Best adventure movie factual errors of all time

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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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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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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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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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Journey to the Center of the Earth picture

Factual error: Trevor - a Professor of Geology - boasts about having an article published in Scientific American, and that is not something any scientist would do. Scientific American is looked upon with slight disdain by the scientific community, considered to be a populist crowd pleaser. It is not even peer reviewed. Considering that he has just turned the geological and archaeological worlds on their heads he would have been better off publishing in Journal of Geological Research or Geology, both prestigious professional journals.

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The Mummy Returns picture

Factual error: When Brendan Fraser & his son are running to reach the pyramid before the sun hits it, the sunrise line approaches the pyramid along the ground, but the sun would naturally have hit the pyramid at the top first and worked its way down to the ground. [Some people insist on trying to correct this - think of it this way. If the sun's illuminating the ground from way up in the sky, what's keeping something higher up than the ground in darkness?] (01:34:40)

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Suggested correction: Despite the additional comments this posting is wrong. The terminator line - the distinct boundary between sunlit day and dark night - moves horizontally across the surface of the earth, from east to west. It is perfectly feasible for the land behind Rick (i.e. to the east) to be in bright sunlight while the pyramid - to the west - is still in darkness. What is not feasible is anyone outrunning the terminator line, which moves at around 1500 kmh in the latitudes they are in.

Try it for yourself - get a round object, such as a basketball, a map tack and a flashlight. As you shine the flashlight on the ball you will see the equivalent of the day/night terminator line. Now stick the map tack into the ball and slowly rotate the ball with the light still shining on it. As it moves, the terminator moves and the map tack will become illuminated before the surface of the ball at the base of the tack. The light will move down from the top of the tack. The only way it would work as shown in the movie is if everything is exactly flat - with no differences in altitude above the ground. Obviously that is not the case. (Of course, if you don't want to poke holes in your basketball, you can use any combination of something round and something to stick to it.)

The original post is correct. Because of its sheer height, the top of the pyramid would receive direct sunlight first, just as a mountaintop receives sunlight before it appears on level ground.

Charles Austin Miller

It is perfectly possible for a mountain to be in complete darkness and the low lying land nearby to be brightly sunlit if the mountain is to the west and has not yet been reached by the terminator line. I repeat, the terminator line moves horizontally (in all practical terms) across the surface of the earth and as a result anything west of the line will be in darkness regardless of its height and will stay that way until the line reaches it.

Look, you're talking about mountains miles away beyond the terminator (so far away that they would be beyond the range of sight anyway). We are talking about a pyramid, easily the tallest thing in the immediate vicinity, in the near background, only a mile away at most. Under the physical conditions and locations present in this film, the pyramid should be illuminated top-down. Period.

Charles Austin Miller

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Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation picture

Factual error: Towards the end of the film, Solomon is trapped in a small Plexiglas box and fires his gun into the bulletproof sides numerous times, but the bullets don't ricochet or get embedded in the glass.

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Spider-Man: Homecoming picture

Factual error: When the bus is shown entering Washington, DC for the competition, the shot shows the bus traveling over the Arlington Memorial Bridge with the Lincoln Memorial in the background. That bridge is on the southwest side of the city. Since NYC is to the northeast of DC, this means that to get to that bridge and enter DC that way, the bus had to drive all the way around the city and then come back in from the opposite direction. Even if the bus driver made a mistake and missed the most direct route into the city from the north, there are dozens of other ways to get to the heart of the city without adding a good 45 minutes to an hour to the trip.

Guy

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Superman picture

Factual error: When Clark speaks to Jor-El for the first time in the Fortress, Jor-El says "I will have been dead for many thousands of your years..." Fine in theory - Baby Kal-El travelled to Earth at above light speed so time passed differently for him. However, as such, wouldn't Jor-El have seen Earth as it was thousands of years ago? Which also makes there a problem with all the things Kal-El was taught during his voyage to Earth, as Jor-El references Einstein by name, for instance, and he would not have existed at the point when Jor-El sent him to Earth.

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The Final Countdown picture

Factual error: Listening to a radio broadcast, live, since no other indication is given, Joe Louis is completing the 12th round of a fight. This is December 6, 1941. Joe's last fight of 1941 occurred in September, his next fight was January 1942. (00:00:10)

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Back to the Future Part III picture

Factual error: Though extremely modest on today's standards, the dress worn by Clara to the hoedown shows far too much cleavage for the time. No schoolteacher would ever wear a dress like that in the 1880s.

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Spectre picture

Factual error: The 15 bus in London does not go over Westminster Bridge.

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Spider-Man 3 picture Spider-Man 3 mistake picture

Factual error: During the fight scene with Sandman in the armored car, the Terminal Tower can be seen in the background, which is a landmark in Cleveland, Ohio (where the scene was shot), not in New York City.

ctown28

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Wonder Woman 1984 picture

Factual error: The video games Operation Wolf and Rampage were visible in the Family Amusement Center arcade during the opening. However, this would not be possible during the movie's 1984 setting since Rampage wasn't released until 1986 and Operation Wolf wasn't released until 1987. (00:12:48)

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Passengers picture

Factual error: During the 31st year of the Avalon's voyage, the ship passes close to the star Arcturus, which is about 37 light years from Earth. Later in the movie, it was stated that the Avalon was moving at around 50% of the speed of light. The ship would not have reached Arcturus in the time allotted.

Blathrop

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The Time Machine picture

Factual error: When Philby and Alexander are talking about Albert Einstein, Alexander mentions that Einstein is a patent clerk. The beginning of this movie takes place in the year 1899. Einstein was still in school and didn't become a patent clerk until 1902.

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The Revenant picture

Factual error: When Glass saves the Indian girl from the Frenchmen the flintlock pistol he gets off the Frenchman fires multiple times without reload, as it does later while being chased by the Indians.

Terry Gragg

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The Space Between Us picture

Factual error: In the scenes where Gardner is messaging his Earth based female friend Tulsa from his Mars home, their communication is shown as being in real time. In truth, there would be minimum of a 4 min lag between messages due to the distance. (00:24:00)

Jizzmopper

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Suggested correction: The tech is supposed to be highly advanced. This is at least kept consistent throughout the film as all communication between planets is in real time.

DetectiveGadget85

There is no tech that can alter the laws of physics that we know of. The near future setting of the film limits the scope of what's feasible.

Jizzmopper

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Finding Nemo picture

Factual error: When the fish tank has been cleaned by the newly installed laser fish cleaner, the machine states that the water temperature is '82°.' In Australia the Celsius scale is used; therefore, it should be about '28°.' Australia is 100% metric and has been since 1974! Nobody in Australia - nobody, anywhere, any time since 1974, uses imperial measures. There is absolutely no question of the dentist having an imperial thermometer or expressing himself in° Fahrenheit. It is actually illegal to import or sell any instrument using 'Imperial' scales. You couldn't buy a Fahrenheit thermometer if you tried. (01:14:30)

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National Treasure picture

Factual error: As Ben is clinging to the staircase while it is falling apart, there is a close-up of a nail being pulled out of the wood. This nail is round-headed, rather than square as it would have been over 200 years ago. It's also shiny instead of rusty, which indicates that it's galvanized. Galvanization as an industrial, metal-preservation process was not patented until 1837, and was not used in building materials until well into the late-1800s. Since the film states the staircase was made by "the Founding Fathers, " and there was no galvanization of iron nails in any industrialized nation in 1780s-1830's, this is a huge anachronism.

Kristal

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