The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - 69 mistakes

Continuity: When Jack is briefing the President, he draws a line on a map of the U.S. and tells the President to have everybody south of that line evacuated. The shape of the line changes between shots.

Factual error: The football (soccer in the U.S.) match we see relatively early on in the film is said to be between Manchester United and Celtic, in Glasgow. However, the non-MU team isn't wearing Celtic's home strip as they should be if playing in Glasgow (it's actually Boca Juniors from Argentina, in a match played in 2002) and the stadium shown is actually Old Trafford, Man. U's home ground, as shown by the advertising billboards in the background.

Visible crew/equipment: When Jack is in the library towards the end of the movie, he looks in a room and then the shot goes back to facing him. If you look very carefully, in the back of the hall you can see a person walk by. He is very hard to see.

Continuity: The first time we see the black bear cage, the sign (and the entire shot) is a reversed image. Twenty five minutes later, we see the black bear cage again and the sign is correct.

Continuity: Just before the huge wave hits the library, we see that Laura cuts her leg. She cuts it on the side of the top part of her leg. Later in the movie, when her trouser leg is pulled back to reveal the wound, it is now on the front of her lower leg.

Factual error: When the International Space Station is shown, it's spinning. The space station doesn't spin. The centrifugal force would create gravity on all the outer sides of the space station - and make it impossible to dock other modules.

Factual error: The International Space Station is shown taking meteorological measurements and transmitting them to earth. First of all, there are HUNDREDS of weather satellites already in orbit for that purpose, the use of which does not require distracting astronauts from other duties. Second, the ISS does not have sophisticated earth-sensing equipment.

Revealing: Very near the end of the movie, when the NOAA director is viewed in the helicopter as it approaches NYC, the image is reversed, verified by the David Clark logo on his headset being reversed. There are two different shots of this just a few seconds apart, and they are both reversed.

Factual error: NOAA headquarters is shown to be in downtown D.C, when in fact it is just outside of the District in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Revealing: When a newscaster is mentioning that two airplanes were caught up in the storm and crashed, they show footage of the AVIANCA (Colombian airline) Flight number 52, which crashed in New York on January 25th, 1990.

Continuity: After Sam's phone call to his dad, when Jack holds his wife with both hands at her cheekbones the position of her hair changes from under his hands to over, between shots.

Continuity: When the tidal wave is hitting Manhattan, and the camera cuts to Laura walking behind the black woman and the cop, the woman panics and turns to her left to look at Laura, but in the following closeup she turned to her right to look and talk to Laura. (Slow-mo may be required.)

Other: None of the men in the movie grow any facial hair at all, even the ones stuck in the library in New York.

Continuity: At the Hedland Center, when Dennis wakes up Simon from snoring, in the background Simon lifts himself up from the chair, but in the next shot he is already at the coffee machine.

Continuity: When Sam is sitting in the kitchen eating, his mother is talking to Jack on the phone and just after Jack says, "Sam is a straight A student he doesn't fail classes," Sam puts down his glass of milk and leaves his left hand up, but in the following shot it is down by his stomach.

Continuity: When Sam and his two teammates are on their way to NYC for the competition, the airplane gets hit by turbulence. Two attendants go to the back of the aisle with the drink cart, when the plane starts to shake, and in the long shot of the aisle (from the head to the back) one of them is in front of the cart and the other one is behind. However, both are behind the cart in the close up, when they try to prevent the cart from hitting anybody.

Factual error: The tidal wave that strikes Manhattan is shown coming from the west (From New Jersey) as opposed to coming from the east of Manhattan (where the Atlantic Ocean is). Where did this tidal wave originate from, the Hackensack River?

Continuity: As the massive tidal wave is rolling through Manhattan, when it cuts to Sam looking at Laura from the steps, the two taxis in front of the library are further away from each other, than in the following shot when Sam has to jump on the cars just to get over them.

