Patzer

When Whistler is driving the van, one of the headlights gets smashed, yet is operational in a subsequent shot.

When Bishop is marched into Cosmo's office at gunpoint, there are four light switches by the door, two of which are flipped up, two flipped down. However, when Cosmo leaves a moment later, they are all flipped up.

When Liz and Werner Brandes are dining in Chinatown late into the night, it is clearly getting light outside the window at one point, but then returns to being dark.

When Martin is released at the corner of Hyde and Lombard, it should be the morning but, as the camera turns around him, the brightest spot is on the ocean, clearly, the evening.

When Bishop calls the NSA from Liz' apartment, he presses the buttons on the telephone with his left hand. In the next shot he removes his right hand from the telephone.

To circumvent the thermal security sensors, the temperature in Cosmo's office is raised to 98.6° F to match normal internal body temperature. Coming from a normal room temperature environment, Bishop's exposed skin would have been only about 91° to 94°, and his clothing even cooler, about 85° to 89°. This may have been enough of a difference to set off the alarm. The office should only have been warmed up to about 90°.

When Martin kicks in Dr. Janek's office door, there's no damage to the frame. At least part of the frame would have splintered.

When Martin and Greg are pulled over in the limo, the FBI agent opens the door from the outside. Given the problems with assassinations the limos were designed to auto lock, a feature which was in use for all limos for embassy or political leaders in America since 1974.

If Dr. Elena Rhyzkov is indeed Czech, as mentioned in the film, her last name should actually be Rhyzkova, the female form of Rhyzkov.

When Whistler is setting up the phone rerouting system to defeat the trace, the computer screen shows one of the cities listed as Durban, South Africa (an eastern coast city) but the actual location is clearly pointing to Cape Town, South Africa (a western coast city)

When Bishop is practicing lock picking on the way to Janek's office he is only using a pick to manipulate the lock. This wouldn't work as you also need a tension tool to hold the pins in place once you have set them with the pick. With his method the pins would simply spring back into place as soon as he removed the pick.

It is often asked how Bishop gets the answering machine into the office. He carries the backpack in his briefcase, and this can be seen when he opens it in the engineer's office. The answering machine can be seen in the backpack.

The "180 IQ" guy, Brandes, is listed in his computer profile as being blond and having blue eyes. In the bar, he is brown-haired and has brown eyes. This is not a goof, as Brandeis lied to make himself seem more attractive to potential matches.

There are five bridges across San Francisco Bay. The film lists the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge, the San Mateo, and the Dumbarton. It misses the Richmond bridge.

Bishop goes to the trouble of defeating the voice entry system, which leads him to being caught. While Carl catches up with him via the access vents, getting into them needed a decoy gardener, and sending two people into the bathroom would have attracted attention.

The ceiling tiles that Martin and Carl use to move around above the floors in the Playtronics building are the hanging type, quite fragile like cardboard and would not be able to support an adult's full body weight.

In the limousine, after Gregor finds out who Wallace works for, he tells Martin, "You disappeared once before, my friend. I suggest you do it again". But how could Gregor have known this? It seems doubtful that Martin would share such sensitive information with a potentially dangerous member of counterintelligence and not his closest associates. Creese even says to Liz that she was the only one who knew Martin's secret.

When Cosmo swipes his ID card at Werner's office, the magnetic stripe is facing away from the reader.

Liz records the bulk of Werner's voice in a noisy restaurant with a band playing but when Martin plays the recording for the voice recognition system, no background noise is heard.

When Wallace is shooting at Martin while he hides above the ceiling, one of his shots destroys a tile in a spot where Wallace obviously hadn't aimed.

In the opening scene, set in 1969, the display terminal is clearly showing IBM VGA 40-column text. The IBM VGA standard was not developed until 1987.

When Whistler shifts the van from reverse to drive, it makes the sound of gears grinding as if it were a manual transmission. An automatic transmission does not grind gears together, but the shifting motion clearly is that of an automatic.

After Bishop has described crossing a bridge, the shot switches to the van on a bridge. The first sound of a car going over a seam matches up with the van going over a seam, but for the rest of the shot, which includes the sound of several more seams, the van doesn't cross another seam.

Crease, explaining the "Man trap" security access booth, can clearly be seen saying, "Otherwise you'll be trapped in a steel-reinforced booth...," but is heard saying, "Otherwise you'll be caught..."

An A/V mismatch in context: When they're at the reservoir with the geese, there is the sound of a real cocktail party in an overlay, ~30% lower in volume than the birds.

When Bishop calls the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland, he dials the 202 (Washington, D.C.) area code.

The statute of limitations for most federal crimes is 5 years. The opening scene where Bishop makes illegal bank transfers takes place in 1969. So there would be no need for him to hide his identity or fear government prosecution in 1992 when the remainder of the plot takes place.

However, in the USA treason and espionage (either of which Bishop could potentially have been charged with) are classed as capital offenses, for which there is no statue of limitations.

While the guys are videotaping Janek working in his office, he gets up to open the door to let Dr. Elena Rhyzkov in, and you can see the electronic keypad on the door. However, no one in the team notices it. Later, we see Bishop practicing picking a standard door lock, and when he arrives at the door, the electronic lock is a surprise to everyone. Since they are able to zoom in on Janek's keyboard when they are trying to get his password, they could have zoomed in on the door to see the electronic keypad, and been prepared for it.

Liz mentions she and Werner were set up by a computer, something which Cosmo finds so implausible that he realizes something is wrong. However, online dating sites are notorious for poor matchmaking: complexities of human attraction and behavior make it very difficult to make accurate matches, and that's before you factor in that people often lie in order to increase their chances of finding someone.

When "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" is sung in both Chinese and English, the lyrics "[Baddest] man in the whole downtown" are sung. The actual lyrics sung by Jim Croce are "Baddest man in the whole damn town".

When Carl approaches Mary from the NSA she is not only pointing her gun at Carl, she has her finger on the trigger. This is very poor firearms discipline for anyone let alone a trained professional.

However, Mary is holding an MP5 which has a three position fire-mode selector for safe, single fire or continuous fire. The position of the selector can be quickly and easily changed by a person trained in its use. The NSA would know that the group were a low threat with no record of firearms use. A trained professional such as Mary would be aware of all this and have the selector in the safety position until the situation demanded otherwise.

'Mary' from the NSA is not holding an Uzi, as Carl states; it is actually a Heckler & Koch MP5.

It's dark as the group enter the room and Carl wouldn't get much time to make an assessment of the type of machine gun Mary is holding; he's also more focused on her than the type of gun she's holding (since he asks for her phone number later). "Uzi" is a often used as a generic term for a compact sub-machine gun, especially by people who aren't very familiar with different models. In the circumstances it's reasonable for Carl to identify the gun as an Uzi.