Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) - 60 mistakes

Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Riggs is in the cargo area, a gunman shoots at him, he rolls and starts emptying the clip into him - you see the bullet holes in the gunman. But as Riggs is face to face with the gunman, the holes disappear.

Continuity: While he's on the toilet, Murtaugh is wearing a flak jacket that disappears for one shot while he is getting instructions from the bomb squad leader.

Continuity: The right headlight of Murtaugh's car, when it is chasing the BMW, falls off when he hits something, but later on it is fine.

Factual error: In the scene where Riggs drops the container, there were only two buttons on the control. I've never seen a hoist with a drop button, just an up and down and they are pretty slow.

Continuity: When Riggs is on the recovery truck, he drops his gun and it lands on the left side of the road, but when Leo picks it up after Roger stops the car, its now on the opposite side of the road.

Visible crew/equipment: When Riggs first starts shadowing Rudd, he cuts off Rudd's car with his truck. They go to the close up shot of Riggs and when he drives away you can see in the reflection of the trucks window, the PANAV on the hood of the Panavision camera.

Factual error: All vehicles sold in the U.S. since the 1950s have federally-mandated laminated windshields. When the surfboard crashes through the windshield of the truck, the windshield shatters like ordinary unlaminated glass.

Continuity: Near the end of the car chase you see a shot of the station wagon Riggs and Murtaugh are riding in get held up by a couple of police cars. The hood is popped open. The shot changes to the BMW crashing into the store window and then back to the station wagon. The hood is down.

Continuity: When Rika comes to Riggs' trailer he offers her a chair, and she sits down twice in different camera angles.

Continuity: When Hans first walks into the room with the fishtank, the plastic on the floor flaps up behind him as he walks, ending up folded up on itself without much space between the man and the end of the plastic. When he gets shot and falls back onto it, it's perfectly flat and he's a lot further forward.

Plot hole: During Riggs' last fight with Adolph, Adolph holds the knife in his own hand as Riggs forces him to stab himself very slowly. At any point, Adolph could simply have let the knife fall or just tilt down before that happened. Nothing Riggs is doing is making such impossible. "Locking" his wrist does not prevent him from letting go of the knife. It only prevents him flexing his wrist. And this guy is a trained killer, fighting for his life. Better to battle for control of the knife than just let it kill you.

Continuity: Murtagh states he was 7 floors up, but the room number (612) suggests it's a 6th floor room. When he looks down to see the three men falling, his vantage point is well above 7 floors up.

Revealing: The building used for the South African Consulate is actually a bank. When Roger and Leo are thrown out, the glass front doors are marked with winged logos and consulate lettering that is dark in color, but one door has additional white lettering that says "Open to Serve You, Monday - Thursday 9am-4pm, Friday 9am - 6pm"- rather out of character for a consulate.

Factual error: When Riggs and Murtaugh rappel from the container they have no gloves. Considering how fast they descended 20-30 feet, their hands would have suffered very bad rope burn.

Continuity: When the surfboard crashes into the tow-truck cabin the driver is gone.

Continuity: In the drive-thru scene you can see that the right half of the grill and both right headlights on the wagon are gone. When they pull up at Roger's in the scene where Leo gets kidnapped the right headlight is working.

Continuity: During the opening chase when Riggs is driving through the small gap on the bridge, as Murtaugh shouts, "Get off ya mother f***er", the car that is next to them goes from being right up against their car to a good 10 feet away between the 2 shots.

Deliberate "mistake": Towards the end of the movie, Gibson shoots padlocks with his pistol to break them to get into a truck. Mythbusters has proven this cannot be done with ordinary weapons, or even much more powerful weapons.

Revealing: When Riggs rolls over the front of the recovery truck, as he goes over and stops, he bounces, because there is a platform out of shot that Riggs lands on, that is removed in the later wide shots.

Revealing: When the small car is launched into the air, the underside is plainly visible, showing no normal working parts like a suspension or drivetrain. It has a flat pan bottom with a square-tube support structure to make it very light for its flight and to retain it shape. (Director's Cut.)

Continuity: As Murtagh's car pulls up behind the small pickup, a man is reaching into the bed of the truck from the left side of the truck. But as soon as Riggs steps out of the car, the man is instantly behind his truck.

Factual error: Nail guns like the one used as a weapon here can not be fired unless the tip is pressed against a hard surface. It will not fire a nail at someone across any space. The first guy is killed by pressing the gun to his forehead, but the second is hit from several inches away (evidenced by the length of each nail still sticking out of the guy instead of them being fully into his body with only the nail heads showing.

