Goofs for
National Treasure (2004)

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• Anachronisms: As the scaffolding is falling, we see nails popping out. These are clearly manufactured nails and not cut nails of the type used in the colonial period. Also, the nails are of a silver color, while nails of the colonial period would have a black iron color.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end, when Riley Poole is sitting in his Ferrari, several shots show the car wet, like it was just rained on. In other shots, it is perfectly dry.
  
  
• Continuity: The length (and even existence) of Riley's goatee varies throughout the movie.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: When Ben visits his father after stealing the Declaration and they argue, there are reflections of video screens in his father's glasses.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the tunnels below the church, Patrick Gates appears to be lit from the torch he is holding. When he turns toward the camera, a square diffused light is reflected in his glasses and is the source of the "torch" light.
  
  
• Continuity: When Riley is first shown in the treasure room looking at the "big... bluish-green man with a strange looking goatee", there is already a smudge in the dust on the chest of the statue. The scene cuts to Riley, then back to the him and the statue. The statue now has an even layer of undisturbed dust with no smudge. Riley then hugs the statue and his cheek rests on the chest of the statue. He is not shown moving away from the statue, but the smudge could have only been left by his cheek.
  
  
• Continuity: When Sadusky and his men are arresting Ben, the back of Riley and Abigail's heads can be seen leaving the scene, and a moment later, they can be seen turning away from them, waiting for their cue over Sadusky's shoulder. However, a moment later they come around the corner and witness Ben's arrest and then turn and leave again, for the third time total.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The first shots of the group once inside Trinity Church reveal that they are actually inside the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, California, USA. The pipe organ in the background does not match the one inside Trinity church.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Abigail and Riley notice two of Ian's thugs chasing them, Riley says, "Time to run", but his lips do not move.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Ben escapes from the police and he's meeting with Ian and they are talking outside the church, one scene there are cars in the background. Then the camera turns back to look at Ian and then goes back to Ben and there are no cars.
  
  
• Continuity: The postcard carousel in the gift shop as Ben Gates is hiding from Abigail.
  
  
• Continuity: On The Charlotte, in the cargo hold, Ian's hat has a design on it "looks like mountains". The amount of the design that we see continually changes throughout the scene - and continues to change as Ian is escaping in the vehicle before The Charlotte blows up.
  
  
• Continuity: As Ben and Ian are talking about whether there is a next clue while in the lantern cave, the Declaration changes places multiple times as Abigail holds it. It changes from no case to brown case to white case and finally ends in the brown case on Abigail's shoulder.
  
  
• Continuity: After Ben has escaped the FBI and is driven to meet Ian, Ian puts the pipe and declaration on top of the car. Ben takes the declaration in his left hand and the pipe in his right in the next shot when he tries to walk away, the declaration is in his right hand and the pipe is hidden.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben, Abigail, and Riley are at Urban Outfitters, Ben and Abby are getting new clothes. They are in changing rooms next to each other. When they come out, Abby has her hands on the top of the door. But in the very next shot, she has her arms folded across the top of the door.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Riley goes down into the Archives-Navy Memorial Metro stop to tap the security system, the train passing behind him is clearly a New York subway train and not a DC Metro train.
  
  
• Continuity: When Riley is down in the Archives-Navy Memorial Metro stop to tap the security system, the shot that he records of the preservation room shows the Declaration already there and covered, as Ben later finds it. However, Riley has not yet set off the temperature sensors, thus the document has not been taken down to the Preservation Room yet.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the characters go underground, Ben pulls a torch off of the wall and lights it, and it burns instantly and brightly. Also when the heroes find the treasure room, a 'river of fire is lit'. There is no substance the 18th century colonials would have had access to which could have both produced instant flames of that kind *and* had it's potency last for 200+ years.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just after Ben mixes the fluorescent marker liquid, he reaches into the glass clearly holding the George Washington campaign button. The scene then cuts to him dipping his bare fingers and the button has vanished.
  
  
• Continuity: When discussing the Pass and Stow riddle in Urban Outfitters, Abigail is clearly leaning on the counter with one hand as Ben says, "... the vision to see the treasure past must refer to a way to read the map". In the next shot, Abigail's arms are crossed and she is standing straight up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Abigail and Riley are running through the market, Abigail jumps over a low wooden counter but is shown finishing her "jump" behind a glass meat case far from the wooden counter which, incidentally, is being blocked by the waitress.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): While explaining the importance of the lantern outside the treasure room Patrick Gates incorrectly states that a Thomas Newton hung the lanterns in the Old North Church for Paul Revere to see. The name of the church sexton that hung the two lanterns was Robert Newman.
  
