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When they put the reversal liquid into the ape, a rubber band was used to help find the blood vessel. When they did the same thing for Sebastian, no rubber band was used but they were quickly successful at finding the vessel. See more...

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Hollow Man (2000) - 32 corrections

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kevin Bacon, Rhona Mitra (add more)

Genres: Action, Drama, Horror, 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 Throughout the film, Kevin Bacon's character is seen with sticky sensor wires stuck to the top of his head and around his face. But we never see him get his hair cut off, even though we even see he has no hair when they first attempt to make him visible. Also, just a short time later, we see Kevin swimming in a pool, with a full head of hair, and later it is gone again. [He has hair the entire time, even when they try to reverse the quantum shift. It appears last in the process, but it is briefly visible. The sensors stuck to his head are pretty small, and it would be no problem attaching them to his scalp under his hair (or cut a tiny portion of hair away to attach sensors). The only time his head is completely bald, is at the very end, after he has been set afire and his hair has burned off.]
Corrected by Twotall
Entry After making Kevin's mask, Elizabeth Shue cuts circles around his eyes by using a scissors, but the circles weren't that perfect. In the next shots, until the end of the movie, they became flawless. [The next shots of him wearing the mask are several days later (He was shifted for three days, they failed at bringing him back, made the mask and the next time we see him he says he's been shifted for ten days). There's been plenty of time for them to be making fine adjustments to the mask, or for that matter, make more masks.]
Corrected by Twotall
Entry Sebastian can see perfectly like anyone else but because he's invisible light would hit his retinas from all directions making him effectively blind. [According to the movie, the serum "quantum shifts" the user out of other visual light ranges. It puts him out of phase with the people around him. The light isn't passing through him, he is just out of phase with the light.]
Corrected by Jazetopher
Entry There is a scene where the invisible Sebastian rolls over on his 'bed' and pulls the sheet over. The next shot is from the opposite direction where you can see the monitor showing the thermo image of Sebastian - in the monitor we see Sebastian rolling over and pulling the sheet again. Real time would not afford enough time to be doing this twice. [Not all films are shown in real time. The monitor shot was just reshowing the previous scene but through the thermal imaging monitor, both happening at the same moment, but shown independantly of each other.]
Entry Kevin Bacon gets blood thrown on him and it disappears within seconds. Ever try washing your hands after a nosebleed? It isn't that easy. [I have never had problems washing away blood from me (and I get frequent nosebleeds), especially when it is still relatively fresh. And in Sebastian's case, we don't know for sure what he does after he kills Sarah, as the action switches to Linda and Matt at this point. But it is not unlikely that this high-tech research facility that deals with among other things radiation would have a radiation burn shower readily available. Such a shower would have sprayed Sebastian's entire body within seconds, removing the blood in a short time, making him ready to go back and lock Linda and Matt in the freezer.]
Corrected by Twotall
Entry The way Sue is wrapping the wires around the door handle in order to make a magnet, would cause the current to go from left to right and return from right to left. This would create two equally powerful magnetic fields in opposite directions so the final sum would be zero magnetic field. The door handle shouldn't get magnetized. [In actual fact, all electromagnets are wound from one end to the other, and back again. The only way to cancel the induced magnetism would be to wind it in the opposite direction (i.e. clockwise round the core, then anti-clockwise, the same number of turns).]
Corrected by airhead
Entry When locked in the freezer, why didn't Linda simply yank out a few of the obvious hanging wires behind the refrigeration unit? [Even if she did do this, given that she's in an airtight refrigeration unit, she'd still be suffering from the cold for a long time. It makes sense that she'd try to figure out a way to escape rather than wasting time tearing out wires.]
Corrected by Happy Manc
Entry The pressurized tanks of flammable liquid that Linda uses to make a flamethrower are sitting unsecured in the lab. OSHA regulations require pressurized cylinders to be secured to prevent them from tipping over. The danger is that the top will get knocked off, and the tank will shoot around like a rocket. Any lab would have their tanks secured for this reason. [People do break laws and people do break OSHA regulations. It is not a mistake, but real life.]
Corrected by Rlvlk
Entry Elisabeth Shue uses the blowtorch to set off the fire sprinkler in the hallway, but later there is a raging inferno in the lab with all the important data and equipment and not one sprinkler. [Some areas may be deliberately not covered by the sprinkler system either because water damage may be more of a concern than fire or because sprinkling water on to all the electrical equipment would probably cause even more damage.]