Revealing: When the windshield is shot up, Riggs knocks the glass off the car. But interior shots that follow show Riggs' tall, fluffy hair isn't moving at all in the high-speed air rushing into the car.

Other: In Lethal Weapon 1 Murtaugh turns 50. In Lethal Weapon 2, you can see a copy of Murtaugh's police file in the South African Embassy, when they are discussing repercussions against the police. In the file it says Murtaugh was born in 1947 which would make him 40 in this movie.

Continuity: Near the end, when Riggs is captured by the bad guys they tie him in a straight-jacket and toss him off a pier into the drink, he's wearing a pair of Dingo style boots. Underwater when he dislocates his shoulder and escapes the straight-jacket, he sees Patsy Kendit's corpse, swims over, checks her pulse and swims to the surface. Now he's barefoot. Yet when he attacks and kills the two thugs he's got the boots on again. They can even be heard on the pavement.

Deliberate "mistake": The way diplomatic immunity is depicted in the movie is extremely inaccurate. While technically a sufficiently ranking diplomat could perform the acts shown in the movie without being subject to arrest, their home government would be requested to turn the diplomats over for trial, or the diplomat would be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country. A drug smuggling ring and murdering multiple policemen is far, far more serious than actual crimes that diplomats have been expelled (or handed over for trial) for in the real world.

Factual error: In the scene where Riggs and Murtaugh are in the police car, they intercept a transmission in Afrikaans for the first time in the movie. Except it's definitely not Afrikaans (my home language). I think it's Vlaams or Dutch.

Visible crew/equipment: When Riggs is thrown off the tow truck and rolls across the ground a camera peeks in from the right.

Revealing: When Riggs is holding on to the front of the tow truck, in some wider shots you see how his jacket is squeezed by the rope which ties him to the car.

Continuity: When the boss gives Riggs and Murtaugh the Leo assignment the name on the office door changes from Capt. E. Murphy to Capt. L. Murphy when they leave the office.

Continuity: In the final shoot-out Riggs shoots a guy who is looking down a ladder. We see about four exit wounds on his back, but no injury in front, neither later when Murtaugh takes a look at the corpse.

Deliberate "mistake": It's surely an intended joke, but that the toilet not only survived the explosion but also the landing in one piece is very unrealistic.

Continuity: In the opening car chase the red BMW zips through a hotel arcade. On the right we see a guest waiting with a porter. The porter grabs a suitcase and runs towards the entrance, and the guest turns left and starts running away from the entrance. When the camera angle changes the guest is back where he was standing, but now he turns right and runs the other way.

Factual error: When Riggs and Murtaugh make the car go through the container door it has only a few meters to accelerate. It would have never been able to gain enough speed to leave the container almost horizontally.

Continuity: When the bathroom explodes, from one angle we see the toilet come sailing out over the roof of a police truck parked at the front of the house. While the angles make it a bit tricky to judge, there's a definite leftward trajectory. We then cut to a closeup of Murtaugh's car, and the toilet lands on it as if it was flying to the right. Even if the angles are misleading, in the first shot the police truck and other cars are parked to the right of the exploding window. In the shot of Roger's car he's also parked to the right, but without all the cars visible around it which there should be.

Continuity: In the final scene where Riggs is in Murtaugh's arms the side shots show blood all over the left side of Riggs' face but the straight shots there is just a little on his left cheek and chin.

Continuity: In the scene where Riggs and Rika are in the trailer while the men in the helicopters are shooting, after the scene where you see the T.V. fall down, You see the cabinet being shot. If you look carefully, you can see pieces of the cabinet fall down, then appear again. Director's cut.

Continuity: In the scene where Murtaugh is shooting his attackers with the nail gun the walls are apparently covered with super plastic. How is it that the plastic sheeting is light enough for the bad guy to punch through, but is able to support the weight of his corpse by a single nail when Murtaugh shoots him through the plastic? Wouldn't the plastic tear and drop the body to the floor?

Plot hole: Roger intercepts Riggs and blocks the path of his truck. After agreeing to a plan, we hear Riggs driving off. But his original path is still blocked and we don't see him pass behind Murtagh, so he must have reversed direction (which seems unlikely since he's continuing his drive to the same destination). But for his truck to have headed the other way, he'd have to turn it around first, but we hear it simply drive off.

Plot hole: Riggs and Murtagh send the car flying out of the container, pushing the money out as it goes. Ignoring that the car couldn't possibly force the sealed container doors open, even without having the obstacle of pallets loaded with money in the way, the car actually explodes in mid air for no reason. (Director's Cut.)

