Top Gun (1986) - 90 mistakes

Continuity: At the end, a victorious Maverick is hoisted on the shoulders of the guys. As he goes up, he isn't wearing sunglasses. His head goes out of the shot, and when he comes down, he's wearing a pair.

Revealing: When "Charlie" is first introduced to the class, she struts down the aisle in heels. When she follows Maverick into the building, you can briefly see that she is wearing flats to compensate for Maverick's short stature.

Continuity: During the whole elevator scene with Mav and Charlie, her earrings change.

Continuity: The Navy allowed only one live missile shot for the filming of the movie. Maybe that is why we see so many missiles fired from an empty rack.

Continuity: Throughout the film Maverick's plane has the number "114" on it. However, at the end when he is waiting on deck, the number has changed to "104". This is actually Iceman's plane, which has already taken off. When Maverick launches, the number has changed back to "114" again.

Visible crew/equipment: When Goose and Maverick are in the sea after their plane crashes, look carefully, there's a thin black rope latching onto Maverick and the camera crew's boat. Look carefully and you will see it.

Continuity: In the final dog fight scene, Maverick is flying with Merlin as his co-pilot. Merlin's helmet is purple and can be seen many times behind Maverick. In one scene though, the helmet behind Maverick's is orange, which is Sundown's colour.

Revealing: Near the end of the movie, when Maverick's plane is about to be launched, there is a quick closeup of an F14's nose gear, which is quite obviously not hooked up to a catapult or anything else.

Continuity: When Maverick rides his motorcycle up the hill to Charlie's house, the sun is just about to set in the background. He stays at Charlie's a while, they drink some wine, then he leaves. As he is leaving, the sun is still setting in the background.

Other: In the last dogfight, we see four MIGs circling around Iceman, trying to get him down. A few moments after, Maverick gets to the scene, and the same shot is being used.

Continuity: In a scene soon after Cruise's partner dies, when he's flying with his new partner, you can see his call sign on his helmet, but when they get on the ground and he's talking to Cruise, all the letters on his helmet are removed.

Continuity: In the volleyball scene, Maverick can clearly be seen looking at his watch because he has a hot date with Kelly McGillis, however while they are actually playing, it is easily noticeable that he is no longer wearing his watch.

Continuity: In the elevator scene with Maverick and Charlie, Tom Cruise's hair keeps changing.

Continuity: In the final battle scene, which takes place way out over the water, in some of the F-14 shots, mountains can be seen in the background.

Visible crew/equipment: In the sceen after Maverick and Goose were told that they would be going to Top Gun the next scene shows Maverick on the runway riding his motorcycle as planes fly by. If you have your DVD settings on full screen you won't notice this but on wide screen you will. You can see the motorcycle that he is riding is strapped down to a trailer with 2 blue tie-down straps. Also, if you listen and watch closely you can tell that Maverick is not shifting and giving gas to the motorcyle at the right time. The only reason I know this is because I have been riding for over 10 years. If you give a sport-bike like that gas, it goes. He gave gas and it never even moves on the screen. Hard to do when you are strapped down to a trailer.

Factual error: In the last battle. Mav is ordered to launch his alert five. While hooking up to the catapult we see a man holding his left hand flat and placing two fingers sideways into it. That means you are plugging in an external power source. You would not do that during launch.

Continuity: When we are first introduced to Maverick and Goose, their Tomcat crosses the screen, right to left, in close-up, slowly. It's nose is marked 203. Then we see the other Tomcat flying with them, and it is number 114, and its crew is Cougar and Merlin. But all the shots after this place Maverick and Goose in 114.

Factual error: Every time they show a close up of Maverick moving the throttle (going to burner, hitting the brakes, etc...) he is doing it backwards. He pulls back for burner and forward to slow down. In real life, it is just the opposite.

Continuity: In the dogfight where Cougar freaks out, when Maverick and Goose fly upside-down to give the MIG the birdie, the names of each pilot are not only upside down, but they are mirrored too. If you look at the names upside down, you can't read them.

