Factual error: After the successful Trinity test in 1945, people in a crowd are holding small US flags with 50 stars on them (offset rows). At the time there were only 48 states and the flag had 48 stars in even rows. The 50 star flag didn't exist until 1960, after Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959.
Factual error: Poirot attends a Halloween party in Venice in 1947. Halloween was never publicly recognized as a holiday in Venice or Italy in general in the XX century, especially with the traditional pumpkin-centered iconography. One could argue that, for the most part, Poirot is attending a private party organized by an American soprano. But, besides how unlikely it would be for 1947 Catholic nuns to take part in such a pagan-themed event, there are scenes showing Halloween decorations in the streets of Venice far away from the party location, as if it were a public holiday and not a private gathering from an eccentric foreigner.
Suggested correction: Besides what Oliver says to Poirot in the beginning about Americans bringing over Halloween to Italy, it's not true. Halloween has a European and Christian origin. A day called All Hallow's Day on November 1st has been a national holiday in Italy since the 9th century. There have always been activities in Italy the evening prior to All Hallow's day. This includes games, themes of death, carved pumpkins (turnips before), and masks ("guising"), all of which are very old traditions done all over Europe.
Being Italian and having lived in Italy for the past decades, may not make me an authority over all things Italian, but I can assure you that Ognissanti (which is what you quote as being "All Hallow's Day," since we obviously haven't been borrowing English names for our festivities) has never been observed as a national holiday with anything remotely close to what is shown here, which is, like Ariadne Oliver says, plain and simple Halloween. Like I said in the entry, it'd be perfectly fine for Americans to celebrate it, but no pumpkin banners in the public streets and parades with people shouting "Happy Halloween!" with nuns in full garb, no less! Halloween has never been celebrated here with any mainstream fanfare until the very, very recent years.
Factual error: The helicopter shown in the film (N801JB) was manufactured in 1979, 8-9 years after the film was set.
Factual error: This is set in summer 2007 but they watch Superbad (released August 2007) on DVD.
Suggested correction: The movie actually takes place in 2006. Superbad coming out in 2007 was correct.
Do a word change if the mistake is valid. Not a correction.
The movie starts in late 2006, then Oliver is invited to spend the summer (2007) with Felix, where the bulk of the movie takes place.
Character mistake: In the meeting in 1984 when Jason Bateman first appears they have players on the whiteboard in the background. They have "Hakeem Olajuwon." He didn't put the H back in his name until 1991. So it should have been "Akeem Olajuwon." (00:08:40)
Factual error: In the introduction to the movie, set in 2002, a young Adonis has a Naruto: Shippuden poster in his room. Naruto: Shippuden did not premiere until 2007.
Continuity mistake: Towards the end of the movie, when Mills and Koa are battling the dinosaurs, it is nighttime. Mills lures one of them towards the hot springs, and at this point, sunrise is beginning. After they defeat the final dinosaur, they go back to the escape pod, and it is back to being nighttime again.
Continuity mistake: During the drive to the mansion, the number of pages Noah has read in her book ("Pride and Prejudice") varies with front/back views. After she has read to almost the end, she's back to the middle or about two-thirds left to read. (00:02:00 - 00:02:44)
Continuity mistake: Byron walks towards the maid and surrounds her waist with his arm. From the angle behind, he is repeating all previous movements.
Factual error: The storm chasers are meeting by the road and you see the sign for I-90 East in the background several times. This movie takes place in and around Texas, yet the route that I-90 takes is nowhere remotely close to that far south.
Factual error: In the film, Blackberry is shown being "raided" by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As a Canadian company with its headquarters in Canada, the SEC, by itself, has no jurisdiction to effectuate such a raid on the premises. In real life, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) brought the case against Blackberry co-CEO, Jim Balsillie.