Continuity: When we see the news report on the TV, you can see that people are taking bottles of water from the shelves. Beside the TV you see a person's hand on the right side of the TV and a black tea flask as well. In the next shot the person's hand is much further away from the screen and the tea flask has also been moved to the opposite side of the TV.

Plot hole: When you see the shot of New York, just before the scene where the apartment lights go out, there are no lights on in the buildings, or car lights in the street, although it is dark. The lights should still be on as there has not been a power outage.

Factual error: When Sam climbs outside the ship he grabs the frozen metallic pipes and rails with both hands - one half covered with a glove, one is bare. He has no problem gripping the cold metal and he can get his hands free every time. If the moisture froze before contact, his hands would be frozen too, so that can't be the reason.

Factual error: When the helicopters land in Manhattan in the end, there should have been lots of snow flying around since it had been snowing for that last two days after the eye passed.

Audio problem: The pitch of an airliner's engine doesn't change dramatically when going through rough turbulence. In the scene with the turbulence - after all is quiet, it almost sounds as if the engines are shut down. And it happens way to fast for it to be the pilots doing it. And why would the pilots speed up when entering turbulence?

Continuity: Just after Jack comes out of the New Delhi conference, he is talking with Terry Rapson. At the right of the screen at the stand, there is a guy with a red hat/turban and scarf and no other people behind him with turbans. However, in Terry's close-up the man wearing the red turban has vanished and there are a lot more people in the background wearing turbans.

Continuity: When the two men at the start of the film are saving Dennis Quaid from falling, you can see Quaid reach for one of the others' hands, then that guy grabs him with both hands, but in the following shot, Quaid is holding the hands of both men.

Continuity: As the tidal wave is heading towards the library, the homeless man picks up his dog and runs towards the library. In the next shot his dog is still on the ground.

Visible crew/equipment: When the janitor is approaching the door you can see a shadow of a man, which isn't the janitor's, in the background holding something that appears to be a microphone.

Revealing: In the scene where Dennis Quaid jumps over the ice crevasse to the other side, note the position of his ice axe, which is strapped to the right side of his hip. When he jumps back over with the metal tubes in his hands, he balances a little, then falls. We see his gloved hands disappear as he falls into the crevasse. The next shot shows he is holding onto the ice axe, which is embedded into the ice with his left hand. In reality he would not be able to unhook the ice axe so quickly and then put it in his left hand and thrust it into the ice. Remember what gravity does.

Continuity: When Jack and Lucy are talking about Sam failing class on the phone and Lucy says "I don't have time to talk about this right now", it shows Sam eating and a milk pack with its opening pointing left. When it cuts the opening is pointing right.

Continuity: When Lucy is saying good bye and hugging her co-worker, she puts her arm over the co-worker's shoulder. When it cuts, Lucy's arm is gone and when it cuts it's back over her shoulder.

Continuity: Just after Terry looks at the boys on the screen with Simon, in the overhead shot of Manhattan traffic, the homeless guy in the middle of the traffic is walking towards a black car with a police car beside it. But in the following closeup he has passed the cop car and is now at the bumper of the black car. (Zoom in is required).

Factual error: When Jack is showing Professor Rapson projections of the world, with the coloured storms, he first shows a quick picture of Europe. Greece is not visible on this map, you may have to look carefully.

Continuity: At the end of the movie, when they are all in the helicopter, it cuts to a view of them looking out the window. In this shot, the black actor is sitting next to the window, on the other side of the helicopter, but in the following one, he has suddenly switched seats, and is no longer sitting next to the window.

Continuity: The image from the space station that is sent to Tamlyn has no vortex. However when she sees the images on her screen there is a vortex about 50 miles in diameter.

Continuity: When Jack is trekking north to Manhattan with two of his colleagues, one falls through a glass ceiling and the other cuts his right hand trying to save him. Despite the fact that we see his hand bleeding profusely, you can see in the subsequent scene that his right hand is just fine.

