a rural county or town.
He just got out of prison and establishing his innocence involved the violent deaths of at least two people. Do you not think that his employers just might have followed his story? He'd be all over the news media. The idea that not one person would have followed up on his criminal history is beyond absurd - we are talking about a safety critical job that involves the safety of hundreds of people.