Artistic License History / Timeless

• The team goes back to Nazi Germany in December 1944, less than a week before Germany's last major offensive in which very cold weather played a key role. Nonetheless, there is no sign of winter anywhere (probably due to California Doubling) nor are any of the characters dressed as though there could be a blizzard in a few days.
• Clyde Barrow never used a Thompson submachine gun in his crime spree. His preferred streetsweeper was the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, of which he stole at least a half-dozen from a National Guard armory. In the show, he empties a drum magazine from a Tommy Gun at Ranger Frank Hamer's posse before switching to the BAR.
• The electrical grounding is presented as a solidly known fact for the cause of the Hindenburg crash, when it's actually just one of numerous theories. The actual cause is unknown.
• The idea that Lincoln's death is all that prevented the post-Civil War South from turning into a racial paradise is, to put it charitably, quite naïve. However, in context, Lincoln's death did cause reprisals against the South which affected race relations. Also, his death did slow down the advance of civil rights for African-Americans.
• According to Lucy, the Department of Energy conducted atomic tests near Las Vegas in the early 1960s. That agency was created in 1977. Its existence in 1962 rather than its predecessor the Atomic Energy Commission may be due to a historical change brought about by a previous mission.
• While Judith Campbell was intimate with both President Kennedy and mob boss Giancana, her autobiography states that their relationships were entirely personal and that Giancana did not ask anything about Kennedy. Judith did say in later interviews that she transferred information and money between them, as we see in the show, but both liberals and conservatives have pointed out that this doesn't match with what is known about Kennedy and his staff, and that she is likely an unreliable witness, especially in light of her history of mental health issues and cancer diagnosis.
• Zigzagged with Ian Fleming's appearance: the official record says he went on only a single field mission which was at a different time, but the real truth of wartime espionage naturally remains mysterious - so who's to say there weren't more? He also says he's with MI6, when in reality he was with the Royal Navy's Naval Intelligence Division. His brother Michael Fleming did die in 1940, but he wasn't killed by a V-2 attack; while serving as a captain in the BEF, he was severely wounded and captured during the fighting retreat to Dunkirk, and later died in a POW hospital.
• Katherine Johnson helps the team get back in contact with Apollo 11, when she wasn't actually at mission control that day but at a meeting in the Poconos, watching it on the news like everyone else. Of course, it's possible that the slight changes to history made by Flynn and the Lifeboat team have resulted in her being at mission control instead of at the meeting.
• The series has portrayed the outcome of the Cold War as having been on a razor's edge, with characters speculating that the failure of the moon landing or Von Braun being captured by the Soviet Union could have led to the United States losing the Cold War. In reality, the forty-year standoff of the Cold War was decided on much more than who was currently leading in ballistics technology.^note Leadership in electronics played a much larger role, with the West providing the innovation and the Soviets pirating US, Japanese, and British designs. This was due to Brezhnev's de-emphasis on electronics and computing for ideological reasons. Not until the 1980's did the Soviets attempt to close the gap, and they did have some good computer designs, but the damage had already been done.
• Bonnie and Clyde are shown to be the dashingly handsome and daring bank robbers who are folk heroes. The real pair were unattractive sociopaths who weren't that famous in their own time. Also, rather than go out of their way not to hurt people, the pair had no problem killing innocent people in their robberies.^note When Bonnie and Clyde came out, one newspaper columnist printed a letter from a man whose father was cut in half by Clyde Barrow shooting him with a BAR. Clyde Barrow did try to cultivate a "Robin Hood" image, but he tended to get homicidally violent if anyone stood up to him or didn't comply with his demands fast enough for his liking.
• Subverted with H.H. Holmes as the real man and his "Murder Home" were even worse than what the show has. And unlike in the series, Holmes lived longer to commit more murders and then gain infamy by being America's first well-known serial killer.
• In order to capture Jesse James, who escaped assassination in St. Joseph, Missouri, the team enlists the help of Bass Reeves, a federal marshal for western Arkansas and the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The distance involved precludes the team contacting Reeves in a timely fashion. Additionally, the theory that Reeves was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger (on which The Other Wiki casts doubts — see here), despite never actually being a Texas Ranger, is treated as fact.
