Twister (1996) - 84 mistakes

Continuity: During the big falling debris scene, Paxton and Helen Hunt are in the red truck. The truck hits a tractor. The impact damages the windshield, and it is clearly broken, but a second later the windshield is perfect and untouched.

Continuity: When the cow blows by the truck, the truck is driving down an empty dirt road with water on both sides. During the shots of the occupants, the road behind the truck is paved, and in one of these rear shots a truck drives by in the opposite direction.

Factual error: In the begining when Jo's dad is bringing the family downstairs and say's "TV says it's big, might be an F-5" That scene was set in 1969. In reality he would not have known anything about an F-5 or any tornado with an F rating because the Fujita scale was not developed until 1971.

Other: Although the film is set in Oklahoma (and north of Oklahoma City), the roads are marked by Texas road signs.

Continuity: When the solid water funnel comes and Bill, Joe, and Melissa are chasing it, if you look from when they are not up to the dirt road, surrounded by water, to when they almost get blown away, there is a red car driving by.

Visible crew/equipment: Near the beginning of the movie when Bill and Mellisa are on their way to get the divorce papers signed, you can see the reflection on the passenger side window of the helicopter and the cameraman. A few shots later when the camera angle is in front of the Dodge, you can see a brief reflection of the brake lights from the camera truck in the rear window of the Dodge.

Continuity: When the telephone pole falls on the truck, you see Dorothy get thrown off of the bed and the tailgate gets broken off along with it. And a couple of scenes later, the tailgate is back and hanging there like it was untouched.

Continuity: When Bill and Jo are going through the house, the house is on its side horizontally. When they are crashing through the rooms though, the rooms are vertical. Also, in the same scene, you can clearly see them going up the stairs to the second floor. When they burst out, they are magically back down on the first floor. Right after that, the windshield is all cracked. A second later, it's perfectly fine.

Continuity: After Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt chase the first tornado they switch to Bill's new truck. They look at the speedometer once then they look at again about 3 seconds later and the odometer is hundreds of miles different than it was only 3 seconds before.

Continuity: When the good group is chasing the tornado, the bad group is following them (watching for skid marks on turns, etc.) anyway, the bad guys see skid marks at a turn about 10ft in front of them. They would have to turn immediately and they would still barely make the turn. The camera goes off the road and shows the driver's "what do I do??" expression for about 3 seconds, then the camera goes back on the road and the turn is the same distance away. In reality they would have passed the turn and been about 20 ft past it by then.

Continuity: After the last tornado that passes directly over them, of F5 intensity, immediately afterwards, Helen Hunt still has her lightweight headphones casually draped around her neck.  A stiff breeze could have blown them off, but not an F5 tornado?

Continuity: After leaving Aunt Meg's the first time, Jo and Bill are in the red truck. Bill says, "Ok, let's get you wired." When Jo looks over at him you can see that she already has the headphones around her neck. Then they cut to Bill and when he goes to put the headphones on her neck is bare.

Plot hole: Throughout the entire movie, barns, houses, cars, 18-wheelers, etc. are demolished and lifted into the air like they were made of paper. And yet Jo and Bill pass through one tornado after another with nothing more than their hair getting messed up (a little.) You'd think just the debris flying into their faces at 100 miles an hour would be enough to give them a few injuries.

Visible crew/equipment: When they are trapped in the garage and the tornado is whipping through, if you look real close when the debris is falling on them you can see (very quickly) a crew member throwing trash in the background.

Continuity: When Jo's truck lands in the road, right after which Jonas' crew drives by, if you look quickly, you can see that the driver side (the truck was upside down) window is gone. Yet, when Jo goes to get her backpack out, she has to kick that window out.

Revealing: They wouldn't be able to walk or run nearly so easily when near a tornado. In ametuer video footage of real tornados, the people could only move quite slowly, and were walking on an angle of 30 degrees from upright.

Continuity: When the telephone pole falls on the bed of Paxton's truck, the pole dents the bed. In the scene before the pole falls, there is a dent on the bed.

