Continuity: While Steve and David are trying to escape the mother ship, they are approaching the ship's outer doors that are about to close. David keeps saying, "Must go faster, must go faster", then it shows Steve with his arms extended as if he is pushing the controls forward trying to make the craft go faster. The problem with this is that when they first tried to take off from Area 51, the controls were such that pulling back on them made the craft go forward, and pushing them forward made it go in reverse. But Steve was not pulling the controls back toward him when they were escaping.

Factual error: In the scene where Will Smith's girlfriend is running in the tunnel, she kicks open the door just in time to save herself, her son, and the dog. The terrible fireball then goes right by them. They are just inside the open door, with fire and debris flying right past it. While the fire and debris might not spill in, the heatwave would still fry them.

Continuity: In the scene where Jeff Goldblum is getting the alcohol out of the fridge, he opens the fridge door and it is full of food.  When his ex-wife puts the bottle back in the fridge, it's virtually empty.  It's full again when Jeff reaches back in to get the bottle back.

Continuity: Several times during the last air battle, the President shoots his missiles, but a view of his plane shows that it still has all four missiles.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Jeff G. is talking to his ex-wife over the cell in the white house, watch behind her as she paces around the hallway.  At one point, you will see a camera man (complete with water bottle and utility belt) on the lower left portion of the screen.  He's on the floor behind her and accidentally gets exposed to the camera when she steps to the side.  He quickly scrambles away.

Factual error: The Capitol's dome crumbles like stone, but it's made of iron.

Continuity: In the Area 51 hangar, when Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are trying to take off in the alien Attacker, we are clearly shown how the ship flies: Pull back on the controls, you go forward, push forward on the controls, you go in reverse. Later, in the mothership, after they have launched the nuke and are released, Will Smith pulls back on the steering wheel, which should send them flying forward, but the external shot shows them flying backwards.

Revealing: When the President's assistant is waiting for him the first morning she is reading U.S.A Today. On the back there is a weather map and it is blue and green, the colours for cold in U.S.A Today. It was a hot July day!

Factual error: When Will Smith is flying through the canyon he says "Hope you got air bag" and pulls a lever to deploy the braking chute on his FA-18. The chute is then detached and lands onto the attacking alien craft. FA-18's DO NOT have a braking chute, they rely on using an arrestor hook for carrier landings and a dorsal airbrake when landing on a runway.

Factual error: When the dad stands up to talk about his flight experience and says that he was taken by aliens 10 years before, everyone reacts with tired groans as though they are sick of hearing his tall tales. Well we know there are aliens, so why would they not believe him?

Continuity: When Jeff Goldblum is getting drunk and he's talking to his ex-wife, at one point he slams the bottle down on the counter and a little liquor sprays up out the opening, then they talk for a second, and he picks the bottle back up to pour himself more, but he now needs to unscrew the cap which was just lying next to the bottle.

Revealing: When Jeff Goldblum is throwing a tantrum in the hangar housing the captured alien craft, he knocks over several plastic garbage cans, one of which is clearly labelled "Art Dept" - kind of odd for a top secret underground government military research facility...(unless the can is from the Aircraft Recovery and Transport department that brought the alien ship into the hangar, in which case, it's just fine ).

Factual error: When the aliens attack Novosibirsk, Russia, a map of "Russia" in Russian letters is displayed on-screen from what is supposed to be a Russian news broadcast. In fact, it's a map of the Soviet Union, St. Petersburg is incorrectly labeled as "Petrograd," Moscow is too far east, and Novosibirsk is very badly misspelled.

Continuity: When Will Smith is dragging the unconscious alien across the desert, the sky alternates between overcast and perfectly sunny depending on if it a close up or far off view of Will.

Continuity: The scene after Jasmine's no show club pole dance, she is with her girlfriend in the dressing room. She is warning her girlfriend not to go to the alien rooftop site. She is undressed when she enters the dress closet, and comes out fully dressed within 2 seconds.

Factual error: El Toro base is shown being at the end of a long desert road. El Toro is in the middle of completely developed cities in Orange County. The desert is about 50 miles away over a few mountain ranges.

Factual error: In the opening scene, the plaque from the Apollo 11 landing is shown sitting in the lunar soil. The actual plaque is mounted to the landing module, right under the ladder.

Factual error: When the alien ship over New York blows up the Empire State Building you see the blastwave spill out in the street in front of the Empire State Building. This is in that part of the city that's built in a grid pattern. In front of the Empire State Building there's just another building, not a street where the blastwave and debris can spill into. All the people who are way down the street, looking at the building being hit by the beam just can't be there.

Continuity: If you look carefully at the scene where Will Smith is in his dress uniform, the piece of cloth above the shoulder where the rank (and for us former U. S. Army guys - unit crest) is, in one scene it is out above the collar, in the next shot it is under the collar (where it belongs), but in the very next shot, it is out again.

Factual error: In the scene where the Empire State Building gets blown up, look to the right of the picture. The building next to it is the Citicorp Center. That is not right because Citicorp Center is on Lex between 53rd and 54th, while the ESB is on 34th and 5th.