Hollow Man (2000) - 48 mistakes

Factual error: The serum is transported by blood. Hair has no blood traveling to it, only the root. So, unless Bacon shaved his body clean, his hair wouldn't have become invisible, as wouldn't all of the fur on the gorilla.

Continuity: Why does the Twinkie Kevin Bacon eats disappear immediately? If things that go into him disappear, when they give the needle to the gorilla, you shouldn't see the needle point when it is stuck in her arm.

Continuity: At the end of film when Elizabeth and her lover are escaping from Sebastian in the hall, Liz turned on the fire alarm and everything became wet. But after that, they, and their clothes, are dry.

Factual error: When they make the gorilla visible again, her heart becomes audible at the same time it becomes visible. This happens with Kevin Bacon as well.  But that shouldn't happen, because it was just invisible, not inaudible. And it wouldn't make a noise like that unless you were listening through a stethoscope.

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, a phone conversation tells us that it will be morning soon and Kevin Bacon will meet them at the lab first thing in the morning. Yet when they show the car driving on the highway to the lab, all of the shadows are straight down.

Factual error: When they put the gorilla back into the cage in the movie, who is said to be female several times, you can spot that it has a silver back. Female gorillas do not ever have silver backs - it's strictly a male thing.

Continuity: When they try to make Kevin visible, they use a blue spray to see his vein (like they did to the gorilla). but you never see the blue mark again...

Continuity: When Elizabeth Shue and her boyfriend are locked in the freezer, the camera keeps cutting back to the thermometer which is visibly and rapidly moving downward. However, it doesn't seem to have moved at all while the camera is not on it.

Continuity: When they're pouring the "goo" on Kevin Bacon to make the mask, some of it gets on the end of his breathing tube. When they change shots, it is clean again.

Continuity: When the veterinary is throwing blood to stain Sebastian, she stains her left breast. A few seconds after, there's no stain.

Plot hole: Where does Sebastian come from in the end when he grabs Elizabeth Shue? We would have seen him if he was on top of the elevator and he surely could not have been hiding in the fire.

Continuity: When the gorilla is lying on the bed, you can't see any marks on the mattress, but when they make Kevin Bacon invisible you can see his shape marked on it.

Factual error: 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).

Factual error: When they inject the serum that counters the invisibility into the gorilla, you see the serum flow backwards toward the gorilla's hand. Veins have special valves that prevent blood flow from going backwards and to force blood to go to the heart, so how the serum manages this is beyond me.

Continuity: Sometimes you can see the outline of Kevin Bacon's head, when he is running to the toilet to puke, for example.

Factual error: During the scene in which Sebastian is chasing Elizabeth Shue and her boyfriend up the ladder in the elevator shaft, not only would the heat from the fire burn them, they would have all suffocated as the long-burning explosion quickly consumed their oxygen.

Factual error: Rats have very poor eyesight but an extremely keen sense of smell. (see www.pestproducts.com/norway) The rat introduced into the gorilla's cage would know right away that there was another animal in the cage and would never scamper happily into danger, as this one does.

Continuity: When they first inject Kevin Bacon with the stuff that makes him invisible, he thrashes around in pain. He lunges to his left breaking the strap holding down his right arm. In the scenes that follow his right arm is still strapped in.  They even unstrap him to let him up.

Plot hole: The elevator to enter the lab requires a visible-light thumb scan, but Caine enters the lab (and apparently not by following someone) after he has become invisible. A fingerprint is not sufficient for the type of scanner shown. The gloves he wears would also not follow the contours of his fingertips closely enough to copy his fingerprints.

Plot hole: Caine's skin becomes visible when it chars, for no reason consistent with the other invisibility. Further, it drops off in an impossible way (since there's no indication the invisibility otherwise changes metabolism/healing). Caine acts far too healthy for someone so severely burned. Finally, the extreme damage to skin and muscles that this implies is not seen when he becomes visible. (Even if the material flaking off is clothing, most of the arguments still apply; burned clothing would adhere to burned skin, and would provide little to no protection from the fire.).

Factual error: 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.

Other: During the scene when Elizabeth Shue burns Kevin Bacon with the flame thrower, she has blood on her shirt. When she shoots the sprinkler head the blood is gone.

Factual error: Duct tape would not stick to bloody skin at 40 below zero, and probably not at higher temperatures either; again because of the blood.

Deliberate "mistake": Elizabeth Shue uses a drawer handle as an electromagnet. OK if it's really a magnetic material but lab furniture is generally made of aluminium or stainless steel which is not. There is no way that they would use an iron handle in a potentially wet, and hence corrosive, environment such as a freezer.

Deliberate "mistake": When Sebastian goes to his employers house to kill him, the man is standing by his pool smoking a cigarette. When the boss blows smoke in Sebastian's direction, Sebastian appears and scares him. Since Sebastian is invisible you shouldn't be able to see his pupils, only an outline of his eyeballs, but you can see the pupils.

