Factual error: The final scene of the movie has Col. Kirby and the little Vietnamese boy supposedly on the beach at Da Nang, Vietnam. Kirby is saying, "The future of 'nam is you, kid", and the camera pans out to the sea and the sun is going down. The sun's sinking in the east...
Suggested correction: Nowhere in the film are we told where in Vietnam the Green Beret base is, just that it is in South Vietnam (of course). South Vietnam has a Western coast, along the Gulf of Thailand, along which anyone can watch the sun set over the sea.
Around the 18:00 - 18:30 mark a character welcomes John Wayne to Da Nang. This base is returned to throughout the film, including the infamous sun setting in the east scene. Da Nang's beaches face to the Northeast. Only when you get south of Nha Trang does the Vietnamese coast begin to offer a south to southwest horizon on the ocean.
Factual error: When Elektra closes her cell phone on McCabe, a dial tone can be heard. Cell phones don't have dial tones. Even if they did, Elektra hung up, so nothing would be heard.
Factual error: In the area with the lava Willie is put in a cage and lowered over the lava. She keeps dropping down until she is stopped what looks like a few feet above the lava. In reality she would have been incinerated by the heat.
Factual error: In the scenes at Miami Airport, you see numerous CSA planes (Czech Airlines). Czech Airlines offer no direct flights to Miami. However, Prague Airport, where this scene was shot, is full of CSA planes. (00:44:50)
Factual error: The ship, VIRGIL, is diving straight down from the crust to the core. Although the interior of the ship pivots to make the cockpit perpendicular to the descent, the ship itself is "digging" straight down so when people move from compartment to compartment they should be climbing up and down rather than simply walking back and forth.
Factual error: Just before Declan and the Jackal start shooting at each other in the subway tunnel, one of the trains starts coming from the opposite direction and begins passing Declan. This train continues to pass him at full speed for a full 35-40 seconds while they shoot it out. Subway trains are not nearly long enough for that. Also, during this time another train comes from behind him and he has to get between them and hold onto the light for a few seconds while they pass. But the second train then passes first while the first one passes fully about 2 seconds after the second one came... and it got there first, by about 15-20 seconds. Subway lines are about the same length as each other as well. But the first one was way longer and way wrong. (01:49:30 - 01:50:05)
Factual error: After the stationary 3D scene of the wild night drinking. There is a city skyline scene. The film is set in New York and the skyline scene is actually of Boston. Check the buildings from the right hand side. Recognisable ones you see in order:- The I.M. Pei Building. (with the arch on it.) The Prudential Building. The new John Hancock Building and then just at the base of it, to the left and partially obscured, the distinctive original John Hancock Building.
Factual error: The Map of Europe used for plotting their route displays the Netherlands incorrectly, showing its two major central polders (low-lying reclaimed landmasses surrounded by dikes) which weren't drained and finally completed until 1968.
Factual error: The repairman was freeing the soldiers from inside the locked gate using bolt cutters. The terrorist noticed this on the video feed so they electrified the fence, shocking the repairman. This would not have happened because the bolt cutters have plastic handles just for that reason, to keep you from being electrocuted by mistake. (00:54:50)
Factual error: When they first pick up the Mona Lisa, they show the back. There you can see a canvas sheet over a wooden framework. However, the Mona Lisa is painted directly onto wood, no canvas at all. The scan they run even says it's painted onto wood, despite visual evidence to the contrary. (00:06:35)
Factual error: When McClane and Zeus take the little hatchback from the bank location, they run up the ramp by the Brooklyn Bridge and McClane looks to see the dump trucks aren't on the bridge. Zeus then spots them on FDR Drive and they speed off down the ramp to FDR Drive. The ramp they were on doesn't connect to the ramp they took to give chase. It only heads towards City Hall or over the bridge. They'd have to take the Civic Center ramp, do a u-turn under the Brooklyn Bridge approach then head back up the ramp to FDR Drive.
Factual error: Throughout the movie, all sorts of messages are passed over the 1MC (ship's intercom) when the boat is supposed to be stealthy. They've set "Ultra Quiet" to avoid the enemy sub but no-one was any quieter, and everyone was still using the 1MC. Worse, people are shouting commands and status updates, both in person, and over the intercom! No wonder that Akula found them. The only thing protecting this ship was plot armor! In real life, messages would be passed quietly using sound powered phones (which we also see), rather than blasting the info loudly to the entire crew, because sonar will literally pick up the sounds of loudspeakers and people shouting. Let's not even mention classified target data being passed to the entire ship's crew on the 1MC. (00:49:00)
Factual error: In the last battle scene when you see shots of the German destroyer through the periscope the last one shot before it's blown up is really bad angling. The ship is far away but in the scope it's very close and the periscope (in order to get that camera angle) is 100 ft in the air.
Factual error: When TCAS sounds on an airliner, it should include instructions for the pilot to climb or descend. The pilot should not have to call another plane to inform that pilot. It would take too much time.
Factual error: The country of Pakistan was shown to be part of the G12 summit member countries. But the G12 are Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and USA. (13 countries, but the name was never changed when Switzerland joined in 1984).
Factual error: If Owen Wilson is under a dead body, how could any thermal radiation leak through the cold dead body covering him so the satellite (plus the Admiral and aides) could see him the whole time? (00:54:10)
Factual error: The gas used at the end of the movie to blow up the hospital was nitrogen, but nitrogen is not flammable.
Suggested correction: The agent in the basement says someone is heating up the liquid nitrogen to an unstable level, but adds that they also have pure oxygen leaking down there, and one spark can cause "these tanks" to explode. We don't know if "these tanks" are the nitrogen or something else that may be explosive, like gas for the emergency generators, and it is the high oxygen levels that make the environment explosive, not the nitrogen, since almost anything burns in a pure oxygen environment.
Oxygen is not explosive. It wouldn't make the environment explosive unless it was combined with a flammable gas. No medical gasses are flammable. It also couldn't be the gas from the generators as the explosions were occuring on each level, not from one central source. Generators are virtually always diesel, which also is very unlikely to explode unless very specific criteria are met.
Factual error: The aircraft used to fly to Shangri-La is a Bristol Beaufighter, a single seat long range fighter bomber. It was not a transport aircraft and could not carry passengers. Some variants of the Beaufighter were two seaters but none at all could be used as small airliners as they do here. It is not possible to simply reconfigure the aircraft as shown here - the centre of gravity, balance and trim would all be thrown out. The resulting jury-built aircraft would be uncontrollable in flight.
Factual error: In "Pikachu and Pichu," when Pikachu and the Pichu brothers come to the big play structure thing, there are a bunch of Pokemon around, including a red-and-white, ball-shaped Pokemon called Voltorb. The dubbers for the English version made a very noticeable error here: instead of Voltorb saying "Voltorb," (almost all Pokemon say parts of their names when they speak) it says "Electrode," which is the name of a similar-looking, but different Pokemon. The two are both red and white, but the difference is that Voltorb has eyes on the red part of its body, while Electrode has eyes on the white part of its body.
Factual error: When Gregor shoots the guy in the car after nearly killing the little girl, blood sprays over the window, but there's no bullet hole. If the bullet exited his head, hence spraying blood, it should have gone through the window too. (00:55:00)