Continuity: When Jo's truck is lifted by the first tornado they encounter, it is dropped on the road in front of the red dodge driven by Bill's fiancée. When we see the truck drop, the drivers window is closed. As the dodge swerves to avoid hitting the other truck, the window is now opened. And finally, in the last shot where everyone is running to her aide, the window is closed again.

Continuity: During the first tornado, Beltzer says the twister is about three miles away. You later see Bill turn the truck off the road directly onto that dirt path, not ten yards away. The tornado then arrives and sucks Jo's truck into the air. After the tornado, Melissa is driving along and says, "Oh my God" as the tornado disappears, back to about three miles away.

Visible crew/equipment: There's a shot late in the movie at Helen Hunt's Aunt's house - the camera shows all of her home made "wind chimes" blowing in the wind. As the camera pans in and shows a little man sawing or axing something, you see a human hand appear near the bottom of the screen as the camera leaves the scene.

Visible crew/equipment: After the "sidewinder" tornado, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are driving through a cornfield. The cornfield merges into the main road and their truck almost runs into the evil storm chaser's van. As the car enters the road, you can see a crew member poking his head up from the corn across the road.

Continuity: When Jo's crew is having their little steak snack at Aunt Meg's, we see Preacher watching TV. There's a good shot of the top of the television set and there are NO walkie-talkies on top. Yet when they hear about another tornado, they all jumped up and grab their walkie-talkies off the top of the TV.

Continuity: At the beginning, when the guy comes back to have Jo sign the divorce papers, He says "you missed one", and you can clearly see a red tab on the paper that she missed. In the next seen it's gone and in the next it's back again.

Continuity: When Bill & Jo leave the aunt's house in the red truck, it shows the truck has a back sliding window - the next shot there is no back sliding window.

Revealing: Can you imagine driving a truck into a city totally demolished by a twister and actually parking in front of the house of their friend (Hunt's Aunt)? There would be wood and nails and debris galore (NOT TO MENTION LIVE POWER LINES) about the streets which, of course, results in electrocutions and flat tires. They manage to rescue the old lady out of the house, as well as her dog, and they get immediate assistance from an ambulance crew....

Continuity: During the first tornado Helen Hunt has a big glob of dirt on her face, the shot cuts to the tornado, then back to Helen Hunt and the dirt (no smear marks either) is completely gone.

Continuity: Towards the beginning of the movie when Melissa goes on the first chase, she is under an umbrella with her hair dry. They cut away go back, she is drenched, cut away go back she is soaked, go back again, she is wet.

Continuity: At the beginning of the movie, the first time we see Jo's and her parents' house, there are several fairly close-up shots showing the porch and yard. These scenes are clearer during the flashes of lightning. There is nothing in the yard, close to the right side of the porch (as we are looking at it) except tall grass and a few small bushes right next to the porch. When the family comes out of the house to go to the cellar, there is a good-sized, red toy tractor sitting in the yard now.

Continuity: When Bill is going over the divorce papers, he comes to the page missing Jo's signature. It only has one red arrow near top right. When he hands it to Jo, she starts looking at it, then flips up page to look at others, and the missing signature page is a completely different page with two red arrows, one toward the top and another, on the right, toward the bottom.

Continuity: Near the beginning, when Bill and Melissa have gone to get the divorce papers, Bill leaves Melissa talking to Dusty. When Dusty starts telling her about the "suck zone" there are a couple of black cows behind Dusty. Next, Jo comes over to meet Melissa and when the camera pans to the same area behind Dusty, there are no cows.

Continuity: At the beginning of the drive-in scene Jo and Bill give each other a long look. During this you can see that Jo passes the same Pepsi sign twice.

Revealing: When Bill and Jo are driving towards the first tornado together (arguing), it's clear there's no windshield in the red truck. There's no rear view mirror and it's perfectly clear. During the next few scenes, a rear view mirror appears and there is mud on the windshield around the wiper tracks.

Revealing: The weather really is unusual in Oklahoma, as in some scenes, the cornfields were ripe and brown, and in others, they were fresh and green. Obviously shot at different parts of the season.

Visible crew/equipment: When Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are driving up to Aunt Meg's house after the tornado has hit, you see a shot of the ruined home as they drive up. If you look carefully, you can see wires hanging coming out from the top of the house to keep it from collapsing until the filmmakers were ready.

