Day into night - twice during action shots (first at the SOCCENT base, later for Bumblebee's fight with Barricade), the action starts out in broad daylight and, in an implausibly short time, goes to black night.
(at around 51 mins) When Sam is running from Barricade and hits Mikaela who is riding a moped they fall on the ground and the moped is clearly visible laying next to them on the ground. In the next shot they zoom out and the moped is nowhere to be seen.
When the autobots are in vehicle mode, they are all cleanly polished, shiny and brand-new looking. However when they transform into robot mode, their shells (including identifiable parts from the vehicles) are covered in dents and scratches, even in scenes with no combat. This is most noticeable in the first scene with all five autobots together in the alley. When they return to vehicle mode, they are once again cleanly polished.
Mikaela's nail polish appears and disappears.
(at around 1h 30 mins) When "Sector 7" agent Tom Banacheck shows two different ALIEN images to Defense Secretary John Keller he states that one is from the Soccent base attack in Qatar [by Blackout] and the other he explains is an image taken from the Beagle 2 Mars Rover. Both images are shown to have been taken during the day; However, Staff Sergeant Epps (Tyrese) took the thermal image after Blackout had transformed (at night)
Glenn Morshower's character is referred to in the closing credits as 'SOCCENT Sergeant'. However, when we actually see him (in the film's opening scenes), he is clearly a Colonel: he wears the rank insignia of a Colonel, and is referred to as Colonel by his subordinates.
The uniforms worn by Captain Lennox's team have patches on their right shoulders from the 82nd Airborne "All Americans" Division, indicating they served with the 82nd in combat. The "Airborne" tab has been incorrectly replaced with a "Ranger" tab. The "Ranger" tab is worn above the "Airborne" tab on the left shoulder when deployed with the unit and it is not used on the right shoulder.
(at around 43 mins) Although the A-10s shown during the battle with Scorponok appear to carry laser guided bombs, they were never used during the battle.
(at around 25 mins) When Mikaela looks under Bumblebee's hood she mentions that the distributor cap is loose. The engine shown is a Chevrolet V8, either an LS7, or a supercharged 6.2L LS3 , neither of which has a distributor. Both engines use individual coils for ignition in each cylinder. And even if the engine shown were custom modified, there is nowhere to install a distributor.
(at around 1h 7 mins) The movie referred to "high heat sabot rounds" as being the most effective against the robots. However, sabot rounds work strictly through kinetic energy and the heat produced by them is strictly a by-product. In other words, sabot rounds must travel at extremely high velocity to be effective. However, none of the weapons that supposedly used them in the movie would have been capable of producing the necessary velocity. This could also refer to a High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) round, but that is a large shell with a shaped-charge exploding warhead, unlike the solid projectile of a sabot round.
(at around 1h 35 mins) When the Cube is revealed at the secret base, we're told carbon dating has determined it to be on Earth since 10,000 BCE. Carbon dating is in fact accurate to within about 9 half lives of the carbon 14. 9 half lives of carbon 14 (at 5280 years per half-life) gives an accuracy limit of about 50,000 years. 10,000 years BCE is well within the time frame able to be determined by radiometric dating using carbon ratios, and would in fact be the most accurate dating method for something in this time frame.
(at around 4 mins) When the F-22 intercepts the helicopter 4500X the audio pronounces the tail number as "forty five hundred x-ray." Aviation standards require most numbers be pronounced individually and should have been pronounced "four five zero zero x-ray." However, most controllers are more compulsive than pilots about this and pilots would commonly abbreviate this to either "fourty five hundred" or "four five hundred".
(at around 26 mins) When Mikaela leaves Sam after looking at his engine, the passenger door is open. When Sam starts the car, and closes the hood, the passenger door is closed. However, Bumblebee has shown himself able and willing to open and close his doors whenever he wants.
(at around 1h 11 mins) Ironhide complains about his foot rusting after Mojo "leaked lubricants" on him. Yet he crash landed in a pool when coming to earth and said nothing of rust. However, urine is essentially a diluted acid with salts in it, which would be more corrosive to ferrous metals than chlorinated pool water, so it could be that Ironhide's metal skin is rust-resistant but not rust-proof. More likely, however, is that he was grousing and exaggerating in the process, much like real people do; or just that he didn't complain at the time of landing in the swimming pool as there was nobody to complain to.
