Continuity mistake: When Jackson comes to pick his kids up to go camping, he is shown passing by the back side of his limo and the trunk is fully opened, but in the next shot the trunk is still opening. (00:14:20)
Continuity mistake: When Jackson and the kids are at the dried up lake in Yellowstone park, they walk past the carcass of an elk. We change to the long shot, and when the army arrives, the carcass has gone. (00:21:35 - 00:22:05)
Factual error: In the supermarket scene, we can see that the parking lot's pavement and the store's floor starts to rip apart. The amount of energy needed for that to happen would have caused a major earthquake that everybody in the store would have noticed way before the main dialog between the characters begins. (00:35:00 - 00:36:00)
Factual error: In the poster shot and in the film, the wave from the Atlantic carrying the carrier JFK into a collision with the White House comes crashing in from the west because the south portico of the White House is seen. The Atlantic Ocean is east of Washington, so the wave should come from the other direction. And even a wave coming from the east could not have made the JFK (CV-67) crash into the White House because the carrier was retired in 2005 and is berthed in Philadelphia, which is northeast of Washington DC. (01:30:10 - 01:30:40)
Factual error: Gross defiance of the laws of inertia. Cars falling off the back of a moving plane will carry the momentum in the same direction of the plane. It seems to have the opposite effect in this film. The cars are propelled in the wrong direction. (01:43:50)
Factual error: Air Force One is still complete when it strikes Ark 4 which is simply not possible. The aircraft would have been obliterated by the air pressure wave and the resulting huge tidal wave that hit it, so that only debris would have hit the Ark, certainly not the complete intact aircraft we saw. (02:12:15)
Plot hole: During the later parts of this movie there is much talk about 'continental displacement' and this appears to be happening in the film. The Earth's crust is falling apart because of the heating of the inner core, and all the cities seems to be falling apart since the ground can no longer hold them. When our cast finds themselves surprised to be already over China when they figured to be over the ocean, it is explained that Asia has actually moved from where it was. If this phenomenon is taking place globally, how come the monks in China don't seem to have been disturbed at all? In fact the bell the monk rings as the ocean approaches hasn't even been shaken. The arks are built in between the mountains, but the mountains are apparently fine. Shouldn't they be falling like the rest of the crust?
Plot hole: Given the amount of destruction all over the world, it is HIGHLY unlikely the use of phones by general public would be possible, especially internationally. If any lines of communication were working, they would be completely jammed.
Factual error: Given that the main characters are from southern California, it is unreasonable to believe that a father and his two children would drive the 1000 miles one way to spend a weekend camping in Yellowstone National Park, nor would they be able to return home in only a few hours, following the call from the mother.
Factual error: About an hour into the movie the plane with our heroes in it is being chased by a pyroclastic flow from the Yellowstone eruption. The flow at one point fully overtakes the plane. A pyroclastic flow is comprised of hot gas and rock sometimes over 1000° Celsius. It not just dust and smoke. The plane would have been ripped apart by both the temperature and the fast flying rocks. Instead it came out of the flow without a scratch.
Revealing mistake: The scene of rioting in the UK features a load of police officers running through a crowd. All the officers shown are wearing black tunics and custodian helmets worn with chinstraps. This is obviously old stock footage from a protest in the 80's or early 90's as nowadays, (and especially in 2012) the tunic has not been worn as general wear for well over 15 years, and Brit cops are now better equipped for protests with body armour, NATO helmets, flame retardant overalls, etc.
Factual error: The scene where Yuri starts the car with his voice has two mistakes in it. The first one is that to use voice activation in any kind of car you have to push a button to let the car know that you're talking to it and secondly no car manufacturer would make the voice recognition the only way to start the car, there would always also be the option to start the car via a button or with the key simply because of safety reasons.
Suggested correction: I'm fairly sure a billionaire oligarch could afford to pay for a custom job like that considering a pop star from the 2000s paid Ferrari a solid gold engine and a lawnmower.
Factual error: It's stated after the Yellowstone Caldera explodes that the Ash Cloud would hit Las Vegas first, then St. Louis, Chicago and so on. We see Jackson and his family land in Vegas, then the action moves to D.C., where we learn the V.P.'s chopper goes down in the ash cloud in Pittsburgh. A pyroclastic cloud that we see moves at 450mph. It would reach Vegas long before it reaches Pittsburgh. Vegas would have been long gone before Jackson and family could reach it.
Factual error: At several points late in the film, we see shots of the gigantic tsunami thundering across Southeast Asia and India, carrying away buildings, vehicles, people, monasteries, et cetera. The tsunami is still ocean blue with foaming whitecaps as it barrels into the Himalayas, and the water is perfectly crystal clear as it begins flooding the Ark. We even see John Cusack and others wading and swimming in flood water that is as clear as a swimming pool. In reality, when a tsunami slams into a coastline and travels inland, it carries millions of tons of seabed sediment and landscape all churned into a godawful slurry that is virtually opaque black. No amount of illumination can penetrate it, and it would be impossible to see anything beneath the surface. The enormous tsunami depicted in this film, having traveled hundreds or thousands of miles across the Asian mainland, should have arrived at the Himalayas looking like a massive flood of squid ink, rather than crystal clear.
Factual error: The astrophysicists talk about the solar neutrinos "mutating" into new particles. This is pure pseudoscientific nonsense- there are only three possible types of neutrino, none of which interact with normal matter to any significant effect. Neutrinos regularly switch between these types. Also, particles don't "mutate", which is a genetic change. No physicist would use this term.
Audio problem: An early scene in the movie has Chinese soldiers recruiting Tibetans to work on a secret project which they are told is a dam. As the scene ends, the sound of explosives draws everyone's eyes towards the mountains, where the explosions can be seen several miles in the distance. The sight and sound of these explosions take place simultaneously. Sound travels much slower than light. In reality, there should have been some delay before the sound of the explosions was heard.
Continuity mistake: As Jackson is dropping his kids off in the limo, it shows all the mosquito bites on their faces. Later that morning, as the family is sitting down at breakfast, the bites have disappeared and don't show up again.
Continuity mistake: As the heads of state decide to open the gates, we see the countdown timer in the background go from 14:40 remaining to 14:39. We cut to a different angle, and it's back up to 14:41.
Factual error: Supposedly Charlie Frost was broadcasting his final moments from the highest peak in Yellowstone, some 2,000 feet above sea level. The whole park is at about 6,000 feet elevation or more.
Factual error: While supposedly in the Antonov aircraft, the characters are down in the cargo area. The Antonov does not have a pressurized cargo area, only the topmost area around the cockpit is pressurized.
