Factual error: In the scene at the beginning of the movie as the 3 youths walk up the street, you can see current MA license plates, although the action should have taken place many years earlier.

Visible crew/equipment: When Sean Penn is picking out headstones, you can see the tracks and the wheels of the dolly for the camera being reflected in the headstone.

Visible crew/equipment: Before we first see the marching band, and Kevin Bacon finds out what his daughter's name is, there is shot looking at him in his car and he drives off screen. As the car goes out of the shot to the left, check out the reflection of the camera man in the rear driver's side window.

Continuity: When Penn is drinking whiskey, he puts the bottle on the table, with no hull, later it has a hull and then it's again with no hull.

Continuity: When Sean Penn is being interrogated by the cops, his coffee mug is yellow in the wall angle, and white in the rest of the shots.

Continuity: In the scene where Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne go to Tim Robbins' house to speak to him about being in the bar on the night of the murder, they all walk down the street together, as Dave is walking his son to school. In one shot, following the men from behind, it shows them walking past a red brick building, then a blue cape cod style building. When they are about halfway past this blue building, it cuts to a shot taken from in front of them (showing their faces), in which we can see them walking past the red brick building and then the blue building again.

Factual error: In the first scene the boys are playing street hockey using sticks that have plastic blades made with holes in them for better aerodynamics. These blades were not available in the mid-70's. We know this scene is taking place in the mid-70's because Dave tells his son he was in high school from 1978-82. The scene takes place when Dave is 11, too young to have been in high school.

Continuity: When Boyle is interrogated by the cops, the pencil in front of him swaps from being parallel to him to slightly skewed between shots.