The first 3 times viewers see shots of the underside of the 747 during the flypast, the underside of the aircraft has no markings other than those found on any commercial aircraft. It is only on the fourth shot that the "GOOD LUCK BOKKE" message is shown.
While the security detail is studying the program for the US visit, the document has on the cover the Taiwan flag, which will come later in the movie.
In a scene in Francois Pienaar's parents' house they are watching TV. The father switches it off and the camera pans away. When it pans back, the TV is mysteriously back on.
When Mandela addresses the UN General Assembly, the first shot shows Mandela as played by Morgan Freeman being projected onto large wide screens. It then cuts to a wide shot of Mandela's actual speech in 1994 and there are no screens in the chamber.
In some of the game footage you can clearly see the pitch is too small but more obvious is the lacking of goal posts which were nowhere to be seen in some clips. In rugby all pitches have goal posts for conversions and penalties.
In the final when the clock reaches 10 minutes in the second half of extra time, the referee blows his whistle to signal the end of the match even though the ball is still in play. In rugby, the match does not end until the ball is dead. South Africa would have had to win the scrum then kick the ball to touch (out of bounds). At that point, the referee would blow his whistle. If the losing team is in control of the ball, play continues until the ball is dead.
The first game of rugby the Springboks play after they are readmitted to the world stage post-apartheid is depicted as being against England. In fact it was the NZ All Blacks the Springboks played on 15/08/1992.
The major plot point and title for the film are erroneous since, in reality, it was not "Invictus" but Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech that Nelson Mandela gave to Francois Pienaar for inspiration.
In the World Cup, after the Australia match, the Springboks' next two matches are shown to be against Western Samoa and France. In fact, these were the quarter-final and semi-final matches; the Springboks played Romania and Canada after Australia in the pool stage. (This may have been deliberate on the part of the filmmakers; the punch-up at the end of the Canada match would not have been in the spirit of the film).
Johan de Villiers is shown as the TV commentator who first bad-mouths the Boks and then praises the Springboks, after the final whistle, asks the question of Pienaar: "What did it feel like to have 62,000 fans supporting you in the stadium?" and receives the answer: "We didn't have 62,000 fans behind us, we had 43 million South Africans." It was in fact a SABC reporter called David van der Sandt.
The England fans can be seen waving Union Jacks, even though the different countries of the United Kingdom play separately (Scotland and Wales, which also play as single nations and were both in the 1995 Rugby World Cup). This does actually happen frequently at English Matches, but Scottish and Welsh fans do not wave the Union Jack when supporting their own teams.
When the South Africa Rugby Squad go to interact and play rugby with the children from the squatter settlements, a member of the squad asks a group of children who knows the rules of rugby. In Rugby Union they are called them 'laws' and an international player would know that. But in trying to explain the game to a group of children who were unfamiliar with rugby (and possibly hostile to white players teaching them) it would be quite reasonable to use the more everyday term 'rules'.
The Samoan team is referred to as "Western Samoa", the name they were commonly referred to in the 1990s and early. It is now known as "Samoa", or sometimes as "Manu Samoa". However Manu Samoa tends to be used by the Samoans themselves.
The referee signalled a knock on at one point in the final, but this occurred during a scrum. It isn't possible to have a knock-on in a scrum as it is illegal to handle the ball in a scrum unless the ball has crossed the goal line. However, it is perfectly possible and quite common for the scrum half or one of the back row players to knock the ball on when attempting to retrieve it from the scrum.
Extra time in the rugby final is 20 minutes. Francois Pienaar asks how long to go and is told "7 minutes" (i.e. 13 minutes done) and a little later Nelson Mandela is told "5 minutes" (i.e. 15 minutes done) but in between there is a shot of the video scoreboard reading "11 minutes". Actually overtime is divided in two halves of 10 minutes. In actual footage of the game you can see that it ends at 11 minutes on the 2nd half of overtime and since the clock moves forward in rugby there isn't a continuity mistake here.
In the scene where Nelson Mandela looks at his clock radio, it reads 4:00 and it is supposed to be 4 AM in the morning. However, the red dot indicating AM or PM is lit on the bottom, which indicates PM.
As Francois Pienaar speaks to his teammates in a huddle during the World Cup final, empty stadium seats can be seen behind the players in close-up shots, despite it being previously established that the game had completely sold out.
