Continuity: While he's on the toilet, Murtaugh is wearing a flak jacket that disappears for one shot while he is getting instructions from the bomb squad leader.

Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Riggs is in the cargo area, a gunman shoots at him, he rolls and starts emptying the clip into him - you see the bullet holes in the gunman. But as Riggs is face to face with the gunman, the holes disappear.

Factual error: In the scene where Riggs drops the container, there were only two buttons on the control. I've never seen a hoist with a drop button, just an up and down and they are pretty slow.

Continuity: Near the end of the car chase you see a shot of the station wagon Riggs and Murtaugh are riding in get held up by a couple of police cars. The hood is popped open. The shot changes to the BMW crashing into the store window and then back to the station wagon. The hood is down.

Continuity: The right headlight of Murtaugh's car, when it is chasing the BMW, falls off when he hits something, but later on it is fine.

Continuity: When Riggs is on the recovery truck, he drops his gun and it lands on the left side of the road, but when Leo picks it up after Roger stops the car, its now on the opposite side of the road.

Visible crew/equipment: When Riggs first starts shadowing Rudd, he cuts off Rudd's car with his truck. They go to the close up shot of Riggs and when he drives away you can see in the reflection of the trucks window, the PANAV on the hood of the Panavision camera.

Factual error: All vehicles sold in the U.S. since the 1950s have federally-mandated laminated windshields. When the surfboard crashes through the windshield of the truck, the windshield shatters like ordinary unlaminated glass.

Continuity: When Rika comes to Riggs' trailer he offers her a chair, and she sits down twice in different camera angles.

Continuity: When Hans first walks into the room with the fishtank, the plastic on the floor flaps up behind him as he walks, ending up folded up on itself without much space between the man and the end of the plastic. When he gets shot and falls back onto it, it's perfectly flat and he's a lot further forward.

Plot hole: During Riggs' last fight with Adolph, Adolph holds the knife in his own hand as Riggs forces him to stab himself very slowly. At any point, Adolph could simply have let the knife fall or just tilt down before that happened. Nothing Riggs is doing is making such impossible. "Locking" his wrist does not prevent him from letting go of the knife. It only prevents him flexing his wrist. And this guy is a trained killer, fighting for his life. Better to battle for control of the knife than just let it kill you.

Revealing: The building used for the South African Consulate is actually a bank. When Roger and Leo are thrown out, the glass front doors are marked with winged logos and consulate lettering that is dark in color, but one door has additional white lettering that says "Open to Serve You, Monday - Thursday 9am-4pm, Friday 9am - 6pm"- rather out of character for a consulate.

Factual error: When Riggs and Murtaugh rappel from the container they have no gloves. Considering how fast they descended 20-30 feet, their hands would have suffered very bad rope burn.

Continuity: When the surfboard crashes into the tow-truck cabin the driver is gone.

Continuity: When the bathroom explodes, from one angle we see the toilet come sailing out over the roof of a police truck parked at the front of the house. While the angles make it a bit tricky to judge, there's a definite leftward trajectory. We then cut to a closeup of Murtaugh's car, and the toilet lands on it as if it was flying to the right. Even if the angles are misleading, in the first shot the police truck and other cars are parked to the right of the exploding window. In the shot of Roger's car he's also parked to the right, but without all the cars visible around it which there should be.

Continuity: In the drive-thru scene you can see that the right half of the grill and both right headlights on the wagon are gone. When they pull up at Roger's in the scene where Leo gets kidnapped the right headlight is working.

Revealing: When Riggs rolls over the front of the recovery truck, as he goes over and stops, he bounces, because there is a platform out of shot that Riggs lands on, that is removed in the later wide shots.

Continuity: Murtagh states he was 7 floors up, but the room number (612) suggests it's a 6th floor room. When he looks down to see the three men falling, his vantage point is well above 7 floors up.

Plot hole: Roger intercepts Riggs and blocks the path of his truck. After agreeing to a plan, we hear Riggs driving off. But his original path is still blocked and we don't see him pass behind Murtagh, so he must have reversed direction (which seems unlikely since he's continuing his drive to the same destination). But for his truck to have headed the other way, he'd have to turn it around first, but we hear it simply drive off.

Revealing: When the small car is launched into the air, the underside is plainly visible, showing no normal working parts like a suspension or drivetrain. It has a flat pan bottom with a square-tube support structure to make it very light for its flight and to retain it shape. (Director's Cut.)