Corrected entry: When Ben meets Abigail for the first time in her office, he admires her collection of Washington's campaign buttons. In fact, there is no such thing as a Washington campaign button, since presidential campaigns (as we know them today, with a candidate declaring the desire to be president and actively promoting himself or herself) did not come into existence until the mid-1800's. Washington never "ran" for president. In fact, at the time it would have been considered very un-gentlemanly and arrogant to publicly express your interest in the office. There were however buttons made to commemorate his inauguration and his presidency itself (saying "Long Live the President", etc., but nothing like those seen in the film), and these are, indeed, collector's items.
Corrected entry: When Riley uncovers the frozen seaman in his hammock, he gets scared/excited, starts flailing his arms and knocks both hammocks on either side of him as he falls backward. That would have left both hammocks moving/swinging a little. But in the very next frame where Riley is still making noises and turns over on all fours, we see the hammock on the left side of the screen as still as the dead.
Correction: There are 2 levels of hammocks, one over the other, Riley actually moves an upper one to see the frozen seaman, and when Riley is scared he only hits the top hammock on his right on his way down. When you do not see it swinging it is a closeup and you only see the lower hammock that he did not hit.
Corrected entry: During the chase scene when Abigail has been kidnapped by Ian and crew, both vehicles go over huge bumps, holes, etc. In Ian's vehicle, we see all the stuff go flying all over the back of the vehicle even hitting the people that are in the back of the catering van. But in Ben and Riley's vehicle, everything swings gently around and when Abigail is in the vehicle with Ben and Riley, we can see ropes, cables, boxes, etc. all neatly stacked, very high up the sides of their van with nothing out of place.
Correction: Ben and Riley's vehicle is a normal panal van, usually used for holding tools, etc. Ian's vehicle is a catering van, which normally sits still. Pots and pans in the catering van weren't tied down, therefore they flew around. The van would also have better shocks than the catering van, therefore it wouldn't bounce as much. It is also lighter and not as long as the catering van, so it would handle better (and bounce less). I've been a passenger in an RV before, and the bumps are always bigger at the back of a large vehicle.
Corrected entry: When Ben is carving out the brick with his knife at the Liberty Bell sequence, he somehow is able to carve into cement like it was clay. You can even tell it wasn't cement because it didn't crumble right away. It had more of a cutting look to it.
Correction: The brick was set in a way to make it easy to get it out. It's no biggie replacing the mortar with another substance that simulates it (so as to remain undetected for as long as necessary) while being easy to remove. In addition, over time the binding agent in mortar leaches out, and the remaining substance is actually very easy to scrape out.
Corrected entry: When they search on Yahoo shortly after Ian talks with the kid, watch the computer screen closely. There's already a search up there, and instead of clicking 'enter', they select the first search entry.
Correction: The guy firstly enters STOW, that is also what it says, "top web results: 6903 search hits for the word "STOW". Then he enters STOW Declaration of Independence. and hits the search button with the mouse, when it shows him Liberty Bell as top result. The next click you hear after a short period of time when we don't see the screen, enough time for the guy on the laptop to move the mouse to the link and click it.
Corrected entry: In the scene when Riley sets off the sensors of the Declaration of Independence, to get it into the preservation room, it is broad daylight. Cage steals it much later, in fact its pitch black outside when he does. The Declaration would not be in the preservation room for that long.
Correction: Why not? A defective sensor (which is what they are suspecting) likely needs more than a cursory verification. Not only that they have exact replicas on display when working on the housings and the documents. So it is entirely likely that the orthogonal would be there for an extended period while diagnosing any potential issues.
She also says that she wants all the sensors changed out, which probably would take a fair amount of time.
Corrected entry: Not really a mistake, but it always seemed weird to me. When Ben is reading the letters for Abigail's password to Riley, he reads them in alphabetical order. Considering the situation and the limited time he has, it seems strange that he would take the time to read them that way. Wouldn't most people read the letters in the order that they are on the keyboard?
Correction: He wasn't reading the keyboard the way you'd read a book. He glanced at the keyboard and knew which keys had finger prints and listed them off in the way most intuitive to him.
Corrected entry: When Ben is talking in front of the Lincoln Memorial, You can see between shots that the World War II Memorial (at the end of the long pool behind Ben) disappears and reappears.
Correction: On my (German) DVD Version I the WWII memorial is there all the time, I've checked it several times.
Corrected entry: "Valley Forge" cannot be used as a government password. All government passwords must include a special character (and asterisk, an underscore, etc) and a number. For example, "Valley_Forge3" would have worked.
Correction: Government passwords for computers do require symbols, letters and numbers. This is not a computer (per se) but a terminal granting entry to the preservation room. A computer will deny a password that doesn't have the correct symbols but a terminal to the preservation room may well not. Therefore, she may have been able to use whatever password she wanted.
Corrected entry: When Ian abandons Ben and Riley at the Charlotte with no food, provisions or transport, how do they get back to the States so quickly? I know Ian mentions moving before any one sees the smoke from the explosion, but this does not mean anyone would come or did come.
Correction: After being abandoned at the Charlotte, Ben points out that they are nine miles from a settlement frequented by bush pilots. They could have easily trekked that distance.
