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• Movie Goof (factual errors): It is impossible for Dr. Arroway to have graduated from MIT Magna Cum Laude, as MIT gives no such distinctions.
• Movie Goof (incorrectly regarded as a mistake): SPOILER: The opening sequence visualizing the travel of radio waves from Earth takes the viewer zipping outside our solar system, outside our galaxy, and through several other interesting galactic tourist attractions. Visually delightful, to be sure. However, the premise of the story is that the broadcast signal has just completed its round trip from Vega, which is only 25 light years away. Our solar system is more like 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way, so we'd barely get out of the astronomical neighborhood, let alone out of the galaxy. However, one shot in the ride in the pod shows that, when Ellie reaches Vega, some sort of receiver is set up. In the book, it's explained that the race that uses the wormhole transit system also has placed several of these devices that pick up on signals and transmit back to the original source the received signal and the data for constructing the machine.
• SPOILER: Arroway's remark at the end that if humans were the only life in the universe it would "be a terrible waste of space" is a famous quote by author Carl Sagan.
• The long shot of Ellie as a child running up the stairs to get medicine for her father starts off on the stairs and rounds a corner, down the hall, into the bathroom and out of the medicine cabinet mirror a shot that is practically impossible. The shot was actually filmed as a normal shot would have been and then flipped and placed in the mirror which, at the time of shooting was a blue screen placement in the cabinet.