National Treasure

Continuity mistake: When Ben ducks into the Gift Store, there is a blonde lady in a black dress standing at the counter between Ben and the door. She steps forward out of the picture as Abigail goes by. Then as Ben starts to turn to leave the store you see her arm come back into the picture. But as Ben walks by that part of the store and the clerk says to Ben, "Are you trying to steal that?" the lady has disappeared.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: When Ben puts his tool belt on the conveyor belt to go through the X-ray machine, we see the gloves are on the left and pointed down while the red, rubber encased plyer handles are approx. in middle leaning slightly to the right and no space between the plyer handles. As we watch the tool belt go through the X-ray machine, the gloves are on the right side with the plyer handles almost directly above the gloves, both handles visible and the rest of the belt all to the left.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: After Ben And Riley climb down into the smuggler's hole and are scrambling to get away, Ben grabs Riley and throws him through a hatchway. Riley lands in the snow with a wall next to him, on the screen's left side. Right before the blast, Ben dives (is thrown) facedown in the snow next to Riley but the screen is a mirror image of the previous one because the wall is now on the right of the screen and so is Riley.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: When we first see Dr. Chase's desk there is a Rolodex on the upper left hand side (as she is looking out over her desk). Then when Dr. Chase confirms that the FBI is right, that nobody could steal the Declaration of Independence, we see the Rolodex in the shot between her and Ben. It then disappears until Dr. Chase says, "You're treasure hunters,aren't you?" where it reappears between her and Ben. It not on her desk as Riley says "...owned by Freemasons." but reappears as Dr. Chase says, "Did Bigfoot steal it?"

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: When Abigail runs down the aisle trying to find a hiding place from Shaw and Viktor, she jumps over a small space between some meat display coolers. In that shot the "butcher lady" can be seen behind a large roll of brown paper to the right of the scene. To the left of the space, behind a roll of white paper, is a second butcher. This second butcher is right next to where Abigail lands and is sitting when the first butcher lady says: "If you're not a steak, you don't belong here." But there is no one near Abigail when the camera show her sitting there, talking to the butcher lady.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: After the Independence Hall chase, Ben tells Abigail & Riley to meet him at the car. When Ben arrives he is confronted by the detective, then placed under arrest, and in the background behind the detective you see Abigail & Riley standing on the sidewalk. In the following shots the positions of Abigail & Riley keep changing.

Continuity mistake: When Riley and Abigail are running through the tunnel, trying to get away from Shaw and Viktor, we see Riley running into people and getting knocked around and held up. We see a lady in a red suit go by and then there are two men in suits, the one closest to the camera has a medium brown suit on, over the collar salt and pepper hair and glasses whilst the man farthest from the camera has a medium gray/blue suit on and very short brown hair. The next shot shows Riley trying to go between these two men only now, the one nearest the camera has a very dark charcoal suit on, short white hair and no glasses whilst the other man is wearing a black suit, has greyish brown hair and is much older than before.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: Ben stirs a solution to make the campaign button fluorescent and tests the solution. He dips two fingers into the solution, rubs them against his thumb, then draws a smiley face on the tabletop. When he shines the UV light on the tabletop, there's a small, compact smiley face. But if you watch Ben very closely as he is making the smiley face, he draws the eyes much farther apart and he starts the mouth of the face between the eyes. The one he actually draws is not the one that is shown.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: When Ian abducts Abigail, you see some one shoot at Ben and hit the hood of his van twice, but in another shot you do not see any bullet holes.

Continuity mistake: This has to do with Ben getting Abigail's fingerprints off the champagne glass. When he hands her the champagne glass, her fingers are positioned on the lower half of the glass. Later, when Ben "takes" her thumbprint off the glass, he takes it from a much higher part of the glass.

