Doc

23rd Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Reservations Are Required - S1-E15

Continuity mistake: Hogan dumps a bucket of water on Barnes and Davis each, to make it look like they were the ones who hid in the tanker. They get big wet patches on their uniforms from it, but aren't completely wet through and through - which is to be expected, after all it's just a small bucket of water each. After the next cut however, they are completely soaked like they went swimming.

Doc

23rd Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

16th Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Show generally

Plot hole: Hogan's men have that clever device in Klink's quarters, where they turn the oven from below to reveal the trap door. That however unplugs the oven from the chimney, you can even see the smoke pouring out of the oven in some shots. Often enough, they have the oven unplugged for half a minute or more. If an oven smoked into a room that long, the whole room would fill with smoke so badly it could actually lead to smoke poisoning. If nothing else, Klink would have the oven checked. Any device that can turn a heavy cast-iron stove flawlessly like that would by definition have to be quite massive and not disassemble easily. If Klink had the oven checked, that would certainly lead to the discovery of the turning mechanism.

Doc

16th Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

6th Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Hogan's Hofbrau - S1-E13

Factual error: Hogan mentions a store that offers "thirty percent off on T-shirts." T-shirts were mostly unknown in Germany during the 3rd Reich, and didn't see widespread use before the 1960s. Before that, the traditional Unterhemd, known in America as tank top or wife beater, was worn almost exclusively.

Doc

3rd Jan 2017

M*A*S*H (1972)

Radar's Report - S2-E3

Stupidity: Radar takes his glasses off, takes a sip of coffee, then props his clipboard onto the typewriter and accidentally starts typing on the desk calculator. Even if he didn't know his desk well enough to wonder what he laid his clipboard upon AND was so blind he couldn't even orient himself by the desk lamp (which he isn't), he would have felt the difference the instant he touched the keys. Note that he puts his hands on the keys, squints at the clipboard (sic!), then starts typing, he doesn't hammer away right off, which would have added at least a little plausibility to the joke.

Doc

1st Jan 2017

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Information Please - S2-E15

Revealing mistake: When Schultz checks the barbed wire to see if it is fixed now, he noticeably wiggles the vertical wire, but only barely touches the horizontal one - because it is rigged to come apart, and will again if he handles it too roughly.

Doc

30th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Monkey Business - S3-E29

Factual error: In this episode, the Royal Navy submarine that acts as a radio relay for Hogan's men is hunted by a destroyer. Like in most such Hollywood scenes, depth charges are seen exploding right next to the submarine, which just shrugs the blasts off. In reality, any depth charge that went off closer than 100 meters was instantly deadly to a submerged sub.

Doc

30th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Monkey Business - S3-E29

Factual error: In several episodes, Hogan's men communicate by radio with a British submarine, and the dialog hints that the sub is submerged at the time. During the WWII era, submarines could not communicate by radio without surfacing first. In most episodes one might argue that the sub could be running shallow with a mast up, which would perhaps be within the technical possibilities of the era, but in this episode, the sub is talking to Hogan's men while under attack by a destroyer. This pretty much rules out running at periscope depth, because ramming was regularly-used tactic for killing subs that were in the process of diving or surfacing. To avoid confusion: Nowadays, subs can communicate while running several hundred feet deep by using VLF and ELF. However, these are definitely not capable of transmitting voice, but are text-only.

Doc

18th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Guess Who Came to Dinner? - S4-E9

Factual error: Schultz says, Von Grubner has "a castle right next to the Führer's in Berchtesgaden." Hitler's famous real estate in Obersalzberg wasn't a castle but a mountain chalet based on a former farm estate called the "Steinhaus".

Doc

18th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

18th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

14th Nov 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

The Gypsy - S6-E13

Factual error: In this episode, LeBeau pretends to be a psychic gypsy to fool Klink. Gypsies generally didn't fare too well in the Third Reich. Admitting to being of Gypsy origin would probably have earned LeBeau a ride to the concentration camp.

Doc

16th Oct 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Duel of Honor - S3-E22

Factual error: Erica says she has a plane to take Klink and her to Argentina. The only transatlantic airplane in Germany at that time was the FW-200 Condor, whose military value would have made it hard to requisition even for an SS Gruppenführer (which would be the real rank a "General" would hold in the SS, different mistake), let alone for his wife. Plus, even the FW-200 could not have made it even to the Brazilian coast without a refueling stop somewhere along the African west coast, which would have been a problem, because Germany had no possessions there. Klink, being a Luftwaffe (Air Force) officer, should have at least been suspicious of that plan, even if he didn't know all the details off the top of his head.

Doc

16th Oct 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Request Permission to Escape - S1-E32

Character mistake: When ordering Schultz to finish cleaning his car, Klink salutes Schultz, his returning the salute with the garden hose in his hand leads to Klink being soaked. A salute is, except in rare circumstances, always initiated by the lower-ranking individual and returned by his superior, not the other way round. This rule is broken especially by Klink in several other places as well.

Doc

29th Sep 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Rockets or Romance - S6-E24

Plot hole: Hogan has his men play romantic music over the radio. Earlier they were afraid of the radio in the observation post being detected. Elsewhere in the series, they try to avoid sending too long to avoid being homed in on - which is correct. Now, if they were to play a whole record at once, wouldn't the homing devices pick up on the transmitter at the camp?

Doc

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: It is shown several times in the series that the detectors are brought out at specific times / events. With how much control they have over the camp they would know when those times were / more than likely be able to tamper with them. The other times they were worried were simply because either A. They were close to the scanning times or B. New ones got shipped in that they didn't have time to tamper with yet.

In the whole series, they never once are shown tampering with the detection equipment or obtaining any "scanning schedules" or anything. Seriously, did I sleep through all of that selectively or are you pulling this stuff out of thin air?

Doc

Trivia: This isn't properly a mistake, since it can't really be spotted except in pause, but it's still interesting: Some of the articles on the piston peak air attack wall of fame are legible, but they don't correspond with the headlines but talk among others about the Vietnam War. (00:28:40)

Doc

28th Sep 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Happy Birthday, Dear Hogan - S4-E26

Plot hole: In the cinema, Hogan and his female underground contact avoid attention from a passing plain clothes policeman by kissing. This is wrong for three reasons. Firstly, 3rd Reich Germany wasn't so liberal that open kissing in the cinema would have passed as normal, it would probably rather have been viewed as libertine and offensive. Secondly, the scene takes place with a speech of Hitler as the background, which can hardly be viewed as romantic, and thirdly, this is even more true for the Gestapo, who was tasked with ratting out political dissent. To a Gestapo officer, ignoring the Führer's speech and kissing instead would make them stand out doubly.

Doc

28th Sep 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Show generally

Factual error: During the whole show, the iconic Prussian helmet, the Pickelhaube, is present on Klink's desk. If Klink was a flier in WWI as he often hints, that is wrong. The German Reich's air corps didn't wear such helmets but had peaked caps instead.

Doc

9th Sep 2016

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

Six Lessons from Madame LaGrange - S5-E22

Character mistake: The SS guard salutes Major Hochstetter with his palm out, in the British fashion. Firstly, German soldiers salute palm-down, secondly, by the Wehrmacht (and SS) military protocol, he should just click his heels and not salute at all when receiving an order.

Doc

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