Best movie factual errors of all time

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Bruce Almighty picture

Factual error: At the very end of the film Bruce is reporting on a drive for blood donors, and Grace leads him over to the booth to give blood himself - he is even wearing a tourniquet. However, he is supporting himself on a walking stick - he is not fully recovered from the injuries he received when he was run over, which happened when he was hit by a moving car - injuries which left him clinically dead. There is absolutely no way that a person who has suffered life threatening injuries and has undergone the (inevitably) intensive drug therapies and surgical procedures involved while under treatment in hospital in the fairly recent past would be allowed to give blood. There is no way that the Red Cross (or the US equivalent) would want to encourage people who have recently been hospitalised to try to give blood. Not only would that be the height of irresponsibility, they would be wasting precious resources and staff time turning away people who would not be allowed to give blood.

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

Suggested correction: There's no indication of how much time has passed from when Bruce was in hospital. It may have been months. His using a stick may be a long-term result of physical injuries. It's therefore reasonable to assume that Bruce hadn't only recently recovered and was therefore deemed a valid donor.

He has not recovered from his injuries. It does not matter how long ago the accident was; someone unable to walk unaided would inevitably still be receiving painkillers and would be undergoing other medical therapies. He is absolutely not eligible to register as a blood donor, and the Red Cross would never allow him to undertake business for them.

Not everyone in the world who walks unaided has to be taking painkillers and undergoing medical procedures. I have a friend currently using a walking frame following a recent fall. They're no longer taking medication. They've said they don't really need to use the frame but it's physiological. They just feel safer doing so until their confidence increases. Unfortunately, we aren't giving enough information about Bruce's condition or timeline to draw factual conclusions.

More Bruce Almighty factual errors
The Matrix picture

Factual error: When Trinity is being arrested, you hear the cops all burst into the room and cock the hammers on their Glocks. The Glock doesn't have an external hammer. To load the weapon, you have to pull the slide back and release it. (00:01:50)

More The Matrix factual errors
Guns of Navarone picture

Factual error: Miller rigs his booby trap by attaching the wires from the bomb to a pole down which a metal runner slides, so that when the runner touches the wires it completes the circuit and detonates the bomb. The trouble is, the pole is made of steel, and steel is very conductive indeed. Miller attaches the exposed end of the wire to the pole without any insulation or gap. The circuit will actually be completed when Miller attaches the battery, and he and his booby trap will be blown sky high.

More Guns of Navarone factual errors
Jaws picture

Factual error: When Hooper sees the hole in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, he uses his knife to pry out the shark tooth. The tooth is located at the bottom of the hole, with its flat root side stuck inside the wood and its pointy side facing up. It is completely impossible for the shark's tooth to become wedged in the wood this way, while he takes a nice bite out of the wood hull. (00:49:15)

Super Grover

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

Suggested correction: When Hooper uses the knife to pry to tooth out, it took very little effort, suggesting that the tooth wasn't wedged into that spot, but merely just resting in that spot.

The shark tooth was inserted into the wood by the prop crew with its flat root side down, which would have been impossible to have occurred during the attack on the hull. As to the statement that the tooth was "merely just resting in that spot" then Hooper would not have needed to use the blade to remove it from the wood, plus the fact that since it was underwater it would have floated away during the hours after the attack. But it did not float away, so it must have been at the very least snugly fit into the wood hull. Still impossible.

Super Grover

The original mistake says that the root of the tooth was embedded In the wood. Not possible since it should be the sharp end in the wood and the root showing on top (as described in the mistake).

Ssiscool

More Jaws factual errors
The Green Mile picture

Factual error: This movie is set in 1935. Back then, executions were done by hanging. The Louisiana Legislature changed the method from hanging to electrocution in 1940.

More The Green Mile factual errors
White House Down picture

Factual error: When Sawyer and Cale take Cadillac One ("The Beast"), they eventually want to shoot a rocket launcher at the fence. Sawyer wants to do this while hanging out of the window. The real Cadillac One is bullet proof and has several layers of glass with the final one softer not only to prevent the bullets entering but the deadlier threat of glass pieces. Only the driver side can open approximately 3 inches.

Friso94

More White House Down factual errors
Geostorm picture

Factual error: The lady hacked a tablet with he command mkdir -p on the command prompt. mkdir command is used to make a folder. (01:00:00)

More Geostorm factual errors
The Post picture

Factual error: Robert McNamara is wearing a multi colored Polo shirt talking to Mrs. Graham in 1971. The Ralph Lauren Company did not make the shirts until 1972.

