In the scene where Bill is trying to catch up with Jonas, right after Bill stops the truck, we see a long shot of Jonas's storm chasing crew passing Bill's truck, a side road can be seen on the right side of the road. But when Bill puts the truck in reverse and turns onto the side road it's now on the left side (there never was a side road visible on the left side in the long shot). See more...
Directed by Jan de Bont, starring Alan Ruck, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Helen Hunt, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
In the scene where Billy and Jo go into Jo's aunt's house to rescue her after a tornado has gone through Wakita, they hear things falling. When they jump over a break in the floor, you can see a crewman run across the opening on the floor below. [I just watched this, and there was no crewman visible.]
The first time we see the NSSL; the woman's name there is Chris. Later in the movie, when we see the NSSL again, her name is Bryce. Turn the captions on so you can tell. [I watched this with the captions on, and she was only referred to as Chris, never Bryce.]
Isn't it oddly convenient that a side road was available whenever they needed one? [In flat farm country like Kansas, or eastern North Dakota where I grew up, county roads are set up in a fairly regular grid pattern to allow access to fields. This can be easily confirmed on Google Earth.]
In the beginning of the movie when they go down in to the cellar, Jo's mother lights a kerosene lantern with no prep work done to the lantern. This would be impossible because the mantles can only be used one time and then they have to be replaced. When you put a new mantle on, it has to be "ashed" or burnt before the lantern can actually be used. Then the lantern she was using had to have the kerosene pumped up or 'vaporized' in the chimney part of the lantern. Only then could Jo's mother put a match to the mantle to light the lantern. [Or maybe it's an oil lamp, which you just light with a match whenever you want.]
With the last Dorothy, Bill and Jo burst open the door of the Dodge and make a run into the cornfield. This is not possible. Corn stalks are strong and would hold the doors back, no matter how hard they pushed. [That scene was filmed in the middle of a real corn field, so obviously they pushed hard enough.]
Near the beginning of the movie, Jo mentions how NSSL has not seen a storm like this in years. She would actually be getting real-time forecast data from the Storm Prediction Center, SPC. NSSL deals primarily in research, not daily forecasting. [Regardless of the source of Jo's information, the fact remains that the NSSL still had not seen a storm like that in years. Her comment was "factual" and relevant, and therefore not a mistake.]
Corrected by Phixius
In the scene where Hunt and Paxton's crew drive onto a smaller side road surrounded by cornfields, Rabbit says he can't figure out what road they're on, and depreciatingly calls it "Bob's Road" as he scours his maps. However, in the forward shots, you can see they're actually driving on a paved road, complete with black-and-white highway signs. [That doesn't mean that he can find the name of the road on the map. There are plenty of roads around me that are paved with signs, but good luck finding a name on a map.]
Corrected by shortdanzr
At the part when they are driving in the car (near the climax scene of the big tornado) the weather radio in the car is issuing alerts about the big "F5" tornado on the ground nearby. That is a huge mistake, because there is no way to know that until a survey is done of the tornado damage afterwards. Only then can a tornado be called an "F5" or "F3". [More of a character mistake than a movie mistake. The radio anouncer probably knew it was a huge twister and incorrectly pronounced it an "F5" before it could be correctly classified later.]
When Jo and Bill are running from and going towards the F5 tornado, there are buildings, semi-trucks, and other things being thrown around and sucked up. Living in Oklahoma and being near a tornado, buildings don't get thrown on the road without taking the trees and cars or trucks around them and a truck would certainly be taken with a Semi. Plus, when they are running from the F5 with all the corn, fences, farm equipment, etc. being sucked up and thrown, they would have been tossed around just as violently. [Not necessarily. Things to this effect have been posted all over the Twister mistakes. But if you have ever seen a tornado and the aftermath of one. They are really extremely unpredictable. They do very strange things. So while it may seem impossible that they could walk around while buildings are being blown about, it's not really. A tornado is not like a steady wind. There are gusts, updrafts, it's really variable. So a gust may come up and knock over a building, but the same gust never comes near the people walking.]
