The Fly

The Fly (1986)

6 corrected entries

(10 votes)

Corrected entry: When Jeff Goldblum tries to fix the flaws in his telepods by transporting a steak through them, we see him place the steak on a white platter before placing it in one of the pods. When the steak gets transported it appears in the other pod on a dark blue coloured platter.

Correction: The plate stays the same, white with brown around the edge. When it's in the telepod, the blue lights reflect off the white plate to give it a bluish tint, that is all.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: Brundle's steak experiment has one major flaw in its planning: he takes care to separate the two cuts of meat by placing them on different coloured plates so he knows which is the control cut and which is the teleported cut, however he then proceeds to cook them both at the same time in the same pan. Being a scientist you'd think he'd know this could quite easily ruin the results of the experiment as whatever changes occurred to the teleported steak could leak out with its juices and contaminate the control.

Correction: It seems clear he only has one pan and he wanted to make sure both steaks were served at the same temperature, as well as let Veronica taste them at the same time. The "juices" had nothing to with the taste, it was the muscle structure he was more concerned about.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: Jeff Goldblum's part in this film actually ends in the shot where he starts dragging Veronica over to the telepods and knocks a lamp over. From there till the end the Brundlefly is done entirely with puppets.

Correction: Not really trivia.

William Bergquist

Corrected entry: In the scene where Jeff Goldblum starts transforming into the Brundlefly, there is a long sequence where his skin and body parts keep falling off and making a huge mess on the floor. After John Getz blows the creature's telepod power cord apart with a shotgun, he collapses onto the floor which is now clean.

Correction: As Brundlefly loses body parts, he also keeps moving backwards, leaving the shed skin and parts behind. He later stops, and throws Ronnie some feet, into the telepod. Stathis then comes up alongside the telepod that Ronnie is in and cuts THAT power cable (not "the creature's"), before collapsing. So the part of the floor where he lies, is a few feet away from where the Brundlefly parts fell.

Twotall

Corrected entry: In the scene where Veronica is interviewing Brundle and turns on the tape recorder, it stops the next minute because the tape ends. When her boss is listening to the tape we can see the tape is at the beginning at that time of the conversation.

Correction: It's common for news reporters to make a copy of something important. With a major, career-defining, news story, trust is a major concern. Especially since the editor is her ex-boyfriend.

Dameon

Corrected entry: After Seth Brundle has gone through his final stage of metamorphosising into the Brundlefly, he throws Ronnie (Geena Davis) into one telepod and then starts to make his way across the lab towards the other one. Watch as he emerges from behind a wooden pillar, there's one shot where a crew member's arm is seen reaching inside the back of the Brundlefly puppet, to move the creature's head. You'll need to slow-mo to see it but it's there. (As per the rules of this site, visible crew members is an acceptable use of slow motion.)

Correction: Slow-mo is not accepted.

Sacha

Factual error: There is no possible method of "fusing" the genetic material of a common housefly (Musca domestica) and a human. The housefly has twelve chromosomes, humans forty six. There is no way to combine the two in order to produce a viable organism. Thirty four of the human chromosomes would have no matching chromosome to "fuse" with, meaning the physical characteristics coded by those genes would not form. The Brundlefly would be missing three quarters of his human body.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: There's no possible way of teleporting physical objects either, but it happens in this movie. This is science fiction. These kinds of "factual errors" are not valid.

Phaneron

The film presents no scientific explanation for "teleportation" but does for "genetic merging." Teleportation is possible in this film's universe, but "genetic merging" is impossible in any universe.

More mistakes in The Fly

Seth Brundle: I think you're making a mistake. I think you really want to talk to me.
Ronnie: Sorry, I have three other interviews to do before this party's over.
Seth Brundle: Yeah, but they're not working on something that'll change the world as we know it.
Ronnie: They say they are.
Seth Brundle: Yeah, but they're lying. I'm not.

More quotes from The Fly

Trivia: The film's director, David Cronenberg, has a cameo in this film as the doctor who helps Ronnie deliver her maggot baby.

More trivia for The Fly

Question: Why exactly does Brundle experience a feeling of euphoria and strength after his teleportation? Why doesn't he turn into the Brundlefly immediately?

Answer: Brundle's just had all of his atoms separated and then joined back together with a massive influx of electrical energy; certainly that would generate some sort of sensation in cells that have never experienced it before. No reason to believe it couldn't manifest as euphoria and strength. As far as the transformation: Brundle's cells have been put back together with fly DNA in them, but with very little actual fly material, initially. It's reasonable to expect that as his cells die off and regenerate in the usual ways, they are replaced not by human ones, but by human/fly hybrids. As this happens, he becomes gradually more fly-like.

Rooster of Doom

More questions & answers from The Fly

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.