Rocky IV (1985) - 21 mistakes

Continuity: When Apollo is getting ready to fight the Russian boxer, he comes out with white boxing gloves on. Sometime during the announcement of the fighters, the camera shows Rocky and Apollo standing in Apollo's corner. Apollo is jumping up and down while pointing with an ungloved and untaped hand, He is saying "I want you". The next time they show Apollo, he has his gloves on again.

Continuity: When Rocky and Apollo are talking before Apollo fights Drago, in one shot, Apollo has no gloves on and in the next he does. While he may have been able to slip them on in between shots, he would have had to put them on in front of a boxing official and there was not one in the room.

Factual error: In the first fight between Apollo and Drago, towards the end of Round 1 and even into Round 2, Apollo is getting pummeled. Before his eventual knockdown (and death) mid Round 2, we see the referee step in to try and control Drago, and he is violently shoved aside, and the match continues. Anybody knows in real boxing, within seconds the referee would have stopped the match and disqualified the offending boxer, if not already stopping the match minutes or rounds beforehand for one boxer dominating over the other.

Audio problem: When they arrive in Russia and gets out the plane you can see it is blowing in the snow and you can hear the wind. In the next shot it isn't blowing and the snow is falling straight down, but the sound of the wind remains.

Continuity: During round 2 of the Rocky/Drago fight, Drago backed Rocky into a neutral corner. The next shot has them in Rocky's corner, then Rocky cuts Drago from the neutral corner again in the following shot. They couldn't have moved back and forth that quickly.

Continuity: Before the final round, one of the Russian politicians slowly rises from his seat, comes down to the ring (from all the way up in the luxury suites) yells at the trainer, yells at Drago, then is picked up by Drago and thrown into the crowd. Then Drago says some things to him in Russian. In standard boxing, the period between a round is always 60 seconds. That Premier got down to the ring amazingly fast.

Continuity: When Apollo is knocked out during the fight with Drago, he falls to the canvas in slow motion. During the fall his hands are hanging down, but in the next shot, when he lies on the floor after the fall, his hands are in front of his head. In the next shot his arms are down again.

Factual error: During the 2nd round of the fight between Drago and Rocky, after getting tossed to the ground by Drago, Rocky makes his way up and out of the corner and takes a couple of hits to the head and goes right back down to the ground and gets back up. The referee does not start a count on Rocky for being knocked down. Even though this is an exhibition bout, the standing eight count rule should still be in effect in this case. According to professional boxing rules (Safety During the Competition) the standing eight count is "waived in some circumstances." Considering Drago killed Apollo Creed and was killing Rocky up to that point in the bout, the standing eight count should not have been waived.

Continuity: In the scene where Apollo is playing with his dog in his pool while hearing the news of Ivan Drago on television, he has three tennis balls in his hand. In one shot he throws 2 of the tennis balls to the dog, and in the next shot he is seen with 3 balls back in his hands while looking at the television.

Factual error: When Rocky makes his speech after his fight with Drago, he says that it's better that one person fights another instead of a million fighting a million (a US USSR war). The Russian translator misinterprets his speech and says that this is better than a million dollars. You don't have to understand Russian (although I do) to hear the translator says million dollars to confirm this blunder of a mistake.

Continuity: Just before the fight between Drago and Apollo happens and the announcer is about to announce Drago. Just as the announcer starts saying, "And in the red corner,", we can see Drago in his corner, facing and apparently talking to one of his corner men, indicated by Drago shaking his head yes. Not even a split second later or two words further in the introduction, we now see Drago about 8 feet away from his corner men, pacing as if anticipating to be announced.

Continuity: At the end of the second round between Rocky and Drago, Drago has both eyes cut when Rocky throws him to the ground, but he only has one eye cut when he gets to his corner.

Revealing: Take a good look at the lower right corner during the 'Hearts on Fire' training sequence at a barn in Russia. Rocky does a few leaning sit-ups; at that moment the cow in the lower right corner moves backwards. When you look closely you'll see it moves back too quick and anatomically incorrect, thus revealing it's a fake head attached to wheels or something.

Continuity: When Rocky is having his press conference, some newspapers are shown about him losing his title. However if you zoom the picture to them, you can see that the articles of the newspapers are not talking about him outside the headlines, but they are normal political news.

Revealing: During the Apollo/Drago pre-fight festivities James Brown is singing the song "Living in America". At certain times during the song James Brown is too far away from the microphone for his voice to be heard as it sounds. And at certain times his lips aren't even moving when we hear lyrics of the song being sung.

Deliberate "mistake": At the end of the second round when Rocky is holding Drago's arm and punching him, Drago snaps his head back for a punch that completely misses his head and lands on his shoulder.

Continuity: During the first round of Rocky's fight with Drago there is a brief shot of Tony and Paulie looking on. Tony already has blood on his shirt, but being the first round there obviously hasn't been any time between rounds for him to have come in contact with Rocky's blood.

Continuity: When Rocky and his crew arrive in Russia, watch the Mercedes limo that picks them up. In the last shot at the airport as they are getting into the car, it has tinted windows in the back where in the previous views they were clear. This only happens once and the next view of the car when they drive up to the training farm shows the windows are clear and the passengers are visible.

Deliberate "mistake": When Rocky cuts Drago during round two of their fight, the punch actually hits Drago on the chin. His eye would not cut from that impact.

Revealing: As you watch Rocky fight the Russian, watch closely during round three. In a couple of punches, you can see that Drago does not make contact with Rocky, but the sound effects and Rocky's movements indicates that Drago hits him hard.