Director Michael Bay didn't like the script and often engaged Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in discussions about how the dialogue and scenes could improve. He often allowed them to improvise while the camera were rolling. He secretly told Will to call Lawrence a bitch before the car-scene. The whole "two bitches in the sea" was improvised, as was Martin's comment when T?a Leoni called him gay.

The two leads were originally intended for Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes.

Directorial debut of Michael Bay.

The opening scene where Mike and Marcus are held up by two carjackers was shot in Los Angeles weeks after principal photography had been completed. Columbia and Michael Bay wanted a better, more comedic introduction to the two lead characters than what was in the original film.

The scene in the convenience store, wherein the clerk puts a gun to Burnett and Lowrey's heads and yells, telling them to "Freeze, mother bitches!", is also improvised. They came up with: "No, you freeze, bitch! Now back up, put the gun down and get me a pack of Tropical Fruit Bubbalicious". "And some Skittles."

Continuity

The same computer screen shot of the location of the speeding car is shown twice when tracking the cellular phone call.

Marcus' wife complains that he is not wearing his wedding ring, even though he is. It suddenly disappears, after which he retrieves it from his pocket.

One of the goons in the hangar is shot down by Mike Lowrey. Later, before the hangar explodes, you can see him running out of the hangar.

At the Biltmore Hotel when Julie and Max arrive the sun is out, but when they are chasing Julie on the roof, it is already night.

When Marcus and Mike are at Club Hell, Mike is at the bar while Marcus is being attacked in the restroom. The foot of the dancer that Mike is watching changes as the scene cuts back and forth. The shoe and toe nail polish is different.



Factual errors

Ether burns with a blue flame, not an orange-coloured one.

In a car chase scene Mike is throwing ether-barrels from a truck. After that he fires at the barrels and they explode. In real life nothing would happen if you shoot at an ether-barrel because a bullet fired on metal wouldn't cause sparks.

A "cutting agent" for drugs can never be "highly volatile" because that means it would evaporate quickly and possibly even create a smell, defeating the purpose of diluting the drugs and increasing profit. They possibly meant "solvent". Then again, there is no need to treat high-grade, white free-base heroin with solvent just to cut it. What you do is just mix in any white powder that hopefully won't kill your customers outright and have generally similar physical properties. If such a substance caused problems due to humidity, the correct adjective would be 'hygroscopic'.

During the fight scene in Club Hell, Marcus is thrown into an aquarium. Normally the glass of the aquarium would cause several lacerations in his face and his hands.

Mike and Marcus are Narcotics Detectives with Miami PD there is no way they should be at any homicide investigations Narc and Homicide are two different units within a PD being the murder scene at the beginning involving Mikes friend where they both are present and investigating.



Revealing mistakes

When Marcus is fighting two thugs trying to kill him in Club Hell, one of them picks him up and slams him into an aquarium. The glass of the aquarium shatters before his body makes impact.

When the Mike throws the ether out of the car and makes it explode, a cable can be seen attached to the roof.

A standard, 55-gallon oil drum weighs about 19 kilos empty. Ether has a lower density than water, but 55 gallons of ether still weigh over 142 kilos. The barrels tossed out of the van by Lowrey obviously weighed a lot less than 320 pounds, so they must have been empty.

When the crooks are breaking into the police evidence locker, they freeze and shatter the padlock, which lets both ends of the chain fall into the locker. In the same sequence, however, hands grasp both ends of the chain and pull it out through the bars as if there were two lengths of chain simply dangling into the locker and attached to the padlock. At the same time, chunks of the "steel" bars break off from the impact of the bolt cutters and the dragging of the chains revealing the bars are made of wood.

When the car on the bridge is caught in the ethanol explosion, part of it comes crashing back down. A rigging cable attached to it is clearly visible in silhouette against the flames.



Miscellaneous

In the beginning scene, Markus complains about the Porsche having no cup holders or a rear seat. At the end in the chase scene, you can clearly see Julie sitting in the back seat.

At 1h 35m 10s the computer screen appears to show a directory called "PERSONEL" being accessed. All the files appear to be MS-DOS/Windows related system files - not to be found in a normal user-generated file directory.



Crew or equipment visible

When Marcus is driving, Mike remarks that "he's slow enough to drive Miss Daisy"; the shot changes to the driver's side and you can see the camera attached to the driver's door. Only visible in the widescreen release.

In the opening car-jacking sequence, the crew is reflected in the door of the Porsche as it is opened.

At the end of the Porsche and the AC Cobra runway chase, the shadow of the camera can be seen just as the Porsche drives between the concrete blocks.

In the fight sequence at the end of the film, a cameraman can be seen standing with a hand-held camera in the group of kids that are circling the area.

As Marcus and Mike are about to break into the air conditioner contractor's house, the camera's reflection can be seen on the hood of the car in the foreground.



Plot holes

Fouchet has no reason to phone the police after the unnecessary kidnapping of Julie, especially since he does not even make any demands. And as a general rule, no drug dealer ever has a reason to tell the police when exactly his next drug deal will go down.

No reason at all for Fouchet to kidnap Julie after the shootout in the lobby of Lowrie's house - except to keep the plot going and start the chase action sequence. He came to kill the witness and there she was lying on the floor with no cover, him blazing away at any other target but her, with a gun in each hand.



Character error

In the first murder crime scene, Mike and Marcus touch things with no regard for fingerprints and integrity of evidence.

The second time Mike and Marcus go talk to Jojo, Mike pushes Jojo over some tires and puts a gun to his head and cocks the hammer. He then draws on Marcus and cocks the hammer on his back-up weapon. He then pulls Jojo up, points both weapons at him and cocks a third hammer.

When Julie stands up after looking at the computer monitor she dosent quite get 1 of her shoes on correctly and walks off screen like that.

There is no point in handcuffing Julie to the steering wheels of their cars because Fouchet and his men only need to kill Julie because she's a witness, if they were to find her handcuffed to a car, they can just kill her and leave.

Marcus had no reason to lie to his wife about a subpoena. He could've just told her the truth and that he was guarding a witness to a murder, thus rendering the subplot about him pretending to be out of town completely pointless.