Best sci-fi movie factual errors of all time

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The Thing picture The Thing mistake picture

Factual error: When the infected Palmer starts his transformation into the Thing, he has a series of fits and the creature 'falls', or leaps upward onto the ceiling. Watch closely...you can see a piece of paneling also 'fall' upward, when it should have fallen down. (01:23:20)

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You Only Live Twice picture

Factual error: Two rocket lift-offs are shown. For the American lift-off, they show an Atlas-Agena (American) rocket booster but for the Soviet lift-off, they show a Gemini-Titan (also American) rocket booster. Compounding the mixup is that the film's Jupiter capsules are basically just Gemini craft, which are seen atop what the film presents as the Russian rocket.

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The Terminator picture

Factual error: Right after Kyle saws off the barrel of the shotgun in the alley, he pumps a shell into it, then again after his dream of the future in the car, then a 3rd time in the night club before he shoots the terminator. The 2nd and 3rd time he pumps it, shells should eject. They don't. (00:35:22)

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home picture

Factual error: The "whaling boat" is too small to function as such. It isn't large enough to hold a fin, let alone disassemble a humpback whale.

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Contagion picture

Factual error: When a global map is shown, the location of Toronto is incorrect. What is labelled as Toronto is actually the location of Montreal. (01:08:05)

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Elysium picture

Factual error: When the shuttles are approaching the station, their engines are firing from the rear, meaning they are in constant acceleration toward the station. When arriving at a station, you would need to slow down as you approach, meaning the engines should be firing forward (or the shuttle should reverse direction). This happens in all scenes where shuttles are approaching the station.

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Suggested correction: But the station spins to create artificial gravity for the outer rim where the ships are headed. The ships approaching are just matching speed and don't need to fully brake.

lionhead

Not when accelerating toward the structure. They would have to slow their approach, then match the radial velocity of the ring, which would still mean decelerating to match the structure's relative position in orbit.

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Star Trek Into Darkness picture

Factual error: After the USS Vengeance blasts the USS Enterprise out of Warp, Sulu says that they are 237,000km away from Earth, but the Moon is between both ships and Earth. Earth's Moon is about 380,000km away from our planet, so the Moon should have been way behind the combatants.

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The X-Files Movie picture

Factual error: Dallas, Texas is not surrounded by desert mountains. This is a dumb tourist mistake; when that shot of downtown Dallas appeared on the screen audiences there groaned in unison. (00:07:30)

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Wall-E picture

Factual error: As a trash compactor Wall-E does not function logically. When he fills his chest compartment with garbage and runs his internal compactor, the cube that exits his body is the same volume as the trash he puts in, despite that trash having been compacted. He does not add extra trash to fill the empty space after running the compactor - there are three scenes that show him filling up only once with loose garbage and then ejecting a densely compacted cube. (00:02:30)

BocaDavie

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Suggested correction: You haven't noticed the exact shape of his body. The back sticks out a tad. Garbage fills the space and the back pushes in to compress it.

You've missed the point of the mistake here. The cube that is ejected is the same size as the compartment. Wall-E puts loose fitting items into the compactor with gaps between items but once it's been crushed and compacted it's exactly the same size as before. It should be smaller.

Ssiscool

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Terminator: Dark Fate picture

Factual error: When Grace is fighting the controls of the C-5 cargo aircraft there is a shot of part of the instrument panel. Among the items on the panel is a switch labeled "tail rotor quadrant." The C-5 does not have a tail rotor. Helicopters do. (01:35:00)

toroscan

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Army of the Dead picture

Factual error: There is no way in hell they can carry $200,000,000 in cash (over 4,000lbs), let alone load it on the helicopter.