Continuity: When T.J. is talking with the homeless black guy who is sitting on the floor telling the student how to keep warm, the guy throws the student a book to rip up and make himself warm. When he throws the book, the student is grasping the book at the bottom with his left hand, but in the following shot his left hand is at the top of the book.

Revealing: During the tornado scene there is a part where you see lots of cars on the highway flying and crashing and if you look carefully at the second car falling it doesn't touch the ground, yet it manages to cause sparks and dents.

Continuity: When the man asks Jack "Why for the love of God would you aggravate the Vice President?", he has both his hands up. When it cuts his hands are down.

Factual error: At the end of the film a wing of Black hawk helicopters are dispatched to NYC to evacuate survivors. The Black hawk does not have anywhere near the fuel capacity for such a trip. And at it's cruising speed it would take a day to get there anyway.

Factual error: At the end of the film when they arrive in NYC looking for the library, we know that they survived because they are inside with a roaring fire burning. But where is the smoke up above, as Jack Hall approaches? There must be a chimney, or else they would have all died of asphyxiation.

Factual error: At the start, Jack jumps the break in the ice to go and pick up 4 ice core tubes. He lifts them way too easily, considering they are supposed to have ice cores in them.

Other: Even though all of the RAF helicopters are flying in close proximity to each other, they all freeze at different times. They should all have frozen at the same time.

Factual error: There is a scene where a helicopter's tail rotor freezes up, causing the copter to spin out of control and crash. The problem with this scene is that the helicopter starts to spin clockwise, in the SAME direction as the main rotor blades. In actuality, engine torque would cause a conventional tail-rotor helicopter to spin in the OPPOSITE direction of the rotor blades, in the event of a tail rotor failure.

Continuity: When all the people are in the library sheltering from the cold, in the overhead shot of the guard (the one who told the homeless guy he can't enter the library with a dog), he is in front of Laura and then walks to his right with clothing/blankets in his hand, but in the next shot he is behind Laura and the black cop.

Factual error: When the North Atlantic current is shown on a world map, there are a couple of errors on it. 1) South East Asia is missing, and 2) Arabia is joined to Africa.

Continuity: When on the plane and there's the major turbulence Sam's hair flops over his forehead.Then he looks at the wing and there is no hair on his forehead but in the next shot of him his hair is back messed up.

Continuity: When the huge tidal wave hits the bus you see a man standing on top of a taxi, number 7Z22, which gets crushed by the water. Moments afterwards you hear the French woman saying that she left her bag behind. If you look on the right side of Laura you can see a still intact taxi with the number 7Z22 on it.

Continuity: The older scientist reaches down to grab Jack with his right hand. In a closeup, Jack grabs the right hand and the same scientist catches him with the left hand as well. In the next shot from above, only his left hand is down, but as he pulls Jack up both hands are on him.

Other: A huge majority of the crew listed in the first half of the credits are French Canadians, their name spelled properly, accents and all. As seen in the UK, all the times "è" should have been written, it was replaced by a "Ø", for example HélØne and LafreniØre. Very noticeable when you know about it, and most probably caused by a sloppy conversion between two software, and no one proofchecking the credits before putting the movie out.

Factual error: The old Sky News logo is used in the film, as shown in a broadcast.

Factual error: Given that the entire premise of the movie revolves around the melting of the ice caps and the disruption this causes, including a rise in sea-levels, and that at then end of the movie most of the Northern Hemisphere outside the tropics is covered by an enormously enlarged ice cap the sea-level should have lowered significantly enough for the shape of the land masses to appear different from space.

Continuity: When the students are looking around the library for books to burn, it cuts to a girl and man standing on the balcony beside a book cart. When the guy reaches across to grab a book and says, "We can't burn this one..." he is holding the book with both hands, but in the following shot his left hand is on the book and the other hand is on the cart.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, when Dennis Quaid is running from the cabin to help his friend, in the far shot, you can see him run onto the ice, but in the following shot, he is on the stairs.