Continuity: After the first twister they chase, Jo's hair is covered in mud and dirt. Then minutes later in the red truck her hair is clean and fixed nicely.

Continuity: Paxton and Hunt drive their truck toward the twister in a corn field, they jump out of the truck and then start running for it. Have you ever run in a corn field? You can't run in a corn field that has stalks that high,  they would cut you to shreds. They would have been bleeding on the faces and hands and arms if they were wearing short sleeve shirts. If you enter a corn field, you must move with the rows - you cannot cross rows because the stalks are just like small trees and they are maybe six inches apart.

Continuity: When they are at the drive-in movie "The Shining" is showing just as he sees the two girls but two minutes later the guy is trying to kill them at least half an hour later.

Continuity: In the first few seconds of the movie, there's a landscape shot of a fence. Right in front of the fence there's a little piece of grass blowing in the wind, and it's just so obvious that they looped the 1 second to make it last 5 seconds, because the grass keeps jumping back and forth. Minor but annoying.

Other: In the scene in the garage pit, one of the characters is hit in the forehead by a flying hubcap. He is cut clear across his forehead, but there is only a small trickle of blood oozing from the wound. I've seen many scalp lacerations and even the most minor ones will bleed like a stuck pig, where's all of that blood?

Audio problem: When the two storm chasing crews have stopped at the Hot Pit Bar-B-Q, in the shot where Bill runs over to beat up Jonas for supposedly stealing his design for Dorothy, Jonas's mouth is not moving and yet we hear him continuing to talk about DOT 3.

Revealing: When Jo and Bill are running past the sunflowers, just after the barn has flown past them, the sunflowers aren't even swaying. Sunflowers would blow over at a tiny breeze, let alone an F5 tornado blowing around them.

Revealing: When they are at the drive-in movie place, Melissa comes out of her room when she sees the wind blowing through the curtains. When she steps out, other windows in the motel are open and the curtains are absolutely still while the curtains in her room continue to blow.

Continuity: When they make their pit stop at the BBQ diner Bill is outside with Dusty and says, "we're going green". The sky is dark and green. When Jo comes out and they're ready to go a few minutes later, the sky is almost sunny and it's suddenly partly cloudy.

Continuity: When Bill and Jo are chased by the first tornado, a frontward shot shows them about 50 yards away from the wooden structure, while traveling at about 75 MPH according to the speedometer shot earlier. They continue driving for several seconds after this.

Continuity: In the garage scene, an air hose comes on and someone grabs it. When this guy is hit by a hub cap and lets go of the hose, the air switches off.

Continuity: When all of the crew are heading to the F5 tornado, in the truck, you can see that the dog is in the front of the truck and at the same time, under a table on the back of the truck.

Continuity: In the scene immediately before the gas tanker blows up in front of the truck, the passenger window of the truck is wide open. As the truck clears the explosion, the window is closed.

Continuity: When the two main characters are trying to outrun the final huge tornado in the truck, the windshield gets busted from debri and crashing through the rolloing house.   However, the windshield is undamaged shortly after.

Continuity: About halfway through the film, when they all take shelter in the garage near the drive in movie, when the 'Drive In Movie' sign goes crashing through the garage wall you can clearly see a large metal chain pulling it through.

Continuity: 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).

Continuity: During the last tornado scene, one of the team members says "they're going to punch the core" as Bill and Joe turn right off the road towards the F5. If you look ahead of their truck above the cornfield there is no sign of the F5 they turned apparently towards.

Continuity: When Bill and Melissa go out to get the divorce papers from Jo, we see Bill pull his truck up with Rabbit and Allan's truck (hood up) in the background. We see it closer up when Bill asks Dusty, "Where's Jo?" But when the scene comes back to Bill and Dusty and then shows Melissa, Rabbit, Allan and the truck have disappeared. When Dusty is holding Melissa's hand and walking to sit in his chairs, Rabbit & co. are in the background again.

