Jim Garrison's glasses appear and disappear several times between shots while he's talking to Senator Long on the plane.
Garrison's pipe appears and disappears between shots when he's watching the crime scene from a fence on Elm Street.
Willie walks into Clay's house with his jacket on, but before being greeted by the butler he bumps into him with his jacket now off.
Liz Garrison's hair during the final trial changes from up to down in different shots.
David Ferrie's "confession" in Fountainbleu Hotel never happened. Ferrie went to his death denying any knowledge of Oswald or the plot to kill JFK.
In the film, they state that when Marina first met Oswald she thought he was a native speaker of Russian. This is false. Marina knew that he was not a native Russian. In fact, his foreign identity helped attract Marina to him, as she thought that a foreign man would treat her better than a Russian would.
Jack Ruby did not shout "Oswald!" when he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. He didn't yell anything.
Garrison says, "We have the epileptic seizure around 12:15 PM ... distracting the police, making it easier for the shooters to move into their places. The epileptic later vanished, never checking into the hospital." But the individual in question hardly "vanished"; his name was Jerry Belknap, a man who suffered from fainting spells after being hit by a car several years earlier. He was located by the FBI on May 26, 1964, and to prove his identity, he produced his receipt for the $12.50 he paid for his ambulance ride to Parkland Hospital. He explained that he had left Parkland without registering because he felt better after being given a glass of water and an aspirin. Moments later, the President's motorcade pulled into the hospital's parking lot, and Belknap realized he was not likely to see a doctor anytime soon anyway.
When Garrison is in the airplane with Senator Long, it is implied that he looks out the window at the White House below. No civilian airplanes have been allowed to fly within three miles of the White House since World War II.
Garrison says Oswald was "interrogated for 12 hours and nobody made a record of it". The Warren Report itself states that Oswald's interrogations were not recorded by court reporter or tape recording. The report includes several reports of these interrogations, made after they were over. Most of them were made after Oswald's death.
Garrison's assistant tells him that it "takes a minimum of 2.3 seconds to recycle this thing {the Carcano}." The HSCA concluded that it was possible to fire the rifle within 1.66 seconds using the open iron sights, but it was not formed until 1976, seven years after the Shaw trial. The Warren Report, published in 1964, five years before the Shaw trial, stated that at least 2.3 seconds were required between shots.
Jack Ruby tells Chief Justice Warren, "My life is in danger. If I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing any bit of the truth." In his actual testimony before the Warren Commission Ruby said, "there was no conspiracy."
(In the interrogation document Ruby says: "Gentlemen, my life is in danger here. Not with my guilty plea of execution.
Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this? ")
Garrison claims that Oswald's statements while in custody would be inadmissible in court. Because this assertion in based on a contrary to fact condition, it can never be verified. Neither can the assertion that Oswald's statements made while in custody would be admissible. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled Danny Escobedo's murder confession to be inadmissible, because he made it in police custody after his requests to obtain a lawyer were refused. If Oswald had been tried, if he had chosen not to testify and if the courts held that giving him only brief opportunities to find a lawyer and continuing to question him after his efforts were unsuccessful constituted a denial of his right to counsel, his statements in custody would have been inadmissible.
On the DVD edition, when Jim Garrison and his assistant Lou are in the corner window of the Texas School Book Depository, there is an additional piece discussing more CIA connections. It has been pointed out that, in this scene, they mention "our friend Clay Shaw" although the real name of Clay Bertrand has not yet been discovered. However, "Clay Shaw" is, in fact, already known to Garrison & his crew as an important man and director of the local trade mart (even Garrison's wife knows of him as she states in a scene a few minutes later regarding Mr. Shaw's charity work). It is in this capacity that he is known as "our friend Clay Shaw" who made CIA introductions. What was not known was that the mystery man for whom they were looking, David Ferrie's money-man friend, "Clay Bertrand" & the important, respectable, well-known man about town "Clay Shaw" were one & the same man. This is evident when in almost the very next scene Bill Broussard (Michael Rooker) is shocked when he hears that Bertrand & Shaw are one & the same man and everyone's shock when he announces this news to the investigation group. Though the script is not extraordinarily clear on this point (making it easy to assign this as a continuity goof), it is the connection between these men that is the mystery, not specifically the knowledge of a man named Clay Shaw.
In Garrison's version of the assassination, the rifleman in the Dal-Tex Building rests his rifle on a metal frame. No one experienced with rifles would rest one on a hard object when firing it. If he did, the vibrations of the barrel would make the rifle jump up, throwing the aim point off the target.
The advertising sign on top of the School Book Depository was not removed until 1979.
During a flashback to the scene at Dealey Plaza, just before the assassination, a 1964 Ford Mustang can be seen clearly in the background. That car did not come out until half way through the following year.
When Garrison is in the airplane with Senator Long we see upper hand luggage shelves already fitted with doors. At the time they were plain open.
After hearing of Kennedy's death, Guy Bannister proclaims, "Camelot in smithereens!" No one referred to Kennedy's presidency as Camelot until a week after the assassination, when Life magazine published Theodore H. White's interview with Jacqueline Kennedy, which made the link.
A banner that says "Louisiana: Tax-Free" is part of a late-1980's tourism campaign in Louisiana.
When Jim Garrison and his assistant Lou are in the corner
window of the Texas School Book Depository, Lou's line "...hasn't been used for two hundred years" doesn't sync with the movement of his lips, a mishap director Oliver Stone tried to correct by manufacturing an "echo" effect to lengthen the sound of dialogue.
When Ferrie is arguing in the hotel room with Garrison, his reflection in the nearby mirror seems to be talking when he is not.
In a staff meeting Garrison says "...we're through the looking glass here, people." There is an obvious jump cut in the middle of this line. However this may have been deliberate, as this movie is noted for its editing.
As Oswald is being taken out of the Texas Theater and into the police car, a boom operator in shorts can be seen, as well several other members of the crew in modern dress.
When Ferrie is in the hotel room speaking to Garrison a boom mic can be seen in the mirror.
Jim Garrison tells the jury that Dr. James Humes destroyed the notes he took at the JFK autopsy. He actually burned his first draft of the autopsy report and turned the notes over to his commanding officer. They subsequently disappeared.
Mr. X tells Garrison that the "who" questions aren't important, yet three of his follow up questions, he's literally asking who.
In the trial scene, Garrison does a demonstration of the "magic bullet" theory where he shows Kennedy and Connally seated directly in front of one another and at the same height. In reality, Connally was sitting in a jump seat in the limo. He was further towards the interior of the car than Kennedy and was significantly lower down.
When the judge dismissed the evidence that Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand, because a lawyer wasn't present during the police intake questions, Garrison could have introduced that evidence after Shaw "lied" on the stand saying he never used the alias "Clay Bertrand". He could have admitted the intake form showing that Clay Shaw admitted he used this alias.
Garrison says "Back and to the left" repeatedly. Kennedy's head actually goes forward two inches (indicating a shot from behind) and then back and to the left (which is a reaction to the bullet hitting a strong nerve).