In many scenes, the red dodge truck doesn't have an antenna, but yet they are using the radio. [The Dodge truck has a number of after market upgrades to make it function better in storms; a smaller and stronger antenna would make sense as it would be less likely to be damaged by the high wind conditions it would be subjected to. These are commonly as small as one inch or can be installed as a wire on the inside of the rear window of a truck, making it essentially invisible to a movie viewer.]
Corrected by OneHappyHusky
In the beginning when Jo and her parents are in the storm cellar, Jo's dad is trying to hold the door shut for dear life. Finally he gets sucked away by the tornado, leaving Jo and her mom sad and alone in the cellar, but completely unharmed nonetheless. Why was it such a priority to hold the door shut if nothing gets sucked out of there, and nothing is harmed in any way, when the door is gone? [Jo and her mom were fine because the tornado passed over them. Her father managed to hold the doors closed just long enough to spare them, but he still got sucked out.]
Corrected by shortdanzr
At the end of the movie, after the F5 tornado, the horses on the farm seem to be completely unharmed, not to mention well-groomed. Anyone care to explain how they not only survived, but didn't even seem to be affected at all? Even if they were by the house, which the tornado didn't take, the wind would have at least messed up their manes. [Tornados are a strange phenomenon and can easily destroy half of a house and leave the other half totally untouched - not even so much as moving papers on a desk. The wind is, for the most part, contained within the cone of the tornado itself so the horses could look as if they were not even near the tornado.]
The aluminum cans they use to make Dorothy fly are Pepsi cans. Later, when they see the twister pattern on the computer screen, very briefly it assumes the shape of a Pepsi logo. Hidden commercial? [What you're actually seeing when you see the "Pepsi symbol" are really Doppler radar images. That particular one is showing radial velocities, indicating rotation and a possible tornado. Check this out, and tilt your head to either direction and you will see your "Pepsi symbol". http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/remote/lecture_notes/radar/doppler/graphics/sd_prof_veer.gif.]
Aunt Meg's house is destroyed by the tornado, but her spindly metal lawn ornaments remain upright, intact, and in working order? Hmmm... [Those ornaments were homemade wind/tornado detectors. They're all designed to spin around with the wind so there is almost no surface area for the storm to knock over unlike a house or truck.]
When they are at Aunt Meg's the first time, they get word that a tornado has been spotted and somehow they already know it is an F5. Tornadoes get their ratings from the amount of damage they do. This is determined after the tornado is gone. [The Fujita scale relates damage to an estimated wind speed range. With modern Doppler radar, a meteorologist can determine the winds and other conditions throughout the storm and will not only announce an F scale number for a currently existing tornado, but predict what F scale tornadoes the storm is capable of producing.]
Corrected by Myridon
When Bill and Jo are in the truck, Jo looks at the dashboard, which is shown, and then Jo looks away and covers her eyes. Bill then floors the gas, and the dashboard is shown, and this time, the airbag light is on, unlike the previous shot of the dashboard two seconds earlier. [Some trucks will flash the air bag light or ABS light when floored.]
The first time we see the bad guy, his entourage is overtaking the good guys, yet in every other car scene the good guys have no trouble outrunning them. [More than likely the "good guys" are allowing the "bad guys" to overtake them, they are not driving their vehicles as fast as they can go.]
When Bill and Jo are chasing their first tornado in the movie, we see the tornado dismantle a barn into several pieces. Later, it goes through the bridge Bill and Jo are grabbing onto. It dismantled a well constructed barn, but barely pushed the truck into an old and rickety bridge? [The tornado doesn't only push the truck into the bridge, it also picks it up and throws it.]
At the end of the film Hunt's and Paxton's characters are lifted and held aloft by the F5 as they hung onto a ground fixture. Wouldn't a force strong enough to lift their body weights be strong enough to rip off their clothes and send them to Oz? Or at least their shoes? Yet after the tornado passes all clothing is present, nothing is missing or even torn. [We see the tornado die off a few seconds later so the force probably wasn't F5 thus they could possibly be left the way they were.]
When the red truck goes through the house, you can see chairs and other things standing up when the house is on its side. [The house just rolled over into the road...unless things are bolted to the floor they are going to move around a LOT. Having upright furniture is not that big of a surprise.]
You may also like: Titanic | The Dark Knight | Tropic Thunder | The Shining | Apocalypse Now
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