Best sci-fi movie character mistakes of all time

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Street Fighter picture

Character mistake: When Guile promises to rescue the hostages while on camera with Bison, he makes it a point to mention Charlie by name to reassure him that he wasn't forgotten. Anyone in charge of a major hostage recovery operation would avoid naming a specific hostage unknown to the enemy due to the special focus that the enemy may put on that hostage for further abuse. This was promptly proven when Bison specifically chose Charlie to transform into a beast due to Guile identifying him as a personal friend.

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Guyver: Dark Hero picture

Character mistake: A character mentions carbon-dating one of the fossils found. This is preposterous... you can't carbon-date fossils like the ones being shown. Radiometric dating maybe... But certainly not carbon dating. He's a professional and should know more than better that carbon dating wouldn't work.

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Ready Player One picture Ready Player One mistake picture

Character mistake: After Wade is going over the second clue in his mind and trying to figure out what part of Halliday's past is he trying to escape from, he looks over the wall of article clippings and notes he has hung up. When the camera stops on Karen Underwood's obituary, there is a hand written note beside it listing movies set in New York, with the sentence "Set in New York" underlined. This apparently him looking for clues in films set there for the race challenge that is in Manhattan. However, one of the films he has written on that list is Mad Max, which takes place in Australia, not New York. (00:35:00)

Quantom X

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picture

Character mistake: At the beginning they refer to the G8. Russia was removed from the group in 2014, making it the G7. (00:07:20)

Joey221995

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Bill & Ted Face the Music picture

Character mistake: The Rufus hologram states that he first brought the phone booth to the Chosen Ones (Bill and Ted) in 1989, referencing events of the original film. While that was the year the first movie came out, it took place in 1988 (indicated by the opening title card and dialogue throughout the movie).

Vader47000

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Watchmen picture

Character mistake: While he is describing his origin, Dr. Manhattan mentions a circulatory system appearing at a military base. However, what is actually shown is a nervous system, as it depicts a brain and spinal cord.

wizard_of_gore

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Stealth picture

Character mistake: When Lt Gannon is in the dogfight with the Russian jets, he announces that he is deploying "chafe and flares." The term is spelled and pronounced "chaff", and any pilot would know that.

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Pitch Black picture

Character mistake: When Carolyn first addresses Imam, she quite obviously pronounces his name "ell-mom," as though the capital I in his title were a lower-case L. It should be pronounced "ee-mam". We distinctly hear Ali call out his name in this fashion after the ship crash lands on the planet.

THGhost

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Jurassic World picture

Character mistake: When Claire and Lowery look at the gyrosphere in red on the control panel, written above the gyrostation is "Return Request Disbhatched." Dispatched is misspelled. (00:55:20)

Comedyfan74

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Meltdown: Days of Destruction picture

Character mistake: Throughout most of the movie, many of the characters are seen wearing dark, heavy clothes such as long pants, sweatshirts, etc. Wearing warm clothing puts them at a greater risk of suffering heat stroke and dying more quickly, than if they wore light-colored, cooler materials.

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Earth vs. the Spider picture

Character mistake: When first talking to the sheriff on the phone, Mr. Kingman, the science teacher, refers to spiders as "insects" several times. A science teacher should know that spiders are arachnids, not insects.

Twotall

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind picture

Character mistake: When Ronnie is cutting the article about Roy's encounter out of the newspaper, the title of the article begins with "UFO's...", the apostrophe making it possessive. It correctly should have been "UFOs...", with no apostrophe making it plural as intended.

Kit Sullivan

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

Suggested correction: You are incorrect. The article is actually correct. It is used as a contraction, not a possessive. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/apostrophe.html.

It's not a contraction. A plural acronym is simply "s" added to the acronym. An apostrophe never indicates plurality.

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: There is no standard on how to pluralize initialisms or acronyms and either way is acceptable, depending on a person's preference. An apostrophe does not automatically make something possessive, such as using apostrophes in contractions to replace missing letters.

Bishop73

Nope. In contractions joining two words, apostrophes only replace vowels (typically the letter "o," such as in "hasn't" or "wouldn't" or "isn't," and most obviously with "it's" replacing the letter "i" in "it is"). In this case, the acronym "UFOs" stands for "Unidentified Flying Objects," and there is no vowel to replace between the "t" and the "s" (in fact, an apostrophe wouldn't replace any letter at all). So, the contraction argument is invalid. Using an apostrophe for "UFO's" makes the acronym singular possessive (such as in "The UFO's movements were erratic").

Charles Austin Miller

It seems you missed the point of my comment. What you're stating is an opinion on how to pluralize initialisms and acronyms. While many lean towards just adding an "s", many real life publications back in the 70's did in fact use and "apostrophe s" for initialisms and acronyms. (Notice how 70's isn't possessive or a contraction. But many prefer using "70s.").

Bishop73

"Many publications" were wrong (especially in the late 1970s) and followed poor literary and journalistic standards. No, it's not a "matter of opinion"; throwing in apostrophes where they are not appropriate is a matter of poor education in the English language.

Charles Austin Miller

The question is not whether using the apostrophe is "correct" or "appropriate." It's whether it was used by publications in the '70s. It was, therefore it is not a mistake.

You should be more educated when stating opinions then, because it wasn't about being wrong. It was about no set standard. For example "The Chicago Manual of Style" would recommend UFOs while "The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage" would recommend UFO's. Of course, both would recommend using the apostrophe when making single letters plural "A's" or p's and q's."

Bishop73

The New York Times manual of style is predictably bogus. I'm a professor of Journalism (Southwest Texas State University 1979 to 1987). I know what is proper.

Charles Austin Miller

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Night of the Living Dead picture

Character mistake: After Ben tells his story about his first encounter with the ghouls, Barbara begins her story. She talks about the ghoul Johnny was joking about. She tells Ben that she wanted to apologize. She states, "I said good evening, and he grabbed me." If you go back to that original scene, you'll never hear her say "Good evening." (00:29:40)

DrLoomis1978

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Blade Runner picture

Character mistake: When Deckard is talking to the street merchant trying to identify the snake scale, the identification number he reads aloud is not the number that shows on the monitor. (00:47:30)

Lynette Carrington

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Spaceballs picture Spaceballs mistake picture

Character mistake: During the scene in the diner, there is a sign that reads "EMPLOYEE'S ONLY." There shouldn't be an apostrophe.

Low Cow

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Moon picture

Character mistake: The word "satellite" on the uplink screen at which Sam Rockwell spends a lot of time staring, is incorrectly spelled "sattelite". The correct spelling is used a little further down on the same display.

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I Am Legend picture

Character mistake: When LT. Col. Robert Neville's wife fails the eye scan and he's ordering the soldiers to scan her again, the soldier that escorts them to the scan point, and later to the helicopter mistakenly uses Will Smith's real last name. You can faintly here him identifying LT. Col. Robert Neville to another soldier as LT. Col. Robert Smith.

rickrude

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Reign of Fire picture

Character mistake: When newspapers are flashed on screen to demonstrate how the dragons have destroyed the countries, one of the headlines reads "Europes' capital cities in ruins." It should read "Europe's capital cities in ruins."

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The Matrix picture

Character mistake: When Morpheus is explaining to Neo the reason the Matrix exists, he states that a human being gives off 25,000 BTUs of body heat to help power it - this is just not true. Even human beings that are running a marathon can't give off that much heat, and the humans in the Matrix are all lying down, not moving.

John Tetris Lawless

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Minority Report picture

Character mistake: Near the end of the movie, John's wife calls one of his colleagues and says, "Jad, it's Laura, John needs a favour." Her character's name is Lara. (02:08:30)

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