True Lies (1994) - 54 mistakes

Revealing: When Helen Tasker pretends to be the hooker, Doris, at the hotel room, she does a striptease and you can see a burn scar on her right hip from a childhood accident. Then it is gone during closeups, as a body double is used.

Revealing: During the hotel scene where Arnold is on the horse chasing the bad guy on the motorcycle, keep your eye on the carpet. As the bike clears a path through the lobby, you can see tyre marks all over the carpet where this shot has been practised many times.

Audio problem: In the public restroom fight, Arnold slams one of the bad guys head into the ceramic urinal. Although you hear two loud and clear "klonks", the urinal bends when Arnold presses the bad guy's head down. [Only visible in the pan and scan version.]

Revealing: During the shoot-out in the restroom, the villain fires shots down the length of stalls.  Then as he walks down kicking each door open there is a shot from inside one of the stalls.  You can see where the explosives were taped to the back of the door to make the gun shoot holes.  There is residue on the back of the door and all of these rectangular clean area where the holes ended up being.

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene where the bad guy is attached to the missile and fired, in the split second before it hits the helicopter you can see below it a building called SUN BANK, but the letters are backwards. A close look reveals the likely reason - to the right of the reversed building is one which looks just like the building to the LEFT of the Sun Bank building behind the harrier a few seconds earlier. Most likely they couldn't film the chopper from the right side because there was a building there (the one the camera flies through), so they filmed it from the other side (the same side they'd filmed the harrier from), catching the "Sun Bank" behind, then had to flip it to have everything facing the right way.

Revealing: During the scene where Arnold's character is escaping from the mansion at the beginning of the movie, there is a part where he is running down a snowy hill through trees. At one point during the hill scene, Arnold does a flip head first. When he lands the flip, you can clearly see the stunt double's face as he turns to shoot at more bad guys.

Continuity: In the scene when Harry brings Helen's purse to Gibbs in the van, it is raining very hard. When Harry is standing along side of the van talking to Gibbs who is in the van, he is not getting wet and there is no rain falling when the camera is facing in towards the van. However, when the camera angle is facing out away from the van, it is pouring rain and Harry is getting wet.

Revealing: After the bathroom shootout, when Harry Tasker has his team contain the terrorist leader in front of the building they're about to chase through, just before the terrorist rides the motorcycle through the front door, if you watch carefully, you can very clearly spot Arnold Schwarzenegger's double on the horse.

Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, at Switzerland, Harry has just ran & tumbled in the snow, but doesn't show a speck of snow anywhere on him.

Continuity: In the scene where Harry is trying to get the truth from Gibb about Helen's phone conversation, the van pulls over and the wheels are facing to the right. They get out and talk and Harry then punches the window through. As they get back in the van and pull away, the wheels are facing the opposite direction.

Factual error: When the bad guy is stuck on the missile on the rail of the Harrier, and Arnold shoots it, it carries the bad guy into the building and out the other side. Modern missiles accelerate at more than 2000 G's - the Sidewinder weighs less than 200 lbs, and thrust is more than 40,000. So he would have been fried by the backwash as it left without him.

Continuity: Throughout the limo chase scene, Tia's scratch on her face disappears and changes from cheek to cheek.

Factual error: At the start, when Schwarzenegger leaves the party to steal the computer evidence, when he turns on the computer you can clearly hear the Macintosh start up sound, but when he looks at the computer screen it is the Windows loading screen. It's not a case of changing the sound files - PCs make no noise before Windows is fully loaded except perhaps the initial beep.

Visible crew/equipment: During the Corvette scene when Arnold is driving, there is a shot looking at Bill Paxton talking and on his shoulder is the shadow of the boom mike.

Revealing: At the beginning of the movie, during the scene were Arnold is being chased by the 2 Dobermans, the dogs jump up to get him and he knocks them out by bashing their heads together. Look closely as the dogs fall because you will see that they are obviously two rubber figures of dogs and bounce when they land.

Revealing: When Arnie's interrogating his wife, Tom Arnold says "but he's not exactly ringing your bell these days", and you can see the audio monitor on the left peaking as he speaks. It then goes flat a second or two before Arnie covers the microphone up.

