Goofs

When Cecilia is looking at a family tree diagram on a wall in Mikael's cabin, the camera focuses on two paper sheets containing photos, Post-It notes and name labels about Cecilia and Harriet. When it zooms out, the photos, sticky notes and labels are arranged in a very different way.

When Lisbeth is checking Mikael's email in the beginning of the movie, the incoming emails are all dated "2/1/06" (thus indicating either January or February depending on date setting), whereas the next scene takes place either on Christmas Eve or shortly after.

When Lisbeth searches Hans-Erik Wennerström on Google, the search results list a Wikipedia article first that lists Hans-Erik Wennerström's birthday as "May 29, 1952." When Lisbeth clicks through to Wennerström's Wikipedia page, it lists his birthday as "12 June, 1951."

Time of year keeps changing all the time. Look at trees: Green leaves, colourful leaves and no leaves in random order.

The season of the year seems to change almost from scene to another, switching between winter, summer, autumn and spring. The film begins definitely during winter; there is even snow when Blomkvist arrives to Vangers house the first time. As Blomkvist does not spend a whole year in his investigations, this isn't possible.

For example at 1:26:00 when Lisbeth drives her motorcycle, the leaves of the trees are clearly green, it's summer or late spring. In the very next shot where Blomkvist parks his car, the leaves are turning to autumn colors, but at 1:35.50 the trees have no leaves at all.

When Mikael tries to call from his cellphone and can't get a network signal he gets the "Number not found" tone. To get that signal you need to have a connection to the mobile network.

On Wennerström's Wikipedia entry, all the "blue links" are external links (denoted by an icon at the end of each link). That amount of external links in the body of an article in Wikipedia would be considered spamming and is forbidden. External links in Wikipedia (when deemed reliable and pertinent enough) normally go to a section at the very end of the article.

When Lisbeth and Mikael are outside his cottage discussing the murders, Lisbeth states the victims' names were Biblical and mentioned in the Old Testament. She included the Virgin Mary as one such name. The Virgin Mary is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The Virgin Mary is only mentioned in the New Testament.

Frode tells Mikael (as if he would not know it) that it has been coldest winter in 20 years. Sea is not frozen, there is very little snow, and you can see wet snow coming down from fully clouded sky: Temperature is obviously close to zero Celsius. Besides, this happens right before or after New Year, when coldest time of year is just beginning at this part of world.

Toward the end of the movie, Salander travels to Switzerland using a fake Norwegian identity. She is shown using a Norwegian passport at immigration in Zurich airport. However - Sweden, Switzerland and Norway are all part of the Schengen Area. Salander would not be subject to passport control on the Swiss border if her inbound flight originated in Sweden or Norway. However, passport control at Switzerland's airports of travelers coming from other Schengen countries were discontinued only in March 2009, so if movie is set to take place in 2005-2006, passport check would have taken place just as shown on the movie.

When Blomkvist is reviewing Inspector Morrell's notes from the accident, he highlights what he considers to be interesting facts. One of them is about Inspector Morrell interviewing the family, however, "interview" is misspelled "interveiws". However, many people cannot spell properly, and such mistakes are commonplace.

Henrik Vanger's question about Harriet Vanger that sets off the main events of the movie is not answered by any of these events, if only to introduce Lisbeth Salander to reveal much to the end of the movie, that Harriet lives under the name of her dead sister in London. This implies that about 70 percent of the film is a big plot hole, for it has nothing to do with the plot about what happened to Harriet.

This is not a plot hole. The Harriet case is what starts the investigation, along the way it is discovered that it is a much larger case.

When Salander is searching crime records she is entering SQL queries, but the result does not match her query. The query specified last names starting with the letter "L" but the result included names that did not start with "L".

When Lisbeth Googles Wennerström she finds a Wikipedia entry on him. Apart from the first few lines, the content of it is placeholder text.

When Mikael Blomkvist arrives at Hedestad for the second time, he takes a taxi to the the small house. It's snowing very hard, but you can see lots of car tracks in front of the house.

Earlier comment says Henrik is Harriet's grandfather when in fact he is her uncle.

When Lisbeth arrives at a meeting with a motorcycle and removes the helmet, her hair is Mohawk Punk Style which is almost impossible.

The action in the movie takes place in Sweden, but almost all of dialogue is in English. The movie makers have gone to great pain throughout to translate documents, notes, emails, newspaper reports etc. into English. However, on the wall where Mikael's pins his research material, some of the newspapers are clearly in Swedish. At one point, he picks up a news clip with the headline "Gottfried Vanger påtraffad drunknad" (Gottfried Vanger found drowned) which is inconsistent with the rest of the movie.

When Lisbeth returns to her apartment towards the end of the film, the lights are already on, particularly the desk lamp.

Sweden had left side driving until 3rd September 1967. The cars/drivers on the bridge in "1966" seem to have adopted right hand side driving about a year early.

The story takes place in about 2005-06. Mikael and Lisbeth are using Macbook Pros with older versions of OS X, which correspond with the time. However, the Macbook Pros with black separated keys were not introduced until 2008.

The camera Lisbeth uses in the film is a Sony NEX-3, a model that would have been made after the story takes place.

The photographs of the parade were supposedly taken in the 1960s from a balcony with a handheld film camera, yet they look like still frames from a modern fixed-position HD camera. Each image has identical framing, focus, and exposure, and they were taken in rapid succession. Motorized camera drives were not invented until the 1970s and a professional photographer shooting a parade from a balcony would not have restricted themselves by using a tripod. Further, since Mikael took the negatives back to his cottage, he would have digitized them there with consumer-grade equipment, which should have resulted in further image degradation and variability. Even if he used digital software to stabilize and regrade them there should have been significantly more variation in each frame, yet the background remains identical in each frame.

When the caretaker is lighting a fire, the reflection in Blomkvist's glasses show a green screen.

When Blomkvist calls the police detective to ask him what Rebecca's last name is, there was no possible way for him to have made a connection to her death and to Harriet's bible verse because he did not know Rebecca's matter of death. He even asks the policeman this very question after he learns Rebecca's last name is Johnson. It's a big stretch for Blomkvist to assume that the R.J. initial had anything to do with Rebecca in the first place.