Continuity mistake: When Charlie Epps is writing a quadrillion on the whiteboard, the writing alternates between shots. Most noticably when he first writes it down, there is a significant downward tendency of the 000 groups. In the next shot, they are pretty much horizontal. Also the shapes of the commas alter.
Continuity mistake: Around the middle of the episode, Charlie Eppes and Mildred French are discussing in front of a board. She completes an equation and he adds a minus. In the next close shots, the minus disappears and reappears with angle changes. After three or four changes, a circle appears around the minus.
Continuity mistake: Season 2 - Episode 16 - "Protest": Near the end when the guy is threatening to drop the nitroglycerin, he drops the test-tube and it lands on a red mat. However, when the agent picks it up, there isn't a mat anywhere near the test-tube.
Revealing mistake: Davis, the psychiatrist, is the second man to be killed. Although he was shot at five times, only the first two wounds, which are the highest, give blood, while the lower and later three do not.
Continuity mistake: "The Art of Reckoning": At the end when Lucy and Pony are at the table, she extends her left hand and he lays his head on her hand. In the next shot, he is holding her right hand with his head up and then in the next shot he is back to lying on her left hand.
Continuity mistake: While the mother is driving her children to school in a minivan, both the driver's seat and the front passenger seat change from having the headrest/whiplash protector being attached to the seats (non-removable), to having the adjustable kind that have been removed.
Killer Chat - S3-E11
Continuity mistake: While Charlie is talking to Dr. York on the phone, the camera is at a wide shot, notice that Larry's name tag is not behind Amita on the wall. When the camera cuts to single shot of Amita, Larry's name tag appears on the wall. Then, the camera cuts to a wide shot again, and the name tag disappears. (00:38:25)
Noisy Edge - S1-E12
Factual error: In the beginning of the episode, Charlie is stating that "there is always a solution" and "if there's any limitation it's got to be in the mathematician, not the math". Unfortunately, according to Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorems, this is not true. Simply put, there are mathematical problems that cannot be proven/solved.
Factual error: The Secret Service agent says the bills are counterfeit because you can see the watermark under a uv light, which is completely wrong. The uv reactive strip is not a watermark, it's a plastic strip embedded between the two layers of the bill and fluoresces under uv as a security measure. In older bills, it glows blue as in the film. In newer ones, it glows yellow to orange and is on the right half of the bill. A fake bill would be the one that does not glow. (00:07:20)
Continuity mistake: Throughout the series when Megan Reeves is wearing long sleeves they tend to go up and down in split-second speed between shots.
Magic Show - S5-E6
Continuity mistake: When David is outside the club being interviewed by the media, he comments that "We're in the middle of an investigation." However, when the statement is later played during news coverage, David noticeably stammers and says "we're" twice.
Continuity mistake: In 'The Janus List' (324), when David gets mad at Colby for being a spy, he says "You're not a spy, you're a damn traitor". But, in 'Trust Metric' (401), when Don is reviewing the tapes of Colby's interrogation, David says "You're not a damn spy, you're a traitor".
Factual error: During the scene when Megan and the FBI are making the house entry, a scene cuts to two FBI agents, one with a M4 and another with a MP5. The agent with the MP5 has the magazine in his weapon installed backwards. (00:05:10)
Continuity mistake: When Charlie is in his office talking to Larry, while going over the potential killers and victims, he writes the word "Killers" on the board and circles it. Then, when Charlie notices that Larry has left and says "gone", the writing is different. The 'k' is wider, and most noticeably, the left side of the circle is gone, and the loop in his 's' disappears. Once Charlie goes back to working, the word changes back to how it was originally written. (00:38:20)
Dirty Bomb - S1-E10
Factual error: Season 1, Episode 10, "Dirty Bomb": The opening figures refer to "500g of Nuclear Material." These are the wrong units to determine the hazard level in a radiological sample. The "Curie content" describes, roughly, how much radiation will be given off, and is not tied directly to the sample's mass. 500g of Cesium-137 (the isotope being discussed in the episode) could well be less radioactive than 1g of a different isotope.
Factual error: In one episode, there is a chase with the suspect driving an ambulance. The chase ends when the ambulance runs into and flips over a motionless taxi perpendicular to it, killing the suspect. There's no way this could happen, because at those speeds the impact would make the taxi flip over if anything.
Continuity mistake: When the FBI goes to arrest Tabakien, his men try to stop them and Don slams one of the guys' heads into a plate. The plate breaks into several pieces spreading the food all over. After you see the other men being stopped, you see a shot of the first guy again. And you can see that the plate is mostly intact and the food is not spread around as much.
Visible crew/equipment: After Charlie comes up with the idea of creating a false master key and designing the lock that it opens, when it cuts to them back at the office the yellow T-mark can be seen on the floor by David's foot.
Other mistake: In the opening sequence, Colby tells Helm at the airplane crash site that all of the passenger bodies have been moved to the L.A. Coroner's Office. However, later in the scene, there are shrouded bodies on the ground outside the command center tent.
Continuity mistake: When Charlie is comparing a computer wipe to a data scrubber, he first crosses out the equation"E=MC2" with a magic marker, beginning mostly with uniform, vertical lines, and then lightly scribbled. However, in a later shot in the sequence, the cross-out is different, being mostly scribbled, with few vertical lines.
Answer: It takes 24-48 hours before a decaying body begins producing a decaying odor. It takes a number of days for it to intensify enough to be immediately noticeable when walking into a room.
raywest ★