Factual error: When Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane and Dennis Miller are climbing through the sewer system to get to the White House, Lane looks up and says that they must be under the National Mall because there's Pennsylvania Avenue. That is incorrect. The National Mall is located behind the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue is the street in front. They do not intersect.
Factual error: While Dirk and Reed are running from Rahad's house, and trying to get into Dirk's 'Vette, Rahad fires a shotgun at them. One shot hits the driver's window, which shatters, then a shot at the back of the car showers sparks. Corvettes are fiberglass-bodied, and wouldn't spark. After the sparks, there is no damage to the rear bumper cover, which if really hit with a shotgun blast would at least put some holes in the fiberglass.
Factual error: When Tommy Lee Jones is looking at his wife on the computer, he had typed in Truro (in Cape Cod, Mass.), but when he zoomed in, it was on the lower cape; Truro is located on the upper cape near the tip. (00:58:40)
Factual error: At the end of the film, The Voice tells his radio audience the Challenger was estimated to have hit the bulldozers at 185 MPH. The top speed of the Challenger, with a 426 Hemi, was 145 MPH. A trained police officer (and there were many of them there), even estimating speed without a radar gun, would be able to estimate the speed much closer than that. It's part of their training to be able to make estimates that will hold up in court, and 185 MPH is noticeably different than 145 MPH.
Factual error: John Cusack arrives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and drives through the downtown area while we hear Minnie Driver's voice-over. He not only passes some storefronts at least twice, but one of the storefronts has a large yellow and brown awning reading "Monrovia Beauty Supply," which is located in Monrovia, California.
Factual error: There is a chase through the Archives-Navy Memorial station on the Washington, D.C. Metro, but the station looks nothing like the real one and the trains don't look like the trains on the DC Metro.
Factual error: A meteorite strikes a dam, flooding downtown Kansas City. There are no dams on the Missouri River within hundreds of miles of that location. Also, the apparent position of the dam would require the river to be flowing backwards. And downtown Kansas City sits atop a bluff, the flood would have gone elsewhere and not hit there.
Factual error: When Quinn and Yaz jump out of the little sportplane, they use his little ball-parachute thingy. When it opens they just fall out. No foam, no stuffings. Nothing. Technically, they would have been smashed like bugs into the ground.
Factual error: When D.J. is attacked by Dr. Weir, he is grabbed by the throat and is squeezed until his windpipe is broken, shown by the way he was breathing (or struggling to). When Weir seizes him again and throws him against a support beam, he screams in a way impossible for someone who just had his windpipe crushed.
Suggested correction: Dr. Weir doesn't crush DJ's throat at all. The noises he makes are simply choking noises because he is being picked up by his throat, there isn't even anything in the scene to imply his throat is being crushed, which in reality requires considerably more effort than most people believe.
Factual error: The queen's maid tells Brown that the queen is currently reading 'Lord Tennyson.' That would be difficult in 1864, as Tennyson did not accept a peerage until the early 1880s.
Factual error: During the remote control car chase the bad guys' minivan drives directly over it at one point. From the view of the toy car, you can see a driveshaft running down the centre of the undercarriage, which would be impossible on a front-wheel-drive vehicle like the Nissan Quest they're driving, which use half axles to drive the front wheels.
Factual error: During Howard's "Thank You" speech to New York he gives NYC the gift of a live performance by AC/DC. The year was 1985. As the band takes the stage and launches into "You Shook Me All Night" we see Phil Rudd on drums. Rudd had quit AC/DC two years earlier and was replaced by Simon Wright. (Rudd returned in 1994, hence being part of the band when the scene was filmed).
Factual error: In the prom scene in which Romy and Michelle wear Madonna costumes, Romy is wearing her hair up in a distinctive ponytail assumingly inspired by the famous ponytail Madonna sported in her Blond Ambition World Tour. However, this scene is supposed to be taking place in around 1987 and Madonna did not wear that ponytail until 1990.
Factual error: At the start of the film, they are using an optical telescope for astronomy in daylight. This is not possible. The telescope is also far too small to be giving such a detailed picture.
Factual error: When Vincent and Jerome are at the Gattaca building at night, they watch a rocket launch. The exhaust from a such a rocket would have lit the area around them or at least the nearby mountains bright as day.
Factual error: Secretary of State John Hay is depicted issuing the order to "initiate hostilities" against Spain. Unfortunately, at the time we actually went to war with Spain, John Hay was not the Secretary of State. That position was held by William. R. Day. Hay did not become SofS until September of 1898, after most hostilities had ended.
Factual error: During the scene where Charlie's thug, Lo, is in the street with the homeless man and his "busket", Lo gets angry at him, pulls his Glock out and rakes the slide to chamber a round. However, in the next shots of Lo we see his Glock with the slide still back even though it should have returned to the closed position.
Factual error: When the Pest is in his girlfriend's house, and Gustav comes in, the pest has way too many bullets. The pistol he has holds one bullet, not 15 or however many he fired.
Factual error: The movie opens with the Academy Awards, which as everyone knows are held no later than late March. Then Howard's wedding is no less than a week later, at which point he accidentally outs himself and is subsequently fired. It's clear that the kids' graduation is no more than a week or two later (made especially clear by the fact that Cameron, rushing to town, gets there the same night of the wedding and then is still there at graduation.) But high school graduations are in June or, at the earliest, May - which last time I checked was more than a week or two after the end of March.
Factual error: Insurance companies are not allowed to file bankruptcy. The government would bail them out.