LATINLOVERS124

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Suggested correction: They never did and it was never the idea. They simply didn't figure out it's not physically possible. They took as much as they could from the vault in the much more limited time they had, and never got any of it to the helicopter (except for 1 small stack) anyway.

lionhead

It's true that the team was not meant to recover all the money, but they didn't know that going in. How did Ward and Peters, who seem reasonably smart, not consider the weight when planning the heist? The deal Ward believed was "get paid $50 million to recover $200 million" not "grab what you can and good luck"

I suppose it could be counted as a stupidity, but I'm not sure anyone is really aware of the weight of 200 million in cash, even reasonably smart people. Never seen it, never weighed it.

lionhead

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Daybreakers picture

Factual error: In the beginning a calendar says 2019 April, you can see April 1 being Tuesday when actually April 1 2019 was a Monday. (00:01:10)

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Moonraker picture

Factual error: Although it's already been mentioned that the scene of the shuttle being stolen from the back of the 747 is impossible because the shuttle wouldn't be fueled while being transported, it should also be noted that even if the shuttle was fueled, it would still be just as impossible. During the getaway, the thieves ignited the shuttle's three main engines to get free of the 747 and escape. The thing is, the shuttle's main engines are fueled entirely by the large external tank the shuttle and the solid fuel boosters are attached to during liftoff, and once the tank is jettisoned, these engines cannot be used. The only engines the shuttle's internal fuel feeds are the reaction control thrusters and the Orbital Maneuvering System (which are the two smaller engines located in the bulges just above the main engines). Both the RCS thrusters and OMS engines are almost totally useless within the atmosphere, so even if the thieves managed to get the shuttle free of the 747, they could only get it as far as it would glide unpowered. In fact, they could probably get it further if it wasn't fueled. It should be noted that this is not a fictional, futuristic spacecraft. It's a bog standard shuttle, stolen from NASA, on the back of the modified 747 used by them to transport the orbiter from its landing site to Cape Canaveral.

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon picture

Factual error: When the Autobots return to the moon in the present day to retrieve Sentinel Prime, they pass by the Apollo 11 lunar module (LEM). The LEM consists of an upper part (ascent stage) that houses the astronauts, and a lower part (decent stage) that holds the braking rocket used to land on the moon. When leaving the moon, the ascent stage blasts off, leaving just the decent stage on the moon. In the film, the entire LEM is shown sitting on the moon, which is impossible since the astronauts came back to earth.

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Hot Tub Time Machine picture

Factual error: The famous AFC Championship game that featured "The Drive" took place on January 11th, 1987, while the events of the film took place in 1986.

kota1968mo

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Predator picture

Factual error: The heat from Dutch's body would warm the mud up in a matter of seconds (tested by the Mythbusters). It doesn't even cover all of his skin or his eyes. And the Predator isn't filtering his input for only large heat sources. His normal vision tracks in on a rat hiding just above Dutch.

Fireball

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Transformers picture

Factual error: Mikaela hot wires the tow truck by twisting two conveniently exposed and very long wires together. Allowing that this could work at all in a modern vehicle, it can't steer until the ignition lock is turned or removed, neither of which she does. (01:55:55)

johnrosa

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Evolution picture

Factual error: At the end of the film, when Duchovny and Jones are on the ladder truck shooting the head and shoulders, they are yelling "go go go". They slide down the ladder and the next shot is the fire truck speeding away. Movie elapsed time 5 seconds. It is a physical impossibility for a fully extended ladder to be lowered, retracted and bedded in a span of less than 4-7 minutes. Even if the hydraulic lines are cut, the ladder would remain upright and not collapse/retract. (01:32:59)

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Aliens vs Predator: Requiem picture

Factual error: The uniform the female soldier is wearing when she comes back home is all wrong: the camo pattern is that of the USMC digital desert uniform but it has "US ARMY" chest tags (in a strange size and position, by the way). The US flag and unit insignia are on the wrong arms. The cut of the jacket is ACU, the pants are true USMC. (00:15:00)

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Little Shop of Horrors picture

Factual error: When Steve Martin dies with the mask on, the inflation bulbs (the little black bags that inflate and deflate) deflate completely. Actually they should INFLATE completely and stay that way. The gas is still on full blast and Steve is no longer inhaling (which would cause them to deflate). It was done only to emphasize Steve Martin's demise but it's factually incorrect.

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