Factual error: The President goes to the G8 summit in Toronto at the end. The G8 is comprised of Canada, United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Russia. In the room there are a number of non-G8 countries represented.
Factual error: When Chevy is free-falling from the helicopter, his jacket is flapping gently in the breeze. In reality, he would have been falling so fast that his clothes would have been plastered against his back and flapping wildly in the front.
Factual error: When Norah offers Tyler a ride home, she says she is taking him to her special place near Hampden. That place turns out to be at the docks near the Key Bridge, miles away and nowhere near Hampden. (00:47:55)
Factual error: In the scene where Captain Vidal's dinner guests arrive in the rainstorm, Vidal's men are using automatic umbrellas which weren't invented until the 1960s. The film is set in 1944. (00:38:20)
Factual error: When Eisenheim is at the Vienna rail station, catching his train after the Crown Prince has died, the overhead electric cables of the modern railway are visible in several shots.
Factual error: At the end when Ryan Reynolds unplugs Israel and Sparazza, both Israel and Sparazza die. Only Sparazza is on a ventilator. Israel is on a regular oxygen mask, which requires the patient to be breathing without assistance, such as a breathing machine. The type of mask Israel was on is not a life support mechanism that would be affected by being unplugged, as it either runs from O2 from a wall insert or directly from an O2 tank, both of which run without electricity. I work in an ER so I know how O2 systems work.
Factual error: After the last of the crew is in the water, (girl with life vest goes in), a major land mass is seen not more than a mile from where the crew was left stranded. (00:24:00)
Suggested correction: There is no actual land mass shown after the girl with the life vest is thrown into the water. The land that is shown is from her memory as child.
Factual error: During the "University Challenge" competition: Brian answers a question with "Calcium Sulphite" and the question-master says he gave the correct answer of "Calcium Sulphate" (a different compound).
Factual error: The three scorecards of 95-94 for the Dixon vs Balboa fight could not possibly be scored that way for a ten-round professional fight in which so many knockdowns occurred. Each fighter went down multiple times, which would've resulted in a much lower set of numbers using the ten-point-must system enforced in Nevada (and pretty much everywhere else). (01:30:25)
Factual error: When Angier and Cutter are looking for a new workshop they enter a room, with a fully glassed wall on one side. A very modern white radiator is in the room. (00:35:00)
Factual error: In the standoff between Meat and O2, Meat pulls the trigger to shoot O2 and his gun clicks - it is out of rounds. This is a common mistake: semiautomatic pistols do not re-cock after the last round is fired - the chamber remains open, so the gun will not click if the trigger is pulled again.
Factual error: Winter in Antarctica begins in June and ends in September. The movie says winter is beginning in February which is incorrect in the Southern Hemisphere.
Factual error: Traveling to Bethlehem Joseph buys a fish. It looks like a carp or catfish which were deemed unclean.
Factual error: When the girls go to their motel rooms before the regionals, they exclaim over the color TV in the room. However, that TV has a digital tuner, not available in the mid-60s.
Factual error: The movie is set in 1983, but small satellite dishes seen attached to homes were only available around 1989 when Sky was introduced, and the even smaller sizes visible on some homes did not exist until many years later.
Factual error: At one point, a screencast of a computer screen shows a video of Barry Brickman on the desktop environment of Windows XP (operating system, developed by Microsoft, released in 2001). However, the app that plays the video is QuickTime for Mac (which runs on Mac OS only), not QuickTime for Windows (which runs on Windows XP). These two versions of QuickTime are almost identical in every respect, except for their title bar (the narrow horizontal area above the video). (00:19:15)