The easter egg roll scene was filmed on Mount Vernon, with the White House added in the background. [Everything has to be filmed somewhere - there is nothing notable about one location pretending to be another.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
Great sites
Quotes
Mitch Wilkinson: We both know what has to happen here, Ben.
Ben Gates: One of us keeps the door open and stays behind.
Riley Poole: I vote Mitch!
Mistakes
In the scene where the barrels of beer are rolling off the truck, you can notice small squibs going off to make the barrels look like they have been shot. See more...
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) - 32 corrections
starring Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel, Helen Mirren, Jon Voight, Nicolas Cage (add more)
Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Mystery, Thriller
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
The easter egg roll scene was filmed on Mount Vernon, with the White House added in the background. [Everything has to be filmed somewhere - there is nothing notable about one location pretending to be another.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
The idea that Queen Victoria would side with the South because of, as Cage and Kruger say in one scene, cotton and to divide the U.S., has little historic basis. Prime Minister Palmerston thought positively about a break-up of the United States; however, this was never a issue he expressed during the war. On the other hand, with cotton stocks high and overproduction in the British textile industry, cotton had lost its influence on Great Britain during the Civil War. Queen Victoria siding with the South is absurd as she was pacifist and wished to keep the country out of any military struggle at the time. British help to the South would have required just such a military action. [An opinion on what a person would or should do is not a mistake. The whole premise of Victoria's "aid" to the South is that she could not openly state it; the letter and all help she could give had to be done in the utmost secret. Publicly, she would of course present a different and more politically correct view, but she could still harbor secrets and have a different opinion in private.]
Corrected by Twotall
How could the diary in 1865 have a code word saying Laboulaye Lady - when the first model of the Statue of Liberty was not made until 5 years later? The movie said Laboulaye was to hide clues later, but in 1865 no one knew he was going to construct a 'Lady'. [The movie mentions that he had the *idea* for the lady, not that the statues were built. It's likely he was commissioned to build the statues to include the clues by the time the diary was written. It takes the artist time to plan and build a sculpture of those scales, while probably working on other pieces at the same time, so having the idea come to completion five years later is not unusual.]
During the scene where Ben Gates' father is stopped by the police in the boat, the side of the police boat says Maryland police, yet they are in Virginia. [Mount Vernon is on the bank of the Potomac. The border between Virginia and Maryland is actually right there on the bank, thus it would be the jurisdiction of Maryland police. More specifically the Charles County, Maryland police.]
In the water wheel scene toward the end of the movie, Cage says they must go down because the chamber would be filled with water if there was no place for the water to drain. They stop the flow of water using the first water wheel and enter into the chamber containing the City of Gold. When the water breaks through the walls of the first chamber, it begins filling the lower chamber because the final escape door is closed. The only way to open this door is for someone to turn the second water wheel and hold the door open. Thus, with no place for water to drain out of the City of Gold chamber (other than for someone to hold the second water wheel in place), both the lower and the upper chamber would fill with water. [Not sure where the mistake is here. The wall to the first chamber bursts, probably due to water pressure, in which case the water wheel doesn't do anything to regulate the water. If the walls held, the second chamber would fill both chambers up, so no mistake there. Either way, the group would drown if not able to leave the flooded chambers via the water wheel's opening.]
In the scene when everyone is moving the wheel so to close the (gates which would eventually stop the water) there in one scene the lamp is on the wheel which is being turned and in the other scene when a top angle shot of the wheel is taken it is not there. [This is not true the oil lamp does not move it is there in the top view it is just more difficult to see.]
In the end of the movie when Riley walks along the sidewalk there are no cars there. When he backs up in his returned car, he crashes into something. It is highly un-likely that he backed up over the curb. [There's at least one car parked behind (plus another in front) of his car. The car behind him is what he hits.]
When they are in the room that is filling with water, Mitch says that he will go first and if anyone else does, they will stop and go through it all again. However, in the next shot he is holding the door open while everyone else goes through. [Realizing he can't get out (there's no way for him to get any of the others back to hold the wheel for him) Mitch has a change of heart at the end and chooses to save them.]
Nicolas Cage and his friends were viewing a digital photo of their speeding offence pretty much immediately when they had access to a laptop. This is only possible when the image is sent from the camera through transmission. UK speed cameras use old photo reels to prevent fraudlant offences, so there is absolutely no way for them to see the photo. [Digital speed cameras have been in use in UK since at least 2005. Otherwise the Average Speed restrictions would be difficult to enforce.]