  
• Continuity: When Abigail opens the box containing the campaign button, the bottom of the box falls on its side. In the next shot, the close-up of her hands holding the button, the box is right side up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Gates places his tool belt on the X-ray machine conveyor, the plastic clip on the end gets snagged in the entrance. In the picture on the machine, the belt is connected in a full circle, and the purse that is show coming out of the other, presumably front entrance, machine, has no strap and is a clutch.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ian's henchman is shooting at Ben as he is ducking behind the red van outside the gala, he shoots out one of the headlights on the passenger side. When the chase is coming to an end, after Ian realizes that he has a replica in his possession, they show the van with both headlights in tact. Only one headlight is lit (drivers side) but the glass on the passenger side is intact.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ben determines that the shadow cast from Independence Hall must be viewed at 2:22 PM, there is no consideration given as to the time of year. For the shadow to be cast in exactly the correct spot, the shadow would have to be viewed on the same day of the year as the clue was viewed.
  
  
• Continuity: When everyone reaches the 'dead end' room at the bottom of the winding staircase, Ben has the tube with the Declaration of Independence over his shoulder, he slung it there after saving it from falling into the pit. After they start talking about having reached a dead end, it disappears from over his shoulder. When Ian and his henchman turn to go back out, Riley is holding it and when Ian is talking to Ben from the platform, Abigail has the Delcaration of Independence and Riley just has the tube.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ben, Riley and Abagail, go to Independence Hall, he opens the loose brick with a collapsable buck knife. You must go through a metal detector to get into Independence Hall.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the gunpowder burns up at first there is little to no smoke. Smokeless gunpowder was not invented until 1884-1886 and the Charlotte was lost at sea in 1818. The gunpowder used prior to the invention of the smokeless gunpowder invented in 1884-1886 would have produced a large cloud of smoke, disabling them from seeing each other.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: After crawling through the "creepy, crawly" space where the coffin was removed, all characters emerged without a speck of dust, dirt or cobwebs on their clothing. The knees on their pants should have been filthy.
  
  
• Continuity: When Riley is sitting outside the building that holds the Doogood Letters, retrieving the next clue by the Museum Kid, he puts a pile of papers that were previously seen under the paper he is writing the clue on, next to him on the bench. Then in the next shot, in which there is a close up of the paper that holds the clue, they are back under it.
  
  
• Factual errors: Throughout the movie, it is said the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776, when in fact, it was only adopted on that day. It was not actually engrossed on parchment, and signed until August 2nd, 1776. The copy that was signed on July 4th was a "rough journal" as it was called, and then only signed by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress and Charles Thomson, the Secretary.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When they are at the Charlotte, there are mountains in the background in multiple directions. They alleged they are in an area where the ice pack is "semi-solid" and shifting. Clearly, they are in a valley, completely surrounded by mountains, inland. While it is reasonable that a ship wreck would move with the ice pack, it is not reasonable that it would have shifted enough to bring a ship wreck that far inland.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben and Abigail are putting on their new clothes Abigail's jeans are turned/rolled up two to three inches. In all future scenes the jeans are hemmed to an appropriate length. There is no mention of having the clothes "tailored" nor would adventurers on the run take the time to have that type of thing done.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end when Riley hugs the big bluish-green man with the strange goatee the statue shakes considerably. The statue was most likely supposedly made out of Jade. That amount of jade would be of considerable weight and incapable of shaking that much, if at all, when being touched by a human being.
  
  
• Factual errors: Lemon juice is used to create invisible ink, not expose it, and it turns brown when heated; it does not fade away again as it cools.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ian kidnaps Abigail after the Declaration is stolen, Ian asks her, "and just who might you be?" In that shot, his hair is completely dry. In the very next shot of Ian, not more than five seconds later, his hair looks to be soaked in sweat or water with the rest of him appearing to be dry.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the FBI agents enter his father's home (finding his father tied up), the agents enter through the front door, and presenting handguns. What you hear is a click like a safety being released on a pistol. They're carrying Glocks. There is no external safety release on a Glock.
  
  
• Factual errors: After Ben escapes from the FBI by jumping into the river, one of Ian's men hands him a regulator from his scuba tank. Ben puts it to his mouth and immediately begins to breath through it, forgetting to purge the regulator of water first. In fact, he should have inhaled a mouthful of water.
  
