Goofs

Watson kicks in the door to enter the telegraph office at the factory. When he leaves, the door frame is in perfect shape, and the door locks with a loud click.

When running in the woods, Watson gets wounded on the right side by a bullet, shown in slow motion. When they are in train, later on, the wound is on the left side.

While fighting the Cossack, Holmes gets a cut on his left cheek. This cut disappears and reappears for the rest of the movie.

When Watson first enters the house to visit Sherlock, he is clean shaven (other than the mustache) and has a clean haircut. When he is in his old office viewing the diorama, he has five o-clock shadow and his hair his longer and messy. After viewing the diorama, when Watson is shown to attend to Gladstone, he is again shown with the cleaner hairstyle and freshly shaven appearance.

Holmes has a pipe in his mouth when he tries to wake up Watson after arriving at the church for the wedding. It disappears after a few seconds when he goes to pull the blanket off Watson and get him out of the car.

When Holmes and Moriarty are playing chess, Moriarty "castles" after Holmes puts him in check. You can not castle while in check.

When Holmes entered Mr. Moriarty's office to get an inscription, there is a chessboard on the desk, with all pieces at their starting squares. White's King and Queen starting position is wrong. White Queen should be on white square, opposing the black Queen on the other rank.

In the war room scene one of the armaments positioned in Holland is labeled "Howitzer", despite all other designations being in German. The German word for howitzer is "Haubitze".

When "Little Hansel" is fired, the slow-motion shows boiling red flames and black smoke emanating from its muzzle, which are obviously gasoline-fueled. The only artillery shell propellant in use at the time would have been gunpowder, which produces a brief flash with cinders and white smoke, but no flames.

Although displayed correctly, the flag of Prussia seems out of place since in 1891 the Kingdom of Prussia was part of the German Empire, represented through the (incorrect) German flag in the same room.

When Professor Moriarty opens the account book after the game of chess with Holmes, on the balcony over the water fall, he finds out that it was switched by Holmes in the factory.

Holmes had answered Moriarty's question (if he was the fish or the fisherman) by turning the account book replacement into a flip book, which shows the fish eating the fisherman. However Moriarty only asked Holmes the metaphorically question after Holmes had already switched the books. Holmes could not have known the question before switching the books. However, the flip book idea actually came from the music playing on the phonograph when Moriarty first met Holmes at the university so the time available for creating a flip book would have started after that meeting since Holmes had already, at that time, spotted the book.

The blast from the concealed bomb in the cake was seemingly large enough to kill the majority of the occupants of the room. If that was the case, why bother shooting someone who would almost certainly be killed by the explosion? However, they couldn't be absolutely sure that the explosion would kill their target and therefore needed a foolproof way to know for certain that the assassination had succeeded.

A German sign on the door of a chemical factory in Heilbronn warns of "Lebensgefahr" (mortal danger), but then has the English word POISON in large red letters in the middle. It makes no sense for the most important word in a sign to be in a foreign language, and is clearly for the benefit of the audience (the skull & crossbones symbol might have been used, as it was internationally recognized by the 1880s). Additionally, the same sign reads "Chemische Kampfführung" (Chemical Warfare). This term is not used to warn somebody of the dangers of chemical weapons but is used when describing the overall methods and tactics of using chemical weapons.

When the tower of the ammunition factory collapses there is no mortar on any of the bricks in the rubble.

When Dr. Watson first visits Holmes at his home, he is struck by a dart in the back. Later, a rectangular pad can be seen protruding from underneath Watson's jacket where the dart is stuck, before Holmes pulls it out.

Toward the end of the movie, there is a view of the castle in the mountain from above, and Moriarty's horse-drawn sled is entering the castle. The scene then cuts to a view from within the castle grounds with the sled coming in. As this happens, the computer-generated snow briefly disappears from under the sled, revealing the wheels upon which the sled was riding when the scene was shot.

After the battle aboard the train, Watson and Holmes are sitting in the destroyed lavatory. You can clearly see that in the shots with Holmes against the destroyed back wall that the off-screen wind machine is blowing and getting underneath a few of the "ceramic' bathroom tiles revealing that it is really plastic or vinyl covering on the prop wall and not real tiles.

After the bombing of the hotel, when Holmes, Watson & Simza are investigating the sniper's vantage point, a vision is shown of the colonel gearing up to take the shot. He attaches a suppressor to the rifle, before he goes to take the shot.

In the first movie from 2009, Sherlock Holmes himself is shown fiddling around with the invention of a suppressor for a handgun, essentially saying that the design is his idea initially.

• This movie takes place following the first ones recent time; unless the basic concept of a suppressor was considered wildly different from rifle to pistol, Holmes' design sure caught on quickly..

Holmes follows Moriarty's lecturing tour across Europe and mentions Oslo, Norway. However, as of 1891, Oslo had been called Christiania since the mid-1600s. It was not called Oslo again until the 1920s.

Holmes uses a tube of lipstick to sabotage the villains' guns on the train. Lipstick in a tube was not invented until 1915.

Professor Moriarty is shown playing a 12" gramophone record in his office and the armaments factory. The 12" gramophone record was not introduced until 1903.

When Holmes and Moriarty are playing chess, Moriarty says "Your clock is ticking, may I remind you this is blitz chess." The earliest known usage of the term 'blitz chess' according to the OED is in 1942, 51 years after the film is said to be set.

The German flag shown on the boxes is the current German flag and probably used for the benefit of the audience. It was first used 1848-1866 in the Deutscher Bund, but by 1891 a different flag was in use, with black at the top, white in the middle and red at the bottom. It was the flag of the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund) 1867-1871 and the German Empire (1871-1918). After that, in the Weimarer Republic (1919-1933), black-red-gold was the official flag again.

When the gang is running from the Germans through the forest, one of Moriarity's German lackeys yells that it is time to introduce them to "Little Hansel" (in subtitles). Strangely, what he really yelled was, "zu viele Füchse für die kleinen Hühner," or "too many foxes for the little chickens".

During the dance scene in the castle the couples dance a Vienesse Walz but are clearly not dancing to the music that can be heard in the background.

This movie is said to take place in 1891. However, in the first movie Holmes is seen reading a newspaper which is dated November 1891. He can't have solved that case and this one in such a short time.

Watson mentioned that Colonel Moran had been dishonorably discharged. Dishonorable discharges are reserved for enlisted men, the equivalent for officers is dismissal.

Professor Moriarty is described at one point as "a Professor at Oxford University." But when Holmes accepts an invitation to visit Moriarty following Dr. Watson's wedding, the lead in shot shows King's College at Cambridge University.

As a former Colonel in the British Army, Moran would have had a strong upper-class accent.