More The Post factual errors
Better Off Dead picture

Factual error: A native French speaker like Monique would never mistake the word 'testicle' for 'tentacle'. The French word for 'testicle' is 'testicule' and the word for 'tentacle' is 'tentacules' - both are pronounced almost identically to the English form. She'd have to confuse the two words in French, and not even a non-English speaking French person would make a mistake like that. Monique's English is very good. She'd be perfectly aware of what she was saying.,.

More Better Off Dead factual errors
Matilda picture

Factual error: It is stated that Miss Trunchbull competed in the Olympics in shot put, javelin, and hammer throw. According to her jersey those were the 1972 Olympics. The hammer throw wasn't added as an Olympic event for women until 2000.

More Matilda factual errors
Commando picture

Factual error: If the access hatch to the nose wheel well on an airliner was opened at any time during the flight, every alarm panel in the cockpit would light up like a Christmas tree. In this case happening within seconds of takeoff the pilot would immediately declare an emergency, turn around and land at the airport he had just left. (00:22:10)

More Commando factual errors
Gladiator picture

Factual error: When a group of soldiers goes to Maximus' villa to burn it and kill his family, his son points them, saying in Italian "Mamma! I soldati!" ("Mom, the soldiers!") and then "PapĂ !" ("Daddy!"). This is because the young actor (Giorgio Cantarini) is Italian and they didn't translate, for some reason. As a result, he's speaking Italian in a movie in English, where people are supposed to speak Latin, in a province where Italian was never ever spoken. (00:43:07)

More Gladiator factual errors
Solstice picture

Factual error: The moon is full every night the highschoolers are at the lake house.

More Solstice factual errors
Along Came a Spider picture

Factual error: As the kidnapper is watching TV, we hear a news anchor describing the kidnapped child. She is described as 12 years old, 3 ft. 5 in. tall, and 52 pounds. This is the size of a child half this age. A 12 year old of this size would be freakishly small, which this character is not. And as we see her throughout the movie, she is easily approaching 5 feet tall and in the 70 - 80 pound range. (00:13:30)

More Along Came a Spider factual errors
Robin Hood picture

Factual error: On the cliff top before the battle on the beach, you are treated to a lovely if fleeting glimpse of wind farm turbines, not really fitting for the 12th Century.

More Robin Hood factual errors
WarGames picture

Factual error: At the end of the movie WOPR tries to crack the launch-code using brute force. So far so good. When WOPR finds out one digit of the 10 digit code, the first digit locks and the search goes on with the remaining 9 digits. Then he finds the second one, it locks too and so on. Problem is, brute force doesn't work that way. It would be too easy (26 letters and 10 numbers = only 36 possibilities for one digit). Brute-Force works only "all or nothing", you can't sneak your way to the whole code one by one.

Goekhan

More WarGames factual errors
World War Z picture

Factual error: An An-12, the aircraft the main character uses to fly all over the world, has a maximum range of about 3,500 miles. Hardly enough to fly from the US to South Korea or from South Korea to Israel. The An-12 also miraculously transforms into a C-130 in a couple of filler scenes. And why is this ex-Soviet aircraft marked in USAF markings, assigned to McGuire AFB?

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

Suggested correction: Can't speak to the second half of your paragraph (should really post as 3 separate mistakes) but as for the first, a range of 3500 miles, aircraft such as the kc-135 exist and aerial refueling is fairly common place. Considering it's a mission supported by the acting UN Secretary General to stop a world crisis, resources could have been diverted for refueling.

The initial launch from the carrier is a C-130 which can do this (if empty, minimal fuel, has the full length of the flight deck and the carrier is steaming full ahead into the wind). It then morphs into an AN-12 and back to a Hercules. They make the point that this small fleet is what is known to remain of allied forces so not sure where any tanker support will come from. Many movies have ridiculous range issues with aircraft anyway.

More World War Z factual errors
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull picture

Factual error: In the warehouse scene, the lights and other metal objects are affected by the box's magnetic field. Yet the soldiers easily lift the box into a metal truck to load it and slide it forward. If the box's magnetic field was as strong as suggested, it would have dragged the soldiers forward as it was magnetically attracted to the truck, and it would have taken much more effort for them to slide it onto the truck bed once it was stuck there.

More Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull factual errors
The A-Team picture

Factual error: They are present at Frankfurt, Germany. But with a closer look you see a cathedral at the right side. This cathedral and the central station are located in Cologne, Germany - they are about 220 km apart. (01:04:15)

zehner87

More The A-Team factual errors
Top Gun picture

Factual error: Tom Cruise says of the song 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay' "my folks loved it". However, his father died in 1965, his mother died "shortly after him", and the song wasn't written until 1967.

More Top Gun factual errors