Factual error: Henk arrives in Moscow. The KGB gets a copy of his passport. In the next scene, a building can be seen, and a Trabant 601 drives through the shot (one light out). Trabant was East German made and widely exported on the Eastern Block but never to the Soviet Union. This car is definitely wrong there. (00:30:40)
Visible crew/equipment: Emma Stone is let out of the carriage and runs to the left of screen across the leaves. The camera follows her. On the bottom of the frame, right side, the shadow of the camera is visible. This is the scene before the assistant shows her the frog.
Audio problem: At the start, when at Ground Zero, a robot wakes up, and Joshua shuts it down. The woman he's with says, "What the hell," but her mouth says, "What the fuck," dubbed presumably for a lower rating.
Continuity mistake: When Coriolanus and Sejanus are eating lunch at the Academy, Coriolanus' sandwiches switch positions several times, stacking and unstacking, and turning several times.
Continuity mistake: When Uncle Ollie puts his hand over Delilah's mouth, he also clasps the right side of her hair, practically covering half of her face. Uncle Ollie does not remove his hand from Delilah's mouth, but her hair is to the side of her face. (00:17:30)
Continuity mistake: When Miguel is with the pedophile, he is given bread (or something similar) to eat. Shot changes, and the bread is suddenly bitten. The bread's length keeps changing several times between shots.
Continuity mistake: The wad of money Briggs took from the man Jimmy's dad stole from was evenly folded in half, cupped in Briggs' palm, but at least one bill was protruding upward when he stood up. As Briggs was walking into the building, a rear view showed the money was no longer cupped in his palm but extended from both sides of his hand and was in disarray. (00:05:10)
Continuity mistake: The phone in the foyer of the Simon house is a dial pad, but changes to a rotary more than halfway through.
Continuity mistake: When Famous collapses onto the floor, there is cocaine near his hair/forehead, but the baggie (and cocaine in it) is spread differently and further from his head when Plain Wayne turns his head. (00:08:10)
Suggested correction: While this is correct, an argument can be made that since the colour scenes are meant to be subjective and the black and white scenes are meant to be objective, Oppenheimer could have been unintentionally mapping the modern US flag onto this scene.
THGhost
That's a ridiculous stretch with zero evidence, not least as 48 star flags are seen in colour in other scenes. Sometimes a mistake is simply a mistake.
There is evidence, though. Nolan said so himself. Look it up. As for the mistake itself, I'm merely repeating what I've read on Twitter, and this correction was merely a suggestion. Seeing the 48 star flags in other colour scenes still doesn't disprove this theory. It is just a theory though, so no need to shoot it down so hard.
THGhost
He's said subjective in terms of the colour scenes being "first person", and maybe not strictly factual in terms of creating moments between characters and conveying emotion, but nowhere does that stretch to "one random scene happens to feature 50 star flags because Oppenheimer is mapping the modern flag onto it, when nothing like that happens anywhere else in the film."
Meh, take it up with Twitter. I just thought it was interesting, so I posted it here for a different point of view/perspective for others to read. It is most likely bull**** though.
THGhost
The fact that a director realized they had made a mistake and retroactively made up a deus ex machina explanation for it in no way invalidates the mistake. Nice try, Mr. Nolan but this posting is absolutely valid.
While Christopher Nolan's talked about the subjective/objective colour/black and white thing, which is entirely fair and no doubt exactly his intention, I don't think he's actually tried to "excuse" this by using that explanation, that's just other people trying to connect the two things. I'm not sure Nolan has commented on the flag issue in interviews at all.
Precisely, and I was in no way trying to invalidate the original mistake. I just found the whole theory interesting and posted it here. It is rather hilarious that a director with such attention to detail like Nolan would have missed something like this. We shall see if he gets it fixed for the streaming/physical release.
THGhost
It's not fixed in the home video version. However, the behind-the-scenes materials provide a reason for the mistake, in that putting a crowd in the scene was apparently a spur-of-the-moment decision. It's like that in their haste to bring in the crowd, the set decorators bought some modern miniature flags and put them into the scene without anyone realizing the 48/50 discrepancy.
Vader47000