Factual error: In the Logan departure scene near the end of the movie, Logan's naval officer uniform is missing his rank shoulder boards.
Factual error: The helicopter flown is a Bell 407. The movie is set in '88 and the first flight of this type was 1994.
Factual error: About 20 minutes in, the group find a Welsh miners' group in the phone book. The character who is making the call speaks the first two digits of the phone number: "0, 1,..." The movie is set in 1984, when the dialling code for that district was "0639" In that year, "01" was the code for London, not Wales.
Factual error: Writer/director Adam MacDonald boasted that he studied black bear predatory behavior and black bear attacks on humans for years in preparation for making this film, because he wanted to depict a black bear attack in as factual and as authentic a manner as possible. But, at the most crucial point in this film (when the black bear actually does attack Alex and Jenn), factual accuracy goes out the window. As Alex and Jenn cower in terror, the bear lunges into their tent and bites into Alex's leg; whereupon, Jenn fires a can of bear spray (a stifling pepper-based chemical) point-blank into the animal's face. The startled bear retreats for a moment, but then lunges into the tent again, dragging Alex outside and killing him; thereafter, the bear continues pursuing Jenn for the remainder of the film. However, according to years of extensive study by the University of Calgary, no bear has ever attacked a human after the animal was sprayed with bear spray, much less resumed an attack, as depicted in this film. To date, the success rate of defensive bear spray is 100%. So, the factual accuracy of "Backcountry" was abandoned for the sake of cheap thrills.
Factual error: When Jess meets her father and Martin on the embankment it is twenty to five in the afternoon, however this is between New Years Day and Valentines Day - it would be dark at this time of day in these months.
Factual error: The film makes use of a real Broadway theater, the St. James, which is on West 44th St. When they leave the stage door, the actors are next to the Edison Hotel, which is on 47th St.
Factual error: The concierge in 1968 rushes to help a guest who is choking. The scene depicts him performing the Heimlich Maneuver. It was not introduced until the 1980's.
Factual error: They travel on a Boeing 777 to Amsterdam. The shots in the airplane are in a much smaller cabin (3 seats/aisle/3 seats). The 777 seating in economy class is 9 or 10 seats across, with two aisles. (01:29:00 - 01:30:00)
Factual error: The scene in front of the Sphinx shows the Sphinx without a nose. The nose was not missing until much later - most likely due to vandalism in AD 1378. (The story about Napoleon's soldiers shooting it off is untrue - sketches made in 1738 and published in 1757 show the nose was already missing, long before Napoleon's time).
Factual error: In the third scene, where the woman is being dragged away, you can see the incisions from breast enlargement surgery at the bottom of her breasts, hardly fitting the time period. (00:01:25)
Factual error: Though Maverick describes the helicopter he flies when he picks up the Mustang in Utah as an Apache, it is not one. The Apache is an attack helicopter, while the one flown is a cargo model discontinued in the 1970s. Furthermore, the livery of the aircraft has not been used by the Army for decades. Further still, the jets which intercept Maverick fly so close to the helicopter that their wake turbulence should have caused it to crash. A really heinous scene overall.
Factual error: While Evans and Eve are still in Grand Central they overhear an announcement which states "According to Port Authority policy This station will be closing for the evening." Grand Central is not part of the NY/NJ Port Authority. Also Grand Central is a terminal, not a station, as trains do not pass through Grand Central, they enter and turn around.
Factual error: When the Doctor visits William Turner in Chelsea, he claims to be leaving by train from Charing Cross. That station did not open until 1864 - 13 years after the death of Turner.
Factual error: Newgate makes a reference to Mickey Finn's name being the same as that of a Chicago bartender who used to drug his patrons with knockout drops. However, the film is set in 1899, but the real Mickey Finn wasn't caught until 1903.
Factual error: In the opening scenes where Margaret drives to San Francisco, her car is an early 50s Meteor. Meteors were a Ford Motor Company brand just above Ford (a bit like Mercury) but were sold only in Canada. Meteors often were only rebadged Fords, like this early 50s model. The rest of 50s and 60s car choices in the film seemed perfect.
Factual error: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who phones Jesperson to tell him he has not been accepted is a colonel. In common with most Canadian police forces, the RCMP uses British-style civilian police ranks (inspector, superintendent, etc), not military-style ranks as the American police do.
Factual error: Narration refers to Hitler's Germany research into nuclear fusion - it was nuclear fission they were looking into, the same as what fueled the WWII-ending bombs in Japan, and every nuclear bomb and missile since. No nation has been able to generate nuclear fusion until very recently, and it doesn't produce an explosion - which is what Hitler wanted. (00:08:35)
Factual error: In the scene where James Brown receives a new Cadillac from his manager, the scene is marked by a 1965 timeline header, but the Cadillac is actually a 1967 model.
Factual error: Set back in 2004, there is a scene where Shapelle and her friends are looking at an accommodation website. If you look closely at the laptop screen, you can see that they are using the Google Chrome browser, however the first release of Google Chrome wasn't until September 2008. (00:06:30)
Factual error: In a scene where Kat is flying to or from Northern California for college, in the background through the window on the plane one can see a commercial jet which has the winglets of a narrow-body Boeing, which were not introduced until 1998 on the Boeing 737 NextGen, rather than "wingtip fences" of an Airbus which were in use as early as 1985. Eve disappeared in 1988 when Kat was 17, so this would have been 1993 at the latest, when Kat would have been expected to have graduated from Berkeley. In the movie, it is suggested that this was just 2 years after her mother disappeared, so this would have been not later than 1990-91.