Other mistake: He says his wife died in a hotel fire at 4 am, and then says he was blowing leaves when she died. Who blows leaves at 4 in the morning? Or even 7am allowing for the time difference?
Continuity mistake: Early in the film, Nicholas Cage is hitting the bottle. After pouring one or two drinks, he starts to pour another, nearly fills his glass, then spills it. Although the bottle is about half-empty at this point, the next time it is shown standing on a table, there is only a small amount remaining at the bottom.
Suggested correction: There's no indication how much drink is in the bottle after he spills it. There's the correct amount of drink in every point of the scene.
Continuity mistake: The day after John has discovered that the numbers refer to dates and number of deaths, he shows the sequence to his friend on a flat screen TV. On the left of the TV there is a pile of 4 DVD boxes with white labels. They are gone in the shot where John leaves the room.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where John first discovers the patterns of numbers, he writes all of the numbers on his whiteboard. He circles the numbers he finds online with a colored marker. When he circles the number 2708 with the blue marker, he passes over the 8 with the marker, but the original black 8 and part of the 0 appears on top of the blue, showing that it was done using some overlay technique. This same effect is shown several times including when the blue and red pens mix but are still behind the black. (00:24:55)
Suggested correction: Black marker is never on the top of the blue, blue marker is simply transparent, so you can see black marker through it.
Continuity mistake: When John leaves his house after Diana takes the kids, the tailgate on his truck is open. Then, when he leaves the gas station, the tailgate is missing. When he pulls off the road to find Caleb, the tailgate is back on and closed.
Continuity mistake: When Nicolas Cage runs outside and yells at the elusive intruder, he hits the tree with his baseball bat, breaking in half. But a second later, after picking up his dropped flashlight, his bat is whole and unbroken.
Factual error: The aircraft that crashes in the movie is an Airbus A320-200, but however the wing strobe lights (white blinking lights on the end of the wings) are flashing in single phase (only flashing once a second), Airbus aircraft flash twice every second, only Boeing flicker once.
Revealing mistake: When Diana and John first enter the mobile home, there's a shot of a TV with a dented screen. It's very obviously an old CRT, but cathode ray tubes can't be dented - they're made of glass, and would not only crack and break, but would implode, since they contain a high vacuum inside. This is obviously a prop TV that has been "distressed" simply to make it look old. (01:09:01)
Deliberate mistake: John is shown repeatedly studying Lucinda's numbers and even copies them to a whiteboard, and yet when Diana notices the backwards EE at the end, he's surprised and obviously acts as though he hadn't noticed them before, straining credulity, since he had just as obviously obsessed over the numbers and couldn't have missed the letters beforehand. (01:08:40)
Factual error: The envelopes and letters from the time capsule are in pristine condition after 50 years underground. Even the papers are crisp and unfaded.
Plot hole: When John arrives at Diana's crash scene, he has no reason to believe that she was involved in the accident. He doesn't know what she was driving. He would have just assumed it was someone else and kept driving through. But instead, he gets out of his car and asks where the children are, just assuming it was Diana there, for no logical reason. (01:37:00)
Revealing mistake: Right after the plane crash (when John is running to the crash site) you can see that the fire is C.G. because of the tracking errors.
Continuity mistake: When Caleb and his father talk about his late mother on this bed while watching TV about tigers, watch the position of Caleb's head on the pillow. In close-ups, it is resting on the right edge. In medium shots, it is in the middle.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where there is heavy traffic on the road (before the plane crash), John gets out of his car to see what's going on. As he's making his way to the front, he passes a black pick-up truck. The camera angle changes, and you can see John pass the same truck again.
Suggested correction: He never passes a black pick-up truck, the only minor flaw is he is shown a little further in the next shot from that truck, than he was in the previous shot.
