Continuity mistake: When the Saturn has been dropped by Grindor, as the car falls with Mikaela, Sam and Leo inside, just before they crash land in the last interior shot, Mikaela's and Sam's headrests have vanished, and a large sticker has also suddenly appeared on Sam's visor in this shot. The headrests reappear when they are upside down. (00:55:35)
Continuity mistake: During the forest scene where Optimus Prime is engaged in a battle to the death, Sam is scrambling for safety. In some of the shots both of his hands are uninjured, but in other shots you can see that his left hand is bandaged/splinted. (This is a result of his "real life" injury in a car accident during filming.) (01:00:05)
Continuity mistake: At the frat party, when Alice pushes Sam's chair up against the bar counter, there is a girl wearing a pink tank top leaning back on the counter, but in the next shot she has been instantly replaced by another girl wearing a blue top. (00:34:30)
Revealing mistake: Near the end, there's a slow motion shot of Sam and Mikaela running with explosions behind them. If you look at Mikaela closely, some fire goes right through her (this was added in post-production and they didn't rotoscope her properly).
Continuity mistake: When Sam is at the Frat party just after he has written the code on the table with cake, he goes and gets a drink. The glass is full, the camera cuts to the girl talking and then cuts back to Sam and the glass is nearly empty, cuts to the girl again and then back to Sam, with a full glass again. (00:34:15)
Continuity mistake: When Mikaela, Sam and Leo get into the Saturn there are no headrests on Sam's and Mikaela's seats, but when they kill the Pretender and are driving away, the headrests are suddenly there. (00:54:00 - 00:54:55)
Revealing mistake: When the group are outside talking to Jetfire in the aircraft 'boneyard', on the ground in the bottom right of the screen you can see the tyre tracks where the 3 cars are supposed to pull up to join the shot - then the car on the far right stops and pulls forward again till it's at the end of the tyre track.
Continuity mistake: When Lennox is demoted his rank is ripped from his shirt, but when he turns around his rank is back where it was originally.
Factual error: In the scene where Galloway parachutes out of a C-17, Major Lennox asks Galloway if he is "familiar with the standard MC-4" parachute as he is helping Galloway don said parachute. The parachute that actually deploys when Galloway pulls the ripcord is not an MC-4, as MC-4 parachutes have rectangular canopies (shown correctly later in the film as the NEST team descends into the desert). (01:38:20 - 01:40:00)
Continuity mistake: When Alice and Leo walk in on Sam in the symbol filled dorm room, on the wall at the head of Sam's bed are three small-to-medium sized framed photos of Sam and Mikaela hanging vertically. After Alice pushes Leo out of the room, the frames change. Now there are two large and medium frames hanging vertically and another medium frame hanging horizontally. (00:50:00)
Revealing mistake: When Grindor drops the Saturn with Mikaela, Sam and Leo inside, in the side shot as the airbags deploy, the stiff, shiny mannequin dressed as Sam is much too obvious through the open window. (00:55:40)
Continuity mistake: When Sam phones Mikaela after missing their webchat date he drops his books and papers, and one book falls upright on the top stair in front of him, which promptly vanishes and then reappears as the last book he picks up. All the books and papers keep changing in his arms between shots as well. (00:46:30)
Visible crew/equipment: At the scene where Optimus Prime's body is getting back to base and suddenly got surrounded by US marines, after the shot where Major Lennox objects and beats on the hood of a Humvee, you can see a cameraman's shadow on him in a panning shot. Some shots later you can see it again on Galloway's body in an over-shoulder view. (01:11:10)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Sam is on the phone and explaining his hallucinations in college, he drops his papers on the stairs and there is a man that passes him. When they change the shot, the man is behind him again walking from the top of the stairs.
Visible crew/equipment: After Bumblebee has blown up Sam's bathroom and Sam orders him to get in the garage, as Judy shouts, "Holy mother!" the reflections of the moving boom mic and two crewmembers (one wearing blue short sleeves and the other wearing white short sleeves) are visible in the window to the right. (00:14:35)
Continuity mistake: When Mikaela phones Sam and says that she's breaking up with him, in the first shot of Sam as he walks down the hallway toward his room there is no curtain in front of the window to the right, but in the second shot as he reaches his room, there are white curtains draped over the windows. Then, when Sam runs into the hallway because of the fire, the curtains are gone again. In fact, the white curtains are actually outside the window - someone had closed the windows over the curtains. The curtains reappear again when he runs back into his room with the extinguisher. (00:11:15)
Continuity mistake: The multiple shots of the sinking Aircraft carrier are primarily shots of the CVN 74 (USS John C. Stennis) but also have shots of the CVN 72 (USS Abraham Lincoln) and the CVN 71 (USS Theodore Roosevelt). It is reported later on the news as the Roosevelt, and the Stennis is seen towards the end of the movie perfectly fine and providing air support.
Factual error: When Jetfire uses the "space bridge" to instantaneously move the characters from Washington, D.C. to the Middle East (on the other side of the planet), it was still daylight. 7:30 p.m. (summer closing hours at the museum) in D.C. is 2:30am where they arrived, but it was still broad daylight.
Continuity mistake: In Astronomy 101, after Sam has written the symbols on the board, one symbol actually vanishes just after his professor's first close-up, and then reappears after the professor says, "I will not be punked in front of the dean." (00:45:10)
Continuity mistake: In the secret room below the deli's meat locker, when Wheelie explains that the symbols are the "language of the Primes", Sam picks up two photos, but both photos don't just switch hands as stated in another entry, one changes entirely. In the fist shot Sam holds a photo of a jet, but in the close-up he holds a photo of an old plane, then in the following shot it's back to the jet. (01:19:45)
Chosen answer: He knows from stories passed down to him from older generations of bots, not much unlike stories about the past passed down to us from our ancestors. His line about no one telling him anything is just a way to avoid being put back in the box or being tortured by Mikayla.
dablues7