Best crime movie mistakes of all time

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Enola Holmes picture

Factual error: The old percussion double barrel shotgun is firing modern shotgun shells, which would never work or fit in that gun, and furthermore are also made of plastic, wrong for the era.

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The Outsider picture

Factual error: At the point where Jared Leto is released from prison he is picked up in a 1960 Black Chrysler Imperial. As the camera rises it shows the date as 1954. The car is used a few more times in the movie.

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CHIPS picture

Other mistake: Near the start of the movie Jon indicates that he has titanium in his right arm, but towards the end of the movie the bullet ricochets off his left arm. (00:08:55 - 01:34:45)

mld172

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The Dark Knight picture

Factual error: After escaping the hospital, Harvey Dent wears the same charred suit he was wearing when he was brought to the hospital. That suit would not have been neatly taken off and left intact. It would have been cut off with shears so as not to accidentally remove any damaged skin and flesh when pulling the pants and shirt off. The blazer might still be intact but certainly not the pants and shirt.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Wild Things picture

Plot hole: Suzie pulls out some of her teeth with a pair of heavy pliers. This would leave conspicuous tool marks on the teeth that would be visible to the naked eye, let alone under forensic examination. The conclusion would be that Suzie is missing, not dead, and the whole plot would unravel from there.

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The Informant! picture

Factual error: The movie takes place during the 1990s, but throughout the movie cars are shown with Illinois license plates with "Illinois" written in cursive. These plates were not introduced until 2001. (00:24:45)

illiniman14

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Dial M for Murder picture

Continuity mistake: Before Tony leaves he closes the drapes. He then says he won't go out and will stay home. She says to go out, and he agrees, so he goes to the drapes and closes them again.

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Fast & Furious 8 picture

Revealing mistake: On the ice the tank is firing - in slow motion we see empty shells are littering the area. The shells have crimped ends, revealing them to be blanks.

Steven moffat

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The Transporter picture

Continuity mistake: When surrounded by police and a garbage truck, Frank drives his car from the overpass onto the passing transport trailer below, then lands behind a hatchback and in front of two cars - a white compact with a sunroof and a grey hatchback. In one specific shot from atop the trailer, as Frank rolls his window down (before he requests the gun) the only vehicle behind Frank's car is the white compact, which is at the trailer's rear. Note things such as the trailer's safety bars, and the view through the compact's windshield for starters. That grey hatchback is back when the ramp is lowered, for the ensuing crashes. (00:08:20)

Super Grover

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Jigsaw picture

Plot hole: Spoilers. It's revealed that the barn game takes place at an old farmhouse owned by the family of Jill Tuck - Jigsaw's widow. It's public knowledge that she was married to Jigsaw and that buildings they owned served as the headquarters of several past traps, so the barn should have been investigated at some point in the meantime. Ten years have passed. It makes no sense that the barn was never investigated and that the bodies of the barn victims were never discovered.

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Suggested correction: The game was unknown to police even 10 years after John died. Now they've found all his other games and his multiple lairs. There would be no need to continue the search.

Ssiscool

Hogwash. They would have definitely searched known properties associated with Kramer and his family.

I agree. In the second Saw movie, the police discover that John Kramer is Jigsaw. With this knowledge, not only would the police be able to freeze his assets but, they would be able to look into his financial records and look into any properties he owns like houses, warehouses, etc. Since the cops now have a face and a name, it's a very big plot hole why they never searched his home or any other places. If they had, more traps would have been found and confiscated.

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Miss Congeniality picture

Revealing mistake: Gracie hugs the Russian waitress in order to have a better view of the disc hand-off appear on the monitor. As she raises her left hand that holds the book/camera lens, we see that the digital feed that appears on the monitor stays steady and level, even though she is raising the book/camera lens higher and closer to her face. Obviously the feed that we see on the monitor is not taken from the book/camera lens. (00:04:10)

Super Grover

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The Untouchables picture

Continuity mistake: When Eliot Ness is at Jim Malone's house for the first time, Malone's collar is opened, then buttoned, then open again.

