Factual error: When the kids are getting hit from behind by the truck, cut to a side shot of them in the car, the boy's body moves forward, while the girl's body is more properly propelled in a backward motion relative to the car. This happens several times.
Factual error: No council house in Enfield has a cellar like that.
Factual error: Winter in Antarctica would not have a night and day as portrayed, with the amount of light changing so much during the course of 24 hours.
Factual error: A girl is playing with a Tamagotchi virtual pet in the scene set in 1994, but the toy was not released in Japan until 1996 (it wasn't officially available in the USA until May 1997).
Factual error: Near the beginning when the boat pulls up and the guy on the boat tells the blond convict he's got a beauty 13 foot "Tiger shark" that's up in some sort of sling, the so called tiger shark is actually the same robot mako shark from the rest of the movie, just with stripes on it. Tiger sharks have a blunt rounded nose, not a pointed one like a great white. (00:07:35)
Factual error: In the gunfight on the Nile-boat, you can often see (and hear) Rick fire his revolvers 20-24 times in totum without reloading. The guns he has would only take 6 rounds per gun (MAS 1873 revolvers).
Factual error: The actual Tsavo lions responsible for the killings had no manes - see for yourself; they are on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. [The filmmakers employed artistic license in using maned lions. They were also certain to include - at the very end of the movie - footage of the real Tsavo man eaters, as they appear in the Field Museum.]
Factual error: The grenade Robert Neville uses at the end of the movie has a blue and brown colored lever. This feature is only used on the M69 practice grenade and not the real M67. The lethal grenade lever is completely green.
Factual error: The mounted machine gun fires far too many shots for the limited supply of ammo it has in the box attached to it.
Factual error: In the scene where Arthur first enters the house and starts going through paperwork, there's a shot of Nathaniel Drablow's death certificate which shows 'body was not recovered' in the box next to his cause of death. Such a thing would not be written on death certificates of the time - that box is reserved for 'Signature, description and residence of informant', a heading which can partially be seen as the camera pans across the certificate. For the death to have been registered, an informant's signature would have to have been there. (00:20:05)
Factual error: Abby has trees surrounding her house yet there aren't any in Nome Alaska.
Factual error: When Nate dies by the alien moon rocks, his helmet visor "explodes." The visor in the film shatters like glass, but the real visors on actual spacesuits are made of polycarbonate, a plastic that does not shatter but deforms.
Factual error: When the special forces arrive in the Station of the hive, the computer identifies the soldier`s weapons. The name under the picture is right, but the picture always shows an MP5, even at the soldier carrying a G36 Assault rifle. (00:19:20)
Factual error: When the infected Palmer starts his transformation into the Thing, he has a series of fits and the creature 'falls', or leaps upward onto the ceiling. Watch closely...you can see a piece of paneling also 'fall' upward, when it should have fallen down. (01:23:20)
Factual error: When May cuts her eye out with the scissors at the end of the movie, the fake eyeball used for the effect is perfectly round. A human eyeball is far from being perfectly round.
Factual error: The morgue is located on the lowest floor of a hospital not on the patient rooms floor. And the blinds on the windows would certainly be closed. In this hospital they are open and people can see dead bodies. Never happen.
Factual error: The husband was killed in an explosion. There would be no body for a casket, much less a head full of hair.
Factual error: Dallas, Texas is not surrounded by desert mountains. This is a dumb tourist mistake; when that shot of downtown Dallas appeared on the screen audiences there groaned in unison. (00:07:30)
Factual error: In the scene where Noah analyses the tape, he says that the 'timecode' seems to be invalid and says that every tape has a track where you can see what device was used to record it, etc. The video technology explanation originates from the original, Ringu, with the plot of The Ring changed to make it more applicable to average Americans. But a VHS tape does not have a special track for timecode. It is possible to lay a timecode onto the tape in either an analogue form via a special audio channel, or as digital information on lines 16 and 18 of the vertical interval. But this 'timecode' is only used for professional video editing. A standard VCR, like the one they were playing the tape on, does not use this, and therefore makes Noah's explanation a minute of utter nonsense.
Factual error: After the scene where they fall over the waterfall, and go through what they have left of the equipment. Bill, the Latino doctor, holds up the CD-reader from a desktop computer and says that the hard drive is broken, which would be OK if he actually had the hard drive present. (00:34:35)