Goofs

Prior to the Detectives arriving at Lou's apartment, there is a street view. Note that his red car is facing one direction. After the Detectives leave, Lou looks out the window. His car is now in the opposite direction.

At the end of the final chase scene we see Lou spin the car around to face the overturned cars, as he gets out of the drivers side of the car we see the wing mirror is intact and undamaged. However, after a change of shot and we see Lou walking towards the crash, we see the wing mirror is hanging off in the background.

When Lou goes to the home invasion the street has no parked cars on it but when he leaves the street is full of cars. There is also not enough room for the responding cop car to pass Lou without one of them yielding.

(at around 26 mins) During the interview in the café, the amount of ice in the glass jumps up and down.

Most scrapyards will flat-out refuse chain link fence scrap. It messes up the machinery they use to compact and bundle the scrap. Since it doesn't yield much weight for its size, and its material is of low value to begin with, most (all) scrapyards will expressly forbid it. (Stolen or not). Also manhole covers are almost impossible to sell or else they'd all be missing. One slip up there and a junkyard can lose their license and they wont risk that for 20lbs of scrap.

After Louis calls in the suspects in the restaurant, the police scanner can be heard identifying the situation as a "code 3." Based on the codes Louis researched toward the beginning of the movie, and listed on his computer screen, a code 3 is an "emergency call, lights and siren." When the officers arrive, they do so absent lights and siren, which would have been a code 2/HIGH based on Louis' research, which was listed as a "priority call, no lights or siren."

However, it is possible that the team was dispatched with sirens (to shorten the time delay) but cut them prior to arriving on site (so as not to raise suspicions).

When Lou tracks down the perpetrators of the home invasion, he uses a resource on the web to run their license plates. While license plate information is not legally available to the general public, the owner's name (but not address) is still available to private investigators - e.g., from www.docusearch.com/california-license-plate-search.html. Lou would have to lie about his reason, pay $39, and still need to track down the owner's address.

No News Director, particularly one at a major market station like Los Angeles, would be at the station at 3am to personally direct the morning news on a regular basis as depicted in this film.

A hungry News Director, like Nina, looking to improve ratings would go the extra mile.

At the home invasion-murder, he puts a hand print on the staircase and the wall just before leaving......this evidence could implicate him in the murders.

Lou's POV tape was on the morning news and he freely told the cops he was there. His handprint is meaningless.

There is no chance a television station would run illegally obtained video of an unsecured crime scene as depicted in this film.

It was not illegal. They paid for it so that they could run it. They even asked the legal department for the okay.

At the 1 hour 21 minute mark in the movie, while the protagonist is editing the Horror House footage, the time watermark in the bottom left hand corner of the video does not change as the video progresses.

All television stations (especially during the day) are on total lock-down as they practice high security measures. Way higher security measures are practiced at night when stations practice even stricter security measures such as very high chain link fences with barbs and concertina wire, password protected entrance gates and doors. It is totally inconceivable that "Lou Bloom" (Jake Gyllenhaal) would be able to just walk off the street and into the station without these serious obstacles and just walk in and through the newsroom without being challenged.

When Lou and Rick are driving to the structure fire, they pass a series of buildings (most visibly an IHOP with its lights off). After they make a sudden left turn, they pass the same series of buildings again (the IHOP is illuminated this time).

Throughout the film, when Lou is editing on his computer, you can see audio bars in the editing software he uses. The audio bars fluctuate randomly and are not acting as real audio levels would, despite the corresponding video in the editing program. The bars even move independently of one another and even when there isn't video in the editing view.

Both the real LA television station (CBS 2) and the fictional station (Channel 6) using the same advertising slogan "Coverage You Can Count On." No station would ever copy the slogan of another, for both legal and marketing reasons.

At 49'28", Louis says "Do you remember that?" then in the reversed shot his mouth and jaw are moving despite being silent and then uttering "Well, do you?".

The camera does a full view around the red car as Lou is chasing the police cars. The V8 exhaust engine sound is heard when the camera is at the front of the car and not the back.

When Lou first approaches the "Horror House" in a closeup shot, a crew member is seen in the background ducking out of frame behind the back of the house.

When Lou gets yelled at by Nina at the TV station, the window on the right side of the screen, behind Lou, reveals two boom mics and several crew members with a camera.

During the car chase near the end of the film, when Lou drifts his car around a corner and the film cuts to a shot of the police car from the front, a camera car with a crane mounted on top (that's focused on Lou's car) can be seen for around a second on the right side of the screen.

The day after Lou first encounters a car accident, the newscast reports the crash as taking place on the 110 freeway. However, Los Angeles residents would easily be able to notice that the crash is actually on the 105 freeway, near LAX.

The paramedics would never transport an immobilized victim on their back with blood coming out of their mouth as it would compromise their airways and breathing.