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Training Day picture

Continuity mistake: Towards the end, Denzel drives his car into 2 cars trying to get Ethan off the hood. After that scene ends you see Denzel driving the same car and the front and rear of the car look nothing like they did when he was crashing into the cars.

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Panic Room picture

Factual error: After the intruders flood the panic room with propane, Jody Foster's character gets a lighter and ignites the propane causing it to burn along the ceiling. This would be impossible as propane is heavier than air and would sink to the floor rather than rise up to the ceiling. Lighting a flame in that room should have caused anyone in the room and on the floor to be engulfed in flames almost instantly.

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Presumed Innocent picture

Plot hole: They found seminal fluid left in Caroline Polhemus. Why didn't they subject it to DNA testing, which would have been a powerful indicator of Sabich's guilt? Fertility (or otherwise) has nothing to do with it - as well as non-motile sperm (which contain DNA anyway) the seminal fluid would contain discarded skin and blood calls in abundance. DNA testing was first used in a criminal case in 1985 and was in fairly common use by 1988.

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Menace II Society picture

Visible crew/equipment: In the beginning, when O-Dog is taking the woman back to get the tape, look up at the mirror above the coolers, and you will see the camera crew clearly following them.

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Spider-Man 2 picture

Plot hole: Harry tells Doc Ock that in order to find Spider-Man he must find Peter first. Doc Ock finds Peter with Mary Jane in the cafe and throws a car through the window straight at them, then later throws Peter against a brick wall. Any normal person would've been killed instantly (or very badly injured), and Doc Ock doesn't yet know that Peter is Spider-Man. Given that Peter is his only lead on Spider-Man, it makes no sense that Doc Ock would try to kill him.

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Suggested correction: Doc Ock is being controlled by the arms. They aren't behaving rationally.

Creating a series of silly explanations for obvious plot holes never resolves them. These arms were not behaving irrationally. In many scenes they were shown to be very intelligent. A good example is the scene where they attack doctors who try to remove them from Doc Ock's body. Saying that they weren't behaving rationally is absurd.

He may not have been trying to kill Peter, he could've been trying to make more of a scene of his entry, so Peter would take him more seriously and tell him where Spider-Man was. He could've been thinking of it as a risk of killing Peter though, but his arms made him go crazy.

This is only a theory. Theories never resolve mistakes.

It's not a theory. When Otto is first giving his demonstration to everybody at his apartment, a woman asks if the advanced AI for the tentacles would make him susceptible to being controlled. Otto says that yes it would so he shows everybody the inhibitor chip that he designed so he would not fall under its control. After the inhibitor chip gets destroyed, it's seen that the tentacles have not only taken control of his mind by forcing him to commit crimes, but have slowly driven him insane.

This scene is much too confusing for many people. This entry is correct. This is a mistake.

If these tentacles wanted him to finish the experiment then they wouldn't make him kill the person who has valuable information for him.

The arms are influencing his thoughts but not controlling every part of him. Doc Ock still seems to have control when defending himself but they seem to work in tandem with Ock. The only time they work on their own is when he under anesthetic. As we don't see him before he throws the car, we can only speculate the arms were trying to hurt Peter by themselves.

Lummie

It's a cool scene regardless man.

Rob245

Killing Peter would probably send a message to Spider-Man as well, so Ock probably wasn't concerned about being gentle.

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Bad Boys picture Bad Boys mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the two female characters enter the fancy hotel room, they make a point to say they will only be there for a couple of minutes. It is daylight when they go in. The visit is cut short (the one that's supposed to be a few minutes long) because of a gun battle in which one of the women dies and the other escapes. The escaped one gets out through the roof into an evening's sky. There's still light visible, but for a visit that lasts all of 4 minutes, it's far too quick a change. (00:23:00)

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Shooter picture

Factual error: When Swagger is fleeing from the police in the car wash after being shot, the radio says that he is at a car wash at 9th and Girard. There is no such intersection. On Girard Ave, 9th street picks up south and north of that street.

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