Vin Diesel agreed to make a cameo appearance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) in exchange for the rights to the "Riddick" franchise from Universal Pictures. This allowed him to produce this film independently.

Production on the film was in jeopardy of shutting down when there was a delay in financing. Vin Diesel funded the film himself until the bank loan came through.

When Riddick steps into the identifier for the emergency beacon, the stats on him read: "Richard B. Riddick. Escaped convict. Murderer." This is how he introduced himself to the character of Paris in Pitch Black (2000).

Vin Diesel wanted the movie to be shot on 35mm film, but due to the film's low budget paired with a large number of visual effect shots, the movie had to be shot digitally. As a compromise, David Twohy added a subtle film grain effect throughout the film.

Vin Diesel's original vision was to have The Chronicles of Riddick become like J.R.R Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Pitch Black (2000) was to serve like "The Hobbit," to be a stand-alone film to establish the universe, and to have a trilogy of Riddick serving like Lord of the Rings.

Continuity

When Riddick is trying to get past the creature to the other side of the planet, the water in front of the stairs is deep enough that two of the creatures (one very large) can be fully submerged in it. However, when he runs back with the dog, it is shallow enough that he can slide across it without trouble.

When Riddick is about to push over the obelisk, to create a hiding place so he can sleep, there are a few rocks in the hole he will hide in. In the next shot, as the obelisk is falling, the hole is empty. He wouldn't have had time to clear out the hole as the obelisk was falling.

Before and after Dahl punches Santana, the characteristics of her T shirt change.



Factual errors

A character claims to track Riddick using some device that has detected human pheromones. Since Riddick has been established to be Furian, he wouldn't have human pheromones. Furians have not been established to be non-human.

This takes place 10 years after the events in the first film, but the actor playing Johns' father seems to be about 40- way too young to be William Johns' dad.

At 55:16 Dahl, Katee Sackhoff, makes 1,500m shot on one of the dog creatures. The scope on the rifle swings out of the way to cycle the bolt. No rifle with a movable scope will make a shot beyond 100m let alone 1,500m... A future smart rifle with a target memory scope in a different universe can do that.

Tranquilizer rounds, by design, would have to be lighter than real bullets. This is so they don't over penetrate, and thus potentially kill, their target. That limits their range and their stability. A long distance tranquilizer round makes no sense as it presumes that a round with enough heft to travel in a relatively straight line to its target would still not puncture the target with enough impact energy to create a bullet wound. You can't have it both ways. You can if you are using a future smart rifle in a different universe.

In the opening sequence a pterodactyl-type creature (with a ferocious beak/bite) pecks at Riddick's fingers. However, after 5(?) bites, the fingers are undamaged.



Revealing mistakes

We're lead to believe the power nodes for the two ships are different, both by dialog and in physical appearance. When Riddick spies on Vargas using Dahl's mirror, the nodes in the rack indicates that Vargas is on the wrong ship.

When Riddick first grabs the tooth/claw at his chest you can see it is not solid.

When Dahl readies her pistol, a Springfield XD Tactical, the chambered indicator is flush with the ejection port, indicating there is no round in the chamber.



Plot holes

Despite having spacecraft with sensors, no one ever suggest that they overfly the area and discover Riddick using those sensors. There's nothing presented in the narrative that suggest that this is not possible.

Thousands of mud demons appear whit the monsoon passing on the planet referred to as "Not-Furya". This planet is pictured as a nearly uninhabitable planet and we see little other life. Therefore the number of predators vastly outnumbers the number of potential prey on this planet. Under these circumstances such numbers of predators would not be able to survive. Who knows what they eat? Possibly monsoon-generated mud.



Character error

Riddick "forgets" the exact number of stars which surrounded M-344/G, the planet on which he crashed with John's during the initial film in the trilogy, Pitch Black. He tells Boss it two stars, when the film clearly showed that it had three,

Dahl shoots 1500 meters with a tracking bullet and misses the dog. Then she is able to shoot over 1500 meters and hit a running dog. The chances of her hitting a running dog at over 1500 meters are slim to none. It would have been more believable if she had waited for the dog to stop again rather than shooting at a running dog that far away. She didn't want to wait. She was chagrined at missing the first shot and redeemed herself by making the more difficult running shot.