Factual error: After taking off from Bangor, the pilot pulls back on the flight control bringing the plane up to level flight. However, after taking off, a plane is "nose up" and would require pushing forward on the controls to bring the nose down to level. This is also evident by looking at the attitude indicator (circle with top half blue and bottom half brown). The white line indicates the horizon and you can watch the indicator show the plane's attitude coming from below horizon (nose down) to the horizon (level flight).
Factual error: When Lt. Lee shoots down the second Messerschmidt in Italy, you can see it is a twin engine plane.
Factual error: In one scene, we Dolores driving back home, after the scene where Vera tells her that accidents can 'happen' to wives husbands every day. The shot shows a huge full moon in the sky. Everyone who has every learnt any science/astronomy should know that a huge full moon cannot occur the night before a solar eclipse. (01:29:35)
Factual error: When Sydney arrives at the Christmas Party, President Shepherd and A.J. MacInerney ask where she's been. She says she was stuck at Dupont Circle and they ask why she was on the Hill. But to get from Capitol Hill to the White House, one would not drive anywhere near Dupont Circle.
Factual error: Throughout the film they show exterior shots of Alcatraz. If you pay attention you can clearly see that the Warden's house is destroyed and all that remains is a shell. Also there is only 1 guard tower. Alcatraz had many guard towers but they were destroyed in the seventies by fire. The movie takes place in the late thirties.
Factual error: James Graham, 4th Marquess of Montrose, became 1st Duke of Montrose in 1707, six years before the film is set, although the film refers to him throughout as a Marquess.
Factual error: When the bully has been shocked and his heart stops, Powder zaps him back to life. Okay, fine, but as a former ER nurse I noticed some flaws. 1) You can not get a person's heart beating by defibrillating if he's flatlined. You need some sort of activity in the heart first. If Powder had started with some CPR, possibly. 2) Defibrillating someone in a puddle of water? Bad move, unless you assume that Powder's immune to his own shocks. And 3) when defibrillating you hold one paddle on the sternum (middle of the chest) and one on the left side of the ribcage, thus allowing the electricity to go between the paddles and through the heart. The way Powder held his hands really wouldn't have worked.
Factual error: How could Brian get a cold after he was outside in the rain for a minute and was dried off right away?
Factual error: Mr. Holland starts teaching at JFK in fall of 1964 (q.e.d by the fact that the first graduating class seen is class of 1965). However, when Holland first meets the assistant principal parking his Corvair, the latter asks him if he's read Ralph Nader's book (Unsafe at Any Speed), which was not published until November of 1965.
Factual error: In the movie, it is depicted that Verlaine shoots Rimbaud in the palm; in reality Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist.
Factual error: In the opening scene with Doug Masters flying in Russian airspace, he is to be escorted back to American airspace by MiG-23s. But in fact the two planes that show up are F-4 Phantoms. When the "MiG" fires a missile, you see a completely different plane. Best I can tell, that is not a MiG either.
Factual error: The movie is set in 1948. When Easy first visits Albright about the job, Albright throws some $20 bills down in front of him. The top bill bears the signature of Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, which appeared on paper currency from 1988 to 1993.
Factual error: When asked, Julie Delpy says the reason her English is so good is because she spent a summer in LA. Come on. Even after a year, almost no one could manage to speak and pronounce a foreign language that well, let alone in a summer. Her English is very nearly flawless. We know she has spent some time in London before, but if she had stayed there long enough to learn to speak such good English, she would have learned it the way they speak it there, which means she would have a British accent and not an American one. Someone - whether or not she's a native speaker - doesn't change accents after spending a mere three months somewhere.
Factual error: At a very early point in the film, the King says something along the lines of "....and these are your playmates". In the background is a horde of 17th century ladies boating on the Achille Duchenne water parterre at Blenheim Palace. The palace wasn't built until the late 18th century, and the parterre was not designed until 1925.
Factual error: In the final trial scene, held outdoors in the town center, tribunal members who are on the raised platform are shown sitting by or leaning on tables spread with small, Persian-style carpets. It is likely that the set designer based this choice on an early American painting, which does include many subjects posing with furniture thus bedecked; however, the practice of laying a carpet on a table was employed only when posing for an artist's portrait under particular pricing terms set for a commission. Artists charged their rich patrons based on a scale of bodily detail. The more limbs, the greater the price. (You've no doubt heard the related expression 'to cost an arm and a leg.') A composition from the waist up would be more affordable, but would necessarily exclude a prized carpet, which was an icon of personal affluence. So, the artist adapted and cleverly laid an admired carpet on a desk or table to satisfy the vain, yet thrifty patron.
Factual error: There is a scene where the teenage girl says "She lets me drive her car and I don't even have my Learner's Permit yet." The setting is in New Hampshire. New Hampshire does not issue Learner's Permits. NH law is that the driver must be at least 15 1/2 years of age and accompanied by a licensed driver who is at least 25. You can then get a license at 16.
Factual error: The morning after Katherine found out that Max was cheating on her, while Max is getting dressed for work he dumps out a box of aluminium cased ammo on the dresser, which was unavailable until the early 80's. (01:18:05)
Factual error: When Helen is launching the video that shows the girl turning into worms (the killer's next victim later found at the dumpster), typing "tomorrow.avi" as she does would have returned an error in Linux. She should have typed "call tomorrow.avi" to launch the video. (00:43:00 - 00:44:00)
Factual error: Set in 1955, Tom Holman enters a construction site with an orange warning sign. Prior to 1971, construction signs were yellow.
Factual error: When Kitt drops her mom off at the airport, that's not Chicago O'Hare. She is actually dropping her off at BWI airport so Claudia can fly...to Baltimore, Maryland.