The relationship between Captain Archibald Witwicky and Sam Witwicky keeps on changing throughout the film. At different points during the movie, Archibald is said to be Sam's great great grandfather, great grandfather, and grandfather. However, he could have just gotten tired of saying "my great-great grandfather, Archibald Witwicky..." He seldom said "great-great" other than in his report.
(at around 1h 50 mins) In the highway scene, right up until the shot when Bonecrusher tackles Optimus Prime, the road they are on is clearly ground level. In the shot immediately after, they are seen tumbling off an elevated highway road, falling onto a lower elevated road. Then they fell off again and finally reached ground level where they continued fighting.
(at around 23 mins) During the first ride that Mikaela takes in Sam's car, both windows are obviously down during their conversation. Yet, neither one has any wind blowing on them. Their hair never moves.
(at around 1h 55 mins) When Ironhide is jumping over Devastator's missiles his shadow is clearly visible but the missiles have no shadow.
(at around 2h) In the city fight scene, a large piece of a building falls onto the left side of the street, yet when a citizen passes by (and probably accidentally kicks it) the piece appears to move as if it weighed nothing.
When the Predator flies over the desert to the fight with Scorponok, there is no shadow of it on the sand, a result of the Predator being CGI. A similar issue occurs when Ironhide comes out of the pool and walks directly over the girl with the tooth, meaning the girl should be wet from the pool water dripping over her off of Ironhide. But she isn't, due to the fact Ironhide is CGI as well.
Megatron crash landed onto earth thousands of years and remained virtually unconscious all of that time. Yet when he regained consciousness he was immediately communicating in English.
At around one hour, when Bumble Bee is first following Sam, he falls from his bike in front of Mikaela and then leaves. Mikaela immediately leaves her friends to follow him on her scooter. Sam spent a good ten minutes in the parking lot before he runs out and stops Mikaela. Considering she was on a motor scooter immediately behind him and the Deceptecon police car, she should have been there much sooner.
When the cell phone is transformed into an evil little robot by the cube, it suddenly has machine guns and a rocket within the vacuum of its little prison. Machine guns and rockets would need some type of propulsion system, like gunpowder or rocket fuel, which could not be created internally.
At 4 minutes and 18 seconds there is just a frame of a hp monitor.
(at around 8 mins) There are Patton tanks at the SOCCENT base, when the tank was retired from U.S. service in the 1990s.
(at around 41 mins) When the soldiers are fighting the Scorponok, one soldier is on the phone trying to call the Pentagon, when he leaves the house searching for a credit card, he yells a lot of things, but his mouth movements does not match what he is saying.
(at around 2h 5 mins) During the battle in the city, Captain Lennox picks up an Aprilia RSV-Mille. Then the soundtrack reveals the high-pitch whine of a high-revving four-cylinder. In actual fact, the Aprilia is a V-Twin which would produce more of a low, thumping, two-cylinder sound.
(at around 41 mins) When Captain Lennox is trying to contact the Pentagon during the fight with the scorpion thing in Qatar. He is on the phone with the operator and when he yells "I'm in the middle of a war-zone, this is frigging ridiculous." The words do not match what he actually says.
(at around 43 mins) When the A-10 uses its 30mm cannon for strafing in the Qatar desert, the sound has absolutely nothing to do with the actual sound of a GAU-8 cannon firing. The real sound is more of a growl, sort of the sound of a vibrating cell phone on a hard surface.
(at around 6 mins) At the air base in the beginning, the sound of the helicopter's blades locking plays before they actually lock.
(at around 12 mins) As Ron drives Sam past the Porsche dealership, the reflection of the camera car filming them is briefly visible on the dealership's windows.
(at around 20 mins) When they go to the lake party a cameraman is visible in Mikaela's boyfriend's truck's mirror.
(at around 48 mins) When Sam is running away from his car on the girl's bike and hits the broken sidewalk you can clearly see his double is the one that actually falls over the front of the bike.
(at around 2h 5 mins) When Megatron and Optimus Prime fall off the building after Optimus saves Sam, they land in front of a car that's just arriving. The car swerves to the left to avoid them. There's a shot from inside the car while it's doing so. During most of this shot, you can see the cameraman in the passenger seat, filming, reflected in the rear-view mirror.
(at around 39 mins) When Capt. Lennox and his team keep walking at the middle east of Qatar, they find a metal structure (probably an antenna). Suddenly, the robot which crawls under the sand breaks the base of that structure, causing the structure to fall down. Two soldiers who are in front of that fallen structure wonder what happened, one among them is a guy with spectacles. At this moment the crew and the equipment are visible in the reflection of the soldier's spectacles (when he says "English dude, English".)