Revealing: In every in-flight cockpit scene a brass hand wheel is visible on the right side of the headbox of the seat. The only time this hand-wheel is installed on the seat is to disconnect the seat from the aircraft and to disarm the seat. Therefore, the plane and actors in those scenes were on the ground with a moving camera because there is no way that an F-14 would be allowed to fly with "dry" seats.

Factual error: This is the most basic mistake of all, but probably only obvious to those who fly in the Navy. Almost every written reference to "TOP GUN" is wrong. TOPGUN is one word, all caps, always has been... Check it out at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) website. http://www.fallon.navy.mil/NSAWC.HTM

Continuity: After the final dogfight, how did the drop tanks get back onto the planes before they landed? They sure weren't there during the dogfight.

Continuity: Before the final dogfight the back wings on Mav's jet say YYY, afterwards they say XXX.

Continuity: When the instructors are out on the flight line discussing Maverick's loss of confidence, in each shot Viper's sunglasses can be seen to alternate between Randolph (square type) and then Ray Ban (aviator style).

Factual error: During the briefing before the final scene, the Captain says, "The Migs carry the Exocet missile. They can fire that missile from a hundred miles away." Yes they could fire the Exocet from a hundred miles away, but the Exocet's maximum range is around 40 miles.

Factual error: The final dogfight scene has a huge error when Hollywood's jet is hit with a missile and he ejects. The next scene shows him manually deploying a small pilot chute to open his main parachute. After seat/man seperation, the main chute automatically deploys depending on altitude and airspeed. He would still be connected to his ejection seat until his chute deploys. Having to manually throw a "pilot chute" to the wind would leave too much for human error.

Continuity: The weapons armament on the F-14's keeps changing from one cut to another.

Continuity: At Charlie's, she and Mav are having dinner and he asks for the wine. Throughout the entire scene the bottle of wine is rotating.

Visible crew/equipment: A boom mic is visible in Viper's office in the top right as Jester and Viper chat following Maverick leaving the room.

Factual error: The training was conducted at Miramar, 5 (or so) miles from the beach. When Charlie confronts Maverick about his flying and he leaves on a motorcycle, he zooms up a hill away from the ocean leaving MCRD (not Miramar) with the Coronado Bay Bridge - and lots of ocean water- in the background.

Factual error: Just as Mav goes into the flat spin, you hear a voice over while looking at the rear of his F-14 (you can see the AB), you hear "Engine 1 is out" and you see the right engine flame out... this is engine 2, engine 1 is the left engine.

Factual error: In the first flying scene where Goose says he has got contact with the enemy on his radar, the display shown is sweeping in a full circle. The AWG-9 radar of the F-14 is mounted to the front of the airplane and can only see side to side not in a circle.

Factual error: In his first flight at Top Gun, Maverick and Jester are seen flying at low level, yet there is a 10,000 foot hard deck, so they must be flying over mountains that height above sea level, in which case the hard deck to be any use would have to be higher.

Factual error: After the final dogfight scene when Maverick and Iceman have landed, we see their two F-14 Tomcats spotted (parked) on the flight deck of the carrier. In the background, you see aircraft already spotted on the fantail (back of the ship) with several blocking the direct path of any aircraft landing on the carrier. While the aircraft directors and blueshirt crews would be fast in moving aircraft, they would not have had the time to spot and tie down all those aircraft on the fantail before Maverick and Iceman had finished parking their jets.

Continuity: The class at Top Gun was made up of the current best pilot/RIO air crews which had not previously attended the school, from various squadrons. At graduation, out of all the pilots in the Navy, including all the pilots from Maverick's squadron still on the carrier (some of which would have already graduated from Top Gun), Maverick, Iceman and Wolfman have to rush back to Maverick's aircraft carrier because they are the only pilots available that can go against the MiGs?

Continuity: In a hostile situation, there is no way on Earth that carrier would only have had two fighters airborne, not to mention two aircrews that were not even part of their squadron.

