Goofs

On the newscast, they say that the warheads will be drilled 100 meters into the comet; however, while on the comet, the astronauts are working with measurements in feet, including the bomb being drilled 800 feet, which is actually over 290 meters, into the comet.

In the wide shot of the helicopter taking off from the helipad, the windsock frame is present, but missing the actual windsock. When the camera is facing Jenny Lerner's face in the next shot, the windsock is present on the frame.

When Jenny gives up her seat on the helicopter, the shot pans out and shows 20 or more helicopters in the air. A few seconds later the camera does a 360 around Jenny, there are no helicopters in the air.

The roads in New York City are completely filled with cars, making it impossible to escape. Yet, when the Brooklyn Bridge comes up, the freeway in the background shows cars moving at a fast pace, barely escaping the wave.

When the ensuing Tsunami hits Manhattan it comes in from the south, flattening the Statue of Liberty, and proceeding to Wall Street - but by the time it hits Washington Square, the wave is traveling from the North and headed back to Wall Street.

The comet is depicted as nearly white when in reality comets are among the darkest objects in the Solar System, normally reflecting about 3% of the light that hits them (in comparison, Earth reflects about 39%). The movie producers were aware of this fact, but special effects technology of the time made it extremely difficult to depict a black object against black space.

The movie completely understates the effects of the Biederman impact and makes it look like there would just be a tsunami resulting from the collision but nothing else. While not quite extinction level, the smaller comet is still quoted as being 1.5 miles wide and the impact would in fact have been far, far more devastating than portrayed in the movie. The blast and seismic shock of the impact from a comet that size would have completely leveled most of the eastern US within minutes, and the fireball would have ignited much of the United States. By the time the tsunami arrived, it would have washed over smoldering ruins of NY and Washington. The ejecta from the crater would have caused firestorms across much of the northern hemisphere, and the resulting smoke plus dust from the impact (in spite of the ocean strike) would have caused an impact winter that dropped global temperatures for a couple of years. Most scientific studies indicate that an impact of that magnitude would kill over a billion people.

The professional astronomer is shown calculating the earth-crossing trajectory of the comet based on a single observation. This is no more possible than computing the flight of a home run based on a single snapshot.

The trajectory of the comet showed it several times heading directly at the earth, not skimming the atmosphere with fire and smoke and then taking a sudden plunge into the Atlantic Ocean as shown, changing direction at the last minute, which is an impossibility. In reality, the comet would take less than two seconds for it to flash boil millions of gallons of surrounding water as it directly impacted the ocean floor. What is more, the tidal wave would have taken a bit longer to affect Virginia than it did, when it is shown flooding the area at the same time as New York.

When the Messiah is approaching the comet to land on it and Jenny Lerner is reporting on the ship's progress, she mentions that the ship will be entering the comet's "tail, or coma" (implying that the tail and coma are the same thing). In fact, the coma of a comet, along with the nucleus, actually form the head of the comet. The coma and the tail are two completely different parts.

When Jenny Lerner is reading out the National Lottery 'rules' she states that no-one over 50 years old will be entering the ark, but when the Biederman family arrive there are people in the crowd who are clearly over 50 years old. That's probably because selected artists and intellectuals would enter the ark too, as Jenny Lerner also stated.

After the comet's impact, the giant waves are shown moving toward the shore with flocks of birds flying ahead of them. However, these waves would be moving at the speed of an airliner, thus making it impossible for any bird to outpace them. (Correction) The birds don't outpace the wave. The wave slows down in shallow water yet catches up to the birds who scatter. Also, there is only one wave and only one flock of birds.

After the announcement, one reporter asks out loud "Does anyone know how big was the one that killed ALL the dinosaurs?". As it's proven by paleontology, most of the non-avian dinosaurs had already been extinct at the time of the mass extinction around 66 million BC. Only the few remaining non-avian ones died (including T-Rex and Triceratops). When she asked how big was the one that killed all the dinosaurs, she meant all of the living dinosaurs at the time.

The first thing the President announced at the press conference was "U.S. Ambassadors for every country in the world are about to tell them what I'm about to tell you...". At the time the movie was made, there were several countries in the world that did not have U.S. ambassadors, including Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, Taiwan, and at least five other known republics which the United States does not recognize. However, it is unlikely that in the midst of this momentous announcement the President would go into that level of detail.

When the crew of the Messiah is saying goodbye, Spurgeon Tanner is told that his sons are both on active duty and couldn't make it even though the president had recalled all troops from overseas. However, "active duty" can be defined as any full-time military service, and as is stated by the President and shown, the military is actively distributing supplies and transporting people to the Ark. Spurgeon's sons were likely assisting in these efforts.

Professor Wolf's jeep blows up before it impacts anything of significance, and what is more, the explosion comes from inside the passenger compartment and not the gas tank rupturing.

The strong wind that ripples Jenny Lerner's hair and clothes leaves nearby bushes unaffected.

After Oren's exposure to the rising sun, he is first seen with minor damage to his face and is left blind. What should have happened is that he should have sustained beyond 6th degree radiation burns to his face and eyes where the skin was irrevocably damaged (not just boils), which towards the end of the movie his skin was magically healed. And being that his visor wasn't down when he was exposed to the sunlight, the UV radiation should have fried both of his eyeballs as well as their sockets, and yet his eyes look completely normal without any signs of extreme redness, burns or extensive tissue damage.