Factual error: When the guys arrive at the stilted home, a 'rollback' wrecker (flatbed tow truck) is shown with its bed raised and tilted to load car. At the higher, forward end of the bed is a massive 'guard' (shaped somewhat like a rollbar) that the warning lightbar is mounted on. This guard is specifically there to prevent a carried vehicle from being able to move forward past the front end of the bed. It is not possible for the car that is struck to go over the cab of the truck as it did, as this guard raises with the bed, and is reinforced to hold the car back, not breakaway in the flimsy fashion that it does.

Plot hole: In the opening chase scenes, the bad guys are using hand-held radios to communicate, and several shots show that all the police are hearing them. These professional criminals would not be broadcasting their criminal activities on a police frequency, nor are the police and their dispatchers monitoring scanners to pick up the criminals' frequency. So neither side should be hearing the other.

Visible crew/equipment: There's a shadow of a crew member moving across the lighted trees when Rudd asks Rita in front of the embassy whether she understood what had happened today.

Continuity: When Riggs is thrown off the tow truck and rolls across the ground the Ryder truck that was just overtaken by the tow truck disappears and reappears between shots.

Continuity: At the end of the opening car chase the red BMW crashes into a police car whose driver vanishes between shots.

Continuity: When Rika sits down outside of Riggs' place, the front of the trailer is half shaded by the sunroof. When the camera angle changes the shade is gone, and it's much brighter.

Continuity: When Riggs, Leo, and the bad guy crash through the hotel window they push the curtains to the side, but when they sail down into the pool the curtains are wrapped around them.

Continuity: When Riggs loses his gun during his tow-truck ride there's a white fence on the left side of the road. When Murtaugh stops the car and Leo "gets" it, there's no fence anywhere.

Revealing: When Riggs and Rika make love a safety blanket separates the crucial areas.

Continuity: This only for the Directors Cut edition of Lethal Weapon 2. In the added scene where Riggs charms the ladies at he Pool in the hotel where Leo is staying. Just as they wallk in to the pool area, you see a woman in a pink bikini get out of the pool almost completely. Then in the close up shot as Roger bends down to talk to someone, the woman in the pink bikini is getting out of the pool again.

Continuity: In the fight scene toward the end of the film between Riggs and the guy who killed his wife and Rika, look carefully at the watch Riggs is wearing - it moves from one arm to the other in close-up as Riggs forces the guy to stab himself.

Continuity: When Riggs wins his straightjacket bet he pulls it over his head, but only because the formerly closed strap through his crotch is suddenly open.

Plot hole: The hitman in the tow truck leans into the rear/left corner of the cab as the surfboard approaches. The board hits the glass at the very top, dead center. Hence, it definitely misses him completely, yet the hitman is killed. Windshields don't break into "shards" (which is another mistake made listed here, and as it can't exist, it can't be the cause of death) and the roof is not damaged. He is the driver, and he stops the truck by braking. There is no vehicle collision. It is clear to all viewers that the makers intended the surfboard to be the cause of death - nobody watching the film thought otherwise.

Continuity: When Riggs and Murtaugh are trying to find the address Leo can't quite remember, Riggs is looking through an address book. Turning the pages, he gets to a yellow bit (possibly a different section), and so goes back a page. The angle changes half-way through this page turn, and the yellow page has disappeared, replaced with a page full of text.

Revealing: In Rudd's office Riggs stops the first attacker with a good head butt. He misses the guy's face and just touches the chest a little, but in the next shot the guy is dramatically holding his nose.

Plot hole: When Riggs emerges from the water after he has freed himself from the straightjacket he knocks out the two bad guys using both his arms. This wouldn't have worked as he had to dislocate his shoulder to wiggle himself out of the jacket, and he relocates it only after the fight.

Revealing: Movie physics occasionally dictate random explosions, but this is too bizarre. Near the start, a cop car smashes through a caravan, and the caravan blows up. Fair enough, may have hit a gas cylinder or whatever. We see the cop car, practically undamaged, skid to a halt. Cut to a few reaction shots, then suddenly the cop car just blows up for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Continuity: At the end of the film when Murtaugh is holding Riggs, the position of the money keeps changing around them, yet no wind appears to be blowing.

Factual error: When Rika hands Rudd his morning faxes they are not faxes but printed sheets folded in the middle. Plus, in those days faxes would have been thermo printed and shown a tendency to roll up, since, as she said, they had just arrived in the morning.

Other: When Riggs kills the guy who murdered his wife by dropping that cargo crate on him it's obvious the crate has no bottom and it falls around him.