Although Dave Hannaberry's boat in the reenactment footage is the right shape and size and covered in white shrink-wrap, a canvas boat cover which does not exist in the archival footage has been draped over the hull. In the archival footage, the ladder Dave Hannaberry leans up against his boat is the step side of an old broken wooden paint ladder - in the reenactment footage a 6-step a-frame fiberglass ladder is opened parallel to the boat.
The film makers have substituted white plastic furniture from IKEA in the recreation of the bombing aftermath for the dark metal commercial grade outdoor dining chairs and tables at the Forum Restaurant.
The white tablecloths draped over the deceased child's and college student's bodies are supposed to have been pulled off nearby tables by restaurant employees but have the sharp folds/crease marks in the fabric like new ones just taken out of the packaging.
In most of the 'recreated' scenes there is very little care taken to match the archival footage with which it is inter-cut. Either the Production Designer (art department) did not watch the original footage or just didn't care if there was a high correlation visually between the recreated scenes and the archival footage which they had to know had to be cut together in the editing room.
Behind Deval Patrick's chair at the end of the conference table when the decision to let the FBI lead the bombing investigation is made the American flag is incorrectly paired with the Boston City flag; it should be the Massachusetts State flag inside the state capital building.
In the recreated Watertown, Mass. Police Station ready room the U.S. flag should be to the left of the speaker/podium according to the flag etiquette 'Order of Procession', it is misplaced to the right.
Dave Henneberry's boat should be located in his driveway up against a privacy fence on the property line directly in front of his garage (see actual crime scene video). In the reenacted shots the placement of the boat in the middle of the neighbor's backyard which would put it on top of the lawn furniture and a BBQ grill we see in the archival footage. The weathered wooden fence running along the driveway is missing.
The interior municipal and government flags in the recreated scenes are not trimmed in gold braid as the flags in the archival footage are (the established convention).
In addition to an unconscious ICU patient not being hooked up to a vital signs monitor it does not look like the breathing tube was properly secured in place by someone with medical training. It does not match John Odom's tape job in the famous photograph of him in the hospital which had to be available for reference?
When Tamerian Tsarnaev's fingerprints are scanned his body is not in the morgue or on an autopsy table but in a very large empty hospital surgery. The published coroner's photos of the corpse reveals the heavily damaged body in a much smaller room with walls covered in white ceramic tiles. The portable fingerprint scanning device used by the FBI to ultimately identify him is not turned on (screen should light up yellow green) and no scan is indicated (sequence of blinking color LEDs) in the recreated scene.
The last time we see John Odom, he is just regaining consciousness in his room in the Intensive Care Unit. The vital signs monitor which should appear over his left shoulder adjacent to the bed in the archival photographs is missing. In the recreated scene there is a vital signs monitor clearly visible in the deep background to the right, stuck in a corner of the room, not turned on. The ventilator tube which runs across John Odom's chest to the left in the archival photos runs off to a ventilator mislocated to his right in the re-creation.
The finish line in the vicinity of the first pressure cooker bomb explosion in the re-enactment looks like a piece of blue plastic stretched across the road. The finish line in the inter-cut archival footage is painted on the pavement in yellow and blue with 'FINISH' in large blue fade-out sans-serif lettering.
The blue plastic sheeting lining the inside face of the crowd control scaffolding barrier along Boylston Street in front of the Marathon Sports suffers no visible blast damage from the pressure cooker bomb filled with nails and ball-bearings exploding. When the scaffolding is overturned by bystanders to get to the bombing victims the plastic shows no burning, shredding or shrapnel penetration you would expect in near proximity to the backpack's location.
In the shoot-out between the Watertown Police and the Tsarnaev brothers everyone appears to be firing Glock semi-auto pistols but the slides do not move or eject shell casings, there is no recoil or muzzle lift when the trigger is pulled, the muzzle flashes look like bursts of sparks and the 'smokeless' small arms propellant smokes profusely.
We see Jim Blackburn reclining on his sofa in his apartment. He is a young single athletic guy who has just started dating Michele Mahoney (who we see in her hospital room after the bombing). Directly behind his head there are sheers in his window - an odd window treatment for a young man living on his own, out of place for a cold climate like Boston and they don't fit the window (hanging down to the floor where as the drapery panels on either side end at the window sill). The sheer drapes don't fit the window and the decorating does not fit the character unless he is renting the room/apt. from his grandmother.