Factual error: The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized steel box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one).
Factual error: The United States Air Force does NOT, ever, allow its pilots to box competitively! Ground staff, yes; pilots, no, never. A pilot can be suspended from flying if he/she receives a blow to the head in day-to-day life; boxing is right out. Almost all air forces (the RAF included) impose this rule.
Factual error: There is a shot of the Imperial Valley at night with the edges of the Los Angeles destroyer spinning over the mountains. The center of the destroyer is hovering over downtown LA. Imperial Valley is over 200 miles away from downtown LA, and the destroyer is no more than 20 miles in diameter. There would be no way the edges of the destroyer would extend far enough to be seen from Imperial Valley as shown unless it was over 100 miles in radius. The ship does not even hover over Steven Hiller's house which is in LA, it can nearly be seen whole from there. The destroyer would be obscured by the mountains and from 200 miles it would appear much smaller.
Factual error: When they are at Aunt Meg's the first time, they get word that a tornado has been spotted and somehow they already know its rating. Tornadoes get their ratings from the amount of damage they do. This is determined after the tornado is gone.
Factual error: A flight manifest would never state on its seating chart that an armed U.S. marshal was on board as it gives away that person's identity and puts everyone on board in danger.
Factual error: In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing. (00:42:45)
Suggested correction: Actually when you look at Australia and New Zealand from orbit, New Zealand is a lot further away from Australia then shown on a map, also a lot more south of Australia. A map is a 2D image of a sphere, causing proportions to be off (its well known Africa is a lot smaller on maps than it is in real life). Especially the further south or north you go distances are way off. The depiction shown in the movie is actually correct, in that angle New Zealand is just outside of the frame. There are plenty of pictures from orbit to compare.
Factual error: When Goodspeed crashes the Ferrari, his airbag deploys and he must shoot it to get out of the car. In reality, airbags inflate and deflate again in less than a second - the gas escapes through vents or the material itself, so there's no way for one to stay inflated.
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 portrayal of the firing MLRS before Denzel's unit moves off is ludicrously inadequate. The rockets launched from the MLRS resemble a space shuttle lift-off, but in the movie it was more like a sparkler thrown into the air.
Factual error: When Howard is running after the bouncy ball he is on the second floor of the Mall of America, however, you see him run through the LEGO store which is located on the lowest floor of the Mall of America, which is impossible if he was on the second floor before.
Factual error: Even aside from the ridiculous recoil that a railgun would cause (yeah, I know they don't use gunpowder, but there's got to be SOME opposite movement, surely), how come when the darts (bullets, whatever) go straight through people, they still get thrown backwards? The passage straight through them means minimal energy being transferred to them, and as such they shouldn't be hurled backwards that much.
Factual error: When WD-40 is at the restaurant, the waiter starts talking about himself. He tells the agent he drives a 1969 Ford Pinto, but the Pinto wasn't introduced until 1971.
Factual error: The Abilene, Texas courthouse should read Taylor County Courthouse, being that Abilene is the county seat of Taylor County, Texas. All Texas courthouses are named by the county they are in.
Factual error: Throughout the movie, we can hear Ash's motorcycle shift gears, but we can see that his hands never disengage the clutch, a must do for a smooth shift like we hear.
Factual error: In a radio news voice-over shortly before the first chase scene, the newsreader comments that "Calls have flooded in from all over the world regarding Dr Barkley's research." He then goes on to mention that the Royal Academy in England has expressed an interest. The "Royal Academy" is more formally the Royal Academy of Arts. They probably mean the Royal Society, which is the most important scientific institution in the UK.
Factual error: There is a major error in the scene where Geena Davis steals the tractor trailer. They show a closeup of the brake line between the truck and the trailer being cut. The problem arises when fluid starts pumping out of the line and Geena screams because she's lost the brakes. First, every tractor trailer is equipped with air brakes, so there is no fluid in the lines to leak. Second, if these air lines are severed it causes the brakes on the trailer to lock up and drag the truck to a stop.
Factual error: Casey arrives at the desert landing in a jeep that is flagged with 4 stars (for a 4 star general) although he is only a 3 star general (as evident by the 3 stars on his shoulder boards). (00:33:30 - 00:35:25)
Factual error: The motor cycle race on two Ducatis: they race from downtown Atlanta to Stone Mountain. They are on a road called Freedom Parkway. It exists primarily to get to and from the Carter Center Library - it doesn't go anywhere beyond that really. In the film they race for miles to Stone Mountain, it's about 45 minutes outside the city, and to get there you have to take three different highways. They arrive on one that doesn't exist.
Factual error: When Xander's thugs are taking the Phantom up to the roof to do away with him, he breaks away and ducks into the machinery room for the elevator. In the scene the door of the room is lockable from the inside only. This door should be lockable from only the outside.
Factual error: When Mel Gibson is leaving NYC by car they come out of the Lincoln Tunnel onto route 4, that is impossible. The only way out of the Lincoln Tunnel is onto route 3. Then when they are driving through New Jersey on route 4, Mel Gibson says "There is the exit for 208." While you can get to 208 from route 4, they were driving on route 4 east, heading back towards NYC, not route 4 west which is the way onto route 208 they showed in the movie.
Suggested correction: The scale back then was based on the size of the tornado, it's only more recently it is based on damage. So during the time of the movie, the scale was being used correctly for size not damage.
The Fujita scale was introduced in 1971 and was in use during the 90's when this film came out. The Fujita scale measured the damage caused by a tornado to man-made structures after ground or aerial surveys, it was not a measurement of tornado size (an F5 tornado is a tornado that's rated on the Fujita scale). It is true the Fujita scale was replaced by the enhanced Fujita scale in 2007, but that was only to align the ratings to the damage better, it did not change rating tornadoes from size to destructive powers.
Bishop73