Continuity: When Bill is walking over to see Jo for the first time, he passes Joey working on the hood of a truck that was previously shown in front of the blue Doppler van and next to the green tractor. Throughout this sequence, this taupe/brown pickup with camper flops back and forth between the two places. Lawrence finally drives it off.

Continuity: When we see Melissa at Aunt Meg's house, she is in the same 3-piece white suit she's been wearing since the start of the movie and it is still spotless - even after Bill, dirty, muddy and wet from the first tornado, hugs her.

Continuity: When they're in the town with the drive-in movie, we see Melissa in her motel room crawling up onto the bed towards her pillow. You can see she has shoes on but no socks. We see her twirling her engagement ring around on her finger, then see her use the remote to turn the TV off. She watches the curtains blow for a minute and then she walks out of her motel room. She has on white socks. Then as she runs to grab Billy's hand, she has on black socks.

Continuity: At the roadside restaurant, when Bill first sees Jonas' version of Dorothy, we see it from Bill's perspective. You can see that the panels in DOT's top are open. In the next shot, Jonas is discussing DOT with the press and the top is closed then opens as he describes the sensors.

Visible crew/equipment: When Jo is introduced to Melissa, Melissa says, "It probably seems kinda sudden." Look into her sunglasses when she says this; you can see a rectangular shaped figure. Figure of the camera, possibly?

Continuity: When Bill and Jo are strapped to the water pipes in the final twister scene, after the tornado passes and they are back on the ground, one of their leather straps are already broken. In this condition it never would have held itself on that pipe, let alone an average sized human being.

Other: When the Tree gets blown under the red truck and they get stuck on it. Why don't they ever put the truck in 4WD? You can see the front differential and 4x4 markings so the truck definately HAS 4WD. That particular year of truck doesn't even require you to get out and lock the hubs.

Other: When Bill, Jo and Melissa are in the Dodge Ram, it shows a shot of the Tornado in the cornfield. For a brief moment before the shot changes, you can see another tornado in the right side of the screen. Seconds later, we see the tornado split into two, and Bill finally mentions "We've got sisters.". Isn't it amazing that the tornado on the right goes completely unnoticed?

Factual error: When the team is attempting to intercept the second tornado, Bill floors the gas pedal in the Dodge Ram after Jo expresses disgust at how slow he's driving. The next shot shows the dashboard, where the speedometer moves from 50-70 MPH, the engine is heard accelerating in the background, but the tachometer stays around 1500 RPM. The truck is an automatic and so it would have downshifted when Bill pressed the accelerator to the floor, and therefore revved much higher.

Factual error: In the last scenes when Bill and Jo are in the shed with the water pipes, the shed is torn apart by wind as well as flying debris at hundreds of miles per hour. I have watched the scene numerous times and there is not so much as a scratch on their faces. Even if they lived, they would have been battered and bloody from debris. Regardless if tornadoes do weird things, the debris ripped the shed apart, which is stronger than a human body.

Visible crew/equipment: When the twister is heading for the drive-in movie theater, as Bill is running towards the garage, you can easily see the shadow of the Steadicam operator and a grip guy on the ground about 2 feet away from Bill's shadow.

Visible crew/equipment: When Jo is taking a shower you can see the reflection of the camera in the glass in one quick shot.

Visible crew/equipment: When Jo shuts her door after setting up Dorothy III during the final monster tornado scene, the heads of three crew members are reflected in the silver window frame.

Factual error: Notice that all of the cars passing and honking at them have the same horn that sounds like a 70's import, even when some of them are pickups and larger cars.

Factual error: When Jo and Bill drive through the house pictures are still on the wall, a chair is still upright and the towels are still hanging perfectly on the rack in the bathroom. Pretty cool considering the house had just been tumbling through a field.

Continuity: After the pitstop, when Jo's team and Jonas's team have the encounter, Jo's team takes off to chase another tornado. When we hear Dusty holler, "Hey you guys, woohoo," we see Jo reach for the CB and dial from channel 22 to 18. But when Bill says, "Shi_," Jo reaches down to adjust the CB and the channel showing is 39.

