(at around 42 mins) During the "twister sisters" scene, the truck is shown on a one-lane dirt road. In a character shot, you see cars passing by through the back window.
(at around 1h 35 mins) When the farm machinery is being thrown about and lands in front of Bill, and Jo shouts "We have debris!" the last piece of machinery has an arm that breaks the windshield in front of Jo. In all of the scenes after, the windshield is intact.
(at around 38 mins) When Bill says the tornado is about to shift directions to the left, he and Jo are driving side by side with Jonas. Bill hits his brakes and Jonas's team passes him completely. When Bill puts the truck into reverse and starts backing up, Jonas's team passes him again.
(at around 54 mins) In the truck after leaving Aunt Meg's house, Bill says to Jo "Let's wire you up." She is already "wired," with a headset round her neck. Her wiring disappears in the next cut, allowing Bill to replace it.
(at around 1h 1 min) The utility pole that falls on the truck soon disappears.
While strapped down, the winds would not keep Jo and Bill in one place. It should have whipped them around like a tether ball. With wind at that speed, they shouldn't have been able to breathe or keep their eyes open. Plus, the debris inside should have cut them to ribbons.
The last twister in the movie was classified and deemed an F-5, yet when it hits the farm where Jo and Bill are strapped to the pipe, about a third of the barn is still standing and the house can be seen more or less fully intact. F-5 level tornadoes can and will violently hurl entire wood frame structures from their foundations and even heavily damage steel reinforced concrete buildings. Therefore, in actuality, the entire ranch; house, barn, and all, should have been swept down to the ground. Also, survival in an F-5 tornado tied to a pipe is very unlikely as debris, especially flying wood splinters and glass at that speed can shred clothes and skin and cause potentially fatal injury.
In the beginning when Jo's dad is bringing the family downstairs and say's "TV says it's big, might be an F-5" That scene was set in 1969. In reality he would not have known anything about an F-5 or any tornado with an F rating because the Fujita scale was not developed until 1971.
(at around 32 mins) When Jo and Bill are clinging to the bridge after driving her truck through the ditch, the twister "drops" into the ditch and follows it. This does not actually happen. The twister would have "jumped" over the ditch. This is why you are told to find low ground if you are outside when a tornado hits your area.
Bill drives the truck through a house that is turned on its side. Once driving it, the truck drives through a staircase. Whether it is going up or down is impossible to determine, since it is already at the wrong angle (up-down instead of side-to-side), given that the house is turned over. On the other end, the truck emerges from the house at ground level, despite the change of elevation on the inside.
(at around 1h 11 mins) In the scene where the drive-in is destroyed by a large tornado, when the tornado is first shown it appears to be a half-mile wide wedge tornado (commonly regarded as being a violent tornado). The size of the tornado suddenly shrinks as it begins to destroy the screen that The Shining (1980) is playing on to being only roughly the width of the screen itself. When the tornado is shown again, after Jo, Bill and their crew take shelter in the steel garage the size reverts back to being wider than the screen itself. But tornadoes can and do quickly grow or shrink in size.
Skies change from clear to cloudy very quickly. That happens in twister country.
(at around 1h 14 mins) As the Galaxy Theatre sign is flying through the air, there appears to be a cable attached to the arrow's point, pulling the sign into the garage. However, this is actually one of the rods with neon stars on it that can previously be seen while the sign is standing.
(at around 1h 30 mins) When Jo and Bill are driving out of the explosion from the tanker truck, you can clearly see Jo taking off a fire resistant suit through the front window of the truck. In the next scene she's in the shirt she was wearing before heading through the fire.
The strap Jo is attached to is broken just below where it is attached to the pole. Yet she doesn't fly away, and is still in the harness.
Bill and Jo almost get shredded by a flying harvester. The sunflowers in the background however barely move.
Towards the end of the movie when Jo and Bill are running from the F5 some fence posts are torn off, however the fenced area closer to the tornado is still in tact.
(at around 1h 35 mins) When Jo and Bill are running beside the picket fence, the boards right beside them start getting hurled around, but the boards closer to the tornado merely sway back and forth.
