Continuity mistake: The green Alfa in the opening minutes has its side, and mirror, wiped out by a lorry. For the next 5 minutes it then drives around in perfect condition. (00:05:43)
Factual error: The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized steel box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one).
Factual error: The radar guided SAMs are consistently evaded/triggered by the pilots' flares, which in reality only work against heat seeking missiles. Radar guided missiles would be defended against using chaff, basically clouds of aluminium foil strips. It was mentioned in some interviews they didn't want use chaff as it wouldn't really be visible for the audience - hence why they only deploy flares.
Other mistake: Before Uncle Owen yells for Luke, if you look very closely, a fly can be seen on the lens (best seen on the special edition release). The fly was removed in the 2019 release.
Continuity mistake: When Pierce's wife is walking in her auto shop they pan down to show her red Louboutin heels, then they cut to her walking in her office, and when they show her shoes again they have a tan sole.
Visible crew/equipment: A boom microphone is reflected in Luke's goggles when he says "Hey, what's the matter? You smell something?"
Factual error: Near the end of the film Knox is flying a Huey helicopter and the Angels hitch a ride by shooting it with a spear gun and dangling on the line behind it. Suddenly adding about 200kgs to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft - the pilot would know immediately that something was wrong. (01:23:20)
Other mistake: Murphy lands the helicopter on a railway line so an oncoming train will destroy it completely, and this happens exactly on cue with huge, dramatic explosions and flying debris. Apparently the train driver doesn't think this is important enough to interrupt his busy schedule - he doesn't stop the train. We do not hear brakes being applied - the wheels would make a noise like the sky coming down - and the train doesn't slow down at all - it just keeps on going.
Continuity mistake: When Sam is in his bedroom, after he finds the Cube sliver it falls and dramatically burns a hole through the floor into the kitchen. But Sam's bedroom is over the living room (there is nothing on the ground floor below Sam's elevated bathroom, and in the first movie Jazz hides in this open space), and the kitchen is actually located between the den and dining room, at the other end of the house. If they were to follow the actual floor plan of the house, the Cube sliver would have landed in the area of the piano in the living room, but where would the fun have been in that? (00:12:30)
Factual error: Amongst the essential parts of a nuclear weapon's detonation mechanism is a radioactive isotope of tritium, which has a half life of just 12 1/2 years. The tritium in every nuke on earth has to be replaced every ten years or so. This is by no means unusual; there are other perishable parts including detonators made of conventional explosives which would be completely inert after a thousand years. After lying dormant with no maintenance at all for that amount of time the nuclear weapons the 'Man-animals' find would be big shiny paperweights and not much else.
Revealing mistake: In many of the scenes taking place in outer space, if you look closely you can see polygon borders surrounding space vehicles (X-Wings, Star Destroyers, and even the Death Star) indicating the objects being superimposed into the outer space background. [This mistake may only apply to the Blu Ray version.]
Factual error: Why is Hilts not wearing a uniform? A serving officer captured behind enemy lines in civilian clothing risked being shot as a spy. If a prisoner's uniform was too worn or damaged to wear, it was routine for the German authorities to replace it - a P.O.W. in civilian clothes is an obvious escape risk. He is wearing a pair of tan chinos, a cut off sloppy Joe sweatshirt, both ridiculously anachronistic - Sixties hipster fashions - and nowhere even close to a World War 2 uniform. He is also wearing Army Type III Service boots - something that would never have been issued to a fighter pilot.
Factual error: The movie starts in 1985, jumps '5 years later' and then back to Sasha Luss, then '3 years earlier'. So, in her crusty apartment in an impoverished neighbourhood of 1987 Soviet Russia, Anna is filling a form on her notebook-style laptop, too modern for the era. It looks like a NEC UltraLite (considered the first notebook style laptop) which didn't even come out until 1989, let alone the likelihood of someone in the USSR having one.
Visible crew/equipment: In the "Battle of Carthage" in the Colosseum, one of the chariots is turned over. Once the dust settles you can see a gas cylinder in the back of the chariot. (01:22:55)
Visible crew/equipment: When Tom and Sonic pull over and the mini drone explodes, knocking Sonic unconscious, the camera pans away and you can see emergency vehicles blocking the road on the right of the screen, presumably closing down the road for filming. (00:59:55)
Continuity mistake: In the final fight scene on the plane between Jinx and Agent Frost, Jinx is slashed across her stomach, drawing blood. In a later scene, when Jinx and 007 are pouring diamonds over one another in the hut on the cliff, her stomach is unblemished. (02:02:25)
Continuity mistake: After chasing down Sully, the yellow Porsche is totally wrecked on the left side, until Arnie drives it away, and it's fine. Later, when Arnie and Cindy arrive at the hotel, the car is wrecked again. (00:39:50)
Factual error: It is impossible for a stream of burning jet fuel to follow a plane through snow and catch up. Not only is jet fuel extremely hard to ignite, almost as soon as the plane was off the ground the fuel stream would be too dispersed for the flame to climb up into the tank, and even if not it wouldn't burn fast enough to catch the plane.
Factual error: When Ray leaves his wife Gina and his car is hit by the truck he should still be in England, but when he is being chased through the streets he is in South Africa, the cops in the car are not in English police uniforms or vehicle, police livery is incorrect, and all vehicles have South Africa plates, not English number plates.
Factual error: At the end of the film Rainwood has established his innocence of the drug charges and is happily back at work as a senior mechanic for a large airline. However, part of the sentencing and plea bargain protocols at his arraignment is his previous conviction on a lesser drug charge years before. It goes without saying that he did not advise his employers of this when he started work for them - no airline in the world (even pre 9/11) would hire someone with a drug conviction on their record! Now this is out in the open the airline knows that Rainwood is a convicted drug user (on the lesser, legitimate charge) and that he lied on his original job application. They wouldn't hire him again to sweep the floors.
Suggested correction: Even today in 2023 felony convictions might not show up on a background check. Not all information has been uploaded to the internet yet. It was extremely easy in the 1980's for a conviction to be missed by a background check especially if there was no prison time served or it occurred in a rural county or town.
He just got out of prison and establishing his innocence involved the violent deaths of at least two people. Do you not think that his employers just might have followed his story? He'd be all over the news media. The idea that not one person would have followed up on his criminal history is beyond absurd - we are talking about a safety critical job that involves the safety of hundreds of people.
Suggested correction: Knox wasn't a trained pilot. Either he had no clue to what was going on, or he thought something may have been wrong, but didn't know what to do about it.
Taking off and landing a helicopter are by far the most intense and difficult part of a pilot's training. Seriously, 99% of learning to fly is learning how to land and take off. If the pilot is skilled enough to take off in a Huey he is easily skilled enough to notice a massive additional drag on his helicopter due to the additional weight of the angels and the air resistance put up by such a bulky protrusion on his aircraft. If he isn't skilled enough to notice that, he isn't skilled enough to take off in the first place.