Considering that the Olmec civilization was confined to southern Mexico, it would not have been able to construct a gigantic gold city in South Dakota. [It is extremely unlikely, but we cannot assume it was impossible. Who really knows what happened hundreds of years ago, or what the ancient cultures were capable of? With their primitive technology they were able to construct massive pyramids. It would not stretch the imagination to think that they could transport gold through (what was then) the wilderness of ancient America to start a new society.]
Near the end, inside the treasure chamber before the water rushes back in, Dr. Appleton is standing next to the sacrificial platform and runs her finger through a series of Olmec characters and says, "This will give an incredible insight of pre-Columbian history." Among those sets of characters showing, only the first two are heliograph characters. The next two sets of 3 each are all ancient Chinese Seal Script characters. [The messages are in Chinese because it's like the Rosetta Stone, saying something in one language and then saying the exact same thing in a different language.]
Towards the end of the movie, when they are in the City of Gold and they see Ben Gate's parents, Ben yells out, "Helen, we found it" instead of the character's name, Emily. [It doesn't make sense that Ben would call his mother by either name, since he refers to her as "mom." He said "Here, we found it!"]
Gates' ending remarks at the conference referencing the South not only being able to continue the war, but win it with a new financial source, is complete bushwa. Once Lee had surrendered, his men were more than happy to go home to their families. What would the rebels do, buy mercenaries? [If the soldiers getting paid vast amounts of money to continue fighting makes them mercenaries, then yes, the rebels would do precisely that.]
Corrected by Phixius
In the movie, it says the famous Spanish explorer, Cabaza de Vaca shipwrecked near Florida. This is false because Cabaza de Vaca's ship actually crashed near Galveston, Texas. [Cabeza de Vaca actually landed in Florida first. He and his crew were at constant odds with the local Native Americans. They built crude rafts in an effort to escape and then shipwrecked near Galveston.]
After the visit to the Oval Office, Riley claims that the information about the "Secret Book" was released in 1966 under the "Freedom Of Information" Act. While it's true Johnson signed the act in 1966, it did not go into effect until the following year. [Character mistake. Even though he appears to know a lot about the subject, it's possible for someone to forget the exact year it all went down.]
In the scene where the cast discovers the underground cave and goes to turn the wheel to stop the water from pouring in, in one shot Ben is holding the flare, then shortly after in another shot, Riley is holding the flare, and shortly after that, the flare is gone completely. [Ben hands the flare to Riley before he is seen turning the wheel. The flare was likely extinguished by the water, or burned out and Riley discarded it. No sense hanging on to a burned out flare.]
In the later part of the chase scene after Buckingham Palace, check out the front passenger-side tire of the SUV Mitch is riding in. Right around the time that the cars are on the bridge, you can see in some frames that sparks are flying from it as if the rim is dragging on the ground. Other times there are no sparks at all. This switches back and forth several times during the chase. [The SUV is driving on the rim, as the tire is flat during all of the scenes on the bridge. The reason you sometimes see sparks, and sometimes not, is that sometimes the bare rim is on pavement, other times, when the wheel is turned the other direction, it is sliding on the rubber that is still on the rim. The tire is completely flat, but has not yet shredded completely off the rim. The behaviour of the vehicle and sparking is consistent with a flat tire of that magnitude.]
When Ben is trying to find the 4 digit code for the Resolute desk in Buckingham Palace, the first code he tries doesn't work. When he tries a different second code, and the first two numbers are the same (1 and 8), yet Ben opens the draws again as if they have not been moved. [He had to close them to reset the mechanism, just like you have to do with any combination lock.]
Corrected by wizard_of_gore
History "genius" Ben Gates incorrectly states the phrase "his name is mud" originated from Dr. Sammuel Mudd, who was convicted and later pardoned in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The phrase has its earliest known recorded instance in 1823, 10 years before Mudd's birth, and is in fact based an obsolete sense of the word 'mud' meaning 'a stupid twaddling fellow'. [While your description of the term "mud" is correct(although based on a quick Google search), Ben's account of the origin of the phrase "His name is Mudd" is absolutely correct.]
When Ben Gates takes the photo of the plank of wood in the President's book, the photo has been taken and stored on his phone previously, as at the bottom of the phone, it says 'View' and 'Options' rather than 'Capture'. [My phone says "options" and "exit" when in camera mode. The photo is taken by pressing the menu button and then says "options" and "back". At no stage does it say "capture"]