Factual error: During the final voiceover, Jim Lovell says "Fred Haise was going back to the moon on Apollo 18, but his mission never flew." In reality, it was Apollo 19, not 18, that Haise was tentatively chosen to command.

Continuity: In the shot of Fred and Mary Haise at the Apollo 11 lunar landing party Mary is obviously pregnant. Apollo 11 was nine months before Apollo 13 and Mary is supposedly 8 months pregnant at the launch of Apollo 13. She does not have a baby during Apollo 13 and even if she was pregnant during Apollo 11 it would not have showed yet.

Visible crew/equipment: Immediately after the accident, when Swigert is struggling to close the hatch, as he pulls the hatch away, just before he says that he can't get it to seal, a camera is briefly visible sitting in the tunnel through to the LEM.

Factual error: The paint scheme shown on the Apollo 13 rocket is incorrect: The paint scheme shown in the movie is what was used on the development versions of the Saturn 1-B first stage, and featured a large black band around the middle. Technicians found it much too hot to work inside the pre-launch first stage from the heat generated from this paint scheme. Subsequently, the paint scheme was much simplified to a near all-white version for the first stage beginning with Apollo 11. All subsequent ship-stacks (including Apollo 13) featured this newer paint scheme.

Factual error: On several occasions the astronauts address the Capcom as "Andy." None of the Apollo 13 Capcoms were named Andy. Their names were Jack Lousma, Joe Kerwin, Bill Pogue and Vance Brand.

Continuity: After Houston reacquires contact with the spacecraft following re-entry, Gene Kranz sits down in his chair, obviously full of emotion. The camera then cuts to a wide shot of Mission Control before panning in on Ken Mattingly. Before the camera zeroes in on Ken, watch the top left corner of the screen and you can see Gene sit down again.

Deliberate "mistake": Keeping the Earth in the window during the burn for trajectory correction is inaccurate because if the LEM were pointing toward the earth, the window would be underneath the craft and the earth wouldn't be visible through the window. The earth is visible to be artistically consistent. This is mentioned by Jim Lovell on DVD Commentary.

Revealing: Right before the ship loses radio contact and goes behind the moon, a wide shot shows the ship heading behind the moon. In this shot, the ship casts a shadow into space which can be seen just above the ship. There is nothing nearby onto which a shadow could be cast, any debris from the explosion would be travelling off into space at high velocity in all directions.

Factual error: It is shown that people are casually having conversation next to the giant rocket-ship transporter, known as the 'crawler'. In fact, the crawler is so noisy that no one could possibly have a conversation near it. All technicians who 'drive' the crawler (an eight man crew) and anyone in the vicinity of an operating crawler wear sound-cancelling headphones whenever near it.

Factual error: The remaining smoke plume after the Saturn V liftoff is about 80 miles too low. It's apparent that an aircraft flew over the space center to leave a feeble 'movie' plume. Also, when the Apollo 13 crew blasts out of Earth orbit, the ship is pointed straight at the Moon, meaning that once they travelled the 240,000 miles to the Moon's orbit path, the Moon would be several thousand miles to their left, and the Apollo 13 crew would continue into oblivion, never to be seen again.

Deliberate "mistake": The dramatic burn towards the end lasts 39 seconds. The real burn lasted 18 seconds. Ron Howard extended it to make it more movie friendly.

Continuity: While the first stage of the Saturn V is fuelled by kerosene and LOX and burns with a bright orange flame, the second and third stages are fuelled by hydrogen and LOX, which has an invisible flame.  In the movie all three stages burn with bright orange flames.

Continuity: While the flight director (Gene) is talking to a guy about bringing the spacecraft's power down, there is a side shot of Gene saying: "that's the deal?" now, his hands are in front of him (playing with a pen) the very next shot he has his hands by his side and the man next to him has his head in a different position (a very short time to move your arms and head like that).

Continuity: In the scene where Jim comes home to inform his family that he is going to the moon, his teenage daughter comes out of her room to ask is she can wear her particular Halloween costume. Jim eventually says no, and she retreats into her room and the door slams shut. Jim walks to the door and the camera angle changes and you can see that the door is still open.