Goofs

After the roof of the bus is riddled with bullet-holes the action cuts to a side on view of the apes advancing. In this shot the bus is unscathed.

On the Golden Gate Bridge, Caesar stands on the roof of a Nissan Maxima and raises his hand and roars as he stops the Apes advance. In the next shot, Caesar is seen from the rear and the car is a Volkswagen Jetta.

When they first took Caesar to the redwood forest, the California license plate registration sticker for their Jeep had an expiration of June 2010. Later when they show the grown Caesar the building complex where he was born, the registration sticker is still June 2010, despite this scene taking place five years later.

License plate: 7T23678 is used on multiple vehicles throughout movie.

The bus on the Golden Gate Bridge is shown in various different positions despite not being moved.

Leaving Gen-Sys, many of the apes smash through plate glass exterior windows as high as five stories up. Even attempting to smash through one of these windows would badly injure any primate, let alone falling down up to five stories from there onto concrete.

When Dodge Landon drags the cattle prod across the cage, we see a shower of sparks. However, if you drag a real electric cattle prod across a metal surface, you will only see blue arcing, no different than the blue arcing between the prongs.

Buck's nostrils are rounded yet a gorilla's nostrils are covered by a small amount of skin folded along the area.

Will says Bright Eyes solved a four-disc Lucas' Tower in 20 moves, and that the perfect score would be 15. He is right about the perfect score (((2^n)-1) for n discs), but any solution must be an even number of steps different from a perfect score, and 20-15 is 5, not an even number.

The experimental drugs in the movie were ALZ-112 and ALZ-113. The "ALZ" prefix was in reference to what the drug was designed to treat, Alzheimer's Disease. In the pharmaceutical industry, however, drugs in development are named with a prefix that is an abbreviation for the company developing it. Since the company's name was Gen-Sys, a drug name of "GNS-112" would be plausible.

None of the great ape species typically use brachiation (swinging by the arms to move from tree to tree) for locomotion like the apes in the movie are frequently seen doing. Instead, they will first descend to the ground from one tree before moving to another tree to climb up it. These aren't regular apes; these are extremely intelligent apes who are in a hurry. Of course they would choose the fastest way to travel, regardless of what their less intelligent counterparts would do.

After the Golden Gate fight scene, all the police cars are shut up, smashed and on fire. Will gets in one that was right in the middle of the mayhem, yet it is unscratched. - There's no guarantee that everything would sustain damage despite how unlikely it would be.

When the apes are crossing the bridge, it is covered in fog. However, by the time they are at the top of the redwoods, there is no fog on the bridge. - Fog conditions on the bridge are constantly changing especially in the several minutes (real time not screen time) between the scenes.

The type of respirator used during the initial test of ALZ-113 requires a snug fit to the face to prevent outside air from leaking in. The character of Franklin has a thick beard, which would have broken this seal, rendering the respirator ineffective.

When the apes make their escape, it is supposed to be at dawn, but the footage was clearly shot with the sun in the west, at sunset.

When Charles sits in the Mustang and puts it in drive, then reverse then drive again. He gets pulled out of the car, but he never switches the gear into neutral.

The movie places Muir Woods in the Marin Headlands, just to the north of the Golden Gate Bridge. In reality, they are about 5 miles to the NW of that location and the bridge is not visible because of the hills and trees in between. Additionally, the Marin Headlands are mostly wind swept grass and scrub brush and have very few trees, let alone redwood forests.

In the opening shot of the movie you can hear orangutan long calls. That wouldn't happen in Africa because the only place wild orangutans are found are in the rain forests of Sumatra and Borneo.

When Caesar is taken to a primate shelter in San Bruno, south of San Francisco, at one point he looks through the facility's windows and sees the Golden Gate Bridge. Later he escapes from the shelter and stands on its roof, looking at the lights of downtown San Francisco. Both of these views are impossible because the San Bruno mountains, north of San Bruno, entirely block any sight of San Francisco from there.

When the apes jump on the cable car, they move down a hill where they can see the Golden Gate Bridge behind downtown. In actuality, the bridge is a distance away. There would be nowhere in San Francisco where this shot would be viable.

As the apes reach San Francisco Zoo to free the zoo's captive primates, there's an establishing shot through the trees showing the downtown city skyline, with the top of the Transamerica Pyramid building clearly visible. In reality the San Francisco Zoo is in the extreme south west corner of the city, on the Pacific coast, while downtown San Francisco is in the north east of the city, next to the bay. Not only are all of San Francisco's largest hills directly in between them, blocking any view of downtown from the zoo, they are also over eight miles away from each other. The shot makes it appear that there is only flat terrain between them, and that they're only about a couple of miles apart.

It can't have been a surprise to the staff that Bright Eyes was pregnant. Animals used for medical tests are very closely examined both before and after treatment.

The first time Will takes Caesar to the Redwoods, Caesar extends his hand in to Will, seeking permission to run off into the forest on his own. Caroline explains the gesture to Will as one of supplication, and guides Will's hand across Caesar's in a counter response gesture. At this point in the film, Caesar is three years old. It's never explained why Will has not previously witnessed this behavior from Caesar. Additionally, the supplication gesture and Will's counter gesture are learned behaviors within ape culture. Without other apes from which to learn this behavior, it's unlikely Caesar would have come up with it on his own, nor would he have understood Will's counter gesture.

While at Gen-Sys, the apes deliberately destroy all of the security cameras one by one as they make their way through the building. There is no reason why the apes would even know what security cameras are, much less be able to easily reach and disable all of them on the ceilings in the building.

Rodman is corrected when he refers to the animals as monkeys. It is inconceivable that after years of researching them, he does not know the difference between monkeys and apes, or would use the incorrect term.

Steven Jacobs asserts to Will that if the ALZ-113 drug tested on chimpanzee boosts positive results for the chimp subject then it will have the same positive effect on humans. This is inaccurate; despite the fact that chimpanzees share 99.1% of their DNA with humans, their biology is still far too different to always guarantee the same results for humans. Jacobs' wild assumption also violates the FDA-required Phase III trials that new drugs be tested on groups of humans before final approval and distribution on the market. Reality Ensues as the ALZ-113 drug doesn't really do the same for humans as it did with chimps, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas.

When Will is giving his presentation to the board, he states that ALZ-112 has potential to cure central nervous system diseases, yet the presentation screen behind him flashing names of diseases flashes Muscular Dystrophy which is an intrinsic muscle disease, not a CNS disease.

No respectable scientist working on a drug would recommend starting human trials based on a single chimp showing improvement. And no respectable head of a biotechnology company would even consider presenting the idea to its board, either.