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Mistakes

When the President of the United States attends a public gathering (such as the SuperBowl) the level of security is extremely high. So why wasn't Mason's delivery on the day of the game checked for explosive devices? See more...

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The SuperBowl game was filmed in Montreal, Quebec in Canada and the two teams are the Montreal Alouettes and Toronto Argonauts of The Canadian Football League. They just put them in different uniforms to film them. See more...

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The Sum of All Fears (2002) - 27 corrections

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson, starring Alan Bates, Ben Affleck, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber, Morgan Freeman, Philip Baker Hall (add more)

Genres: Action, Drama, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
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B2's never leave the middle of the United States unless they are in the air and are on their way to bomb something. The B2's would never have been stationed in Italy and could never have attacked Russia that quickly, as they would have to travel halfway around the world. [Wrong. While the B-2 Spirit is stationed at Whiteman AFB in Missouri they can be deployed where the Government sees fit. Andersen AFB Guam, Diego Garcia, and RAF Fairford are used as "forward operating locations". Also USAF has also flown missions from Whiteman all the way to Afghanistan. When USAF is in alert status aircraft are always in the air, simply awaiting the "Go Codes".]
Edit Corrected by dablues7
I do not think that the B-2 Stealth bombers would flash their wing tip lights. Especially not on a combat mission. [The B-2, while a stealth aircraft, still has to make itself visible to commercial traffic. An all black plane with little to no radar signature would be almost invisible to a passenger plane without wingtip lights, hence its similarity to a UFO. And that also where a number of UFO stories come from.]
Edit Corrected by dablues7
At the football game played at Baltimore when they show the score, the show a game score of Florida vs. Chicago. While there are three different teams from Florida (Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and Miami) there is no team that has Florida as part of its name. [This is a fictional storyline, not even based on truth. There are fictional football teams in 'Any Given Sunday' as well (and a fictional league). Are we going to start posting factual errors on 'Star Wars' because Storm Troopers don't actually exist?]
Edit
During the scene at the end of the film where both presidents are sitting signing documents in front of an audience, both start signing left handed, but the Russian president signs the second document right handedly. [The Russian President might be ambidextrous, i.e. can write with either hand.]
Edit
In the sequence where Ryan's helicopter has been hit by the blast of the nuclear explosion, an acoustic alarm goes off during the tailspin. This wouldn't be possible, since every electronic equipment fails after a nuclear explosion due to the nuclear electromagnetic pulse. [A large portion of military and government vehicles, and aircraft are hardened against the affect of an electromagnetic pulse. This helicopter crashed because of the shock wave from the explosion.]
Edit Corrected by pross79
When Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman go to Russia and meet the president, he is getting his picture taken. The photographer puts in a new cartridge, doesn't take a picture, takes out the unused cartridge then puts a 2nd unused cartridge in and then takes a picture. [Professional photographers can be very picky about their equipment. He may have seen or noticed something he didn't like about the cartridge and switched it out to ensure professional quality photographs.]
Edit
In the scene where Senior Russian officials are entering the underground base of operations, the president is told that American nuclear submarines are pulling out of Norfolk and Kings Bay armed with Trident D3 weapons. This is a mistake for two reasons: a) I speak Russian and I heard them say Trident D5, not D3 and b) American nuke subs are no longer armed with D3 missiles, they have mostly D5's, some have C4's. Also, I'm pretty sure D3's aren't considered first strike weapons, whereas D5's are. [A mistake on the part of the advisor, not being clear on his facts, not necessarily a movie mistake.]
Edit Time
When Affleck is driving the pick-up truck it is a GMC Sierra, but when he crashes into the old car, the tailgate says Silverado. [It is not a different truck. The tailgate says Sierra at the bottom left, on the right you can see GMC in red letters.]
Edit
When the bomb explodes at the Super Bowl in Baltimore it is daytime, but the Super Bowl is always held at night. [I don't remember the Super Bowl being played in the film. There was a football game, but it wasn't the Super Bowl. The scoreboard indicates that the two teams are called "Florida" and "Chicago". There are three NFL teams based in Florida (Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa Bay). None of the aforementioned teams use the name Florida in their name. Therefore one of the teams does not play in the NFL, hence the game can not be the Super Bowl. Furthermore, there are no references to the NFL in the film. In conclusion the time the game is played is irrelevant, since American football games can be played in daylight.]
Edit
