National Treasure (2004) - 80 mistakes

Continuity: When Ben and Riley go down the smuggler's hold in Charlotte, Riley's bag gets set on fire, the flap side. But in any of the following shots where we see his bag, it is not burnt.

Continuity: When Ben walks in to the bathroom to remove his overalls, he slams the tool belt up in the corner of the counter next to side panel wall and tile wall. When Ben unzips the overalls, the tool belt is now behind the last sink's faucet with part of the belt and fastener in the middle sink. None of the tool belt is next to the side panel wall. We next see a shot where the tool belt is almost entirely in the last sink, then back to being behind the faucet.

Continuity: When Ben puts his tool belt on the conveyor belt to go through the X-ray machine, we see the gloves are on the left and pointed down while the red, rubber encased plyer handles are approx. in middle leaning slightly to the right and no space between the plyer handles. As we watch the tool belt go through the X-ray machine, the gloves are on the right side with the plyer handles almost directly above the gloves, both handles visible and the rest of the belt all to the left.

Factual error: The security to get into Independence Hall is very strict, since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Security would not have allowed Ben to keep his pocket knife when he entered it. This should not be confused with his disguising as a janitor, as this happened at a different location (National Archives) earlier in the film.

Continuity: When Ben ducks into the Gift Store, there is a blonde lady in a black dress standing at the counter between Ben and the door. She steps forward out of the picture as Abigail goes by. Then as Ben starts to turn to leave the store you see her arm come back into the picture. But as Ben walks by that part of the store and the clerk says to Ben, "Are you trying to steal that?" the lady has disappeared.

Factual error: To reveal the invisible ink on the back of the Declaration, Ben and Dr. Chase use pure lemon juice before warming the surface. This is best seen when Chase first test it out on the corner, where the Mason symbol is placed. Lemon juice is in fact also used as invisible ink (that you have to heat to make visible), and this procedure would have ruined anything written on the back of the document.

Continuity: When Gates takes out the champagne glass after making the fingerprints visible, the time on his watch changes from 9:11 to half past something.

Continuity: In the treasure vault Riley stands in front of that emerald statue, and on its chest you can see a part which is not covered in dust. In the next shot the whole chest is covered in dust. The clean area coincides with the later placement of Riley's cheek, which means the first shot was actually taken after the embracing and implemented before.

Continuity: Ben stirs a solution to make the campaign button fluorescent and tests the solution. He dips two fingers into the solution, rubs them against his thumb, then draws a smiley face on the tabletop. When he shines the UV light on the tabletop, there's a small, compact smiley face. But if you watch Ben very closely as he is making the smiley face, he draws the eyes much farther apart and he starts the mouth of the face between the eyes. The one he actually draws is not the one that is shown.

Continuity: When Gates and Dr. Chase are in the store to buy new clothes, Abigail is coming out of the changing cubicle. She opens the door wing while having both hands on the edge, when the shot changes, she leans on the edge with both forearms.

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene near the beginning of the movie where Ben finds the pipe and finds the message by rolling the pipe on the paper, the message is long and has symbols, but it is impossible for all of that to fit in the pipe.

Factual error: When Ben finds Charlotte buried in the ice, he would have encountered solid, thick ice. The small pick-ax he uses seems to easily break through the ice. Also, he seems to be digging through packed snow, rather than thick ice, which is indicative to the Arctic ice shelves.

Continuity: When Riley uncovers the frozen seaman in his hammock, he gets scared/excited, starts flailing his arms and knocks both hammocks on either side of him as he falls backward. That would have left both hammocks moving/swinging a little. But in the very next frame where Riley is still making noises and turns over on all fours, we see the hammock on the left side of the screen as still as the dead.

Continuity: When Ian and Ben are sitting on a couple of barrels discussing what the riddle means, there are a couple of balls hanging from chains very close to Ian's head. A scene or two later, there are a couple of oblong, round, flat bottomed things hanging down next to Ian's head that actually brush against the fur on his hood. Next scene, nothing is close to his head and then the balls come back and then nothing again.

Continuity: When we first see Dr. Chase's desk there is a Rolodex on the upper left hand side (as she is looking out over her desk). Then when Dr. Chase confirms that the FBI is right, that nobody could steal the Declaration of Independence, we see the Rolodex in the shot between her and Ben. It then disappears until Dr. Chase says, "You're treasure hunters,aren't you?" where it reappears between her and Ben. It not on her desk as Riley says "...owned by Freemasons." but reappears as Dr. Chase says, "Did Bigfoot steal it?"

Continuity: This has to do with Ben getting Abigail's fingerprints off the champagne glass. When he hands her the champagne glass, her fingers are positioned on the lower half of the glass. Later, when Ben "takes" her thumbprint off the glass, he takes it from a much higher part of the glass.

Continuity: When Gates enters the password he has hit the keyboard 4 times "V A (actually the "Caps lock-key, as explained elsewhere) L L" but when we see the screen with the access code, there are only 2 stars hiding the letters.

Continuity: The actor who plays Ben as a child has brown eyes, but Nicholas Cage has blue eyes.

Continuity: After Ben And Riley climb down into the smuggler's hole and are scrambling to get away, Ben grabs Riley and throws him through a hatchway. Riley lands in the snow with a wall next to him, on the screen's left side. Right before the blast, Ben dives (is thrown) facedown in the snow next to Riley but the screen is a mirror image of the previous one because the wall is now on the right of the screen and so is Riley.

Factual error: The National Archives room with the Declaration of Independence is actually darker than portrayed in the movie. The lack of light is for the protection of the documents, so that the writing doesn't fade away.