Goofs for
The Mothman Prophecies (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• Errors in geography: An obvious Pittsburgh landmark (the Masonic Temple, home of the Pitt Alumni Association) appears in the background of scenes supposedly set in Washington, DC, and Chicago.
  
  
• Errors in geography: John passes a sign for Maine Avenue as he leaves Washington, driving from Memorial Bridge to Interstate 95. Maine Ave is in the opposite direction and there are no signs for Maine Avenue on any of the roads he could have taken to get to I95.
  
  
• Continuity: As the characters are standing outside the police station, four of the extras (one of whom is a teacher called Mrs. Mickola, as it happens) walks past in the background twice from the same direction.
  
  

• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When John Klein rips the telephone from the wall and throws it, we hear the sound of a telephone with a bell hitting the floor, yet the phone is a modern digital cordless phone.
  
  
• Errors in geography: During the Christmas tree lighting festivities, the door of the fire truck reads "Saxonburg" (a town near Kittanning in Pennsylvania where the scene was filmed) not Point Pleasant (where it is set).
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene with the Washington Post reporter, John says that the doctors operated on her temporal lobe for the cancer, but the x-ray showed the tumor in the frontal lobe.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mary is examined for the brain tumor, we see how her head is placed into the head coil of a MR (Magnetic Resonance) scanner. However, when we see her being placed into the scanner itself, she is being placed into a CT (Computed Tomography) scanner. Those type of scanners does not use coils.
  
  
• Errors in geography: On Klein's drive from Point Pleasant to Chicago, a glimpse of an exit sign for "New Kensington" can be seen. There is no "New Kensington" between West Virginia and Illinois, but there is one near Pittsburgh, where the movie was filmed.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end, a title card announces that the cause of the Silver Bridge collapse has never been determined. In reality, the reason for the disaster was determined after several years of detective work: metal fatigue in one of the eyebar chains that held up the bridge, caused by a hairline fracture. When the real Silver Bridge collapsed, the towers fell as well as the span. In the movie, the towers remain standing.
  
  
• Factual errors: After the bridge collapse, the firefighter says that 36 people died in the disaster. 46 people actually died in the collapse.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: In the scene of the Silver Bridge collapse, you can see close-ups of the car windshields and the people inside the cars. If you notice the inspection sticker in the windshield, it is a Pennsylvania inspection sticker instead of a West Virginia, where the movie is based.
  
  
• Continuity: When Klein is looking at his wife's drawings right after she dies, he stops at a dark drawing. When he looks up, we can see in the long shot that he is on a different page.
  
  
• Continuity: When John is driving on the freeway we see the lights of headlights on his face, but other shots of the car show no cars coming towards him.
  
  
• Factual errors: When John consults the supernatural expert/book author Albert Leek in the library, Leek refers to other times Mothmen have been sited before big disasters. He mentions the Galveston Texas hurricane of "1969" when (at least the famous hurricane that hit that town) it happened in 1900. About 6000 people died.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When John finds Gordon lying on the ground, he reaches out and gently closes his eyelids. But right as he lowers his hand downward to do this, you see Gordon close his eyes on his own.
  
  
• Errors in geography: John Klein warns Governor Russ McCallum "of Virginia" about the impending disaster at the chemical plant "on the Ohio River". The story takes place in West Virginia and Virginia is not located on the Ohio River. The Extended Version DVD makes the same mistake (assuming that West Virginia is western Virginia) by stating that the movie is "based on true events that shook a small Virginia town" on the case cover.
  
  
• Continuity: John says that Mary had surgery to remove the tumor. However, the next time we see her, her head is not shaved like it should be if she had brain surgery.
  
  

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