Audio problem: Reference the dialogue in the hangar where Mav/Goose and Charlie are discussing what was happening when they met the MiG, and Goose says "You know, the finger." In the original 1985 cinema release, Charlie replies "Yes, I know the finger, Lieutenant," but in the video release this has been changed to "Yes, I know the finger, Goose." If you look closely you'll see that her lips don't move when she enunciates the word "Goose," and if you listen carefully you can hear the edit change in the soundtrack between "finger," and "Goose."

Deliberate "mistake": In the shot where the F-14 and F5 canopies are only 3-feet apart, you can see that the writing on the side of MAVs F-14 is backwards. Also, if the F-14 was inverted, with the sun more-or-less above, its cockpit would be in shadow, not with sunlight on the nose, as seen.

Continuity: In the first dogfight, when Cougar freaks out he removes his face mask. When Maverick takes-off again to guide him down the shot shows Cougar and Merlin's plane from the side where Cougar is again wearing his mask. Then it cuts back to a face shot of Cougar and his mask is off again.

Factual error: In nearly every cockpit scene, regardless of fighter airframe, you can see that half or more of the lights on the caution lights panel on the lower right-hand side of the cockpit are lit. These lights are the illuminated names of all the systems that are not currently operating, ergo if the "Engine 1" light is lit, then Engine 1 is not running. If over half of the lights are lit (as in the cockpit scenes) then the pilots must be flying without half of their systems running, including engines, hydraulics, and radar. None of these lights should be on in flight. This makes it obvious that the scenes were shot on the ground using external power.

Continuity: In the scene where the guy tells Cruise "Maverick, you and Goose get your butts into Viper's office now", when the scene is close up on his face, the black guy is on the right, but as soon as it goes back to the regular scene the black guy is on the left.

Factual error: When Top Gun first came out, everybody in our squadron made a big joke of the "Deadly Blue Tubes". This refers to the sidewinder missles that were supposedly launched from the Tomcats. Those who are familier with aircraft weapons, would know that the blue tube is a sidewinder simulator. If you was to launch this from the aircraft, all it could do is drop like a rock.

Factual error: In the scene where Charlie is introduced, she conducts a class in a hangar that would be noisy, hot and badly lit, rather than a classroom, where all other military instruction classes are held. Additionally for some strange reason the aircraft are outside, framed by the hangar door, as if set up for a publicity shot, when the proper place for them is in the hangar, out of the sun, or on the flight line.

Factual error: When the MiGs fire a missile, its not a Exocet, its a AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.

Factual error: Every time one of the F-14 pilots fires a missile, he thumbs the selector switch on the stick to the SP/PH (Sparrow/Phoenix) position, then pulls the trigger. In every case, it's a Sidewinder that leaves the rail, even though it isn't selected, and would not have had time to "home" anyway.

Factual error: When Mav explains to Charlie his dogfight with the MiG-28, Charlie askes him: "You were in a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28?", "Yes Mam" he replies. Imagine the two aircraft. The F-14 was inverted (the back of the F-14 was "looking" at the ground, and it was pulling 4 positive G's), and the MiG-28 was flying horizontally (belly of the MiG-28 was "looking" at the ground) so it should have been pulling 4 negative G's to keep their distance constant, or more to increase it (otherwise they'd have collided). For the MiG to pull 4 negative g's is almost impossible for two reasons: 1) the negative g-limits of the aircraft are somewhere in the area of 3.5, and 2) the Russian pilot's eyes would have popped out of his head at this g-force. Even the most modern and agile fighter aircraft of the world (like the F-16 and the Eurofighter) have a negative g-limit of 3.5 while their positive limit is at 9, mainly due to human body constraints.

Continuity: When Maverick is inverted on top of the MIG, they are flying (almost) level - not in a dive at -4 G.

Continuity: In the scene where Maverick is in Top Gun flying against Jester. In one scene he says he's going to hit the brakes. He hits the brakes and goes up so it look like Jester should fly underneath. In the next shot you can see Jester fly over Maverick.

