Best adventure movie factual errors of all time

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The Matrix Reloaded picture The Matrix Reloaded mistake picture

Factual error: In the scene where Neo is shot at by the French guy's henchmen, they shoot with different types of guns. 4 of these are submachine guns which would fire 9mm. Another is a M1928 Thompson would fire .45 APC. Lastly there is a Heckler and Koch G36K which would fire the drastically different 5.56x45mm NATO. When Neo stops the bullets, they are all 9mm Parabellum rounds.

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Aquaman picture

Factual error: Aquaman lifts a submerged submarine towards the surface, which should start to sink again straight after releasing it, as its ballast tanks are still full of water. It shouldn't stay floating like that.

lionhead

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Everest picture

Factual error: On the bus ride in Nepal, they're playing a Hindi song from an Indian movie (Kabhi Khushiyan Kabhi Gham) that was released in 2001. The time frame on the bus is 1996.

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Octopussy picture

Factual error: In the balloon scene, it seems like Q can circle around and land on a spot where he flew past previously. A balloon can only fly in the direction of the wind.

Jacob La Cour

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Dora and the Lost City of Gold picture

Factual error: Dora picks up the solid gold statue - by the size it would weigh in excess of 500 lbs. She then lifts it up and places it back on the mantle above her head. A grown man could not do that, let alone a child. (01:31:06)

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The Martian picture

Factual error: After Watney patches the blow out of one of the HAB's airlocks with plastic sheeting, tie down straps, and duct tape, he pressurizes the HAB and the plastic sheeting pushes out like an inflated balloon. Assuming the plastic and duct tape would hold this is correct, however the plastic would be much more taut given the pressure difference inside and outside.

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Suggested correction: The plastic would certainly be flexing in and out because of the pressure of the wind gusts during the storm. We saw earlier that the gusts of the storms were strong enough to blow a suited explorer off their feet and push them across the surface. Let's say that the HAB is pressurized as much as it can be without blowing out of the plastic, tape, and bungees sealing the airlock. A storm gust would still be able to push the flexible plastic in momentarily, and it would pop back out after the gust passed.

The movie took liberties with the physics of Mars. The gusts on Mars wouldn't be able to blow over a person or a spaceship, let alone push them across the surface, but they needed it for the plot. But using the same physics they then have wedded themselves to, it could then be strong enough to cause the plastic to flap, even though in real life it wouldn't. This is more of a deliberate mistake than a factual error since the writers certainly knew what they did didn't match reality.

Except they didn't 'wed' themselves to their fictional physics. Towards the end of the film NASA tells Watney that a flimsy plastic covering on his ascent vehicle will not be dislodged on acceleration to Martian escape velocity because the atmosphere is too thin to cause any problems. That's cheating in anyone's books.

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True Lies picture

Factual error: The terrorist with the AK47 is unaware of the fact that a Harrier is hovering just outside the window until he slowly turns and see it there. He does a double take when he sees the Harrier just five metres away! A Harrier is an incredibly loud aircraft; you can hear them from three kilometers away. At that range the floor would shake with the noise and he would have been in no doubt whatever that he had been under attack for some time.

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Anaconda picture

Factual error: During the first battle with an Anaconda, the 55-gallon fuel drums lashed to the deck of the riverboat are swept over the side, where they sink to the bottom of the river. This plot device drives the rest of the movie, since the boat must make a dangerous detour through "Anaconda country." There is just one small problem with this: Fuel drums full of diesel fuel or gasoline float on water. The fuel in them makes them buoyant. It would have been a simple matter for someone to get a rope or a boathook and retrieve the fuel drums before they floated away.

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Jurassic Park III picture

Factual error: There is no way a 2001 phone's tiny speaker could be heard a hundred meters away in the belly of a dinosaur or later buried in a mound of dino dung.

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The Matrix picture

Factual error: When Trinity is being arrested, you hear the cops all burst into the room and cock the hammers on their Glocks. The Glock doesn't have an external hammer. To load the weapon, you have to pull the slide back and release it. (00:01:50)

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Mission to Mars picture

Factual error: Gary Sinise looks at a computer screen with a short section (about two full twists) of DNA on it and proclaims that "This DNA looks human." He could have been looking at DNA from any single-celled organism and it would have looked just as human as what he was looking at. All mammals have 90+ percent of their DNA in common, he would have to have sequenced the entire DNA strand (something like 3 billion pairs of nucleotides) to identify it as human, something that would be totally beyond the capacity of anything but a well-equipped genetics lab, something they show no sign of having.

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The Cave picture

Factual error: When they go into the water, they put mouthpieces in, but, a few times, they talk to each other, which is impossible with mouthpieces in.

kh1616

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Suggested correction: Sorry to burst your bubble here but there is scuba equipment which allows for talking whilst using a regulator.

They're not wearing such equipment. In the movie they're just wearing regular mouthpieces.

In the DVD commentary the writers explain that the divers should have been wearing full face masks which allow for communication, but the director changed it for mouthpieces, but kept the talking in. They pointed out this mistake.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull picture

Factual error: In the warehouse scene, the lights and other metal objects are affected by the box's magnetic field. Yet the soldiers easily lift the box into a metal truck to load it and slide it forward. If the box's magnetic field was as strong as suggested, it would have dragged the soldiers forward as it was magnetically attracted to the truck, and it would have taken much more effort for them to slide it onto the truck bed once it was stuck there.

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Gladiator picture

Factual error: When a group of soldiers goes to Maximus' villa to burn it and kill his family, his son points them, saying in Italian "Mamma! I soldati!" ("Mom, the soldiers!") and then "PapĂ !" ("Daddy!"). This is because the young actor (Giorgio Cantarini) is Italian and they didn't translate, for some reason. As a result, he's speaking Italian in a movie in English, where people are supposed to speak Latin, in a province where Italian was never ever spoken. (00:43:07)

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Guns of Navarone picture

Factual error: Miller rigs his booby trap by attaching the wires from the bomb to a pole down which a metal runner slides, so that when the runner touches the wires it completes the circuit and detonates the bomb. The trouble is, the pole is made of steel, and steel is very conductive indeed. Miller attaches the exposed end of the wire to the pole without any insulation or gap. The circuit will actually be completed when Miller attaches the battery, and he and his booby trap will be blown sky high.

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The A-Team picture

Factual error: They are present at Frankfurt, Germany. But with a closer look you see a cathedral at the right side. This cathedral and the central station are located in Cologne, Germany - they are about 220 km apart. (01:04:15)

zehner87

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Matilda picture

Factual error: It is stated that Miss Trunchbull competed in the Olympics in shot put, javelin, and hammer throw. According to her jersey those were the 1972 Olympics. The hammer throw wasn't added as an Olympic event for women until 2000.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl picture

Factual error: During Jack's sliding down the rope scene, it is very noticeable that each one of the English soldiers fire their weapons more than once, which is impossible for that time, knowing that repetition weapons weren't invented until the mid 1800s. (00:20:00)

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Quantum of Solace picture

Factual error: During the boat chase scene, Bond throws a grappling hook/anchor from the old boat he is driving onto the deck of the rubber boat "riding" his. The rubber boat is then violently yanked off of Bond's boat and crashes. This makes no sense. For the rubber boat to be yanked off that way, the other end of the anchor line would have to be tied to something stationary. However, the other end of the line is just lying in Bond's boat. There's even a shot of it sitting there.

Guy

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Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer picture

Factual error: During the opening credits, the show's copyright date is shown in Roman numerals as MCLXIV. In Arabic numbers, that's 1164 - it should have been MCMLXIV for 1964.

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