Continuity: When the bad guy rides the motorbike through a kitchen door two servants drop some food on the floor. When Harry rides his horse through the door there is nothing on the floor. [Only visible in pan and scan version].

Factual error: When Harry's wife is meeting the used car salesman, he says to meet her under the Key Bridge on K street, that would be hard because the Key Bridge is actually over the Potomac river. If that scene was shot in DC it is on K street, under the Whitehyrst freeway.

Factual error: When the terrorist leader has fired his gun at the toilets you can see and count the bullet holes. A AK-74SU clip holds 30 rounds yet there are about 100 bullet holes in the toilets.

Revealing: When all the terrorists are firing their guns at the sky near the end, one of the men is clearly pulling the trigger, and empty cartridge cases are coming out, but there is no muzzle flash like the other guns.

Revealing: The shots fired in the toilet are fired at a very narrow angle at the toilet doors. But when you see the holes up close they are perfectly round. They should be elongated.

Continuity: When Arnold pulls himself up to the roof of the Marriot at the horse's leash, his grip of the leash changes between shots.

Factual error: Throughout the entire movie, Arnold and Tom are always riding in the GM S-series SUV. The thing about these vehicles is that they came with different side view mirrors and if you look close enough during all the shots with the SUV, the side mirrors on the side change, from small ones to big square ones, showing that two different GM S-series SUVs were used throughout the movie.

Audio problem: Harry and Gib pull over to the side of the road, and Harry yells "Give me the goddamn page!" and smashes the SUV window. Harry yells this line during a shot transition, and in the end of the first shot ("Give me-") his mouth isn't moving, yet in the next shot ("-the goddamn page!") his mouth IS moving.

Continuity: During the bridge sequence, the limo drives through an area that is on fire. After emerging from the fire, the passenger side headlights are shown to be blackened from the smoke and heat. Further down the bridge the headlights are shown to be clean and new looking again.

Continuity: The position of the champagne bottle holder and the next chair changes between shots. When Michelle enters the room and the camera is placed in the bedroom, the bottle holder stands between (and somewhat behind) the chair and the window wall. When Michelle approaches the table (camera is now Michelle) the chair is between the bottle holder and the window wall. Later, at the end of the scene this changes again, depending on where the camera is.

Audio problem: While on the plane, Helen says 'we are married and we have a child!'. When the shot changes the part 'and we have a child!' does not match her mouth.

Revealing: When Harry has beaten Samir and his guards, he then has a fight outside with 4 or so terrorists in amongst some pallets. You can see in some shots that it's not Arnold but the stunt double doing some of the fight scenes.

Continuity: The scene in the SUV where Harry asks Tom Arnold 'if there is anything new', and he answers 'no', you see that they were driving straight, but when the camera does a wide shot, you would see a building directly behind them which means they would have been driving through the building.

Continuity: When Arnold is talking to the horse after being pulled up on the roof by the reins, his right hand moves from holding the reins considerably far from the horse's mouth to right up next to it between shots.

Continuity: When the horse stops and flips Arnie over the edge of the building the number of glasses on the Marriott's "A" change between shots.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Bill Paxton and Arnold are riding in the Corvette, you can see a camera reflected in the windshield on several occasions; most notably just after Arnold takes the wheel.

Revealing: In the scene where the limo crashes off the bridge after Hellen Tasker has been picked up in the chopper, the camera pans back to show a strut of some sort is falling from below the limo.

Continuity: Early on when Arnold is setting a bomb up in Austria, he has his coat on. In the very next shot, it's off. Then it's back on again.

Continuity: When the terrorists burst in on Jamie and Arnie in the hotel room, the positions of Arnie's hands change between shots. Once going from being by his side to one being behind his head instantly.

Continuity: When Harry and Gib are interrogating Harry's wife, she says a line "I don't give a s**t if you understand that or not," and the shot is a close up of her on the heat screen. Notice that her head is tilted down. However, when the shot cuts to the wider angle you can see the heat monitor and her head is instantly at a more upright angle without time for her to move.

