Continuity mistake: When Ice Cube reverses the Gibbons' "Three strikes" speech, the waitress behind him keeps changing position throughout the scene, serving the table to the right of the door, or to the left, back and forth. (00:14:40)
Continuity mistake: After the prison break they are in a burger bar - Stone gets up empty handed and tells the other 2 how many laws they have just broken. When he finishes he drinks from a milkshake that has suddenly appeared in his hand. (00:15:00)
Other mistake: Gibbons and Stone have been been together in the same car for over 15 hours at least, from Kansas to Washington DC, and at Lo's they still talk as if they haven't exchanged a single word. (00:19:15)
Continuity mistake: When Gibbons asks Agent Toby Lee Shavers to fit the rocket he picked from the car into a personal weapon, Michael Roof holds the rocket in two different ways (grip on the pipe or between the fins) depending on the camera angle. (00:20:10)
Plot hole: The destroyed NSA base is in the middle of nowhere and patrolled by dozens (we see at least 8 agents just by the barn outside) of federal agents, but Shavers, who provides nothing of relevance to the mission since he's not even the getaway for Stone, is able to just park in plain sight in the vicinity and stalk it with binoculars. With that level of surveillance, his van would have been spotted and approached for identification by the feds in no time. (00:20:35)
Continuity mistake: In a problem already spotted in the previous movie of the saga, the departed Michael Roof had poor ring discipline; when the scene of the assault at the barn begins and he reminds 'X' that it's a covert operation, he's holding the binoculars with ring-free hands, but in the shot when he sighs saying "Subtle..." he sports an obvious metal band (exactly like in the original movie) at his right ring finger. (00:20:40)
Continuity mistake: XXX aims the RPG above the fence, but when we see the shot being fired, the pipe is between two boards of the fence. (00:20:50)
Plot hole: The NSA base in Virginia is assaulted. Gibbons escapes after noon/early afternoon and gets to the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, the day after. Another day passes for the prison escape, and then another day to get back to DC. The FBI agents are hanging out at the crime scene in full force three days after, but during all this time nobody sealed or covered with as much as a tarp or put any perimeter around the huge entrance holes; makes little sense to guard the doors with a dozen agents and leave huge uncovered (not to mention dangerous) holes leading to the core of the building. Even worse, the hard drives of the people they are supposedly investigating (Gibbons) are still there. They would have been sent to the labs to be analyzed, especially since they have been wiped clean, which would only enhance the suspicions. (00:21:00)
Continuity mistake: When XXX stuns with rather unorthodox techniques the two guys the idiot co-protagonist left alone to guard the base, the first one to go down collapses with his right arm straight in front and the left hand below his elbow. When Scott Speedman gets back and start chasing Ice Cube, you can see the same man on the floor, right arm all the way down along his side, and his body turned so the left hand is not in the same position. (00:21:40 - 00:22:20)
Continuity mistake: When we see Ice Cube move from boat to boat cutting the fuel line, we see also the disconnected pipes flopping down. But in close-up the little fuel tube we see pumping gas letting it pool into the deck is carefully propped to stays up and spurts at full force. Darius did not take time to fix any engine that way, though. (00:23:30)
Revealing mistake: Right after Darius blows the boats, Steele is on the dock firing at him. It is shown that he shoots a couple rounds but his finger is not on the trigger. (00:24:00)
Continuity mistake: As Ice Cube waltzes into the truck after the boat stunt, Shavers stares at him. Behind him you can see the car window is half/a third of the way up. With all the commotion, it's unlikely that Shavers decided to close it a bit; it was practically all the way down before, when Darius told him to get his butt off the driver's position, and up when he was saying there was a problem. (00:24:50 - 00:25:20)
Revealing mistake: The wider shot (after the POV) of the boat going up the ramp to rescue Agent Toby Lee Shavers from the Virginia police is a miniature work recognizable at first glance. (00:24:55)
Plot hole: Agent Kyle Christopher Steele ordered roadblocks for 10 miles, Stone just destroyed a state police patrol car blocking a major bridge, but he is able, with no explanation, to just get away with that one encounter with the police and bring back his hyper-recognizable monster van from the countryside to Georgetown with no problem. (00:25:00)
Revealing mistake: When Darius stomps on the police car with the speedboat, an explosion starts from the bottom of the car just the moment the boat nicks the roof. (00:25:00)
Continuity mistake: When Ice Cube jumps off the speedboat he crashed on top of the bridge, the natural light in the shot when he is walking towards the explosion without looking is quite different from the crash shots. (00:25:05)
Factual error: Talking about Darius Stone's military record, Agent Meadows mentions in passing that he holds the Navy record for highest dive at 250 feet. That wouldn't be the Navy record, that would be the world record, higher than the current one by over 50 feet. It's fine for a movie to make up some facts, obviously, but here they downplay what appears to be a next to superhuman ability. It's like having the main character running the 100 meters dash in 8 seconds and call it a "navy record." (00:25:50)
Continuity mistake: With a gun pointed at his head, Gibbons retorts that General George Deckert does not seem to do "any of the dying." Look at the shadows on the doorframe, and look at them again when the camera is back on Samuel Jackson; big change even if he surely didn't go anywhere. (00:29:40)
Plot hole: XXX and his ex (as redundant as it sounds) are learning from the TV the news of Gibbons' demise. He then tells Shavers "Let's get to work" and they plug the hard disk in, for the very first time because they realise that it's been wiped clean. It is night, and their mission was during broad daylight; if Gibbons had to wait nighttime to sneak into his own home, he could have easily helped them out during their mission, and it's absurd that they just sat on the crucial hard disk while chilling and watching the nightly news. Gibbons' house is billed as "Chevy Chase, Maryland", so it's just a few minutes away from their position. (00:31:00)
Revealing mistake: Ice Cube peels the sticker from the hard drive, but he starts peeling it from the right side in the first shot, the left side in the close-up - in fact looking at the numbers you can tell it' s a mirrored shot. (00:32:00)
Answer: To break the surface of the water making an easier penetration. Hitting water at high speeds can be like hitting concrete. By stirring up the water it "softens" the impact.
EMTurbo