• In "Karma Chameleon" Rufus is trying to strike up a conversation with a lady in the bar. He notices Manimal playing on the bar's TV and mentions he's a fan, whereupon she mentions she likes the show too. Leaving aside the probability of Rufus even being aware of a show that was cancelled the month he was born after only 8 episodes^note Rufus mentions he was born in December 1983 and thus would have been conceived sometime in March—hence his concern about travelling to that time period. Manimal is widely regarded as one of the worst TV shows ever and was not released on video until a limited DVD run in 2012. the episode takes place in March 1983. The show didn't even premiere until September 30. They're watching a show that doesn't even exist yet.^note What's even more amusing is that Manimal, like this series, was also an NBC property—part of NBC's disastrous Fall 1983 lineup in which none of the nine new shows that premiered were renewed for a second season. The production staff (if nobody else) should have been aware of this. The lady is also a fan of Flashdance and Staying Alive, both of which came out in 1983... on April 15 and July 15 respectively. (Not to mention the fact that the latter was (and is) nowhere near as popular as the movie it was a sequel.) Not to mention that March 3, 1983 was a Saturday and The A-Team aired first-run on Tuesdays... (and Rufus states the episode they see on TV is "The Beast from the Belly of a Boeing"... which first aired in May. Given that both The A-Team and Timeless were co-produced by Universal, you'd think someone would have noticed).
• Additionally from "Karma Chameleon", the characters are trapped in a hotel bar during a storm so severe that the police have advised everyone to stay off the roads. Weather records for the area in March 1983 show no unusual weather patterns.
• In "Public Enemy #1" after Eliot Ness is killed the team enlists the help of Richard Hart (a/k/a Jimmy Capone), another Treasury agent. Hart was based in Omaha, Nebraska, which is a seven-hour drive from Chicago in a modern car on a modern interstate highway. In a 1930's vehicle at night^note Most cars had a top speed of 40 mph and their headlights were significantly dimmer than those on more modern cars on less-than-optimal roads^note While most cities had paved roads, most rural areas did not the trip should take much longer, and yet the team manages to make the round trip in the space of one evening. This doesn't address the team's ability to get gas for the car without period currency...or why, given the transportation situation in the era, they wouldn't have simply grabbed the next train out. A day train out/night train back (or vice-versa) combination would have been much more believable than betting on driving.
• A minor case is Ernest Hemingway being said to have invented the term "the lost generation" to describe the people who fought in World War I. He popularized the term in his novel The Sun Also Rises, but he actually borrowed it from his friend Gertrude Stein.
  • Which is lampshaded in the episode when Josephine Baker confesses to Lucy she believes Hemingway 'stole it' from Stein.
• The real David Rittenhouse had no son, though he did have two daughters and two stillborn children of unknown gender.
• In "The Darlington 500", the team travels to 1955 to prevent the assassination of the heads of Ford, GM, and Chrysler by a sleeper Rittenhouse agent at the titular race. The head of Ford Motor Company at the time was Henry Ford II, the grandson of Henry Ford—established in "Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde" as a Rittenhouse member himself. Given what we know about the organization, Henry Ford II is also a member of Rittenhouse. The conspiracy is trying to assassinate one of its own members. Additionally, Wendell Scott, the first sanctioned black NASCAR driver, is shown assisting the team. Scott would not race in NASCAR events until 1961. The race is also shown taking place on a dirt track. The actual race took place on a paved track.^note Darlington also holds the distinction of being the world's first true "Superspeedway" with high banking in the turns which allowed cars to build up speed Also, the race was (and still is) called the "Southern 500", not the "Darlington 500".
• In "The Salem Witch Trials", William Stoughton is identified as the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although Stoughton was the chief magistrate in charge of the trials, he was in fact the lieutenant governor. The governor himself, William Phips, is credited with stopping the trials and executions.^note Perhaps not coincidentally, Phips' own wife was among the accused.
• In "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes", the events of the episode result in the death of women's suffrage activist Alice Paul while in police custody. Lucy notes upon their return to 2018 that she was completely erased from history. While Alice Paul's enormous achievements in her 92-year lifetime would not have come to pass (or would have been otherwise accomplished by others), it's important to note that, as of 1919, she was a leading voice in the suffrage movement and had already endured a five-week prison sentence during which Paul and others were beaten and tortured. While Paul may be known to scholars of the movement only in the new timeline, it seems extremely unlikely she would have been forgotten completely. If anything, she would have become even more influential as an Inspirational Martyr for the cause, given the circumstances of her death. Also, the very premise of the episode (that Paul's arrest would stop her delivering a speech for suffrage that would persuade President Wilson to support it) is wrong. Wilson had already come out in favor of it a year before in his State of the Union address, after which his support succeeded in getting it passed through Congress. Her protests had already changed his mind.