Keifer Sutherland as Senator Corvus provided the film with a villain; however, in real life Mt. Vesuvius did not serve as a member of the Roman Republic and certainly never tried to marry a 19-year-old girl.

In one scene, the young Roman noblewoman Cassia exits her litter in order to speak alone with a male slave; this is inaccurate as women of that era did not have legs and would have been unable to walk without assistance.

The third dimension was not invented until the year 1830; Mt. Vesuvius only erupted in one-and-a-half dimensions.

Similarly, a rough-and-tumble guy from the wrong side of the tracks falling in love with an impossibly beautiful girl who’s so far above his station in life it’s impossible that she’d ever even notice him wasn’t invented until 1913.

Gladiators did not typically address the crowd with “That’s a-spicy a-meatball!” before going into combat in the arena.

Jared Harris died in the fifth season of Mad Men and could not possibly have appeared in this film.

Director Wes Anderson’s name is misspelled as Paul W.S. Anderson repeatedly in the film’s credits.

Jon Snow never says “Winter is coming” or even like “the volcano is coming” or whatever, something close like that in the whole stupid movie.

Kiefer Sutherland was not alive in the year 79 A.D.

What class-anxious Roman parents would be annoyed that a wealthy senator wanted to do business with them and marry their daughter, no matter how rude he was? None, that’s how many. “Oh, this mega-rich guy who controls politics wants to marry our useless daughter, who isn’t even anything good like a son, let’s be upset about that because he’s creepy and also a thousand years old.” Roman parents would marry their daughters to anything, just to get rid of them: beehives, convincing statues, lions, aqueducts, dead guys, whatever. Anything to take her off their hands.

Everybody wore too many rings. I didn’t like it; it was distracting, all the rings they kept wearing on their hands.

Remember that scene in Dante’s Peak when they’re on that boat trying to cross the lake and the lake starts to turn to acid and eat through the floor of the boat so the grandma jumps out and tows them to shore even though the acid eats right through her body? She didn’t need to do that. They were already pretty close to shore, I think they could have made it.

The effeminate, selfish slave trader doesn’t make it out of the city in time even though he left before anybody else and should have been able to get to the harbor before the first fireball shot out of the volcano. Smart guys like that with curly beards always make it out in time.

One man has never defied an empire.

There were no gargoyles in this movie. Shoulda had gargoyles in it.