Other: During the tornadoes in LA there is a large sign that slams into the news anchor. The speed and angle of the sign would throw the anchorman at least towards the van that it goes over. Even if his body did hit the ground with the sign flat on top of him, his body would have moved towards the van if not slid far beyond it.

Factual error: When Jack arrives in New York he's right next to the Statue of Liberty. However when he reaches the library he comes from the East River and walks west. That is a pretty big detour around the southeastern corner of Manhattan, instead of taking the direct route.

Factual error: When the students arrive in New York, you can see the luggage tag on Laura's bag. It lists JFK below DCA. This means the bag would have flown from somewhere to John F. Kennedy airport in New York, and then connected onto another flight going to Reagan National in Washington DC. Since New York is their final destination, JFK should have been the top airport code, even if they had connected through somewhere else.

Continuity: When Sam and the other two students are on the big ship, Sam goes outside so that the wolves will chase him, locks the door, then climbs the ladder to a door where the students are. The black student is startled and turns around with a metal scoop to his right getting ready to sling it, but in the following shot the scoop is over his left shoulder.

Continuity: When Sam, Laura and the black student enter J.D.'s hotel room, Laura asks, "You live here?" and J.D. looks at Laura then puts his coat down, but in the next shot his back is to her and is putting his coat down again.

Continuity: Near the start, when it cuts to a street in Japan, a large hailstone hits the policeman's car. When it hits, the wipers just brush it away and keep working, but in the following shot when the policeman looks back at his vehicle, the hailstone is still there and the wipers are no longer working.

Continuity: When we get to the public library the first time there is a shot from behind the homeless guy - he has his hand on a cart. When it cuts to a front shot his hand is off the cart.

Revealing: When the tornadoes are hitting Los Angeles you hear a woman say,'Is anyone hurt?' The angle is high and you can see the Capitol Records building, the tornado and the helicopter. If you look very closely at the bottom right you see lots of cars on the road driving like mad and one of them drives under a large truck trailer, betraying that they are CG cars.

Continuity: In the scene where Sam smashes the vending machine in the library, you see him first take out about three items from it, and then in the next shot you see him holding two items, but when he throws them onto the table there are about a dozen packets of sweets and crisps.

Factual error: When we see a TV report saying how England is affected by the storm we see a shot of a street with hanging yellow traffic lights. England doesn't have yellow traffic lights, we have black ones. It's obviously footage of a storm in the United States.

Continuity: When the tidal wave is about to hit Manhattan, Sam and his two friends are walking up the stairs, and the black friend's hood is over his head, but in the following shot it is no longer over his head.

Continuity: In the scene when Terry Rapson is looking at his grandson's drawing, Simon comes into the room and puts a cup of tea on the desk. In the first two shots you see that the cup is in the same position where the handle is facing exactly towards the camera, but in the third shot, it has changed position, and the handle is now pointing to the left.

Other: In the scene where the first storm appears, you see little windmills spin and trees affected by this wind. However, the hair of the old man walking out of his house (in the same shot) is undisturbed.

Other: Towards the beginning of the movie, one of the characters starts the ignition on his truck. If you look carefully, he turns the key the wrong way.

Other: Near the end of the movie, in New York, once the storm has cleared, ships seem to be pointing out of the ice at all angles. For a while before the water froze over, the ships would've had enough time to either level out or sink if they had been ruptured in some way. Also, there is no way they could be touching the floor of the harbour, seeing as how the water not only rose, but it was already deep enough for ships to pass without difficulty.

Factual error: When the Scottish scientist calls Hall, he tells him that the freezing temperature of fuel is -150° Fahrenheit. This isn't true, Jet A1, which is the type of fuel in such kind of choppers freezes at -52.6° Fahrenheit. The scientist says that they had to look it up, so the should have the correct figures and as this figure is quite important to estimate the temperature in the eye of the storm, he wouldn't mix it up.