Character mistake: When Missy is at her audition, Courtney and Whitney get annoyed and tell her to do a sequence, (front handspring stepout, roundoff back handspring stepout, roundoff back handspring, full twisting layout). However, when Missy starts the sequence, she starts with a cartwheel instead of a front handspring.
Plot hole: Check out the final routine at the end of the movie for the Clovers. Watching carefully, approximately 20 seconds into the routine you will see two girls on the left hand side running face to face into each other. If this had been a proper competition they would have lost because it was a major error in the routine.
Continuity mistake: In the tryouts scene, the stripper's top suddenly changes between when she leans in towards Torrance and when she crawls across the table. [This is because in the extended version of the scene, she takes off the top to reveal she is wearing an even more revealing one under the first. Still a mistake, but there's the explanation.]
Continuity mistake: When Missy licks her finger during the try outs, to wipe the tattoo off her arm, her tongue is already black - she must have had to do previous takes of this shot.
Continuity mistake: When Aaron is confronting Torrance about quitting as captain, he hugs her and whispers in her ear, but in the next shot his head is further down on her shoulder, this happens twice.
Continuity mistake: During the carwash scene, when Cliff drives up in his dirty car, there are clumps of grass on it. In the next shot of the car, there is only dirt, no grass.
Revealing mistake: During the montage when Torrance is talking about how they are going to have to practice longer and harder they show the squad attempting to do a Wolf Wall again. But you can tell that it is the same scene as the beginning, because all the people are wearing the same clothes and you can even see Carver, the girl who broke her leg, standing there next to Torrance. (01:01:04)
Continuity mistake: When the Clovers perform their routine at the finals, you can see that for different shots, there are different cheerleaders. The most supportive argument to this is that the team all have relatively dark-coloured skin. However, within this scene, there are shots with girls who have lighter skin doing the routine.
Continuity mistake: In the audition scene, Whitney closes her notebook after Missy's audition and in the next shot, it is open in front of her.
Plot hole: In the final cheerleading sequence for the Toros, it is obvious that the middle stunt falls. Instead of reshooting, they kept the mistake in. The team wouldn't have been "up there" with the Clovers if it were an actual competition.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning when Aaron is talking to Torrance's parents, he offers to help Mrs. Shipman with her boxes. The camera cuts to her, and she is putting the top of what looks like two boxes in her car. The camera then cuts to Aaron, then back to Mrs. Shipman. When it cuts back to her, she is lifting the same box she had put in the car only moments earlier.
Other mistake: During the Toros last routine at the Nationals competition, they throw two girls in the air while they're lying horizontally. Look at the group standing around the people throwing the girl on the right; you can see one of the guys lift his arms up as if to cheer and then looks behind himself to watch the others.
Revealing mistake: At the start of the movie, when Torrance wakes up from having the dream where she is nude, her hair is all perfect and neat as if it has just been brushed although she has been asleep all night.
Factual error: During the competition scenes between the Clovers and Toros, you can see a basket-toss stunt being thrown in the background: the girl is doing a full twisting flip... in a high school competition, this stunt is very illegal, and both teams would be disqualified for trying it.
Continuity mistake: When Sparky is teaching the Toros his routine, Les' and Darcy's positions change between shots. She comes forward and he moves back and then visa versa.
Audio problem: During the flashback when Torrence is at the summer camp, she purposely drops the spirit stick on the ground as a dare. When it hits it makes the sound of wood hitting concrete, but it's really a soft object hitting carpet. [The spirit stick is not soft, and the floor at camp is probably little more than thin carpet over concrete. The first spirit stick shown is made of wood and the second one (that Missy gets) is made of plastic.] [You can see the stick bend and buckle. Obvious audio over-dubbing to highlight the moment.]
Factual error: When the cheerleaders were developing a new routine three weeks before states, which earlier in the movie was said to be on February 10, they talk about "using every waking minute" to practice, including at football games. At that time, high school football season would have been long over, especially for a team as bad as the Toros, which has no chance of competing in the post-season.
Continuity mistake: When Missy is trying out for cheerleading the shot shows the tattoo Missy has from pen on her arm. The first shot looks like the tattoo is smudged a lot and then the camera switches from Torrance back to Missy and it looks like the tattoo is back to normal.
Continuity mistake: Cliff's tattoo changes shades from black to gray to black, sometimes even being an outline with very little shading.
Continuity mistake: During the National competition, the shadows from people and the stage behind them differ depending on the shot.O ne of the most noticeable ones is when there is a big shadow in front of the stage as the Toros come out, as though late on in the afternoon. The camera then cuts to the audiences perspective, and the shadows are facing the opposite way.
Answer: Kirsten Dunst states that the incident happened last summer. Big Red would have been between her junior and senior year at that point.