One thing that is created by a nuclear blast is an electromagnetic pulse. This radiates out of dozens to hundreds of miles at the speed of light. The pulse fries all electrical equipment whether they are on or not. Cabot's palm-pilot, and all cell towers in the city would have been destroyed so Ryan couldn't have used it to call Spinnaker. [EMP is not certain to destroy all shut down electrical equipment. Some things may survive completely intact if turned off, other things which were on at the time may only be temporarily disrupted. The factors which determine EMP damage are very varied so with an instance of a PDA working it's too much to assume it would definitely have been damaged.]
Edit Time
Why does Clark find it necessary to cut the Ukrainian fence at all? When the guards discover the hole, we can see that Clark began the cut nearly a foot from the top of the fence. In fact, it is barely 8 feet high - with no barbed wire and a smooth bar at the top. Climbing over it (as opposed to cutting it) would have prevented the guards from detecting his presence. Maybe this is why they don't trust him with an email account. [A character's mistake is not a movie mistake.]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
The USAF aircrew flying aboard Air Force One are wearing their black, circular squadron patches above their right pocket on their flight suits. In the real USAF, the squadron patch is worn on the left shoulder. [The aircraft they are flying on is not Air Force One, and those are the correct patch placements for this particular aircrew.]
Edit
When the call comes for the bombing of the aircraft carrier, you think that there would be a chain of command with sort of checkpoints to ensure accuracy and to ensure something terroristic would not happen. They probably did this to keep the plot flowing, but it still seems illogical. [The commander of the airbase was paid to get his pilots to attack the aircraft carrier by the Germans, remember he lied to them about the Americans nuking Moscow, the pilots would assume that their base commander got his orders from his superiors. Also he was killed for this at the end of the movie.]
Edit Corrected by pross79
Shots that are intercut between the scene involving the President's attending the Super Bowl in the football stadium in Baltimore and the shots outside the stadium involving the explosion of the nuclear device and the resulting destruction and loss of life are clearly intended to occur during the same time frame. However, all shots set in the stadium are at night under a darkened sky, and all shots outside the stadium take place in the full afternoon sunlight. [Some people have said it's because the roof is covered, but look at the other entry here about the panoramic shot showing both stadiums being roofless. Either way it's a mistake]. [There's no mistake here: the establishing aerial shot of the Super Bowl stadium (below the Budweiser blimp) shows a DOMED stadium well outside the city. That's where the Super Bowl is taking place. In the aerial shot just before the bomb goes off, you can see Raven Stadium, which is much closer to the center of Baltimore. It's not domed, and is not meant to be the same stadium as the computer-generated one the Super Bowl was held in.]
Edit
About an hour into the movie, when Ryan meets Clark after he is ambushed by the two Ukrainian officers, there are a number of mistakes. For one thing, the officers are not speaking Ukrainian, but pure Russian. Secondly, Clark asks Ryan to tell them to take their shoes off - but we've already seen that Clark knows Russian, when he talked to Spassky's mother. Why doesn't he tell them himself? After that scene, he remarks to Ryan, "You know Ukrainian?"... however Ryan too, just like the "Ukrainian" officers, was speaking Russian. [Considering that Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union, it's not all that surprising that a majority of the Ukraine speaks Russian. I worked with two girls from Ukraine, and they both spoke Russian AND Ukrainian.]
Edit Time
After the nuclear explosion, when the president is in his airplane, he has a plaster on his forehead, then it disappears and without any scar or wound under it. Later it's back again. [When the plaster is gone, it is replaced with a large flesh-colored bandaid that remains on the president the rest of the day.]
Edit
In the scene where the final assassinations take place the cigarette lighter is pushed. Then the camera cuts to a view of the outside of the car right before it explodes. But before it even explodes the car sitting next to it already has its emergency flashers on. Once the car does explode then the car alarm goes off which is when the emergency flashers should cut on. [The flashers do not go on before the explosion. From the angle of the shot, you cannot even see the car next to the one that explodes.]
Edit
In the scene where the soldiers are rescuing the President from his limo they simply rip his door open. It is well known that the Presidential limo is really an armored vehicle that can withstand quite an impact. I doubt that his door would open so easily. [Assumably, the car has had quite a bit of damage since it rolled over about 5 times. Also, you can see that 1 of the doors is completely open where Cabot is hanging out of the car so it's realistic that the door by the president is not even completely shut and sealed by the time the marines get there.]
Edit
In the scene where the Russian president is getting into bed with his wife, his pajamas are dark blue silk. When his guards come to evacuate him in the middle of the night, his pajamas are burgundy. [When they show him getting into bed and later being awoken by the guards, this is not the same night.]
Edit
On the way to the football game it appears that they make the football stadium into a dome stadium. Baltimore doesn't have a dome stadium, this is evident a few minutes later when they show a panoromic view of Baltimore and you can see the 2 stadiums side by side as open stadiums. [The stadium shown in the movie is the Civic Center and it is plenty large enough to house a football game.]
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