Top Gun (1986) - 90 mistakes

Factual error: Maverick seems to always be able to fly in his own aircraft with LT Pete Mitchell written on the side, yet on an aircraft carrier, the air base pilots are allocated planes according to serviceability, etc and not because it has their name on it.

Plot hole: In the debrief in Viper's office following Maverick and Goose's first flight at Top Gun (in which they defeat Jester), Viper states that "Commander Heatherly lost sight of you and called no joy." However, during the actual flight scene, you never hear Jester call "no joy." I've always assumed that this part of the scene was accidentally left in the editing room.

Factual error: When Maverick and Goose are launched off the enterprise, the dogfight in which Iceman is in trouble takes place many hundreds of miles out. Despite this Maverick reaches it in "30" seconds. The F14 is fast, but not that fast...

Continuity: In the opening scene, we know Maverick and Goose are flying in the morning because the CAG is greeted with a "Good morning, sir" before he asks who is flying. As the scene plays out, it is certainly taking place during the day. However, by the time Maverick is escorting Cougar back to the ship, the sun is setting - by the time Cougar's plane lands on the ship, it is quite dark. First, it seems highly unlikely that the encounter with the MiGs would have taken that long, and the F-14's certainly wouldn't have been able to stay airborne that long without refuelling - which we never see.

Factual error: When Maverick is riding his bike to get away from Charlie, he comes over a hill. There are no hills near NAS Miramar (Home of Fighttown USA/Top Gun).

Factual error: In the two dog fight sequences, when Maverick uses his speed brakes to "bleed off" air speed to cause the MIGs on his tail to overshoot him, the nose of his Tomcat pitches up and the MIGs pass beneath him. When pilots do this maneuver to evade pursuit by faster aircraft, loss of airspeed results in loss of lift which cause the aircraft to nose down and lose altitude, and the pursuer to pass above them. Closing the speed brakes and applying afterburner then brought the nose back up in a position to fire missiles into the opponent aircraft's exhaust pipe.

Continuity: While in the opening air scene, the names of the pilot and his RIO are backwards.

Factual error: At the beginning when Maverick and Cougar are flying back to the ship and they are sweating running out of fuel before Maverick can talk Cougar down, this would not have been that much of a big deal. The carrier would have launched a tanker and refuelled the planes.  Even if Cougar was too shaken to land on the carrier, with the help of tankers, they could have diverted to a land based runway which is infinitely easier to land at.

Continuity: After the class where they meet Charlie for the first time, and Maverick reveals that he's "the one", he's confronted by Iceman. The Iceman asks him who was watching Cougar, while he was "show boating" with this MiG.  If you watch Iceman you'll see that he puts his watch on twice.

Continuity: In the elevator scene Kelly McGillis's hair is a different colour (I think a shade of red) than earlier or later in the film. Apparently this scene was filmed months after Top Gun filming was complete while McGillis was shooting another film. This explains the baseball cap and ponytail.