Factual error: In the opening narrative about the first person to call out "America", as the ship passes the Statue of Liberty, it's traveling in the wrong direction - with the Statue entering the screen from the viewer's left and moving toward the right; a direction that would have taken the ship from Manhattan to Staten Island (or through the Straits into the Atlantic).
Factual error: At the beginning of the movie, Pecker is at the Washington Monument in Baltimore when he boards the 27 bus to Hampden. The 27 bus does go to Hampden, but the closest it ever comes to the monument is Howard Street, three blocks to the west.
Factual error: When Beloved wakes up and starts talking to Denver for the first time there's a close-up of her face where her contact lenses are visible. (00:38:40)
Factual error: When the crew head into Wyoming to buy alcohol, there is a shot of the sign the marks the Wyoming border. That particular design of the sign didn't come into use until after 1993, when Wyoming changed its license plates to that design.
Factual error: A computer screen is used to show that a matching record was found for the fingerprint of one of the terrorists. But the two prints shown are identical, meaning they are the same print, shown twice. In reality, a matching print would show the same patterns of skin texture, but the ink pattern, record quality, angle of the finger to the paper, would all vary. You can't make the exact same finger print twice. It's similar to you signature - it's always extremely similar, but never precisely the same. (00:31:40)
Factual error: In the entire movie it's quite obvious Sean Penn has a digital watch on, even though the face is on the inside of his wrist it is occasionally visible, and the modern rubber watch band also gives it away, especially in his close-ups.
Factual error: Mel tells Bobbie that his car is a Coupe De Ville. We see later in the movie that the car has four doors. The Cadillac is actually a Sedan De Ville.
Factual error: When Ratcher's F16 has a system failure, he reports that both his engines are out, but F16s are single engine aircraft.
Factual error: There is a scene where the guy takes a date whale watching in Boston Harbor. There are no whales in Boston Harbor, it's at least an hour and a half trip out to go see whales from Boston.
Factual error: When testing the new phone installation, the engineer only dialled the number, and not the area code, as you have to do on a mobile phone.
Factual error: During the morning training session, Shang shot an arrow to the top of the pole so his soldiers can get it, but the arrow is stuck in a horizontal position. A difficult position to achieve, for someone shooting an arrow from below. Even if the arrow hit the pole at such a point in its arc, its kinetic energy would be at its weakest, preventing it from boring into the pole.
Factual error: Peter McCabe escapes the operating room partly by turning his oxygen supply into a flamethrower. 100% oxygen makes everything extremely flammable, but it cannot be lit like a flamethrower.
Factual error: When Vic is beginning to fall in love with Louisa, he stays up one night reading her novel-in-progress. However, Louisa is Spanish, and it's clear from her accent that her native language is Spanish, and writers very very rarely would deliberately choose to write in their second language when they could write in their first language - so her manuscript is almost certainly in Spanish. And it's extremely unlikely that Vic speaks Spanish: he shows no signs of speaking Spanish; his character is not that bright and not that well-educated; and even if he learned it in school he's been out of it for many years and wouldn't be able to read it at that time. Even if Louisa had chosen to have her work translated so it could be read more widely, she was in the process of writing it; translation is a long, expensive, and involved process and it wouldn't have been done while the work was still being written, as we have already learned it is. Therefore, Vic would have been unable to read Louisa's work.
Factual error: When Bill and Jason are heading up to Canada (and Lucia is following in her own car), they are driving past several high mountain peaks, and up through a winding valley. Problem is, they started in South Bend, IN and are heading towards Detroit, MI, and that area of the country is notoriously flat, other than occasional hills.
Factual error: When Max received a letter, the address showed that he lived in Cincinnati. But at the end of the movie, Max winds up Freak's bird, and lets it fly over the river towards the Cincinnati skyline. This means he is on the other side of the river, in Newport Kentucky.
Suggested correction: That does not mean he lives in Newport, he could have crossed the river to fly Freak's Bird there.
Factual error: When Jack arrives at a roulette table to replace Matt as the dealer, the roulette wheel is stationary. In UK casinos, it is never allowed to stop spinning at any point while the table is open.
Factual error: In a scene set in May 1960, Paul Williams and his group are singing the Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs song "Stay," but Herald Records did not release "Stay" until August 1960.
Factual error: When the Spanish sink the topsail schooner bringing supplies to Gibraltar, Captain Foster swims to a floating fighting top. The schooner actually had nothing more elaborate than a crosstrees on both masts.
Factual error: In the big professional Latin dance championship scene at the end of the movie, the competitors perform four dances: the samba, the cha-cha, the paso doble, and the rumba. In reality, however, a professional Latin dance championship, regardless of where you go, is almost always a 5-dance event: a cha-cha, a samba, a rumba, a paso doble, and a jive. Rumor has it that a jive sequence was originally supposed to be part of the competition scene but was cut from the final version of the film for unknown reasons.
Factual error: When Max and Dirk are at the parking lot flying a kite, Margaret shows up with her plane. When he looks at her map of the flight plan it says Magnum street, but it was filmed on Mangum (Delmar Stadium in Houston, TX).