Factual error: In the final dogfight scene, the Search and Rescue helicopter lands with rescued pilots very soon after the last F-14 lands. The dogfight took place approximately 250 miles away from the ship. The top speed of an H-3 is 120 knots. It should have taken the helo nearly two hours to return to the ship.

Continuity: In the bathroom, Charlie has a tube of lipstick, next cut it's gone.

Continuity: The flight where Goose dies begins over land - where the pilots are chatting. When they see the enemy they are over water. In the next shot they are over mountains and desert again, until they land on the water. That doesn't add up. There are no places in California where the desert goes all the way to the coast with no towns at all.

Deliberate "mistake": In the locker room scene after the final dogfight, Wolfman's helmet is seen hanging in Hollywood's locker. Hollywood's helmet is blue.

Factual error: In the beginning of the movie when Maverick inverts and gets cozy (canopy to canopy) with the MIG pilot and Goose is taking pictures; could never have happened. First off the Tails of the F-14 are nearly 9 feet tall and the canopies are a mere three feet apart, so this would have resulted in a collision. Second the suction of the air between these two airframes even at stall speed of 120 mph would have cause a violent collision.

Continuity: In the final battle scene, Slider sees two MIGs dead ahead and Iceman says he will "Take them down the left side." In a front view the two MIGs come towards them, but cut to a side view and the two MIGs pass, suddenly followed by a third.

Continuity: Take notice of everyone's hands during the action sequences. No one is wearing gloves. As standard issue for military pilots, the gloves are made of Nomex and provide protection from fire and allow for a better grip when things get a little hot and heavy.

Continuity: Before the final dogfight, Hollywood's and Iceman's F-14's are tracking the MiG-28's (F-5's) on radar. The shot changes to the camera being in front of and filming an F-14 from ahead. Iceman says "Voodoo1 Voodoo1". At that point, you can see a MiG-28 right behind Iceman's Tomcat, but they are supposed to be miles ahead of them.

Factual error: The helicopter on an aircraft carrier is usually one of the first aircrafts airborne during flight ops. The helicopter should have been airborne already when they call to launch the rescue helicopter when Iceman was shot down.

Factual error: In the opening dogfight, Cougar says "I'm gonna break high and right, see if he's really alone". When Cougar breaks he is only armed with 2 sidewinders and 2 sparrows. Any F-14 on patrol would at least have 4 sparrows under the fuselage, but most likely would have the pallets and 4 phoenix missiles.

Continuity: In the scene where Kelly McGillis hands Tom Cruise the note saying "meet me at my house 5:30 sharp" or something like that, if you look carefully you can see when she hands Cruise the note that there is a lot of print on the sheet, but when he looks at it in a close up the sheet is totally white blank except for her writing.

Factual error: No part of the Indian Ocean could be described as 'enemy territory' for US ships in 1986.

Other: When Maverick is doing the fly-by at the end of the movie, you can notice the crew watching for the F-14's to fly by the carrier. It's obvious the fly-by was set up, otherwise the crew wouldn't be waiting to watch them fly by.

Continuity: In the scene at the beginning of the movie when the Admiral walks into to flight control room on the aircraft carrier and asks "Who's up there. Great Maverick and Goose"; he is only wearing pilot wings on his uniform. As the scene progresses when Maverick and Cougar tangle with the Migs, the admiral is in the control room and his uniform changes to being completely decorated.

Continuity: When Goose dies, "Sundown" acts as Mav's RIO.  On the plane his helmet has a Sun with rays, and walking on the runaway it does not.

Factual error: US Flight suits certainly have their share of insignia on them, including name, rank, unit and sometimes others. Often aircraft type, school and hours awards are also worn, but they don't look as much like NASCAR fire suits as the movie makes out. Even so, all extraneous insignia are removed when operating in a combat zone. They're attached with velcro for this purpose.