The Moles appear to be 16-18 inches across, so the hole they drill should have a similar diameter. However, when one gets stuck 75 feet down and the astronaut goes to dislodge it, the hole it has drilled is about three feet in diameter and allows the astronaut and his full space suit ample room to descend in. He then jumps up and down on it and we see again that it is much narrower than the hole it appears to have drilled.

The top front of the astronauts' helmets contain two household 12 volt MR-16 halogen lamps. These are neither efficient enough for use in a space suit nor rugged enough for use in extreme conditions.

In the beginning, when Leo and Sarah are looking at the sky, Sarah keeps looking through the view finder of her telescope and not through the actual telescope.

When Dr Wolfe writes down Leo Biederman's name on the floppy disk, he writes it as Beiderman in error because it is misspelled on the paperwork and he just copies it from there.

When the Biederman comet makes impact, it hits at an angle, with tremendous power, yet the resulting smoke cloud rises straight upward from the point of impact, as if the asteroid had dropped straight downward, rather than from the same angle, which is how it should have been depicted.

The cover of the Newsweek magazine Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) is holding when Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) is talking in the assembly at school misspells his name. The cover says "Beiderman Alive!"

When retrieving 3 of the 4 Away Team from the surface of the comet (having lost 1 astronaut) only 3 cables descend from the ship, implying that they expected to lose a crew-member.

The last Titan ICBM was decommissioned in May 1987, 11 years prior to this movie's release.

When Tanner is talking with Monash after Monash was injured, Monash says "...and I see myself dreaming," but his lip movements are something different.

When Orrin is talking to Fish after he is stricken blind, the scene where Fish is preparing to read Orrin Moby Dick, Orrin's lips move an the visual is obviously delayed at one point.

When Wolf's jeep crashes and goes off the road you can see a rope burning (for towing) when it is on fire and resting against a tree.

During the President's continuation of life broadcast, there is a shot in the NBC Studio wide shot where you see everyone watching the line of network TVs, in the bottom left corner of the frame you see a Film camera dollying forward. It would be an unnecessary angle for a Studio camera.

As Jenny records voice memos while driving, a bright white dot is reflected in her sunglasses. This is an obvious movie spotlight.

Besides the fact that there are no mountains near Richmond, the mountain that Leo and Sarah climb at the end to escape the tsunami is covered with scrub brush and Joshua trees, none of which is found in the eastern two-thirds of the United States, much less Virginia.

When Leo and Sarah split from her family, there is a sign that reads "6 miles to beaches". That would mean that they are over 100 miles from any hills. There is a gradual rise from the beaches for over 100 miles to 300 feet above sea level before any hills.

The Ark is supposedly in Missouri, which is heavily forested and quite green. The hills around the ark are brown and covered in sage and rabbit brush - clearly in Southern California.

The Hotchner family (along with the Biederman family) lives in Richmond, Virginia, which is nowhere near the Virginia beaches (which are to the east and southeast of Richmond). For them to be passing a "Virginia Beaches - 6 miles" sign headed westbound implies that they lived at the beach, not in Richmond.

On a few occasions, Mikhail's screen on the spaceship is shown displaying what is supposed to be Russian language. On a closer look, some of the letters displayed do not actually belong in the Russian alphabet and the words make no sense, it's just random letters bunched together.

The Messiah's trajectory was not realistically (or intelligently) chosen. They could have easily flown up beside, or even to the front of, the comet's head, rather than insisting on landing on the night side (and flying upstream into a cloud of rocks).

The President announces the wave reached the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys, yet Leo and Sarah manage to avoid it by racing to the top of a hill just over 6 miles from Virginia Beach.

In the US Presidents' speech, the President mentions that the comet and it's trajectory were know approximately a year earlier. It seems quite silly that in a year's time all hope would be set on just one space mission in stead of sending as many missions as globally possible.

WIth less than 2 weeks until the asteroid ends all life on the planet, it seems very unlikely that Jenny would be able to find a taxi driver on duty driving around looking for fares.

At the beginning of the movie Leo says the unknown object (which would later turn out as the comet) is "about 10 degrees south" of some stars he recognized. If it were 10 degrees away he wouldn't have seen it. What you can overlook with a telescope while looking at one place would be only a tiny fraction of a degree.

While the Messiah crew are placing the bombs, the computer display showing the line between night and day refers to this line as the "horizon." The correct term is the "terminator." The horizon is the visual effect of the sky meeting the ground, and its location depends solely on the point of view of the observer.

However no character is at fault for this, so whilst it may be a mistake it isn't a character mistake.

Both Jenny and Rittenhouse address his daughter on the dock as "Lily" but she is listed in the end credits as Holly Rittenhouse.

However "Lily" is clearly a family name (like a nickname). There's no character mistake here.

During a live broadcast in which the president announces what could be the end of the world, dozens of Biederman's neighbors decide to just stop watching and instead go to visit him. It makes absolutely no sense for any rational human being to stop watching this announcement.

The president refers to Spurgeon Tanner as the pilot of the mission. Tanner corrects him by stating that Oren would do most of the flying. Oren Monash is the mission commander, Andrea Baker is the actual pilot.