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During the attack on the Atoll, a smoker on water skis falls over while going up the ramp. The next shot shows him hitting the wall of the Atoll, but he is now upright again. See more...

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After repairs in 1990 the Exxon Valdez went back to sea as the Exxon Mediterranean. However, no one would recognize or associate any notoriety to the new name so the old name was kept for the movie. See more...

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Waterworld (1995) - 27 corrections

Directed by Kevin Reynolds, starring Kevin Costner (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller

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.

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Entry Where do the smokers get their cigarettes from? Cigarettes do not have an indefinite shelf life. The tobacco will dry out after just a few months and after a few years they would crumble away. Given that the smokers certainly don't have the capacity to grow tobacco or manufacture cigarettes, and the cigarettes they are smoking could not have survived since the global disaster that caused the sea to rise, there shouldn't be any around. [Cigarettes are usually packed in packages wrapped in sealed plastic, and if stored carefully, they will last quite a long time. They certainly would dry out and not be exactly pleasant to smoke, but beggars can't be choosers in thier case. They'd likely smoke anything.]
Entry When the smokers attack the metal city, Enola and Helen go up to Gregor's windmill to try and escape with him. Though the battle is raging outside, you can see a calm, Smoker-free lagoon with no signs of an attack happening through any of the windows in the windmill. [The portion of the lagoon seen through the window is relatively calm, however right after Gregor throws the rope and it gets stuck, you can see a smoker on a jet ski enter the view right before the shot changes.]
Corrected by Jason Sieberg
Entry If it has been so long since the water levels rose that no one remembers a time when dry land was above water, how did the little girl come to have such an accurate map to it tattooed on her back? [Probably because she came from dry land. Her family tattooed her back and sent her out to sea in a basket because they knew they were dying and that there were people out on the sea who would want to find the land. This is mentioned at several points later in the film; Helen mentioning "the basket we found Enola in," and Enola saying "I'm home" at the end.]
Corrected by Jason Sieberg
Entry If there were enough ice on the planet that, when melted, would raise the ocean levels to the extent shown in the movie, then the saltwater would be diluted enough to be drinkable, negating the plot point about "hydro" being such a valuable commodity. [The salt must have come from somewhere else. It is a naturally occurring mineral, after all.]
Corrected by Phixius
Entry The Mariner's gills that allow him to apparently breathe ocean water, are extremely unlikely. Even mammals that live underwater, like whales and dolphins, did not evolve gills. It is not possible for a warm-blooded creature to supply itself with enough oxygen using only small gills. [This is a part of the suspension of disbelief. There's not enough water (solid, liquid, or gas) on the planet for the world to flood up to the peak of Mt. Everest, but that's what the whole movie is built around. In this fictional world the Mariner evolved gills and they work. Perhaps they can't keep him underwater indefinitely, but they at least extend the time he can spend submerged.]
Corrected by Phixius
Entry Since Earth is covered by a salty ocean, fresh water is treated as a rare, expensive commodity. This makes no sense, because the human body requires a certain amount of fresh water each day just to survive. If whole populations are sustaining themselves, this means that they have access to fresh drinking water reliably each day. [But it's severely rationed. There's barely enough to go around, which is why it's regarded so highly.]
Corrected by Phixius
Entry If Kevin Costner's character has gills, and can breathe under water, why would he have a device for someone else to breathe underwater? He very states that he is a loner, and does not travel any way but alone. I can see building one after he picks up his extra passengers, but beforehand doesn't make since. [Not understanding a character's motivations or reasons is not a mistake. While he might have not needed there are numerous reasons why he might have kept it and there is no mistake in keeping it just because he might not need it.]
Corrected by Lummie
Entry Featuring the Exxon Valdez in the movie is a nice piece of social commentary. However, when the real Exxon Valdez was repaired and placed back into service after the Prince William Sound disaster in 1989, it was rechristened the Sea River Mediterranean. [The ship was renamed EXXON Mediterranean (type Exxon Mediterranean into a search engine). This alleged mistake is already covered under trivia.]
Entry It is a known scientific fact that a planet without land will create waves rising from 500 to a thousand feet. This is because there is no land that can break the waves' rise. This would make the surface uninhabitable by any man-made structure or vessel especially with Waterworld's current human technology. Waterworld barely has any waves. [It is not a known scientific fact. It is one scientific theory that is impossible to prove. Computer models can only begin to guess at the effects of no land above water. And in Waterworld there is at least one landmass which they find, and there are probably more as the melting ice-caps are not sufficient to cover the entire surface.]