During one scene in Qatar the soldiers pass Shiprock, a natural landmark found in New Mexico.
In the beginning, during the Qatar scenes, you can see mountains in the background. The country of Qatar has no mountains and the highest elevation is 295 feet above sea level. It would also be very unlikely that you would see wooden telephone poles, as we do in the desert scenes ostensibly set in Qatar. Most telephone poles in many middle-eastern countries, more specifically those used away from population centers and in the open desert, would be composed of metal or pre-formed concrete. The main reasons for this being, not only because the extremes of the high heat and low humidity in those climates would dry the wood to the point of breakage very quickly, but also because of the scarcity of logs of the size suitable for that usage.
(at around 45 mins) Maggie Madsen leaves the Pentagon and runs south across the intersection of Wisconsin Ave. and "M" St. NW in Washington DC. The Pentagon however is three miles away via various major highways, too far to travel on foot. Had she come from the Pentagon, she'd have taken a different route that precludes her crossing the intersection in that direction, possibly avoiding it entirely (i.e. by taking K St. NW instead).
(at around 9 mins) Sam says that his great grandfather discovered the Arctic Circle, and in one scene we see the great grandfather on his ship in the Arctic Sea in 1897 surrounded by the freezing sea. In fact the Arctic Circle is only about 67 degrees North, and is perfectly accessible in both summer and winter. There would not be ice on the sea in the summer time anywhere on the Arctic Circle. Moreover, it sounds like the crew's accents indicate that the ship sailed from England, due North trying to access the Arctic Circle in the North Atlantic Ocean. There is no ice at 67 degrees North at any time of year in the Atlantic Ocean, save random icebergs.
(at around 1h 55 mins) Frenzy has his body restored by the AllSpark by merely coming into close proximity of it while it's in its hangar at the dam. The cube is also present when Bumblebee's legs get mangled so why doesn't it heal him the same way?
(at around 1h 50 mins) During the Freeway chase, Decepticons: Bonecrusher and Barricade together are in pursuit of the Autobots. Bonecrusher pulls ahead to battle Prime, tearing up the roadway by dispatching hapless motorists. Barricade, however, disappears and does not reappear nor is he mentioned again for the rest of the film.
(at around 1h 40 mins) Upon arriving at the Hoover dam Starscream destroys a power substation. Reacting to this the engineer informs Banacheck that the MBE hangar has lost power. Logically, however the power system would be contained within the dam's structure preventing an attack like that from happening. The substation would service nearby communities not the dam.
Pentagon calls in air support package Bravo with "I authenticate Tango Whiskey
at time 0300 Zulu". Qatar is three hours ahead of Zulu time, (=UTC, GMT), so it would be 0600 local time and dawn would just be breaking, rather than setting after a daylight chase and battle.
(at around 15 mins) When the camera does a 360 around Bobby Boliva after the windows explode, the boom mic's shadow is clearly visible on his head.
After Anthony Anderson devours the Dunkin' Donuts tray, a boom mic is reflected in the Australian girl's nose ring.
(at around 25 mins) When Mikaela opens Bumblebee's hood and says "...you've got a high-rise double pump carburetor...' when in fact that is a fuel injection setup.
(at around 37 mins) Maggie Madsen says "you need to move past Fourier Transfers and..." She should have said "Fourier Transforms" in this context.
(at around 1h 35 mins) While in NBE1's (Megatron's) chamber, Simmons has a flag patch on his vest that is improperly worn. He has it on the right side of his chest and the union is facing away from his heart. When wearing a flag, the union must be placed nearest the heart and since Simmons has the patch on his right side, it should be a 'reversed field' flag patch that faces his heart, while he wears a 'left' flag on his right side that faces his arm. Typically, when wearing one flag patch, it should be worn on the left side of the body and is recommended that is be worn on the sleeve.
Throughout the film, Qatar is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. DoD employees would know the proper pronunciation stresses the first. CAU-ter is the closest, though English lacks an equivalent to the original Arabic, especially the peninsular dialect.
(at around 1h 30 mins) Agent Banacheck tells Keller about the loss of the "NASA mission Beagle II to Mars" which managed to send back an image of something on the surface before being destroyed. Beagle II was an ESA (European Space Agency) mission, not NASA, was intended to be a lander, not a rover. The images from Mars were based on the Mars Exploration Rover missions (Spirit and Opportunity) which do not resembled the Beagle II spacecraft at all.