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Quotes

Michael Bolton: If we get caught, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to federal "pound me in the ass" prison.

Samir: I don't want to go to ANY prison!

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Mistakes

During Tom's BBQ when Michael Bolton and Samir are asking Tom's lawyer about prison you see Michael lose grip and drop his cup with a piece of ice hitting Samir in the head. When the ice hits him he's holding the cup in his left hand but when the camera angle changes the cup shows up in his right hand. See more...

Trivia

Red staplers like Milton's weren't made in real life, so the prop department had one specially made for the film. After the film's release, however, so many people wanted red staplers the office supply company started producing them. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Directed by Mike Judge, starring David Herman, Gary Cole, Jennifer Aniston, Ron Livingston, Stephen Root (add more)

Genres: Comedy, Crime, Romance

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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Drew tells Peter the story of Tom Smykowski's attempted suicide, change of heart and subsequent car accident. But how could Drew know that? Tom tried to kill himself with carbon monoxide, changed his mind when his wife got home, and then got hit by the drunk driver. It's very unlikely — absurd, really — to think that he would then tell the whole story to ANYBODY, let alone Drew. [Well not really. You know how Tom throws a party because he banked about 7 digits because of his car accident? I am sure that Drew asked why he was throwing a party and the audience should assume that Tom told Drew of what happened.]
Edit
The "Salami Slicing" technique Michael Bolton has created with his virus will never work on modern banks. currency banking transactions are only conducted using integer-only functions. So there are no roundings that they can take away and put in a different account. Also, if the transactions would round the "fractions of a cent" off they would actually be creating money instead of stealing it, since the "fractions of a cent" normally disappear. [Firstly the movie takes place with banking and computer systems prior to 2000, not modern technology. Secondly, the whole point of using the virus is they thought that since they were updating all the programs for Y2K, they'd get away with it. Finally, the virus didn't work, which is the whole reason the amount of money in the account after only a day or two was so much higher than what they expected. As Michael says: "I suck at math."]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
Michael says he was "about 12 years old" when his namesake started winning Grammys. In fact Michael Bolton the singer won his first Grammy in 1990, which would make Michael Bolton the programmer aged 21 in 1999. But he must be older than this because he's worked at Initech for five years, according to Peter. [Simple (and understandable) character mistake, since he hates the fact that everyone associates him with the other Michael Bolton.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
In the beginning of the movie, when we see Peter talking to Lumburgh, he has a clip on his computer monitor which has some writing on it (I believe it actually reads "Initech"). Later in the movie, when he's trying to shut off his computer and get away from Lumburgh, the clip has no writing on it. [Clips are removable. Peter easily could have moved it at any time from the beginning to the end of the movie.]
Edit
When the guys go to see Tom at the BBQ, he has his head in a support cage. Every time he moves, and particularly when he laughs, this cage moves around and wobbles. The point of these cages is to keep the head still and in line with the spine, and are bolted into the bone itself. Therefore, not only should it be impossible for it to be moving, it would seriously hurt if it was. [Given the huge settlement he recieved, Tom (with the assistance of his attorney) is probably exaggerating his injuries.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
Its next to impossible for a new-style building like Innatech to burn to the ground. Fire codes are now put in place such as firewalls and sprinkler systems in all buildings where many people work because of catastrophes in the past. This makes it impossible for one man to burn it as completely as Milton did. [Milton has worked there for a very long time so he knows all of the fire protection systems and could easily disable them. Remember, he's been talking about doing this for years, so he's had lots of time to plan.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
In the scene toward the beginning of the movie, Peter comes home from work and is sitting on the sofa, talking to Lawrence, who is standing. Watch Lawrence's beer closely. It moves from the right hand to the left hand over and over again in this scene. In fact, in one shot, he switches from the right hand to the left hand and a second later, it is back in his right hand. [Not really a mistake, since we see him transfer the can at least once, we know he is passing the can back and forth. It doesn't take long to switch hands, and while the camera is on Peter there is plenty of time to be switching back and forth.]
Edit
When Peter goes to Joanna's restaurant to ask her out, her long hair is down. Some is pulled back, but there is still a lot of her hair hanging down in front of her. This mistake keeps getting removed (not corrected) from the site, but most restaurants do require waitresses to tie all of their hair back. Many don't allow waitresses to have any of their hair touching the collar of their shirt. [It's still not a mistake. Just because 'many' restaurants don't allow this, doesn't mean that this one doesn't. It's not exactly a five star establishment.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