Factual error: At the end Maverick throws Goose's dogtags off the ship. American soldiers wear two dog tags. When killed, one tag goes to administration for paperwork purposes and the other is given to the family (if any). Goose's personal effects should have had only one tag and been mailed home to his wife, NOT given to Maverick. It is not military policy to let a deceased soldier's friends pick through his stuff after he dies, as we see Maverick do.

Factual error: After Mitchell drops out of TOPGUN, Viper tells him: "That isn't something the State Department tells dependents when the battle happens on the wrong side of some line." The State Department does not notify military dependents of the death of a service member. The Defense Department does. Goose got it right when he joked in the cockpit after being nailed by Jester.

Factual error: Although it doesn't occur in the land-based tower at Miramar during Mitchell's first high-speed pass (thankfully), when he repeats the pass at the carrier, the camera work tries to make it look like the jet rocks the tower. US supercarriers displace over 80,000 tons, and are not pushed around even by 30,000 pounds of thrust flying nearby.

Factual error: Cougar would not have a photo of his wife and kids in the cockpit as seen in the opening scene, as it would fly around when maneuvering. It could also obscure instruments and before he took off each day he would need to put this photo in place, as pilots don't have their own private planes.

Continuity: In the scene where Maverick and Slider are studying and Charlie slips Maverick the piece of paper with her address on it, Slider changes seats. First he is at one end of the table near the wall, then at the end of the scene he, and all of his stuff, is at the opposite end of the table.

Continuity: When Iceman confronts Maverick about covering Cougar, Iceman is shown putting his watch on as Maverick is walking up the stairs. In the next frame, when he is standing next to Maverick, he is shown putting it on again.

Continuity: While Maverick is dogfighting Viper in Top Gun school he is in a F-14, and Viper is in A-4. Viper gets on Maverick's back, but in one scene you see the A-4 flies through the view before the F-14, although he should be behind him...

Continuity: In the first dogfight there are several shots where the planes are very close to the ground - especially one flying over a flat desert where you can see the planes' shadows. In those shots they are definitely below 10,000 feet. However it is only later said that they are going below the hard deck.

Factual error: After the graduation at Top Gun, the next scene shown is an aircraft carrier and the caption "24 hours later." To allow pilots time to overcome the effects of jet lag, they are grounded one day for every three times zones they crossed. Maverick wouldn't even have been on the flight schedule within 24 hours of having left California.

Deliberate "mistake": At the beginning of the movie, during the first encounter with the Migs, Goose whips out a Polaroid camera and takes a picture of the Mig while inverted. There is no chance that the other plane would be visible in the photo. Goose used a flash bulb. The glass of the canopy would reflect the majority of that flash right back at the camera. The only thing that would appear in the photo would be a big white flash of light.

Factual error: The aircraft the American pilots are fighting against are described as being "MiGs", but they are American F-5 jets, called tigers, which the USAF is still using for the training of young pilots.

Factual error: The implausibility of holding class in a hangar instead of a classroom has already been mentioned. But how about the desk just inside of the hangar doors, complete with blotter, "in" and "out" baskets and other accessories?

Continuity: The night before graduation, Maverick is parked on his bike at the runway. An incoming jet is seen, with gear and hook down. But in the next shot the jet just keeps flying. And it's not a test landing and take-off. It's two different planes mixed.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, the squadron commander enters CATTC with a chest full of ribbons, next shot, all ribbons are gone.  There is no smoking in CATTC (for the equipment) and the radar in CATTC cannot be used to monitor air combat movement as they did in the film.  The Combat Centre or CIC is used for that.

Continuity: In the last dogfight, Ice says "two MiGs passing between us."  It then shows the two passing between either Ice or Maverick and a single tail jet.  The Grumman f-14 Tomcat is a twin tail.

Factual error: In describing the first encounter with the MiG, Maverick tells Charlie he saw a MiG do a negative 4G dive. However, in that scene, the two planes are flying straight and level - neither one climbs or dives at any time.

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.