Factual error: In the scene where a boy runs on the streets of Moscow, he passes by the famous Moscow landmarks: St Basil's cathedral, Moscow State University, Big Stone Bridge etc. In reality it would have taken him a good four or five hour run to do that.
Continuity mistake: When Tom Hanks cuts his hand and loses his temper, he picks up the volleyball with a bloody hand and throws it. When he picks it up, you can see that his fingers are spread. When you see the handprint that he makes "Wilson" with, you can see that the fingerprints are together and parallel.
Continuity mistake: The scene where Tom Hanks goes inside the cave for the first time during the storm, he has the flashlight from the dead pilot with him. The flashlight is in front of him when he sits down, but you can see shadows on the rock wall beside him in the wrong places.
Continuity mistake: Throughout the film, Tom Hanks has a dark lump above one of his eyebrows. This seems to come and go from scene to scene.
Continuity mistake: When Chuck first lands on the island he gets up and looks around.. he starts to walk down the beach and after a little while he looks back and sees his own footprints. He turns back around and the camera cuts to a wider shot.. you can clearly see his footprints get washed away by the waves. The camera zooms in as he picks up a FedEx box and zooms back out as he turns around again and his original footprints are there.
Factual error: When Chuck finds the dead pilot, he buries him and marks his death as 1995, so we can assume the crash was in 1995. His Jeep is at least a 1997 or later model, as it is a second generation Cherokee which has newer grille and taillights.
Continuity mistake: Near the end of the movie Chuck and Kelly are standing in the street in the pouring rain. Chuck leads her to the passenger door of his car and she gets in, still dripping wet from being in the rain. Then Chuck goes around to the driver's side and gets in the car, but amazingly he is not dripping like Kelly; his face and hair are somewhat dry for someone just coming in out of a downpour. (Tom Hanks must have a problem with doing his lines with his face wet because, ironically, he did the same thing in a scene in Forrest Gump after jumping off his boat to meet Lt. Dan.)
Revealing mistake: When Chuck is writing on the rock waiting for the wind to change direction, you can see that when the wind changes direction the trees behind him are duplicates.
Continuity mistake: When Tom Hanks finds the shoes, they are too small and he needs to cut out the toes. A couple of scenes later when he is climbing into the cave during the storm, it is clear that the shoes aren't cut at all.
Audio problem: In the scene where Chuck is throwing coconuts at the rock, the sound of the coconut hitting the rock comes after the coconut actually hits it.
Factual error: On Tom Hanks' doomed flight, there is no smoke curtain or solid bulkhead in place. This is a heavy, opaque curtain or solid wall that separates the the topside cargo area from the seating area, designed to keep smoke from a fire away from the crew. On DC10/MD11 aircraft, this is generally a solid bulkhead, and on Airbuses a curtain. This plane should have been grounded until one was installed.
Suggested correction: While some MD-11s at FedEx have a solid bulkhead, most do not and have this 9G net. I don't recall if they starting putting the smoke curtain in before or after they started flying the MD-11, but at one time FedEx only had the 9G net on their aircraft and no curtain.
Continuity mistake: When the plane crashes and Hanks swims to the surface, in the shot from under him, he is barefoot, but when he reaches the shore, he takes off his socks.
Factual error: When the FedEx packages wash up on the beach, all the contents are completely dry. Even the birthday card from the grandma is completely legible. FedEx does have waterproof packaging, I am sure, but those appear to be just regular boxes.
Factual error: When trying to contact Tahiti control, the pilot mentioned that their position is close to JENNA, which is an IFR waypoint. This waypoint can also be seen on the plane's navigation display. The problem is, JENNA is in Louisiana and nowhere close to the Pacific Ocean.
Factual error: In the crash scene, Tom Hanks floats to the back of the plane as it fills with water. This could not happen due to a smoke barrier that is installed on every FedEx DC-10 and is a solid barrier between the crew and freight.
Revealing mistake: When Chuck is lying on the raft, and sees the giant cargo ship that rescues him, there is a closer shot of him and the raft as he stretches his hand out in order to be noticed by the ship's crew. He's supposed to be out in the middle of the deep ocean, but the water below him is pale green and very shallow. You can even see the bottom (hard to notice but it is there). It's obviously the water tank they were filming that scene in.
Continuity mistake: After Chuck Nolan (Tom Hanks) injures his hand and throws the volleyball "Wilson", in the following scenes pay close attention to the box that the volleyball is in. One scene the box has a visible tear along the top rim of the box; then, before Tom Hanks opens the box to remove "Wilson" another box appears not torn.
Factual error: Chuck's plane supposedly went down in 1995. During the early parts of the film, you see several Fed Ex aircraft with only two engines (one on each wing) which are Airbuses. Fed Ex had only a handful of these class of aircraft around 1995 making it impossible to see so many of them on the ground in Memphis, or in the Soviet Union for that fact at that time.
Continuity mistake: On the island, immediately after the title indicating "4 Years Later" Tom spears a fish. The spear hits the fish hard and swiftly, and as the camera pulls away the spear is very close to vertical. For the spear to hit that hard and vertical it had to be thrown close to the fish and almost straight down. But as the camera continues to pull further away, you see Tom standing too far away to have thrown the spear in that way.
Continuity mistake: During the scene where he is first at the cave, look in the sky. First, there aren't any clouds then there are in the next scene. If you keep watching, the clouds vary from the different camera angles.
