WarGames

Other mistake: When Jennifer meets David in Oregon she says she drove 3 hours to get there. In the next scene they are getting off a bus to catch the ferry. What happened to her car?

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Suggested correction: There are possibilities off-screen as to why. It's possible that the bus used its own private road to get to the ferry which may be closed to the public, or the parking lot may have been too expensive and they parked on a street instead and caught a bus. It's not really known, but those are some possibilities.

Other mistake: On the DVD cover, Broderick's and Sheedy's faces and the reflection of their faces on the computer monitor don't match.

William Bergquist

Other mistake: When David and his dad are sitting at the dining table, dad butters his bread to roll his corn on the cob. You can see that the butter melts on the corn and bread, but then he bites into the corn and finds that it is raw. Raw means uncooked and the cob would be cold, therefore the butter wouldn't melt.

azure1987

Other mistake: When David and Jennifer are sat at the IMSAI terminal making the flight reservation for Paris, the date on the booking system shows as 18th March 1982, but the date of the flight is 18th August 1983. (00:29:11)

Other mistake: When David first logs into the system after finding the right password, it shows a phone # beginning with the prefix 936. The only problem was that earlier when his computer was dialing numbers, he had not gotten to 936 yet. That was the 4th prefix and he only got through the first 3. There is no way he could have dialed that number with his computer program.

Other mistake: Why didn't Falken just call NORAD instead of going 1400 miles? NORAD in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. to Goose Island, Oregon is far (1,388.5 mi). Robinson R22 has a maximum speed of approximately 115 miles per hour. The R22 typically has a maximum range of around 200 to 240 nautical miles with standard fuel tanks. It would have to refuel 8 times, making that long 16+ hour trip before the wargame ended, is impossible (not to mention arriving 'just in time').

Gawdsmakk

Other mistake: When David was having his computer dial all the numbers in Sunnyvale, he pulled up the list of numbers already dialled, and there are numbers with the prefix '936', but before he pulled up the list, when the computer was dialling the numbers, the 936 prefix was on the far right hand side. No numbers with the 936 prefix were dialled yet, so they could not have been on the list.

Factual error: At the end of the movie WOPR tries to crack the launch-code using brute force. So far so good. When WOPR finds out one digit of the 10 digit code, the first digit locks and the search goes on with the remaining 9 digits. Then he finds the second one, it locks too and so on. Problem is, brute force doesn't work that way. It would be too easy (26 letters and 10 numbers = only 36 possibilities for one digit). Brute-Force works only "all or nothing", you can't sneak your way to the whole code one by one.

Goekhan

More mistakes in WarGames

Stephen Falken: The whole point was to find a way to practise nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn't afford to make. Except, I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
David Lightman: What's that?
Stephen Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.
Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?
Stephen Falken: Did you ever play tic-tac-toe?
Jennifer: Yeah, of course.
Stephen Falken: But you don't anymore.
Jennifer: No.
Stephen Falken: Why?
Jennifer: Because it's a boring game. It's always a tie.
Stephen Falken: Exactly. There's no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be "acceptable losses."

More quotes from WarGames

Trivia: Closely listen to the TV playing in the background, when Mathew Broderick comes home from school, before all his trouble starts with the Feds. The local news is on, and is saying "a fire broke out in a prophylactic recycling factory."

More trivia for WarGames

Question: At the beginning of the film, who were the two men in uniform and why did one pull a gun on the other?

Answer: They were erroneously alerted that an actual nuclear attack was underway, and they had been trained to respond by firing a nuclear warhead. However, one was unconvinced that the US was actually under attack, and he wanted further confirmation from his superiors. The other insisted that they follow protocol and fire the missiles. One man alone cannot launch the missiles, it takes two, and the one with the gun is attempting to force his partner to follow through on launching the weapon.

raywest

Answer: Actually it would take four men; two men in two separate LCCs (Launch Control Centers) to corroborate. In fact, there are five LCCs in a Squadron and the others can even "inhibit" an erroneous launch order coming from a single LCC.

More questions & answers from WarGames

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