Visible crew/equipment: After Brian transfers Mia in the FBI building, there is a shot of a red car with chrome bumpers. In the bumper you can see a cameraman walking forwards with the camera. (00:24:15)
Continuity mistake: Dom lets go of David Park and Brian rushes forward to grab him. Dom vanishes instantly, for Brian to get past him. (00:29:50)
Continuity mistake: The left side of the spoiler on Brian's car is broken when "Ghetto Smurf's" orange car rolls off the bridge. However a few seconds later when Brian drifts through the final turn the spoiler is fixed before being broken again in the next shot. (00:42:45)
Continuity mistake: When the girl is asking for Dom's number at the end of the first race her hair is in her jacket in some shots and not in others. (00:43:00)
Continuity mistake: During the first tunnel sequence we see there are no lights in the tunnel. There is one shot, from the side, of all the cars going past right to left. When the yellow car goes past, a light is reflected in the paint. (00:56:00)
Factual error: During the first tunnel sequence, all the cars travel very far into the mountains, turn lots of corners, yet not only is Gisele still able to speak to them over the radios, their GPS still works. GPS signals invariably need a clear 'sight' of the sky and can penetrate light cover, but most certainly not that depth and cover. (00:58:05)
Continuity mistake: When Brian and Dom are fighting, Dom throws Brian into a table of objects that fall around them. Camera changes and they have disappeared. (01:00:00)
Visible crew/equipment: When Brian steals the Humvee, and stops for Dom to get it, there is a camera very prominently reflected in it. (01:01:50)
Continuity mistake: When Vin Diesel sits at the dinner table to eat Chinese take out food, his sister asks him to pray before eating. Vin Diesel takes a gulp of the beer, which starts to foam up and spill. Next shot during prayer, there is no foam on the beer. (01:08:25)
Continuity mistake: When Brian is telling Mia why he let Dominic go in the first movie, Mia's necklace goes from over her shirt (on her right shoulder) to under the shirt and on her neck correctly. (01:09:30)
Continuity mistake: When Dom and the woman are talking about going after Braga, her hair is billowing in some shots and not in others. These are instant cuts. (01:20:35)
Continuity mistake: Brian's number plate gets shot off at the end in the desert. However it reappears in a couple of shots in the tunnels. (01:28:00)
Continuity mistake: When Phoenix gets Braga out the Subaru at the end, the 2 cars are close together. Dom then appears and crashes into the Subaru, which doesn't move. When the cops show up, the distance between Phoenix's car and the Subaru has increased massively. (01:30:20 - 01:33:15)
Revealing mistake: At the end when we see all the police arrive, there are tyre marks in the sand where they stopped in previous takes. (01:33:15)
Continuity mistake: In the final scene Mia is driving an NSX. The aerial disappears and reappears throughout this scene. (01:34:00)
Factual error: The animation depicting a car engine at the end of the movie is incorrect. The animation shows a combustion event each time the cylinder reaches TDC (top dead center). A four cycle engine only has one combustion event for every two cycles of the piston. (01:35:30)
Factual error: When Dom emerges from the tunnel driving F-Bomb, he downshifts and presumably hits the throttle, causing the car's front end to lift. The car is on dirt and wearing street tires. It's not physically possible for the car to get the traction required to transfer whatever amount of horsepower we're expected to believe the car has to the ground, so that the front will lift. The only reaction the car would have had was to spin the rear tires wildly, kicking up more dirt and likely causing the car to swerve 'furiously'. (01:35:30)
Continuity mistake: When Dom crushes Phoenix between the Camaro and Impreza, the hood of the Camaro is badly damaged and denting up. In every shot afterwards, the Camaro is just fine. (01:35:50)
Continuity mistake: Dom smashes his Charger into the side of the silver Chevrolet 4x4 and damages the front of the car, yet in all following shots, the damage has gone.
Continuity mistake: During the final chase just before everyone goes into the tunnels, Dom's Charger gets a glancing hit on its back right-hand corner, and you can see the panel damage, but later the damage disappears.
Chosen answer: It's a slightly tricky one to answer because the movie doesn't give very many clues. What we do know for a fact is the events at the start during and up to the conclusion of the Petroleum tanker heists was set before Tokyo Drift as evidenced by Dom speaking to Han with a view to returning back to Tokyo. After that it gets a little fuzzy. Some people claim the entire movie is before Tokyo Drift, but that simply cannot be the case as there are lots of 2008/2009 model cars around the movie, so the general consensus is the very start is before Tokyo Drift, and the time when Dom comes out of travelling/hiding and gets the phone call that Letty is dead is now after Tokyo Drift.
GalahadFairlight
This is not right. The entire movie takes place before "Tokyo Drift", as that is where Han dies. He is still around for the next two films and then dies in the seventh where events catch up with "Tokyo Drift" and then continues where it left off.
Yeah, Han's not dead either, he's back in the 9th movie.