When Nick is in the airport on his way to meet Tanner Bolt, he sees a photo display publicizing his wife's disappearance. The display also features Amy's basic physical characteristics - height, hair color, and eye color. It lists her eye color as brown, but Amy has grey/green eyes throughout the film.
The toll free tip number set up by Amy's parents is shown onscreen many times, and even stated in dialogue as "1-855-4-AMY-TIPS." Yet, when Amy goes to the www.findamazingamy.com website about halfway through the movie, the phone number listed in huge print is not the same, there it is "1-800-FIND-AMY".
When Margo comes over to Nick's house, she locks the front door deadbolt behind her. When she leaves, the deadbolt is unlocked.
When Nick speaks during the wake, his shirt collar repeatedly shifts over and under his jacket collar between shots.
When Nick is being prepped for the TV interview by Tanner Bolt, he has candy thrown at him. One lands on his open neck collar, but disappears in the next cut to Nick, and then reappears seconds later.
When Amy buys the car off Craigslist, the old owner would have transferred the title & kept the old license plate, otherwise he would still be the owner legally. A title transfer to her would turn up easily in a police search.
The crime scene investigators use luminol in the kitchen. This is a chemical used in forensics to cause trace amounts of blood to luminesce even after it has been cleaned. DNA is destroyed by alcohol based luminol, but not by hydrogen peroxide based luminol. Presumably, the luminol used in this case was hydrogen peroxide based.
Nick and Amy have been in Missouri for at least a year and a half at the time the film is set, but Nick's car still has New York plates. There is nothing to suggest Amy and Nick took permanent residence in Missouri. They moved to be near Nick's terminally ill mother, and there is no mention of permanency. All their major possessions and utilities were in Amy's name, and the house was rented. The Bar was owned by Amy, but the state does not require business owner/operators to be permanent residents.
When detectives are first brought in the house and inspect the office, Detective Boney is shown rifling through folders on the desk, one folder is clearly labeled NC natural gas. Also, the police station says North Carolina; inside the station when, Detective Boney is reading the diary and his partner leaves, as well as when Nick and Margo are released with Tanner.
The sign in the police station says 'North Carthage', the name of the Missouri town where the film takes place.
The sign in the police station says 'North Carthage', the name of the Missouri town where the film takes place.
The news crawl during the Sharon Schieber show is sometimes not correctly synchronized: the film will cut away from the program for several seconds, and the news crawl is (sometimes) in exactly the same place when it returns.
As Nick enters "The Bar", the clock shows 5.50. Customers are inside being served. It is supposedly 11am.
In a flashback to 2010, Nick Dunne is shown playing Battlefield 3 (2011), which was released a year later.
Nick pulls some Dreyer's ice cream out of the freezer. Dreyer's is not sold under that name in Missouri, where the movie is based. In Missouri, it is marketed as Edy's ice cream.
Where detective Boney pulls up to the investigation at night and meets Noelle Hawthorne in the driveway, Boney is holding a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup in her hand. There are no Dunkin Donuts within 50 miles of Carthage (North Carthage), where the movie takes place.
Clover milk is not available in Missouri (nor New York).
Every time they go to or come back from St. Louis, they cross the Mississippi River bridge, which leads to Illinois. So they essentially leave Missouri, drive through Illinois and then come back into Missouri again at some point.
When Nick is playing the board game "Game of Life" with Margo, he lands on the marriage block and adds the wife peg to his car. He then hands off to Margo for her turn, neglecting that in the rules for the game one makes another "honeymoon" spin immediately after getting married.
In Amy's diploma for Harvard University, it says underneath her name, "In witness whereof, by authority duty committed to us, we have hereunder placed out names and the seals of Harvard University and of Radcilffe College and so fourth." "Radcilffe" should be Radcliffe.