Visible crew/equipment: After leaving Wakita, Bill and Jo are driving through a cornfield. The cornfield merges into the main road and their truck almost runs into Jonas' fleet. As the truck enters the road, you can see a crew member poking his head up from the corn across the road. Watch above the driver's side mirror.
Continuity mistake: When we see Melissa at Aunt Meg's house, she is in the same 3-piece white suit she's been wearing since the start of the movie and it is still spotless - even after Bill, dirty, muddy and wet from the first tornado, hugs her.
Revealing mistake: When they are at the drive-in movie place, Melissa comes out of her room when she sees the wind blowing through the curtains. When she steps out, other windows in the motel are open and the curtains are absolutely still while the curtains in her room continue to blow.
Other mistake: During the garage scene, we see a large neon sign get ripped off of its mounting pole and thrown into the garage. It seems obvious that the sign is no longer connected to any sort of electricity source, however, the sign stays lit as it is ripped off its pole, into the next shot when it crashes into the garage, and then it continues to flicker a bit as it lays on the ground.
Other mistake: The first time we see the NSSL; the woman's name there is Chris. Later in the movie, when we see the NSSL again, her name is Bryce. Turn the captions on so you can tell.
Continuity mistake: When Jo's truck lands in the road, right after which Jonas' crew drives by, if you look quickly, you can see that the driver side (the truck was upside down) window is gone. Yet, when Jo goes to get her backpack out, she has to kick that window out. (00:35:25)
Continuity mistake: About halfway through the film, when they all take shelter in the garage near the drive in movie, when the 'Drive In Movie' sign goes crashing through the garage wall you can clearly see a large metal chain pulling it through.
Other mistake: In the scene in the garage pit, one of the characters is hit in the forehead by a flying hubcap. He is cut clear across his forehead, but there is only a small trickle of blood oozing from the wound. I've seen many scalp lacerations and even the most minor ones will bleed like a stuck pig, where's all of that blood?
Factual error: We all know that when any tornado is on the ground and/or near moving towards us, things get blown around, like trees, grass, and other things. There are two things that I found that didn't look right. It's in the scene when the F-5 tornado is chasing Bill and Joe to the Barn. First the grass and cornfield are moving but not the trees. And second, when the tornado blows away the brown picket fence we see most of the pickets shoot upwards, which is impossible because they are nailed to horizontal boards. It would either take a far stronger wind than they're currently in to rip the pickets straight up, or the pickets were made out of far cheaper wood than they appear to be.
Continuity mistake: When they are at the drive-in movie "The Shining" is showing just as he sees the two girls, but five minutes later the guy is knocking down the door with an axe, these two scenes occur an hour apart. (01:05:45)
Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Billy and Jo go into Jo's aunt's house to rescue her after a tornado has gone through Wakita, they hear things falling. When they jump over a break in the floor, if you look closely, there is a crewman in a white shirt that runs across the gap.
Continuity mistake: When they make their pit stop at the BBQ diner Bill is outside with Dusty and says, "we're going green". The sky is dark and green. When Jo comes out and they're ready to go a few minutes later, the sky is almost sunny and it's suddenly partly cloudy. (00:25:10)
Continuity mistake: When Bill and Melissa go out to get the divorce papers from Jo, we see Bill pull his truck up with Rabbit and Allan's truck (hood up) in the background. We see it closer up when Bill asks Dusty, "Where's Jo?" But when the scene comes back to Bill and Dusty and then shows Melissa, Rabbit, Allan and the truck have disappeared. When Dusty is holding Melissa's hand and walking to sit in his chairs, Rabbit & co. are in the background again.
Other mistake: When the twister hits the drive in theater, the sirens are wailing, but nobody reacts. Only when Jo screams at the waitresses they start panicking and run. The movie is set in Oklahoma, smack in the middle of tornado alley. The people there know what the sirens mean, they sure don't need no out-of-town big-shots to tell them to get under cover.
Suggested correction: Sirens go off so many times that true Okies tend to ignore them. We might get nervous if the cable goes out.
Do true Okies also run screaming the second an out-of-town big-shot yells at them? Sorry but that argument just doesn't compute. People ignoring fair warning simply isn't a thing in the movie. The main plotline is people not getting warnings soon enough.
It's also possible that they did hear the siren, but unlike the people at the drive-in who could actually see the tornado tearing the screen apart, the people at the snack bar might not have been able to see it (especially with an awning over the windows). They were probably at most confused as to what was happening and it wasn't until Jo actually said to get underground that they realised it was real and was actually happening.
Continuity mistake: When the telephone pole falls on the bed of Paxton's truck, the pole dents the bed. In the scene before the pole falls, there is a dent on the bed.
Revealing mistake: When Jo and Bill are running past the sunflowers, just after the barn has flown past them, the sunflowers aren't even swaying. Sunflowers would blow over at a tiny breeze, let alone an F5 tornado blowing around them. (01:36:45)
Other mistake: When Bill and Jo are strapped to the water pipes in the final twister scene, after the tornado passes and they are back on the ground, one of their leather straps are already broken. In this condition it never would have held itself on that pipe, let alone an average sized human being.
Factual error: With the last Dorothy, Bill and Jo burst open the door of the Dodge and make a run into the cornfield. This is not possible. Corn stalks are strong and would hold the doors back, no matter how hard they pushed. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were unable to open the doors during the scene, so it required them to open the doors before they entered the cornfield in order to jump. They filmed the scene of them driving through the cornfield and start opening the doors. Then they cut and restarted filming, this time with the doors already open so they can jump. Then careful editing was used to merge the scenes together to make it look like one.
Visible crew/equipment: When Jo is introduced to Melissa, Melissa says, "It probably seems kinda sudden." Look into her sunglasses when she says this; you can see a rectangular shaped figure. Figure of the camera, possibly?
Other mistake: When the Tree gets blown under the red truck and they get stuck on it. Why don't they ever put the truck in 4WD? You can see the front differential and 4x4 markings so the truck definately HAS 4WD. That particular year of truck doesn't even require you to get out and lock the hubs.
Suggested correction: Character mistake more than anything. In a panic situation you don't tend to think of the obvious solution. The other issue to is that even if the truck was in 4wd that it might not have been enough. Keep in mind that the rear tires did burnout on a few attempts so the issue wasn't that the wheels weren't stable on the ground but that the tree trunk might have been too big to get the wheels over it by driving across (especially from the angle they were at).