Continuity mistake: When Ben is taking the screws out of the case that holds the Declaration of Independence, the first screw we see him removing is the one in the little "compartment" with an extra little rod across. There are three little compartments with this extra rod across and he is removing the screw from the left-most compartment. Next we see him removing the screw from the compartment just to the left of the previous compartment, but that screw is now back in place. The next time we see him removing a screw, it is again, one compartment to the left and again, the compartment to the right, the one he just removed the screw from, is back in place.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: Right after the scene where the FBI break into Ben's apartment, Ian is puzzling over the clue from the Charlotte. He circles the phrase "in silence" but when he holds the notepad up to his friends, only the word "silence" is circled.

Continuity mistake: When Riley starts down the smugglers' hold his bag is on his left side but when it shows him landing, his bag is now on the right.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: When Ian and Ben are sitting on a couple of barrels discussing what the riddle means, there are a couple of balls hanging from chains very close to Ian's head. A scene or two later, there are a couple of oblong, round, flat bottomed things hanging down next to Ian's head that actually brush against the fur on his hood. Next scene, nothing is close to his head and then the balls come back and then nothing again.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: As Ian watches our heroes leave Independence Hall the clock in the tower reads 3:27. That gave Ben only five minutes to climb down the tower, dig out the brick, meet up downstairs, unroll the Declaration and decipher it, realize they're being followed, plan their escape and leave. It took me longer to write all of that.

Kristal

Continuity mistake: When we see Ian's men pull up over the grate that they are going to go down through to get to the National Archive, we see the street wet so it had to have rained, been hosed down, etc. But when one of Ian's men drops a large bag down, it whirls up a huge cloud of dust when it lands. This shouldn't have happened because there was nothing over the tunnel but a grate and some water would have gone down the tunnel, wetting the dust.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: As Viktor is driving the catering van while Abigail is still in the back, we see the windshield get cracked near the bottom left. It gets hit by at least two more things but the next time we see a full shot of the windshield, it is perfect.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: Near the beginning of the movie when Ben, Ian and Riley are in snow CATS and we see Riley's computer screen, viewed a little from the left, and there is a jiggling hula dancer, supposedly mounted on his keyboard surface. In the background, a window has popped up showing the location and route of the two CATS. Then we hear alarm go off and we see almost the same shot but a little closer in on the computer screen. The hula girl is missing. The difference in angle and "zoom level" could not account for not seeing the hula girl in the second shot.

Sheri Hartman

Continuity mistake: Ben dipped the George Washington button in a liquid solution. But, when he puts it into the gift box, it is considerably larger than before he dips it.

Lynette Carrington

Continuity mistake: When they get ready to climb into the tunnel left by removing the coffin, Ian says, "McGregor, Phil. You stay here." When you see the people coming through the tunnel, it's not Viktor and Shaw as you would expect but Shaw and McGregor. Don't know if Sean blew his line, the writers got the characters mixed up or the actors blew it, but something went amiss.

Sheri Hartman

Factual error: When Ben, Abigail, and Riley are discussing the correct time to be at Independence Hall, they would need to know the exact date, not only the time, of the painting to be sure to see the correct shadow.

More mistakes in National Treasure

Riley Poole: Asuming Ben's theory is correct and my tracking model's accurate, we should be getting very close. But don't go by me, I broke a shoelace this morning. It's a bad omen.
Ian How: Should we turn around and go home?
Ben Gates: Or we could just pull over and throw him out here.
Riley Poole: Ha, ha, ha, okay.
Ben Gates: Well Riley, you're not missing that small, windowless cubicle we found you in are you?
Riley Poole: No, no. Absolutely not.

More quotes from National Treasure

Trivia: Andrew Jackson's 1832 White House was actually filmed at the Daughters of the American Revolution Building in DC.

shortdanzr

More trivia for National Treasure

Question: When Ben and the others enter the treasure room, who's carrying the Declaration of Independence?

denzo1958

Chosen answer: Abigail.

Bowling255

More questions & answers from National Treasure

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.