Other: After the veterinarian throws blood all over the floor, we see clean spots appear on the floor in the shape of Sebastian's feet as he walks through the blood. Somehow he never has any of it stick to the bottom of his feet (even when he's in the puddle).

Continuity: When Kevin Bacon's invisible character shoots another character in the chest with a dart, the dart changes position. First it is on the upper left side of the chest, then it is in the exact centre.

Continuity: 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.

Continuity: When Dr. McKay pushes open the freezer door, she is standing behind the row of wires still connected to the door. A moment later, without moving, she is on the other side of them.

Continuity: When Kevin Bacon gets up and the sticky sensor things rip off his body, they snap backwards and disappear into thin air.

Factual error: The speed used to administer the serum to Sebastian is not close to the reality. At that speed the vein would have exploded.

Other: When the subject is invisible, and the crew are attempting to to return it to normal, when they inject the orange anti-serum into both the gorilla's and Caine's bloodstreams, it makes a noticeable "slooshing" noise as it rushes through their veins, which, technically, should make no noise at all.

Factual error: There is no way for the vet and Shue's characters to intubate Dr Caine when he was attempting to come back from phaseshift. He had not completely re-appeared and it would be impossible to tell his airway from his esophagus.

Continuity: In the scene where Linda tapes up Matt's wound, she is seen pulling a large strip of duct tape almost all the way across his stomach. Later, when they first start climbing in the elevator shaft, Matt's shirt rides up and the tape is gone.

Continuity: When Linda and Matt are trying to escape from the freezer, the amount of blood changes on the door lock.

Continuity: Matt is bitten by the gorilla on his hand in the beginning, but in the next scene where the gorilla is strapped to the table, his hand is fine. Shortly after the gorilla is made visible, his hand is suddenly bandaged.

Visible crew/equipment: When Sebastian is stalking his neighbor and looking at her to see if he can see her undress in the beginning, there is a brief moment where you can see the reflection of a camera crew in the window looking into Sebastian's apartment.

Continuity: When the team tries to make Caine invisible, he tears off all the sensors and wires from his chest. Yet the surrounding machines continue to display his heart rate and blood pressure.

Continuity: When Elizabeth Shue sets off the automatic sprinkler system on the ceiling, a great amount of water is spraying from each one. However, after Shue and Josh Brolin attempt to climb up the escape ladder through the elevator shaft, all of the water is gone.

Continuity: When Sebastian goes to Linda's apartment to catch her and Matthew together, we see Linda welcome Matt by pulling her jeans down. Matt picks her up, hands on her bare butt. After he carries her into the bedroom, Sebastian throws a rock through the window and we see them on the bed, her jeans are pulled back up to her waist. Not the direction clothing usually goes in such situations.

Continuity: In the early part of the movie when Sebastian is checking the stability of the molecule, you see the 3D molecule model explode and the separated atoms pause. When Sebastian turns away, you can see that the atoms are no longer on the same position.

Continuity: When the redhead spilled the blood all over the floor to see if he was coming at her there is a little area to the left of the screen he could walk on without her seeing it. The next shot it's gone.

Continuity: When Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue's boyfriend shoot the gorilla, the gorilla passes out. No one moves the gorilla, yet the red headed veterinarian walks right through the area where the gorilla passed out.

Revealing: Sebastian Caine wears a latex mask and latex gloves in order to appear near-human. The mask he wears is fairly long, and covers his neck, and the tops of his shoulders and collarbone. However, there is a scene in which Linda and Matt are helping a nauseous Sebastian reach the toilet, where he vomits (invisible fluid) into it. In this scene, when Sebastian breaks free from them and runs to the toilet, we can see that his arms and chest are also visible, skin-colored. The mask he wears only reaches the very base of his neck, so it is possible that the actor playing the invisible man did not realize that the tops of his arms and chest were visible.

Factual error: The braking system on lifts (elevators) is designed to stop a free-falling car safely and quickly (using gravity and a wedge system). It would not take a long time to stop the car or break up as shown in the film.

Continuity: The "tranquilliser guns" are really PGP paintball pistols. The little tube on top only has a little hole the size of a paintball you load it, yet in the movie they seem to hold a good amount of large darts in that tiny gun.

Factual error: You see the serum flow toward the heart and then branch out through the rest of the body. The same thing happens when they try to do it with Kevin Bacon. In ANY normal circulatory system, blood that reaches the heart from the veins has to go straight to the lungs to be deoxygenated before it gets sent to the rest of the blood. The serum clearly doesn't do this - the only way that anything could skip the lungs so blatantly is if there was a hole in the heart.

Continuity: When Isabelle (the gorilla)'s body hair is returning, you can see Linda (Elizabeth Shue) touching it. In that shot, the leather belt above Isabelle's body actually seems to be hovering above her - it is not resting on her.