Corrected entry: When Ian unrolls the copy of the Declaration of Independence in the van, the price bar code is on the printed side of the poster, which is rolled inward. This means that the bar code couldn't be scanned in the gift shop, as it wouldn't be showing on the outside of the poster.
Correction: The copy of the declaration was wrapped in plastic in the store. There could easily be a bar code on that.
Corrected entry: At the start, four characters look for Charlotte on two caterpillar snow tractors. After the shoot out, the two good guys are left stranded, and the two bad guys leave. As the two bad guys enter the same tractor, they look at each other confirming they're in the same tractor, yet in the fade away shot both tractors leave. Who was driving the second tractor?
Correction: Ben, Ian, and Riley are in one tractor, while Shaw, McGregor and another one of Ian's men are in the other. When Ben and Riley are left for dead, Ian and Shaw ride in one tractor, while McGregor and Ian's other man {probably Viktor or Phil since they round out Ian's team throughout the movie} drive off in the other tractor.
Corrected entry: After Ben steals the declaration he and Riley get in the van and Ian kidnaps Abigail. The driver of Ian's van shoots at Ben and Riley and shoots out the passenger side headlight. While driving it shows a shot of Ben and Riley's van in the bad guys' rear view mirror, but this time it shows that the driver side headlight is out. Then in a couple later shots you see that the broken light is again on the left side.
Correction: The headlight is correct. The shots where the headlight is on the right hand side are because it is viewed through a rear view mirror. The other shots are viewed as if looking head on.
Corrected entry: Franklin wrote letters when he was sixteen containing "clues" (ie. capitalizing letters) to the location of the treasure. The clues referred to "Pass and Stow," the two craftsmen who recast the Liberty Bell. However, the Bell was not even ordered by the people of Pennsylvania until 30 years after Franklin was 16, so he could not have known that "Pass and Stow" would have cast the bell, or that their names would be on it.
Correction: When Franklin wrote the Dogood papers he did not embed the code in it. When the code trail was being constructed they used the Dogood papers by searching through them for the correct letters and noting their coordinates. You can do this with any document as long as it has all the letters you need. It just so happened that the last letter in the code was a capital; not all of them were.
Corrected entry: At the end of the movie, at Ben's mansion, look closely at his brown sweater: you can see his microphone in the middle of his chest.
Correction: You can see a bump in his sweater, so it could be anything under his sweater. At no time can you see a mike and wires to prove it is a "microphone".
Corrected entry: When young Ben is "knighted" his grandfather wraps the cloak completely around him. Afterward, when Ben looks up, you can see the whole front of his shirt.
Correction: The cloak wasn't secured around young Ben's shoulders, so the cloak acted as cloaks do, it opened.
Corrected entry: When Ben decides to steal the Declaration of Independence before Ian, he plots to have it moved to the Preservation Room for easier theft access. Ian's plan is to steal it from the same room but how does he know that the document will be in the Preservation Room and not on display or in its vault?
Correction: Nowhere is it stated or shown that Ian was headed for the Preservation Room. He just catches up with Ben in the hall outside that room, probably on his way to the Declaration's vault. There are only a few extremely high-security areas within the National Archives as depicted here.
Corrected entry: Riley points out that Daylight Savings Time hadn't been established at the time of the Founding Fathers. However, neither was Standard time. The Founding Fathers used Mean Solar time, and although Philadelphia is close to the 75th meridian, the time on the clock tower would be off by at least a few minutes.
Correction: It may be a few minutes off, but since the shadow was just pointing at the wall it would still be close enough for Ben to know where to go. It was the Mason's symbol that told him exactly which brick to pull out.
Corrected entry: It helps move the plot along so Ian can find Ben, Riley and Abigail but it makes no sense for Riley to go to where the Silence Dogood letters were kept, they simply could have googled them and got the answers they needed.
Correction: Because the Ottendorf cypher requires original documents or scans to work, Ben, Riley, and Abigail could not have made a Google search for the Silence Dogood letters unless Ben's father or the Franklin Institute posted scans online. However, Riley could have simply taken photos of the display rather than hire a child to repeatedly go in and out of the building.
If he went in to take the picture, he would have been seen on a security camera taking the picture. He was at that point probably a wanted man with Ben. Hiring the kid let him get the answers without being detected.
Corrected entry: In the scene on the ship "Charlotte," the main characters find a pipe with a clue etched on the handle. The clue mentions the number 55 which Ben figures out to be the number of men that signed the Declaration of Independence. There are actually 56 signatures on it. (00:11:55)
Correction: The fifty-sixth signature was not added to the document until 1781, by Thomas McKean of Delaware. The clue was written before this time; therefore, it is correct in stating that fifty-five men signed the Declaration of Independence.
Additionally, Richard Stockton-a New Jersey delegate-was captured in November 1776; he was tortured and repudiated his signature, forced to swear allegiance to King George 3. The other 55 signers never recanted, despite great hardship. Hence, there were the "55 men in iron pen..." who had signed, regardless of timeframe.
Correction: There were never any buttons made up to commemorate Washington's military campaigns. Also, political campaign buttons were not seen until the presidential election of 1840. The buttons could have been referred to incorrectly by Ben; perhaps they were coat buttons from some of Washington's uniforms; which would make Abigail's collection very rare indeed. Unfortunately, they don't look like uniform buttons. Alternatively he might have meant inauguration buttons.