Factual error: Jack Ryan takes the enlisted oath, not the officer's oath, when commissioned into the Marines. (00:02:35)
Continuity mistake: When Harper meets Ryan, who's out jogging in the rain, for the second time to recruit him into the CIA, the hood on Ryan's jacket moves between shots, most noticeably in the very close-up shot of his face. (00:12:00)
Continuity mistake: When Ryan and his fiancee meet Viktor Cherevin at the hotel, he purposefully drinks and allows Viktor to accompany her. That's when Ryan's colleague steals Viktor's wallet and says sorry, bumping into him. Before hitting him he's on a call, with his mobile in his right hand and steals the wallet with his left hand. In the very next frame he's seen giving Ryan the wallet with his right hand with his mobile in his left hand. (01:00:00)
Continuity mistake: After the beta safe house is deconspired, when Jack gets into a car in order to follow his girlfriend's kidnappers, there's a man in the other seat of his vehicle. As the car slides into the street, only one person can be seen inside, though. However, the man then reappears in the next scene. (01:16:00)
Continuity mistake: While Jack is chasing Cathy's kidnap vehicle, we see the two GPS markers on a map, on a straight road, with no turns needed for Jack to catch up. Next shot shows Jack tearing round a corner at high speed. He's then told of a hard left coming up, which the map shows - a hard left followed by another long straight. He takes the hard left, then immediately takes a right turn that not only doesn't exist on the map, takes him away from the direction Cathy is going. (01:17:50)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where the van jumps into the water and is going to explode with Aleksandr still inside. The van was likely jumped only 20m from the cliff (above a building actually?), but in the next shot, it shows that the car explodes 100m from the cliff, and there's no building beside the river. (01:35:05)
Continuity mistake: When Cathy is duct taped in the SUV the tape is around her body, but when the SUV crashes she gets out and there is only duct tape around her wrists.
Factual error: In the Dearborn, Michigan car chase scene, a car is shown with a Michigan front license plate. MI is one of 13 states that does not have front license places.
Other mistake: He is referred to as Sir Ryan at the hotel. He isn't knighted until later, after they marry.
Factual error: In the chopper at the beginning of the movie, the soldiers have their rifles pointed upwards. When in helicopters, soldiers always point their rifles downward, so that an accidental discharge would go through the floor rather than the engine above them.
Factual error: At the beginning of the film, Jack is a student at the London School of Economics. The London School of Economics is a relatively modern urban campus in the middle of downtown London, not the fairly spacious, older campus depicted the movie.
Continuity mistake: According to the movie ticket stub, Ryan saw the film 'Sorry, Wrong Number' on 21 September 2012. Yet, a few days later in Moscow, when hacking Cherevin's files, many of them were created in 2013.
Answer: This is true of all versions of the character - his name's officially John Patrick Ryan, but he always goes by Jack.