Factual error: Luna is the Roman name of the moon goddess. Alexander the Great would have dedicated the temple to Selene, which is the Greek equivalent. (00:04:45)
Factual error: The Luna temple is shown with water pouring in through cracks in the ceiling. Since it is submerged, air should be escaping up through the cracks and water should be entering at the bottom (through the passage along which Lara entered). (00:08:50)
Factual error: In beginning scene with the shark, it growls when it sees Lara. C'mon, how many sharks actually growl? (00:14:15)
Factual error: When Lara walked into Times Square in Hong Kong and looked up to the skylight: there is no skylight - just a ceiling in that building. Also had the shootout really taken place, dozens of police officers would have been at the crime scene within minutes, as you have policemen at every street corner. (00:57:50)
Factual error: Lara's GPS gives her position as 22.15N, 114.10E. This is the position of Hong Kong airport which is over 20 miles from the city center where Lara really is. A rough calculation shows she should be around 114.4E. (00:58:30)
Factual error: When Lara is hooking up her phone and camera to the T.V. on the boat, she goes around back and flips off a cover to reveal wires. However, when she attaches her clip to a red wire, she clips it to the plastic coating instead of the bare wire itself. In real life, there would be no current able to go through the plastic. (01:15:50)
Factual error: In the lab in Hong Kong Croft is in a gunfight against Til Schweiger and another baddie. She makes a leap, kills one guy and takes cover behind a table. Then she engages the slide locks and comes up to kill Till Schweiger. All this makes no sense because if the slides were locked backed after the first kill, the guns were empty. This means that she came out of her cover with two empty guns because she didn't reload them before but just engaged the slide locks. If she did in fact reload offscreen it still would make no sense because when she sees Schweiger's trap, she doesn't let off a single round but still reloads as soon as she is behind the table again. In this case she would have replaced two full magazines with two other full magazines.
Factual error: Every time Lara records something with the mini video camera, one of her fingers is right in front of the lens, which should ruin the recordings.
Factual error: The skyscraper that Lara jumped off is in the Central CBD in Hong Kong, but she got on to the top of the building by catching a lift from a shopping centre in Causeway Bay (another HK suburb).
Factual error: When Lara hops on the boat and asks if she can use their satellite dish they continue to watch TV even after she has moved the dish. Anyone with satellite knows how exact the aiming has to be and if the dish gets moved or bumped you get zilch for TV.
Factual error: For the scene in Shanghai, they actually used Hong Kong cars, the Isuzu truck and the Mercedes S-class, as the cars are right-hand-drive, like Hong Kong, while in China cars are left-hand-drive. Also the license plates are not real. The helicopter in the same scene is one that belongs to the Heli-Services in Hong Kong, painted black.
Factual error: Terry Sheridan is described as a former commander in the Royal Marines. This is a Royal Navy rank, the equivalent Marine rank would be Lt. Colonel.
Factual error: Just after Lara puts the "Pandora's Box" back into the black acid, the screen fades into a horizon view of the mountains of Africa. Slight problem, though: doesn't mist RISE from mountains, and not drift down onto it like it backwardly does in the shot?
Answer: As the movie sets out, that is the "Sunday school" version of the story. Within the movie, the legend is based on an artifact that not only bestowed life upon the earth but also slew all who opened it with horrible disease, gaining a reputation for containing the essences of both "good" and "evil."
Phoenix