Best movie mistakes of all time

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6 Underground picture

Continuity mistake: The green Alfa in the opening minutes has its side, and mirror, wiped out by a lorry. For the next 5 minutes it then drives around in perfect condition. (00:05:43)

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Mission: Impossible picture

Factual error: The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized steel box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one).

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Home Alone picture Home Alone mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Kevin goes to the grocery, he buys Tide detergent. While walking home, the two bags break, but no Tide detergent falls out.

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Suggested correction: Maybe he returned it.

No chance, we see him buy it and then use it in a later scene.

Ssiscool

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Trainwreck picture

Factual error: When Amy is fired from S'Nuff magazine she takes her story on Aaron Connors to Vanity Fair, who run with it. That is not going to happen. Amy wrote the article while a paid employee of S'Nuff magazine and that means the copyright in the article (and, very relevant to this issue, the photographs of Aaron they paid to have taken), resides with them, not with her. It isn't hers to sell. No magazine editor of any standing is going to buy an unsolicited article without checking its provenance backwards and forwards, and that would mean checking with Amy's previous employers - after all, what would happen if they changed their minds and ran the story themselves?

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Top Gun: Maverick picture

Factual error: The radar guided SAMs are consistently evaded/triggered by the pilots' flares, which in reality only work against heat seeking missiles. Radar guided missiles would be defended against using chaff, basically clouds of aluminium foil strips. It was mentioned in some interviews they didn't want use chaff as it wouldn't really be visible for the audience - hence why they only deploy flares.

Jon Sandys

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The Gentlemen picture The Gentlemen mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Pierce's wife is walking in her auto shop they pan down to show her red Louboutin heels, then they cut to her walking in her office, and when they show her shoes again they have a tan sole.

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Battlefield Earth picture

Factual error: Amongst the essential parts of a nuclear weapon's detonation mechanism is a radioactive isotope of tritium, which has a half life of just 12 1/2 years. The tritium in every nuke on earth has to be replaced every ten years or so. This is by no means unusual; there are other perishable parts including detonators made of conventional explosives which would be completely inert after a thousand years. After lying dormant with no maintenance at all for that amount of time the nuclear weapons the 'Man-animals' find would be big shiny paperweights and not much else.

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Star Wars picture

Other mistake: Before Uncle Owen yells for Luke, if you look very closely, a fly can be seen on the lens (best seen on the special edition release). The fly was removed in the 2019 release.

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Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi picture

Revealing mistake: In many of the scenes taking place in outer space, if you look closely you can see polygon borders surrounding space vehicles (X-Wings, Star Destroyers, and even the Death Star) indicating the objects being superimposed into the outer space background. [This mistake may only apply to the Blu Ray version.]

Phaneron

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Charlie's Angels picture

Factual error: Near the end of the film Knox is flying a Huey helicopter and the Angels hitch a ride by shooting it with a spear gun and dangling on the line behind it. Suddenly adding about 200kgs to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft - the pilot would know immediately that something was wrong. (01:23:20)

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Suggested correction: Knox wasn't a trained pilot. Either he had no clue to what was going on, or he thought something may have been wrong, but didn't know what to do about it.

Taking off and landing a helicopter are by far the most intense and difficult part of a pilot's training. Seriously, 99% of learning to fly is learning how to land and take off. If the pilot is skilled enough to take off in a Huey he is easily skilled enough to notice a massive additional drag on his helicopter due to the additional weight of the angels and the air resistance put up by such a bulky protrusion on his aircraft. If he isn't skilled enough to notice that, he isn't skilled enough to take off in the first place.

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Blue Thunder picture

Other mistake: Murphy lands the helicopter on a railway line so an oncoming train will destroy it completely, and this happens exactly on cue with huge, dramatic explosions and flying debris. Apparently the train driver doesn't think this is important enough to interrupt his busy schedule - he doesn't stop the train. We do not hear brakes being applied - the wheels would make a noise like the sky coming down - and the train doesn't slow down at all - it just keeps on going.

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Mysterious Island picture

Factual error: It is barely credible that a young Victorian woman like Elena would even think about wearing a goatskin miniskirt - exposing her legs in those days would be akin to walking about topless nowadays. Even if she did those bright yellow cotton knickers - gleefully visible in the scene in the beehive - are in no way from the 1860s. Her pants are a hundred years ahead of their time.

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The Great Escape picture

Factual error: Why is Hilts not wearing a uniform? A serving officer captured behind enemy lines in civilian clothing risked being shot as a spy. If a prisoner's uniform was too worn or damaged to wear, it was routine for the German authorities to replace it - a P.O.W. in civilian clothes is an obvious escape risk. He is wearing a pair of tan chinos, a cut off sloppy Joe sweatshirt, both ridiculously anachronistic - Sixties hipster fashions - and nowhere even close to a World War 2 uniform. He is also wearing Army Type III Service boots - something that would never have been issued to a fighter pilot.

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An Innocent Man picture

Factual error: At the end of the film Rainwood has established his innocence of the drug charges and is happily back at work as a senior mechanic for a large airline. However, part of the sentencing and plea bargain protocols at his arraignment is his previous conviction on a lesser drug charge years before. It goes without saying that he did not advise his employers of this when he started work for them - no airline in the world (even pre 9/11) would hire someone with a drug conviction on their record! Now this is out in the open the airline knows that Rainwood is a convicted drug user (on the lesser, legitimate charge) and that he lied on his original job application. They wouldn't hire him again to sweep the floors.

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Suggested correction: Even today in 2023 felony convictions might not show up on a background check. Not all information has been uploaded to the internet yet. It was extremely easy in the 1980's for a conviction to be missed by a background check especially if there was no prison time served or it occurred in a rural county or town.

He just got out of prison and establishing his innocence involved the violent deaths of at least two people. Do you not think that his employers just might have followed his story? He'd be all over the news media. The idea that not one person would have followed up on his criminal history is beyond absurd - we are talking about a safety critical job that involves the safety of hundreds of people.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picture Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Sam is in his bedroom, after he finds the Cube sliver it falls and dramatically burns a hole through the floor into the kitchen. But Sam's bedroom is over the living room (there is nothing on the ground floor below Sam's elevated bathroom, and in the first movie Jazz hides in this open space), and the kitchen is actually located between the den and dining room, at the other end of the house. If they were to follow the actual floor plan of the house, the Cube sliver would have landed in the area of the piano in the living room, but where would the fun have been in that? (00:12:30)

Super Grover

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Shrek picture

Continuity mistake: Sometimes Shrek's front door opens outwards, at other times inwards, yet it can't be "two-way" because whenever it closes, it slams against the frame. (00:10:55 - 00:13:45)

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Jaws picture Jaws mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Hooper wears rimless eyeglasses, with the arms either attached at the upper corners of the lenses or at the sides of the lenses. If this didn't happen between shots within the same scenes, it could be presumed that Hooper has two different pairs of glasses and switches between the two, but they do indeed change between shots, such as when Mrs. Kintner slaps Brody, or even later, on the Orca. (00:36:05)

Super Grover

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Sonic the Hedgehog picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Tom and Sonic pull over and the mini drone explodes, knocking Sonic unconscious, the camera pans away and you can see emergency vehicles blocking the road on the right of the screen, presumably closing down the road for filming. (00:59:55)

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Gladiator picture Gladiator mistake picture Video

Visible crew/equipment: In the "Battle of Carthage" in the Colosseum, one of the chariots is turned over. Once the dust settles you can see a gas cylinder in the back of the chariot. (01:22:55)

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