Entry It doesn't make sense that the Smokers have so many shells. In the Atoll Assault scene the four-barreled machine gun chassis is dumping out about 50 shells every 4 seconds. [We don't see the world being flooded and the smokers becoming what they are. Who's to say they didn't find an ammunition stash or battleships (which I'm sure would still be floating around) and raided them.]
Entry Since all the Jet Skis in the movie seem to be from the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, and the Exxon Valdez can only hold so much oil, and it has probably been centuries (at least) since the water level rose, there would probably be a very strict oil rationing law in place for there to be any oil left at all. Certainly not enough for the villains to be as profligate with the use of the Jet Skis as they are. [You are assuming lots of things. There are no laws in this movie, it has become everyone for themselves. So who is to say that there is an oil rationing law. Second, maybe there was more than one oil tanker and the Exxon Valdez was the last one and so therefore everyone was DESPERATE to find dry land.]
Corrected by shortdanzr
Entry The villains have many cans of Smeat laying about. Why won't they eat it? [The Deacon and his crew want the people he rules over to believe that he has finally found dryland. Throwing it to them before he makes his speech makes them believe this.]
Entry If dirt is rare and expensive, look of the amount of dirt on the floor throughout the wooden islands, etc. [Its not a wooden island, it's metal, and the "dirt" isn't dirt, it's rust.]
Entry In the scene where Mariner dives Helen to show her the sunken cities in this rare bubble, you take a good look at the underwater panorama. However, you will not find a single fish, despite it's suppose to be full of monsters and creatures. [If the polar icecaps melted and flooded the oceans with freshwater to the extent that the whole planet was underwater (that can't happen, but that's by the by) then every saltwater fish in the sea would die; their body chemistry would be totally disrupted as the salt in the sea was drastically diluted.]
Entry If Kevin Costner can go down to the bottom of the ocean and get dirt he should be able to get things from the sunk cities a lot more valuble than dirt. [The Mariner (Costner) does in fact go to the bottom of the ocean to get more valuble things than just dirt. Crayons, shells, National Geographic, and in the extended version a workable CD player is one of the many items that the Mariner gathers from the ocean floor.]
Entry The woman and the little girl escape with Kevin Costner off the metal island in a big hurry and can be seen taking no bags or clothes with them. Why then, in a later scene aboard Kevin Costner's boat, does the woman have a completely different dress on from the one she escaped in? [It is quite possible that there was a woman's dress aboard Kevin Costner's boat already and the woman just changed into it. Since the clothes they are wearing are a lot like rags, the individual bits and pieces can be rearranged easily so as to look like a different dress. It is also possible that the woman was wearing 2 (or more) sets of clothes simultaneously while escaping from the metal island and simply took one off.]
Entry Can anyone explain to me why the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker that ran aground at one point, is still afloat, yet there is no sign of any military ships (except the sunken submarine). Military ships tend to be more "sink-proof" than civilian ones. [The fact that there are no military ships shown in the film does NOT imply that there are none in Waterworld. Maybe there are, but they simply are not there in the storyline of the film. ]
Entry At the end when the three jet-skis are about to crash, the explosion goes off a bit too early. [The explosion goes off right when it's supposed to. The two smokers that aren't the Deacon hit each other first then explode, then the fire ball covers the screen's view of the Deacon's jet-ski.]
Entry When the mariner questions the woman about the little girl's drawings, she says "she's like a mirror, she draws what she sees."  Later she claims the mariner "has things no one else has seen" like "that reflective glass". What do you think a mirror is, woman? And why do they have "normal glass" and not "reflective glass"? [The term "mirror" and an actual mirror don't have to be called the same thing especilly when Helen has never seen an actual mirror. To Helen, it's quite possible that a mirror is a reflection from the water.]
Entry Why did Costner's character have to use that timer thing to gauge how long he is underwater? He has gills so he should be able to breathe underwater therefore he wouldn't have to limit his exploring time so much. [Considering how scarce fresh water is and how easy it is to desalinate seawater, there could be chemicals in the sea after the war. Maybe the he sets the timer because he knows that staying down much longer will make him sick.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot

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