Fast & Furious (2009) - 22 mistakes

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.

Continuity: After the theft of the tankers, Dom and his gang attend a party where Dom tells Letty that he wants her to quit because it's too dangerous. Watch Letty's right shoulder as it is alternatively bare and covered by her white blouse.

Continuity: When Vin Diesel sits at the dinner table to eat Chinese take out food, his screen 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.

Other: Near the beginning of the movie, Vin Diesel kicks open a guy's door and you hear Marcus Fenix from Gears of War. When the camera pans to the TV for a split second, Marcus is not seen anywhere.

Continuity: The tractor trailer rams the rear of the Buick twice. Just before the second impact, we can see the rear bumper of the Buick is hanging well below its normal location and the sides of the car show crumpled damage. Moments later, the car spins around alongside the trailer and the rear of the car is undamaged.

Continuity: 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.

Factual error: There's no way the pickup trucks could haul the stolen tanker trailers, even as modified as the pickup trucks are. The gas engines they are using don't have the necessary torque to haul the probably 30,000 pounds the full trailers weigh, and the trucks do not show a heavy enough suspension to haul the weight either. Besides, no one hooks up the airlines necessary to release the trailer brakes.

Factual error: When the tanker trailers are separated from each other, the trailer brakes would apply, causing the trailers to skid and/or stop. No one hooks up air lines on the pickups to prevent this from happening.

Continuity: During the start of the chase in the grey Subaru Impreza, its sidelights vary on and off.

Factual error: Dom removes the hose from his nitrous oxide cylinder to fill his car with the gas and then pushes in his cigarette lighter. The fact is that nitrous oxide is not actually flammable on its own. Nitrous oxide is an oxidiser that contains a higher oxygen content than air. This is why it is pumped into engines so that more fuel can also be added to create a stronger explosion. Filling a car with nitrous oxide would not make it explode. You could put a lighter in the car surrounded by the gas and it just mean that the flame would burn brighter - not create an explosion radius of about 5 metres. It is not explosive when introduced to heat (as some have said). The only way this is true is if the bottle itself was heated up to explosion levels - would be a few hundred degrees as they are pressure tested to significant levels. As I have said above, it is ONLY combustible when introduced with a heat source AND fuel! Anyone who argues this should check their sources.

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.

Continuity: When Dom steers into the path of the tractor-trailer to slow it down, the actual swerving of the Buick occurs immediately in front of the tractor, just a few feet ahead of it. As the Buick stops wiggling in the next shot, we can see the tractor is far behind the Buick instantly.

Continuity: Moments before Letty leaps off the trailer onto the hood of the Buick, a quick shot (just as Dom begins to say "You gotta jump!") shows the hood is already damaged from a previous attempt of this same stunt, despite all the preceding shots showing no such damage.

Continuity: 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.

Continuity: 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.

Visible crew/equipment: When Brian at the end says "don't make me laugh", if you look at the chrome bumper of the green Torino he's leaning on, you can see a member of the crew moving. It's not Toretto as he's on the other side of Brian, and it's not any of the Police as evidenced by the following shot that still shows them to be far away.

Revealing: Just after the Buick spins around to knock the trailer loose, we see the Buick speeding away backwards alongside the truck. If you look carefully you can see the REAR tires are steering, not the fronts. This car was modified with the body mounted backwards on the chassis because the transmission only has one reverse gear, so to get the speed and handling needed, the car had to be going 'forward' with a 'backward' body.

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'.

Factual error: During the final chase across the desert, Dom fires at several cars, shooting out their tyres, several of those cars then stop dead and the back ends of the those cars lift up and flip over. Those cars might lose control, but it wouldn't cause the back ends of the cars to defy gravity in such a way unless they actually hit something, which they never do.

Revealing: When Dom and Brian are racing for the job, there is one point where Brian is seen skidding around a corner. There are already skid marks in the exact place Brian skids.

Factual error: During the first theft of the tankers, the pickups backing up to the tanks throw an A-frame over the pintle hitches to steal the trailers. Aside from the fact that it is extremely difficult to hook up that type of hitch, even when stationary, there is a closure over the hook that locks the eye of the A frame in place to prevent it from popping out of the hook. It would be impossible to throw the eye over the hook on a normal hitch that way, and the close up shots of the hitch show the top closure missing. If it's missing, the eye would pop out of the hook either braking, hitting a bump or accelerating.

Continuity: When Dom slams his black Buick Grand National into the side of the Petroleum tanker to get the coupling to break, the entire side of the car is stoved in, and the rear axle is seriously bent as evidenced by the angle of the back wheel. All subsequent shots, however, show the wheel intact and the damage to the side as slight denting.