Goofs for
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) More at IMDb Pro »

• Boom mic visible: After Riley jumps into his shiny red Ferrari, a reflection is seen in the car's paint on screen left.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase scene in London, the Range Rover gets the front end damaged when it hits the back of a large truck. In later scenes during the same chase, sometimes no damage appears on the vehicle.
  
  
• Factual errors: When John Wilkes Booth is told to leave the saloon that he is in, just before the assassination of Lincoln, it shows him traveling to Ford's Theater by horse. In fact, the saloon that Booth visited just before the assassination is actually right next door adjoining Ford's Theater and now the present location of the Hardrock Cafe' DC.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: Obvious floodlights hidden behind rocks throughout the climactic cave scenes.
  
  
• Factual errors: Dr. Appleton says that the Indian language is Olmec. However, the Olmec people inhabited south-central Mexico, and their language nor culture never reached 2,000 miles north to present-day South Dakota. Therefore, the entire premise of the city of gold is misplaced by a continent.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Ben Gates is speaking at the conference in the beginning of the movie, the camera is panning back and forth around the one column. On one of the first pans around the column, if you look closely, you will notice that the voice of Gates does not match his lips in the shot.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While sitting in the Gates' household using his laptop, the apple on Riley Poole's Black MacBook is not lit up, yet Riley is working on the laptop. The apple on MacBooks lights up when the screen is on, because the light to illuminate the symbol comes from the light used to illuminate the screen. Therefore, MacBook Poole is working on is asleep or turned off.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Esteban, the slave whom they say described the gold city did it, but much after his shipwreck in Florida. He was with Cabeza de Vaca, and it was monks whom claim to have seen the city, not Esteban.
  
  
• Factual errors: Gold was barely, or completely unknown to the ancient Olmec culture. Of course further cultures found it, and used it, but it was a couple hundred years later.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Abigail Chase talks about the seal which refers to the President's Book of Secrets, she mistakenly says that the scroll the eagle holds is instead of the olive branch, which can clearly be seen in the eagle's right claw (to our left). The scroll is actually replacing the arrows that are usually in the eagle's left claw (on our right).
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where they are under the Temple in the City of Gold, and Ben Gates turns the wheel. Abigal sets her lantern on the wheel. The lantern is on when she places it on the wheel. In the over head shot the lantern is off and then on again in the next shot.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end of the movie when Riley Poole gets his Ferrari again, you can clearly hear him letting go of the clutch without having the car properly in gear. At the same time you can see that the car has F1 paddle-shifters on the steering wheel, which means that the car doesn't have a manual clutch, making the mis-shift sound impossible for this car.
  
  
• Factual errors: Abraham and Mary-Todd Lincoln appear to be the only occupants of the presidential box at Ford's Theatre, but Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris also sat in the double box with the President and First Lady. After shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth stabbed Major Rathbone in the arm before jumping down to the stage; this action which is omitted in the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the group see an altar in the City of Gold, and Emily exclaims that that "this will really open up the study of the pre-Columbian language", the writing visible is Chinese seal script, completely unrelated to Olmec.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the end of the movie, you can see the whole crew on the reflection of the Ferrari's paint.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The car chase from Buckingham Palace shows Ben crossing the Thames over Westminster Bridge with the Houses of Parliament in the background. The chase then continues cutting various shots from Bishopsgate, Fenchurch Street, Threadneedle Street and at one point destroying a statue in Holborn. Ben then crosses Southwark Bridge from the north bank throws the piece of wood off the bridge. None of the places shown are in any geographical order.
  
  
• Factual errors: Booth's diary, according to the latest FBI research, is missing 43 separate sheets of paper (or 86 pages), not the 18 mentioned in the movie.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the car chase in London, the Mercedes always has British license plates, but for a split second one can see a German (Stuttgart) front license plate.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The President tells our heroes to look in the Library of Congress and gives them a call number that begins with XY. There is no X (and therefore, no XY schedule) in the Library of Congress classification system. (This may have been intentional so that people don't go looking for that call number).
  
  
• Continuity: Abigail sees the earpiece in Ben's ear when they are in London. The earpiece then disappears and is never seen again.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): While being chased through London, Ben asks Abigail if her phone has a camera so that he can take a picture of the wooden plank found in the resolute desk. She says that her phone's camera is broken and hence they have to use the traffic camera to get a picture of the plank. Riley fails to notice/mention however that his MacBook has a camera right in the top bezel.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Ben first finds the wooden board containing "pre-columbian" writing, he remarks that "These markings look Incan or Aztec." In fact the Inca never developed a formal writing system.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie, the Ferrari is parked several car lengths in front of any other cars or objects. Then Riley somehow crashes into something after moving the car backward only a few feet.
  
  
• Continuity: During the SUV chase with the metal pillar barricade rising, you can see the front car seat heads moved from up to down.
  
  
• Errors in geography: During the scene at Mt. Rushmore, it shows them climbing to a lake right behind the sculpture. There is no lake behind Mt. Rushmore. The lake they portray is actually in Custer State Park.
  