In the closeups of President Nelson Mandela during the final game, you can see the reflection of the empty grandstands (red) in his sunglasses, rather than the green and yellow tinged full stands that are shown in the crowd shots.
Captain Laurie Kay's flight over Ellis Park is presented in the movie as both a spur of the moment thing as well as a possible right wing attempt on the life of Nelson Mandela. Neither of these filmed portrayals are in any way accurate.
The Springboks train at Milnerton Lagoon which is in Cape Town for a match which is in Johannesburg, hundreds of kilometres away and at a vastly different altitude.
In the shot of the 747 pilot looking over the stadium, the shot includes a Vodacom advert on top of the tall Ponty Building. In 1995, there was a Coca Cola sponsorship on top of the building.
When the Springboks are on their way into the township for the PR exercise, a 2008 election poster for Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille can be seen.
The 4 engine Airbus A340 with the Chester Williams photo on the fuselage was only introduced to South African Airways in 2000.
In the film, scrums are given the "Crouch, touch, pause, engage" command by the referee. This command was added to the laws of rugby in 2007 to make scrums safer.
In the movie the Springboks were shown teaching children how to do line outs by lifting a player high to receive the ball. In 1995 the interpretation of that rule only allowed "supporting" the player. Modern rugby sees big lifts as portrayed in the film, but in 1995 you would only see smaller jumps.
In the hotel the night before the final match, Francois Pienaar's wife brings him a drink and says "I brought one of your mother's protein drinks". However, her lips do not move.
In the scene where Nelson Mandela is dancing, several of the violin players are holding their bows several inches above their violins.
When Nelson Mandela leaves the conference room in the middle of a presentation by Taiwan officials, the sign outside the room is written in simplified Chinese characters. However, these are not generally used in Taiwan where the more complex traditional characters are preferred, and the simplified writing is considered a Communist perversion of Chinese culture.
We see a scene Mandela is meeting at Taiwan and he left meeting room when hearing news of the games. However, the name of the meeting show "Orchid room" in Simplified Chinese that is not used in Taiwan.
Before the incident where the aircraft flies low over the stadium, the first officer says, "we are on final approach". The captain then takes control and immediately flies the plane low over Ellis Park (where the final takes place) in a roughly northerly direction, as indicated by the position of Ponté Tower out of the cockpit window. Yet Johannesburg Airport is a good distance east of Ellis Park and while there is a northerly approach to land there, a plane which flew a final approach beginning near Ellis Park would be about 9 miles off course.
In the scene where the Springboks are drinking beer in the change-rooms after losing a match the Natal Rugby Union logo is seen in the change room. The Springboks never played at "Kings Park Stadium" (where the Natal Rugby Union is located) in 1994. In addition, it is unlikely that they would be drinking anything other than Lion Lager, their official sponsor (as on their rugby jerseys).
In the scene with the Springbok team jogging just before the final, they are jogging through the streets of Cape Town around the Newlands Rugby Stadium. They would have been jogging at this point in the story in Johannesburg which is where the final took place (at Ellis Park Stadium).
When Francois Pienaar is being escorted by security to Tea with Nelson Mandela. He refers to the Lieutenant as "lootenant", whereas South Africans would say "leftenant".
When Nelson Mandela's head bodyguard is passing out the president's schedule to the other bodyguards, he first calls it the "SHEDule" using the British pronunciation, but a few moments later he calls it the "SKEDule" using the American pronunciation.
When we hear the voice of Morgan Freeman reciting Invictus while Matt Damon is in the Robben Island cell, a word of the poem is changed. The line reads, "Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but unbowed." The voice of Freeman uses the word "fate" instead of "chance." The meaning is the same, but it breaks the rhyme scheme.
In the movie, Nelson Mandela takes his hat off during the South African national anthem. However, in real life he left his hat on as taking off the hat during the national anthem is primarily an American custom.
Near the end of the movie, Francois Pienaar mentions Nelson Mandela's "30 years in that cell," referencing his visit to Mandela's cell on Robben Island. In fact, Mandela spent about 17.5 of his 27 years of imprisonment in the cell on Robben Island. He was imprisoned in Johannesburg and then Pretoria for about a year and a half during his trial, then sent to Robben Island for 17.5 years. He was moved to Pollsmoor Prison for 6 years, then to Victor Verster Prison for 2 years until his release. When Mandela's earlier arrests and imprisonments are factored in, he did spend about 30 years in prison, just not at Robben Island. (See Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.)