Continuity mistake: On the ship, Dr. Zimsky reveals that project DESTINI is an acronym and that the last letter is "I" and not "Y." (INI standing for INItiative). When Rat is at his computer, he goes to the website for Project Destiny, with a "Y" and not an "I." This same thing happens when the Project Destiny subtitle flashes across the screen.
Plot hole: How do they maintain communication between the ship at the centre of the earth and the surface? There's no wire, and radio waves can only travel any distance without obstacles, and the earth's crust would be a pretty hefty obstacle...
Factual error: The ship, VIRGIL, is diving straight down from the crust to the core. Although the interior of the ship pivots to make the cockpit perpendicular to the descent, the ship itself is "digging" straight down so when people move from compartment to compartment they should be climbing up and down rather than simply walking back and forth.
Plot hole: When the crew's vessel gets stuck in the giant geode and the crystal jams the 'impeller', the magma begins to fill the chamber. They see it melting the crystals, yet they frantically continue working to free the crystal from the impeller and lose a crewman...and yet when they get back in the vessel, the magma indeed melts out the crystal that jammed the impeller. With 2 geologists onboard you would think they'd know that.
Suggested correction: At no point do you see any of the crystals melting.
Factual error: When 'Rat' is trying to hack into Project Destiny control, he gets several '404' errors, but '404' is page missing, not access denied. It should say '401- Access Denied'. (01:56:19)
Plot hole: In the melting bridge scene, the space microwave was powerful enough to melt the bridge's thick metal but how come it could not melt the roof of the cars on the bridge? (01:27:10)
Revealing mistake: In the Trafalgar Square scene when the double decker bus flips onto its side there is a shot of it from the front, and it has no engine or radiator. (00:08:10)
Suggested correction: Some buses in the Uk have their engines and radiators in the back of the bus.
Not that one. Sorry to expose my inner geek but that is a 1961 AEC/Leyland Routemaster bus and the engine and radiator were mounted in the front.
Revealing mistake: When the ship punches through the geode it is eventually stopped by a large crystal. Long shot of all the crew in the cabin - they are strapped into their seats and are bouncing around, finally being thrown forward against their seat belts as the ship comes to a sudden halt. Aaron Eckhart seated on the left remains sitting upright, no movement, no sudden pitching forward as the ship stops. He then turns his head to his left and mouths what looks like the magic 'f' word. Looks like he fluffed the scene and realized it. (01:01:15)
Factual error: When Victor and the crew are 2600 miles below the surface and Rat is trying to let Dr. Keyes know that Project Destini is going to happen, he contacts the ship via radio and even transfers computer data to the ship. This would be completely impossible because the ground would block any radio signals from reaching the ship. By the time the ship had reached about a mile down, there would be no radio contact whatsoever, no matter how powerful their transmitter was. Audio communication would be unfeasible too - the ship would make too much noise cutting through the earth to allow for any communications to be transmitted through solid rock.
Factual error: When the Golden Gate Bridge is destroyed by the sun's unfiltered rays (ya, right) the two towers of the bridge lean in the wrong direction. When the middle of the bridge is gone, only the tension from the anchor wires (connecting to land) would remain and they would pull the towers outward. However, in the movie the towers lean inward. (01:27:40)
Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie when they are looking for the survivors they have no signals and decide to give up. Rat is upset, we see a close up of him and his hair is long in the back. The next scene he is walking on the deck of the ship, he figures out the signal and calls to the general waving his arms and screaming. We see him in close up again and his hair is very short in back. Did he get a haircut on the way to the deck?
Factual error: When they realize they need to make the last nuclear explosion 30% bigger, they simply pull the fuel rods from the reactor and set them next to the bomb. This is ludicrous, a nuclear bomb is a carefully engineered piece of equipment, with carefully shaped charges imploding the radioactive material. Setting some fuel rods next to the bomb will accomplish nothing.
Suggested correction: By adding the fuel rods, what they did was not alter the initial reaction to the charges. What it does is amplify the reaction after the charges have gone off. Adding more reactive material increases the size of the blast.
This would have merely added more neutrons in the vicinity of the bomb's core, causing it to go prompt critical before the implosion charges could compress it. The result would be a fizzle.
Revealing mistake: When the boats are searching for the 'virgil' in Hawaii, we see a shot with all of them supposedly going full speed through the water - and their anchor lines are down.
Character mistake: The word "Storyboard" in "Storyboard Artists" during the end titles is misspelled "Stroryboard". (02:05:00)
Revealing mistake: In the burning of the Golden Gate bridge scene a man can be seen on the far top right side of the screen walking along the bridge just as it splits he walking along as if nothing is happening, even though under the extreme heat he would roast. (Widescreen only, cannot be seen on VHS). (01:27:20)
Continuity mistake: In the scene near the end where they are shooting across the F-115 carrier, you can clearly see about 15 to 20 jets parked on the carrier, the camera goes in the carrier for 50 seconds to a minute, then the camera shoots outside of the carrier and you can see that there are only 5 to 7 jets parked. (01:55:15 - 01:56:20)
Factual error: At the very end of the movie when the credits are rolling you see a panned view of the earth. The earth is rotating the wrong way. (02:00:50)
Deliberate mistake: In the scene with the first demonstration of the digging laser, they dig/blast quite a hole in the mountain. Even assuming the laser can very easily shatter the rocks substance, still the debris would have to go somewhere, yet there appears to be none. And the amount of power needed to convert matter into energy is not practical.
Continuity mistake: Just before the shuttle stops in front of the bridge, we can see the worker being "touched" by the shuttles shadow. In the subsequent shot we can see the shuttle is too far away from the bridge for this to happen.
Continuity mistake: When Beck is in the command section of the ship with Zimsky and the rest of them in the weapons center, we can see that the screen she is looking at shows a shot of the black stuff coming towards them. The shot changes but then when it comes back to the screen, you can see the exact same footage used a moment ago.
