Day 4: 2:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M. - S4-E8
Factual error: When Edgar proves that Mary-Ann Taylor framed Sarah to be the rat in CTU, he claims that she remotely took control of her computer by sending the signal over "a plain old AC power line." This is not possible, unless the computers were equipped with special hardware to separate the AC from the signal. If they were, this traffic would have been observed by James Heller's assistant.
Day 5: 11:00 A.M.-12:00 P.M. - S5-E5
Factual error: When Mrs. Logan escapes, Aaron Pierce refers to her as "the First Lady" over his radio. The Secret Service has code names for each of the members of the president's family. He should have used her code name when communicating to other Secret Service agents about her.
Factual error: When Janet enters the operating theatre, the surgeons put some x-rays on the light box. The x-rays are from a barium enema, which would have no relevance to Janet's injuries.
Day 3: 8:00 A.M.-9:00 A.M. - S3-E20
Factual error: In the scene where Steven Saunders phones Tony Almeida to tell him Michelle Dessler has been captured, Steven tells Tony to open a "private web socket" to IP 257.211.16.5. Such an IP cannot exist, the maximum value for any single number in an IP is 255, anything higher like 257 is not defined. Real websites have been mentioned in the show before such as sylviaimports.com, making this reference a bit silly. Occurs at 39:38 in the episode.
Day 2: 12:00 Midnight-1:00 A.M. - S2-E17
Factual error: When Yousef uses his Nextel to call Jack he uses the bleep button on the Nextel. Yet when Jack gives the phone to Wallace it is a regular call and not the Nextel bleep.
Day 4: 12:00 A.M.-1:00 A.M. - S4-E18
Factual error: In the opening scene of the episode, Marwan gives a cohort Lat/Long coordinates for a nuclear missile. The computer shows these coordinates as being in the Midwest, they are actually in Nevada. (37 14' N 115 21' W).
Day 4: 9:00 P.M.-10:00 P.M. - S4-E15
Factual error: The bad guy uses the thumb to access the Air Force base at the end of the episode. Thumb scanners are activated by the pulse and wouldn't work otherwise.
Factual error: Invoking the 25th amendment cannot be done by vote. The members have to send in their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall then immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Factual error: While Drazen is a very common Serbian given name, it is not found as a surname in that form. The surname "Drazenovic" would be fairly common, but not simply "Drazen". Even then, it would be pronounced "Drah-zhen" and not "Dray-zen" as everybody in the show does.
Factual error: Janet would have been in surgery for several hours, instead of just 40 minutes or so.
Factual error: At some point Jack tries to get a message to CTU about the fact that he is being held hostage. The enemy sees Jack writing and tells Jack to shred the message. I work in government security. Believe me, no government agency would have a simple shredder that just cuts the paper into strips. Required is a cross cut shredder that breaks the paper into almost a pulverized state.
Factual error: At about 5:45pm, Teddy is viewing Jack through his rifle scope, but there are no cross hairs, nor any other reticles. (00:31:20)
Day 2: 11:00 P.M.-12:00 Midnight - S2-E16
Factual error: At 18:50, Tony tells Jack that he's contacted someone at the San Jose Sheriff's Department. At 19:35 Jack calls and gets a response of "Sheriff's Department" on the line. There is no San Jose Sheriff's Department. It should have either been the San Jose Police Department or the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. (00:18:50)
Day 3: 12:00 P.M.-1:00 P.M. - S3-E24
Factual error: Chase gets into surgery way too quickly. Considering the time it would take for the paramedics to reach him, stabilise him, pack his hand in ice and bring him to the ER, and then for the doctors to get him ready for surgery, sedate him and actually start operating. There is no way they would have been able to do that in the amount of time they did.
Day 8: 9:00 P.M. - 10:00 P.M. - S8-E6
Factual error: The bad guys talks in German to Jack Bauer, posing as a German weapon dealer. But the German dialogue is very hard to understand, full of errors and with heavy accents - especially from Jack. After the first sentence his cover would be blown. (00:32:40 - 00:33:15)
Day 7: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - S7-E6
Factual error: Mid-air collisions are almost always prevented by Airborne Collision Avoidance Systems which have been incorporated in all commercial aircraft since at least 1973. These systems are independent of ground control. These planes would not have collided.
Day 7: 6:00 AM - 7:00 AM - S7-E23
Factual error: The head scientist tells Tony that the pathogen can survive 2 hours and longer after to host's death. Assuming it is either virus or prion (a protein), it wouldn't be alive to begin with and could effectively remain in Jack's body indefinitely.
Day 5: 1:00 AM - 2:00 AM - S5-E19
Factual error: When Chloe is at Bill's, she brings up the details of the diplomatic flight, and it shows the aircraft as a Boeing 757-200. This is a twin-engine aircraft, but the one shown is a tri-jet.
Day 7: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM - S7-E2
Factual error: Tony Almeida takes control of 2 planes to create a near miss. In reality all aircraft use a commonly available AM voice radio and pilots can hear each other's radio communications. It would be straightforward to contact the planes and warn them.
Chosen answer: Nobody knew, not even the writers, until at least halfway through the season when they were writing the end. They wanted to keep all options open.
Nick N.