Continuity: When Bill and Jo are in the yellow pick-up going after the first tornado, there is a yellow raincoat with a visible metal snap hanging from a hook mounted on the rear window directly behind Jo. As the scene progresses, it moves to a position higher up and off the window when Jo says, "We're moving to intercept, guys. Get ready to set up." Then Bill gets off the road and down into the ditch, right before Bill says, "Are we having fun yet?" the raincoat is back hanging from the hook on the window behind Jo in a different position (no snap visible).

Continuity: When Jo and Bill are traveling in the ditch during the second tornado they show them hitting the bridge from the front and then they change the angle to the passenger side (Jo's side) and they show them hitting the bridge again.

Continuity: Towards the end of the film when they are preparing Dorothy 4, the twister behind them is about 5 metres away. Then it it much further back the next time we see it.

Continuity: In the first sequence, they family is in the house with the child in bed. It looks to be night. When they run from the house to the shelter, they scatter a flock of chickens. Chickens don't go outside after dark... Even during eclipses and such...

Visible crew/equipment: When the crew is leaving Jo's aunts house, as the Red Dodge truck pulls out of the scene you can see the reflection of the camera and entire boom mic and pole in the 2nd window on the driver's side.

Continuity: When the red truck is driving to the tornado where the sensors spill, the scenery and pavement change between shots. First, they are driving down a road with trees on both sides. Then, they are driving down a large empty area where you can see the the horizon. Finally, they drive into a valley with forests on both sides. And this happens in a matter of seconds.

Visible crew/equipment: When Jo and Bill are driving through destroyed Wakita, Jo looks at a family hugging on the side of the road. As the camera pans along them, the shadow of a boom mike is visible, gliding along them.

Revealing: While driving the red truck through the rolling house, Dorothy is mounted on the back of the truck. There are some very sensitive and fragile instruments located on the top sides of Dorothy that stick up above the cab of the truck. These would certainly have been torn off while crashing through the walls of the house, turning Dorothy into a useless pile of junk.

Continuity: When they are driving in that jeep, the window gets shattered at one point, and then they literally DRIVE THROUGH a house and then as they come out, the window is intact again.

Continuity: In the opening scene, where Jo is just a baby and her dad and mom are carrying her and running from the house to enter the storm shelter, the tornado is just 60 seconds or so from destroying their house and sucking Jo's dad away. If you look at the trees behind them as they are running, you can see the trees are barely moving from any wind at all. If a real tornado was that close, the trees would be half bent over from the 60-100+ mph wind.

Continuity: When they all go to Meg's to eat, the gravy is set down in front of Melissa and Dusty. Dusty picks up the bowl, tells her to she has to have it, and spoons gravy on to her potatoes - but you can see that she already has gravy on her potatoes.

Continuity: When Jo, Melissa and Bill are in his car, they see Jonas wave from his car. Just before this had happened, Jonas looked in his rear view mirror. He only saw a red car with a background of a paved street. Where is the rest of Jo and Bill's crew?

Visible crew/equipment: When Bill's fiance is driving over after the first tornado, when the truck lands, she swerves and she stops. As she is getting out, a camera is visible. When the camera backs up though, a crew-member pulling it back is visible in the door.

Factual error: Near the beginning, when we see Bill and Jo in Jo's truck driving in an off-road ditch being "chased" by a tornado, there is a shot where we see the tornado dismantle a barn. In real life, you wouldn't be able to see it dismantle the barn board by board. The tornado would actually cover the barn, and when it leaves, you would see the barn in desolation.

Continuity: When Bill, Jo, and Bill's therapist fiancée are in Bill's red truck and about to be engulfed in the tornado where the cows are flying around, the fiancée's cell phone is ringing for about the fifth time in as many minutes. The fiancée answers the phone with a disgusted look on her face like she resents having to answer the phone during such a dangerous time. Obviously the call is deliberate 'comic relief', even though they were so close to the tornado and about to be engulfed, but the real problem is in reality she would not have been able to hear it ring amongst the grand noise of all the wind.

Continuity: If the base of the twister at the end of the movie is a mile wide, and while attached to the pipes they see the center of the tornado, and the wide view of the two of them hanging on to the pipes after the tornado passes show they are about twenty yards from the house, logic would follow that the house would be taken also, wouldn't it?