Plot hole: In the unedited video footage of the helicopter incident shown to the crowd, the last shot of Arnie getting knocked out is seen from his perspective and as such could never have been filmed by any camera.
Continuity mistake: In the scene after the prison break, we see Richards, Weiss and Laughlin walking through the city. On the big television screen there is a commercial for The Running Man game show. The footage they feature on the commercial is footage from the episode Richards is in. How could they show footage from that episode if it has not taken place yet?
Visible crew/equipment: In one of the scenes where Arnold is running through piles of debris an explosion behind him causes him to fly through the air. The mechanism that launches him in the air can clearly be seen flipped up from the ground.
Continuity mistake: In the fight scene where Arnold is fighting the hockey goalie, he gets cut on barbed wire and leaves a bloody tear on the chest of his fancy spandex bodysuit. In the very next scene the suit is clean and the rip is gone.
Continuity mistake: The film opens with Arnie in a helicopter, refusing to fire on "helpless people." At the film's climax, when the (undoctored) film of this event is screened, it is changed to "helpless human beings."
Audio problem: Just after Dynamo kills Weiss, the next shot shows Dynamo approaching the camera. You can see Dynamos lips moving, and he's speaking, but you can't hear anything.
Visible crew/equipment: When Dynamo chases Arnold Schwarzenegger in his off-roader, Arnold lures him in/onto a pile of junk, following which Dynamos car crashes and overturns. When the car is on its side you can see the cable used to overturn the vehicle. In the next shot the cable has disappeared.
Plot hole: When Richards' turbo sled goes through the tunnel along with Weiss' and Laughlin's, the video monitors show all three sleds are traveling through the same tunnel. Richards' sled comes out of the tunnel first, but with the speed the sleds were going and all three in the same tunnel, there wouldn't have been enough time for Richards to be pulled out, and Laughlin would have come out so fast it would have crashed into Richards, ending his running before it even started.
Factual error: In the beginning of the movie just prior to the Bakersfield Massacre, the camera cuts away from Arnold periodically and shows a computer schematic for his location. The very first coordinate that we see is 29º, 43' N by 119º 23' W and is off the coast of Baja California. The last coordinate that we see is 45º 4' N by 119 8' W and is in north-east Oregon. So, in the 35 seconds or so between these scenes, Arnold's helicopter traveled approximately 1050 miles. That's one fast helicopter. This cannot be explained by saying that they just shortened the trip for the movie because in the first computer schematic you see Bakersfield in the distance which is certainly not 1050 miles away. (00:01:35 - 00:02:10)
Other mistake: When everyone in the audience and everybody at the betting board see the original unedited version of what really happened at Bakersfield, it shows a soldier hitting Ben with the butt of his weapon from Ben's point of view, which is an impossible camera angle. And as it's the original unedited footage, it won't be something they faked.
Visible crew/equipment: Just before Dynamo turns the car over, you can see several times that there is a stuntman driving the car.
Continuity mistake: In the scene with Buzzsaw, after Richards ties the rope around a metal spike, Buzzsaw flies off his bike and lands face down. When Richards approaches Buzzsaw, he is still face down. Then when Richards starts to reach down to grab the chainsaw, Buzzsaw's arm comes up to choke Richards and he is now lying on his back. Richards would have reacted quicker, since Buzzsaw would have had to flip over on his back to grab Richards.
Revealing mistake: When Fireball takes off for the first time, if you look way above him at the top of the tower block behind him, you can see the shadow cast by the rig that is used to lift him up.
Revealing mistake: During the prison break at the beginning Richards grabs a guard and says "How about a lift?" You can tell it's a dummy.
Suggested correction: I've watched this scene many times and still cannot tell if it's a dummy.
Look at the guard's limbs.
What about them? Still, nothing that points to the guard being an obvious dummy.
If you look at the guard's limbs, they are completely stiff and barely move. If it was a real soldier that was being thrown, he would have been flailing his arms around and trying to free himself. It is most noticeable at 00:06:51 that the guard is a dummy.
Revealing mistake: In the Sub-Zero fight scene, Laughlin (the black man) is on his back and Sub-Zero is standing over him. When Sub-Zero tries to kill Laughlin by hitting him with the hockey stick, he rolls to his right. Sub-Zero pulls the stuck hockey stick from the ice and tries to hit Laughlin again, but he then rolls to his left. The stick is once again stuck in the ice, but to the left of the stick there is another divot in the ice, suggesting Sub-Zero struck on Laughlin's right side twice, but in fact it was only once. Sub-Zero tries to hit Laughlin a third time, but he rolls to his right for the final attempt.
Audio problem: When Mick is talking about the network uplink being hidden, his lips don't move.
Continuity mistake: When Killian is looking through the computer for the next contestant, the last person they show is Mackenzie Spike. We see his personal info (occupation, hobbies, eye color, resident), the numbers pop up, and then it shows a completely different set of personal info (despite being the same guy with the same prisoner number).
Audio problem: When Amber runs away from Ben the first time (into the bathroom), her words don't match her mouth, which tends to stay open with little movement, like the dialog was dubbed over her just screaming.
Other mistake: Just before Arnold arrives at his brother Edward's apartment, he walks across a plaza. Note the people standing/sitting in the background, along the railing. They are still there, apparently not having moved an inch, in another scene of that plaza which is supposed to be much later after Arnold has been caught, sent to the tele-station and gassed unconscious. (00:14:20 - 00:26:20)
Plot hole: There is no reason for the prison guards to use portable computers in full view of the inmates to input the sonic deadline code. The guards can walk outside of the deadline whenever they need to input the code, or radio the guard on the outside to lower and raise the deadline like they do when bringing the workers out. In fact, this plot hole is compounded by the presence of the guards stationed outside of the deadline with their own computer, which makes the guard inside the deadline completely unnecessary. The interior guard is only there so Weiss has a way to get both the code and a computer, but this prison set-up makes absolutely no sense.
Suggested correction: The point of having a portable on the outside and inside is in the case of an attempted prison break, if one of the computers is taken by the prisoners, the other can be used to prevent the deadline from shutting down. This was actually shown in the prison break scene where Weiss was unable to shut off the deadline with the inside computer was because the guards on the outside one were countering any attempts to close it.
That only explains why there is a guard outside with a computer. There is no reason to have a guard on the inside of the deadline with a computer. There can't be a prison break if there are no guards with a computer on the inside, the inmate's heads will explode if they cross the deadline.