Entry Kevin Bacon shouldn't be able to see anything - the cornea refracts light rays to the back of the eyeball to the optic nerve, a central point. If the cornea was invisible, light rays would go straight out the back of his head and he would have no vision. [The serum "quantum shifts" the user out of others visual light ranges. It puts him out of phase with the people around him. The light isn't passing through him, he is just out of phase with the light.]
Entry Why didn't the scientists grab all the infrared goggles up and turn off the lights? That way Kevin Bacon wouldn't see them but they could see him. [If we are allowed to second guess the plot this way and say what characters *should* have done then it's equally valid to suggest that Kevin Bacon could have anticipated this and hidden or disabled all the IR goggles.]
Entry When Sebastian comes in at the beginning there is a guard outside who waves at him. When he tells the guy watching him from heaven he is leaving there is a guard out there again. Yet when Sebastian cuts the lines and changes the elevator codes and is killing everyone and all the explosions, screams, shouting, and noise going on he didn't hear anything or call anyone. He should have at least heard a faint explosion or shout. [It is shown at the end of the movie when Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin are climbing up the ladder in the elevator shaft, that the shaft is AT LEAST 200 feet high and the sounds of screams and explosions can very well be muffled by that height. (Screams especially becuase there were no major screams and very few minor ones when Sebastian begins his killing spree.)]
Entry The must be a lot of dumb scientists in Sebastian's lab. While defibrillating the invisible gorilla, (s)he becomes completely visible for a moment. However, not once do the scientists consider that applying a mild electrical shock to the system renders the invisible animal visible again - that electricity may be the key to the whole invisibility problem. They don't even comment upon the fact that the gorilla does become visible. [They have been working on making the animals visible for a while now - perhaps using electricity has been used on the animals and discarded because the amount needed to make a animal visible is too high (note that Sebastian receives a massive electric shock and is still not made fully visible).]
Entry Why on earth would the military be interested in a soldier (sailor, aviator, whatever) who has to go into combat naked and unarmed, and who is detectable by an enemy equipped with a pair of cheap, mass-produced goggles? How would you treat them if they were injured? They would be utterly useless in any form of military operation, even espionage. [Presumably the military are interested because Sebastian's research could lead to advanced forms of invisibility technology, such as the ability to turn materials and weapons invisible for use in combat.]
Entry When we see Sebastian's saucy neighbour for the first time, she has blinds on the window, but when Sebastian is invisible and he looks at her again, she has curtains. [Not a mistake, she could have easily changed it herself.]
Entry When the guy is lying in the corridor bleeding and Sarah (the veterinarian) says he needs blood, she goes back to the lab and starts pulling out bags and bags of whole blood. Problem: They're not authorized to work on humans, so the blood she's planning on pumping into this poor soul (without checking his blood type), is from either a gorilla or a dog. [They're not authorized to work on humans, no, but, bearing in mind that they're going ahead with a human trial anyway, they would undoubtedly have surreptitiously obtained some human blood supplies in case of problems.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
Entry Apparently the serum used to make Sebastian invisible also makes him incredibly strong. When he kills Carter, he is able to lift him up into the air with one arm, he has to weigh at least 200 pounds. [It has been proven time and again through medical science that an increase in adrenaline can also give people an incredible amount of strength. This usually happens in moments of extreme anger or fear.]
Entry In the end of the movie, Sebastian Caine tries to hit the girl and her lover, but misses and gets electrocuted. With that amount of water on the floor, all three of them would get electrocuted. [Popular misconception strikes again. The human body is a much better conductor than plain water, therefore all the electricity takes the "shortest" path to ground which is Sebastian.]
Entry In spite of having all kinds of sophisticated scientific and video equipment in the lab, Sebastian shows the Generals the gorilla experiment using an old fashioned movie projector... [They're not in his lab - they're in an office in a Defense Department building. They aren't as well equipped as the lab - and that's not a film mistake.]
Entry Gorillas are strict vegetarians. So why does Isabelle eat a rat at the beginning of the film? The serum may have turned her into a crazed killer, as it does with Sebastian, but it hasn't changed the structure of her teeth and palate, biochemistry of her digestive system and so on, all of which would be required. She might kill or torture the rat, but she'd never eat it. [The invisible animal that attacks the rat is never specified as the gorilla. There are several visible and invisible animals in the lab - we know this by the "empty" shaking cages later. It could be any animal, like a cat.]

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