Audio problem: In the scene where Dana's about to fall off the crane, you hear an audio of her screaming "Help me. Help me." But if you look at her face, she's not saying anything.

Continuity: When Harry is racing the police horse through the park and hotel you see the end of his reins flip up several times. They are regulation length leather reins. Yet when the horse stops and flips him off over the edge of the building, suddenly the reins are about 10 feet long and much thicker. Also, in reality, the reins would probably have snapped or the bridle would have broken had 200 plus pounds hit the end of them at that speed.

Audio problem: When the helicopter is following "Carlos the Jackal" and Jamie Lee, it's hovering really closely, yet they never hear it. But you can hear it as they are being taken from the trailer home.

Factual error: At the beginning of the movie, when Arnold is running down the snow covered hill with the guys chasing him on skis, he shoots at them with a semi-automatic. He changes magazines once, but I counted 24 shots after that change, and there was no shot of him changing magazines again, nor any chance to do so. There was no extended magazine on the gun, so about the most rounds he could have fired (being liberal) would have been 19 shots.

Plot hole: When Harry goes into the shopping mall toilet, the two terrorists follow him in. They have no radio contact with their leader, yet minutes later the leader goes directly to the toilets. It's improbable that he'd know where Harry was.

Revealing: In the restroom fight scene, the first villain shot by Arnold randomly shoots his gun as he is dying. Some of the stray bullets hit the urinals. As the camera angle changes to show the bullets hitting the urinal, large flames can be seen as the urinal explodes and falls to pieces. There must have been a small explosive used to make this happen, as the bullet impact wouldn't do this.

Audio problem: When the motorbike drives through the Marriot - on carpet - its tires makes sounds as if on concrete.

Revealing: Right after the horse motorcycle chase scene, at the next day's debrief, there is a piece of file footage showing the lead terrorist. As per normal practice, there are numbers running in the clip to show where they are in it, however, even when they pause, the numbers continue to run. Most visible when Trilby asks why he's called the 'sand spider'; they pause the tape and yet the play numbers continue to run.

Continuity: After the shootout in the restroom, close to a hundred rounds were fired, all from LOUD guns, yet when Arnold and the terrorist are running through the mall and out the window, people are standing around in the stores, like they never heard a thing. Heck, that AK-47 would even be heard by the people outside on the street. The only one to hear anything is the guy on the toilet.

Revealing: In the scene at the beginning of the film where Faisal is in the van and decrypting the files, he says "Yeah, I got your password," and then the camera swings down to show his fingers on the keyboard, pressing repeatedly on the same set of keys and looking rather unrealistic.

Continuity: At the part where Arnold and gang are raiding Simon's caravan and one of them hits Helen on the head with his gun, Arnie punches him on his left cheek, however when he gets up he is holding his right cheek.

Factual error: Further to the comment about the loudness of the Harrier, Schwarzenegger flies one without ear protection of any kind. I was fifty metres from one at the Farnborough Air-show, and I can tell you that after landing he (and his daughter) would be both stone deaf. Yes, they are THAT loud.

Continuity: When Harry picks the handcuffs right after he receives the truth injection, he still has the handcuffs hanging off his hand. After he kills the guard with the hook, he grabs Helen and says "let's go". He doesn't have time to take the handcuffs off his hand but they are gone.

Continuity: When Simon takes Harry for a ride in his car, he drives with his left hand on the wheel and his right arm down near his side. But in one shot he pats Harry on the shoulder, and suddenly his arm is up on the back of the seat.

Revealing: When Arnold is riding his horse through the hotel fountain, you can see that the scene had been rehearsed shortly before by evidence of water splashed on the concrete support pillars before the horse ever runs by them.

Revealing: In the scene where the harrier shoots a missile and blows up the bridge you can clearly see that it's all miniature, but if you didn't know, you could tell it by the crash barrier that is obviously made of some sort of rubber - it bounces up and down during the explosion (you see it in the frame where the car crashes down on the bridge again).

Factual error: Harriers cannot fire missiles from hover; they can only use their guns.

Revealing: More rounds come out of the Vulcan than are carried by real Harriers.