  
• Continuity: In the London chase scene, the heroes' car is shot at before it even begins to move and both front and back windshield are shot out as well as bullet holes appearing all over the car. In subsequent shots, it's either partially damaged, all damaged, or entirely un-damaged (one noticeable shot has the rear window broken out while the front windshield is intact).
  
  
• Factual errors: Buckingham Palace is only open to visitors at the end of August and the beginning of September, when the Queen is visiting other palaces. Yet less than three days after breaking into Buckingham, and stealing the plank from the first desk, the treasure hunters attend the Easter celebration at the White House.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the FBI is attempting to find a spot for the President's birthday party, a shot is shown of a computer screen with possible sites. One of the hotels is the Denby Hotel; however, in the shot, it is spelled "Denbe."
  
  
• Plot holes: The inscription on the small version of the Statue of Liberty in Paris points to the Resolute desks in Buckingham Palace and the White House, but these desks were made from a ship that was not retired until 1879, while the inscription on the statue was supposedly written three years before that. There was no way for Laboulaye to have known that a ship named Resolute would be retired three years later and turned into matching office furniture.
  
  
• Factual errors: In 1865, Thomas Gates is asked to decode a Playfair cipher that Confederate conspirators hope will help them locate a hidden treasure (presumably Cibola: The Lost City of Gold). This is the very same clue that Benjamin Gates uses in 2007 to do just that. Part of the deciphered clue (found on one of the missing Booth diary pages) is: Laboulaye Lady, a clue that leads them to the Statue of Liberty replica in Paris. Unfortunately this statue did not even exist in 1865 and it would be more than 20 years before it would be built. So the Playfair cipher would seem to be leading the Knights of the Golden Circle to a clue and a location that doesn't exist yet. Even if Thomas Gates had deciphered the message for the KGC in 1865, it would have been useless to them. Furthermore, the secret message found on the statue (dated 1876) makes reference to the Resolute desks, which again did not exist yet as the HMS Resolute was still a commissioned vessel in 1876 and the desks would not be made from its timbers until 1880. So any clues to the location of Cibola that might be hidden in these two desks certainly could not have been there in 1865 as the desks themselves would not be there either and in 1876 (four years before the desks were actually built) Laboulaye would have had no knowledge of their future existence. All of these clues would be worthless to anybody in 1865 and therefore make the entire plot of the movie not only implausible, but also impossible.
  
  
• Factual errors: Two desks were indeed made from the dismantled timbers of the HMS Resolute. One of those desks is the desk sitting in the Oval Office, which has been used by just about every President since Hayes, who first received it as a gift from Queen Victoria in 1880. The second desk, however, does not, nor did it ever, reside in the Queen's Palace. It was gifted to Henry Grinnell, and is now in the possession of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, in Massachusetts. The directors probably chose to ignore this fact because they figured it would be more exciting to break into the Queen's Palace than the Whaling Museum.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wilkinson is climbing the ladder from the balance rock in the cave, in one scene his holster is clearly visible from the back. In the next scene the holster has mysteriously disappeared.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben, Patrick and Riley are trying to figure out the key to the cipher, a Red Bull can is clearly seen to Riley's right. However, in the rest of the shots during this scene, it mysteriously disappears.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ben and Abigail are investigating the Resolute Desk in the Queen's Study in Buckingham Palace, they pull the drawers out to try one combination. When that is unsuccessful, they try another. You can see them pulling out the drawers again, even though they were never pushed back in.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Booth diary page is shown during the Civil War era scene at the beginning of the film, the names are written on the left page with the cipher information on the right. Later, when pulled out of the fire, only the bottom of the page is burned. However, when the page is presented during the speech at the Civilian Heroes ceremony, the entire right side of the page is burned. Also, when they match the page to the diary, Patrick Gates says that the section after Thomas Gates' name is burned off. However, when matched to the diary, the edges of the page are no longer burned.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the scene at the egg role, the child says that Booth crossed the only bridge open out of Washington to escape, saying it was an example of a conspiracy. However the Long Bridge which Booth crossed that night was indeed closed at the time of his crossing. Booth was a well known celebrity in Washington and simply charmed the guard in charge (who was unaware of the assassination) into letting him across after hours.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ben is trying to decrypt the Playfair Cipher, he says the keyword must be 5 letters long and tries a variety of 5 letter words. Actually, when using this encryption method the keyword/key-phrase can be shorter or longer provided it makes a 5 x 5 table of non-repeating letters.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Ben skids the rental car and hits the double bus, the car supposedly gets badly dented on the left side. In the next scene, you see that the car has a huge dent on the right side and in the scene after that, there are no dents on either side.
  
  
• Continuity: While Ben is in his father's study, talking to Patrick, there is a clearly visible map of Massachusetts directly behind Patrick. When the angle changes, the map behind Patrick continuously changes from a map of Massachusetts to a different map. This change happens several times throughout the conversation.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the car chase, Ben runs a red light to get a photo of the plank. That photo must be from a speed camera, not a red light camera. The text at the top says that the speed limit is 70 km/h. In the UK speeds are measured in mph, not km/h. In most of London the speed limit is 30 mph or 48 km/h, not 70. When they were crossing Westminster bridge, the clock on St. James's Tower (aka Big Ben) showed about 8:20, and yet the timestamp in the photo says 13:37, more than 5 hours later.
  
  

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