  
• Errors in geography: While they're driving over the bridge into the city of Philadelphia, they had been up and driving all night, yet they're clearly driving into the sun while on the bridge. That bridge crosses the Delaware River from NJ, thus, they're driving west into the setting sun, not the rising sun as the movie's timeline would have you believe.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Abigail's password into the preservation room is supposed to be VALLEYFORGE, an eleven letter password. When she enters her password, she only types eight characters, one being an N and one being the space bar, neither of which are found in VALLEYFORGE. This goof appears to have been fixed in the DVD release.
  
  
• Continuity: After ascertaining that the time was almost 3:00, as stated by the clerk from reading Gate's watch, the scene shortly after, where Howe's associates are chasing Chase and Riley and those two split up and Chase goes into the deli area, the wall clock (just before Chase jumps over the counter) shows the time as 2:37.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In the shot outside of the Franklin Institute, when they boy is retrieving the clues for Riley, a SEPTA bus passes by. The bus is the '108 Airport' bus. SEPTA route 108 runs no where near the Franklin Institute. It is a mostly suburban route.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Riley and Abigail are in the café talking to Ben, a bus is seen with "Crosstown" spelled out as its route. There are no buses in Manhattan that only say Crosstown. The bus would have a number before the route designation, which would show the street it travels on and its destination.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ian's gang is seeking access to the Archives by entering the utility tunnel in the street beneath their van, one man with two hooks and a chain easily lifts the utility grate from the street by himself. The grate also is shown to be very thin gage metal and sounds it as it is removed. Any utility grates and castings placed in traffic are normally very heavy so as to be structurally sound under traffic loads. There would be no way for a man to easily lift such a grate in the manner he did, nor would such a light duty grate be placed in traffic.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben and Abigail were handling the Declaration of Independence at Ben's father house they wore gloves to not damage the document. After they retrieved the colored lens glasses from the brick, they simply unrolled the Declaration with their bare hands.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben hands Abigail the champagne glass, she holds it near the bottom. When Ben is in the bathroom testing her fingerprints, the prints are near the top of the glass.
  
  
• Continuity: When the lunch wagon driven by Ian's gang crashes into a barricade, the windshield cracks. In later scenes, the windshield is NOT cracked.
  
  
• Factual errors: The device used to scramble the radio signal of the earpiece in Ben Gates ear on the Intrepid is not a radio jammer but a laser radar. They do not interfere with radio signals because if it did the police would not be able to use them.
  
  
• Factual errors: The movie's depiction of the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom (where the Declaration of Independence is displayed at the National Archives) has several inaccuracies, including: the brightness of the room (the room is kept dark to help preserve the documents); the location of the security guards (the movie depicts one standing to the left of the Declaration, whereas they are posted to the left and right side of the Constitution); the absence of two signs identifying the people in the Barry Faulkner murals on the walls; the absence of holes in the walls where some actual security sensors are stored; the race of the security guards (most of the security staff at the National Archives are African-American, yet the movie depicts all of them as white, which is possible but not probable); and the size of the rooms adjacent to the Rotunda.
  
  
• Continuity: After Ben and Riley leave the National Archives, they are next seen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial continuing their conversation. The Lincoln Memorial is at least 2 miles from the National Archives, and at least 1 mile from any subway station. It seems very unlikely that they would have had no substantial conversation on the long walk.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the Charlotte, when Ben smears blood on the pipe stem and rolls the images onto the paper, they are printed in "positive," as if the symbols had been carved as raised bumps on the pipe, like a linoleum or wood cut. It would have been almost impossible for someone to have carved symbols that small on the circumference of such a small pipe stem in this relief style. Besides that, Ben refers to the carving as an "engraving," which is a gouging-in, or intaglio style of carving: a much easier and more common way to have carved something of this sort. The resulting rolled image would have been a solid field background with the symbols showing as dropped out, or clean paper in the field.
  
  
• Errors in geography: On the deck of the aircraft carrier, when Ben jumps into the water and is whisked away by personal submarine, he leaves Shaw and Powell behind on the ship. It looks as though Ben goes straight across the river, so it would have been impossible for Shaw and Powell to be waiting for him, dry, with a car, when he emerges from the water on the other side of the Hudson River in New Jersey.
  
  
• Factual errors: On Charlotte when Ben Gates finds the clue and inside it a clay pipe: It is amazing how any of those are not frozen solid as the ship has been under ice for so long (and everything else in the ship seems to be frozen).. The most recognized error is the pieces of string that are very flexible. While being frozen they should be very fragile. Also the pip shouldn't brake off to two whole pieces like that in the movie.
  
  

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