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Mistakes

In the end of the movie you can see that the doors of the elevator are almost closed. But in the next scene when Linda shoots him with the flamethrower, the doors are open again. See more...

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Hollow Man (2000) - 36 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. 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.

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An electromagnet is used to pull a metal lever on the other side of a metal door. The metal door would shield the lever, making this impossible. [Not so. The door is typically made of stainless steel for this type of environment, durable and easy to clean. And also; not magnetic.]
Edit Corrected by GalahadFairlight
It is the height of insanity that the underground laboratory does not have an emergency exit; even a top secret government facility would have one. This lab handles highly inflammable and explosive substances and would have a clear and well rehearsed evacuation procedure. Having said that, at the end of the film the survivors of Sebastian's rampage simply open the roof hatch of the lift and climb the ladder that is on one side of the lift shaft. Why didn't they all do that in the first place? Beats getting killed by an invisible, overacting psychotic. [Why didn't they do that in the first place? What, and leave an invisible overacting psychotic alone down there, all ready to escape and wreak havoc on the world? Yeah, that would be sensible. They stay down there to try to correct the huge mistake that they made, either by talking Sebastian down and curing him or, once that proves to be a non-option, by killing him. They're attempting to take responsibility for their actions - the fact that it doesn't work, leaving them at his mercy, doesn't make their initial decision a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
The serum is supposed to "quantum shift" the body of the subject out of range for visible light. However, Bacon is seen working in front of his computer modelling molecules. Clearly, a "quantum shift" would have nothing to do with molecular bio-chemistry, but rather, say, high energy physics. (Something closer to old films in which scientist would try to "beam" someone into invisibility). [The film makers probably wanted to give the original story a modern twist. The original story is about a scientist making himself invisible through a chemical process, then going mad and ended up killed.]
Edit
When the crew pour liquid latex over Sebastian's head and neck, in order to create a fairly life-like mask of his face, it simply pours over his head as though he is completely bald, and he is able to remove it later by pulling it off, exactly like a glove. However, the film creators seem to forget that Sebastian has quite a thick head of hair, and technically, when they pour the latex over his head, it should stick and/or pour along the outline of his hair. Whilst drying, the mask should equally have stuck to his hair and become very difficult to remove, and yet as they create the mask, no hair appears to exist on Sebastian's head. [Or, the crew shaved Sebastian's head immediately prior to creating the mask, to avoid this problem. They would have to do this simply by touch, but it is entirely possible to do it.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall Time
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.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
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.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
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.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
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.]
Edit Corrected by Mad Ade
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.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
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).]
Edit Corrected by airhead
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.]
Edit Corrected by Manky
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.]
Edit Corrected by Rlvlk
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.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.)]
Edit
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).]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker

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