When Peter and the guys are walking back from the restaurant, we see he has his ID card on the left side of his pants (our right). When he gets back and is talking to the guys and Tom, we see his ID card is now on his right side of his pants. [There was plenty of time for him to have switched the position of his ID tag during the walk into the building. Perhaps he had to swipe the card into a reader, and he refastened it to the right side of his pants.]
Edit
When Peter and Michael are in Peter's house talking about how Michael is about to get fired, Michael is sitting on the couch holding a beer with two red X's on it. All through the scene the X's keep changing location on the bottle, from facing Peter to facing Michael. [It's not impossible for a person holding a beer to move it or roll it in his hands. It's quite common actually.]
Edit
The idea for Milton's monologue about burning the building down if the boss takes his stapler, is from a cartoon shown on Saturday Night Live (Jeff Goldblum hosting) That is where the character of Milton came from. [The Milton character actually comes from the short animation Mike Judge created himself (Office Space (the animated short by Mike Judge) - aka 'Milton series of shorts'). It originally aired on MTV's 'Liquid Television'.]
Edit
In the scene where Peter goes to the ATM to check the balance, he inserts his ATM card and gets the print out of his balance. When he grabs the receipt, he turns to leave (before he notices that there is too much money in the account) without getting his ATM card back. [Peter never turns to leave. In the scene he looks at the balance says "Oh Shit" and then the shot cuts to him driving his car. So we can't say from that if he did or didn't get his card back. Besides which, even if he forgot his card it would be a character mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie Time
Peter grabs an electric driver to unscrew the metallic door handle off the door so he won't get a static shock when he opens the door. But how did he remove the metallic cover to get to the screws without actually touching it? You cannot remove the cover armed with just an electric driver. [In the scene when he goes to remove the door handle, it cuts from him holding the electric drill to finishing undoing the handle and knocking it off so we don't know how he exactly removed it. Just because he didn't like touching doesn't mean he didn't or wouldn't touch it to remove it.]
Edit Corrected by Lummie
Peter tells the consultants that he takes the side door to avoid Lumberg, but he walks through the same entrance as him in the beginning of the film. [Peter NORMALLY enters through the side door. He doesn't ALWAYS enter through the side door. Besides, going through the front door at the begining is a plot device to add to Peter's misery at work. Alternatively, that may have actually BEEN the side door, and Lumburgh happened to go in through that door that day too.]
Edit Corrected by Tristan Mangindin
Just because the Initech building burnt down, Peter, Michael and Samir think that they are in the clear. Surely they would know, a big company like Initech, would have an off site mainframe or backup facility in case of situations like this. Anyone in the I.T industry would know this. [Peter is relieved because his confession is gone. And there is also not necessarily a server off-site.]
Edit
When Lumbergh is talking to Milton in the basement, he is finishing his piece of birthday cake. He throws the plate out in a nearby garbage can, then suddenly has a cup of coffee in his hand, when Dom comes running after him. [This is arguably an intentional mistake, playing off the fact that Lumbergh always has his coffee mug in his hand (witness its presence in the sex fantasy).]
Edit Time
In the scene where Peter skips work and Lumbergh calls his answering machine 17 times, Peter is playing back the messages and deleting them as he goes but sometimes he hits the bottom button of the machine and sometimes he hits the second to last button on the machine. [Yes, he does hit two different buttons, but in the first clip of the machine showing the number of messages, you can clearly see that the first button he hits is skip, the second is delete. This isn't that odd of behavior when Lumbergh is being really annoying.]
Edit Time
When the two Bobs are going through files, discussing who to fire with Lumbergh, Bob Slydell mispronounces Tom's surname. It's "SMYkowski" throughout the film, but here he pronounces it "SYMkowski" in this scene. [This could be done intentionally to reinforce the fact that the Bobs are jerks who don't give a crap about the people they're firing. They can't pronounce Samir's last name either, and they laugh about it.]
Edit Corrected by Krista
In the scene where Michael is downloading the virus into the computer there's a shot of the mouse from below, the desktop is clear. When the shot changes, the desk is solid. [It is not the intention of the filmmaker to have us believe that Michael's desktop is glass. The glass desktop is used just to allow a new camera angle and shot. This is done in a number of movies using glass floors, ground, or table tops and by no means a mistake.]
Edit
In the scene where Peter and the boys go for the coffee break, you will notice that all Samir does is add sugar to his coffee. Throughout the scene, he does not drink it, he only adds sugar. [It's Michael who adds the sugar, not Samir]
Edit

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