Best crime movie deliberate mistakes of all time

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Death on the Nile picture

Deliberate mistake: Poirot riles up Pennington narrating the story of Grand vizier Ptahhotep who was crushed under the weight of the silver he embezzled. It's a lovely moral story, but Ptahhotep was actually a virtuous administrator and is credited (with various caveats) with writing "The Maxims of Ptahhotep", one of the first books in human history, and there's no record of such a story. It's likely that Poirot made that part of the story up counting on Pennington's ignorance on the subject. (00:44:20)

Sammo

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Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol picture

Deliberate mistake: Proctor and Harris were surprised when they walked into the Blue Oyster and found out it wasn't a restaurant, but in Police Academy 2, Proctor apparently knew not only the bar, but the address as well.

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Guys and Dolls picture

Deliberate mistake: During the song Adelaide's Lament, Adelaide goes to her medicine cabinet, opens it, and there is a cut to a shot from "inside" the cabinet as she surveys all the medicine she takes to treat her "cold." From the inside, the cabinet is almost twice as wide as it is when it shows her open and later close it from the outside.

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Bad Boys II picture

Deliberate mistake: During the car chase in the Cadillac, the van being chased crashes through a concrete block wall. Even if you can look past the unlikelihood that the van would even be drivable after going through, it is impossible that it would come through without any damage. Surely the windshield would be cracked, the headlights broken, etc. This was obviously not done with a real brick wall and they didn't think to damage the van before running it through the wall. They do show a dent and a messed up grill in a closeup later, but the damage doesn't match the wall scene. (01:02:10)

zephalis

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S.W.A.T. picture

Deliberate mistake: When the procession gets ambushed in the street by the guy with the automatic weapon, he shoots at the police cars. There are no drivers in the cars.

manthabeat

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Auto Focus picture

Deliberate mistake: Although much of Auto Focus revolves around the 1960s hit television series "Hogan's Heroes," the producers of this independent film could not work out a licensing agreement with CBS regarding the famous "Hogan's Heroes" theme music. As a result, the familiar "Hogan's Heroes" theme music is entirely absent from Auto Focus, replaced with contrived theme music that isn't even remotely similar to the original.

Charles Austin Miller

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Ricochet picture

Deliberate mistake: When Lithgow is shot in the leg and trips backwards over the crate or box, the stunt man is deliberately visible. It's not Lithgow making the fall.

manthabeat

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Half Past Dead picture

Deliberate mistake: Early in the movie someone fires an RPG, and, when he does, they show him comically being flung back through the air by some kind of supposed recoil effect. RPGs are rockets shooting out of tubes with the blast going backwards, so the holder of the tube themselves experiences no recoil.

roy sandefur

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Nick of Time picture

Deliberate mistake: In one of the scenes where Johnny Depp goes into the bathroom (specifically, when he changes clothes with the other man), Christopher Walken's character looks under the stall. The camera then shows the legs and crotch of a man sitting on the toilet, who still has his boxers fully on, but his pants are down.

the_better_nacho

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

Suggested correction: That man was not actually using the toilet. He was posing as Watson (Depp) so that Walken would think he was in the stall the whole time.

jshy7979

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XXX: State of the Union picture

Deliberate mistake: It's a really fun visual, but when the bad guys enter the kitchen and get swarmed by African-American waiters in white tuxedos, one can't help but wonder how it could be that Darius was almost the only waiter on the floor up until a moment before - there were a couple others, mostly white dudes, while now we see about 20 people, all of color, coming out at once. The disproportion is huge, it's not like dinner is being served. (00:39:30)

Sammo

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My Super Ex-Girlfriend picture

Deliberate mistake: When Jenny writes "dick" on Matt's forehead, she does not stop the beam but the word is written with the letters separated.

oswal13

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Fracture picture

Deliberate mistake: When Willy's fellow prosecutor, Norman, dropped the Crawford preliminary hearing on him, they said it started at 15:00. Willy is in a rush and the whole ordeal takes him just a few minutes. Still, when Nunally accosts him in the parking lot, the movie sped things up; it's nighttime. (00:27:00)

Sammo

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The Machine Girl picture

Deliberate mistake: When Ami's school friend is killed, a short sword is stabbed into the top of her head. Less than a half-second later, we see her face is totally coated in blood, and she gurgles even more blood before dying. There simply has not been enough time for such a volume of blood to have dripped down her face.

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Deception picture

Deliberate mistake: Wyatt is killed in a park next to El Prado museum (which can be seen in the background). Then S and McQuarry cross the street and appear next to where the bank was. This speeds the pace of the movie, but truth is that the building of the bank and El Prado are 20 minutes walking distance away from each other.

Sacha

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The Double picture

Deliberate mistake: The agent is entering the office approaching his desk where a computer sits with the screen on depicting classified material. Computers left unattended go dark after x amount of time. This computer being in a federal FBI building should be logged out of and not open for everybody to see. (00:19:00)

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Kick-Ass 2 picture

Deliberate mistake: In the scene where Mindy saves the dressed-up Dave from the street thugs and almost gets caught by the police. The female voice over the police radio remarks that the suspect is "under five feet" (below 152 cm). As she flees, she uncovered her motorcycle which appears to be a Ducati 1199 Panigale. The Panigale has a seat height of 82.5 cm, which means that by proportion, Mindy cannot sit on the bike with both feet flat on the ground (as a comparison, I'm 5'9 / 175 cm and still have to tiptoe a little bit on the Panigale, so even if she's slightly taller she still couldn't). Yet in the end scene where Mindy drops Dave at home after the final fight, she seems to be able to sustain the bike with both feet only slightly tiptoed, although her boots are not that tall. (00:13:20 - 01:34:30)

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The Gambler picture

Deliberate mistake: Jim was sitting on a bench along the road and Amy [Brie Larson] walked by (several feet away), apparently not noticing him. (Jim was seated between other people.) Brie got into her car and adjusted the rearview mirror, catching sight of Jim on the bench. A driver would adjust the rearview mirror, if necessary in the first place, to align it with the rear window, not angle it to the right to be able to see the sidewalk. (00:51:34 - 00:51:55)

KeyZOid

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