The establishing shot of the barbed wire at around one minute is looped, which can be seen by the foliage "resetting" at least twice.
(at around 2 mins) In the opening scene, Joe's father warns his family that the TV reports that the "twister might be an F5". It is 1969, but "F5" and the Fujita scale were introduced in 1971.
(at around 1 min) In the scene set in 1969, the TV displays the words, "tornado warning." The National Weather Service did not begin using that term until 1974. The TV should have said, "tornado alert."
(at around 1 min) At the start of the movie, in 1969, Jo's father is wearing a hat which first appeared in the 1980's.
The first scene in the movie is said to take place in 1969 and has Gary England on the television warning of the tornado. But in 1969 England was actually working for a company called A.H. Glenn and Associates in New Orleans. He did not start working for KWTV until 1972.
(at around 1h 3 mins) When Jo is frantically trying to scoop sensors into her jacket she shouts "Bill, help me!" but her lips aren't moving.
(at around 33 mins) While chasing the first tornado, the team obviously turns onto a dirt road (all the dirt flying up as they turn). When Jo's truck drops in front of Melissa driving the red truck and she swerves out of the way, the tires make squealing noises as if they were on a paved road.
It was in fact a paved road/highway, it is common in flood plains to have gravel and dirt accumulate at intersections as was indicated when they initially turned onto the road.
It was in fact a paved road/highway, it is common in flood plains to have gravel and dirt accumulate at intersections as was indicated when they initially turned onto the road.
(at around 1h) When the motorboat is tossed by the tornado past the truck, Bill is heard to exclaim, "Whoah!" However, his lips do not move.
At about 7:30 when adult Jo first appears in the field she's working on a dish antenna on top of one of the vehicles. There's a big spark and when Jo jumps back she says "F**k me!" but there's no sound.
(at around 1h 19 mins) When Jo and Bill are driving through what's left of Wakita, they see Aunt Meg's house. At the top of the house, ropes are visible to prevent the house from falling off cue.
(at around 55 mins) As Jo drives Bill's truck out of the corn field and almost hits Jonas' truck, the top half of a crew member's body can be seen, just above the driver's side mirror, across the street poking out of the corn.
(at around 6 mins) In the opening scene, a helicopter is reflected in Bill's truck.
(at around 1h 30 mins) A third person is visible in the back seat as Bill's truck emerges from the fireball.
When the twister is heading for the drive-in movie theater, as Bill is running towards the garage, you can easily see the shadow of the Steadicam operator and a grip guy on the ground about 2 feet away from Bill's shadow.
When Bill and Joe are driving towards the F3 tornado on Route 33 a road sign can be seen on the right. It shows the state of Texas when the movie is set in Oklahoma.
When at the mechanic shop a Muskogee school bus is seen and the storm is said to be headed to North-East toward Wakita and they can be there in an hour. Wakita is actually 200 miles Noth-West of Muskogee.
(at around 1h 40 mins) An F5 is about a mile wide, but when Bill and Jo are flying inside the tornado, the F5 looks as if it has shrunk dramatically.
After the twister passed through the drive-in there was a lot of damage and cars flying, but neither Bill's (Paxton) red Ram truck nor the other team cars didn't even fly away or it just didn't happen to them.
At Around 9 Minutes In, When Billy Goes To Greet Joey You can see In the Reflection Of The Right Of Him The Boom Mic Swinging Around In The Brown Truck Reflection.
When Jo and Bill are under the bridge they are holding on to the pillars. This is not the thing tornado experts would do. Instead they would have laid flat in the mud because with a tornado it is the side winds which pick up objects. It is a myth that if the tornado is directly on top of you it would suck you upside it.
(at around 4 mins) In the opening scene, when Jo's family is in the cellar, her father tries to hold the door shut, and ends up getting consumed by the tornado. Jo and her mother, despite the door being torn off, remain unaffected by the tornado. Thus it was unnecessary for the father to try to hold the door shut, as he also could have been safe had he simply stayed away from the door.
A man says the last tornado's base must be at least a mile wide, but it's clearly smaller than that.