Best war movie mistakes of all time

Visible crew/equipment: In the "Battle of Carthage" in the Colosseum, one of the chariots is turned over. Once the dust settles you can see a gas cylinder in the back of the chariot.

01:22:55

Factual error: In one scene they are playing on an Xbox 360, but the Xbox 360 did not come out until 2005, and the game being played, Gears of War, wasn't released until 2006. The movie takes place in 2004.

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Other mistake: When the Japanese planes take off for Pearl Harbor, some of the 3 man torpedo planes only have a pilot.

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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

Factual error: Me 262's were armed with 30 mm cannon in the nose, a round penetrating a canopy would leave a hole much larger than was depicted, and being high-explosive, once it detonated inside the cockpit, the pilot was toast. One of the red tails had a number of holes in his canopy.

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Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the movie when the convoy is heading back to the Pakistan Stadium, a Humvee stops briefly to allow a man to walk across the street with a child in his arms. When the shot changes and the Humvee begins driving again, a crew member or cameraman is seen inside the Humvee wearing a white shirt. All of the men who entered the Humvee were wearing fatigues.

02:05:27

Audio problem: When Britney Spears gets pushed into the Pit of Death, you hear her talk and scream but her lips are not moving.

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Factual error: In every photo or drawing I have seen of the Oklahoma or Arizona, their main guns had no flash suppressors as depicted. The main rifles were sealed with tampions in port, and those would be impossible to fit into the muzzles shown in the movie.

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Factual error: When the map of the German advance is shown, Switzerland is shown to be taken over. Switzerland was never invaded by the Germans.

00:05:10

Visible crew/equipment: As Achilles' ship nears the Trojan shores, Agamemnon snidely asks, "What's the fool doing? He's going to take the beach of Troy with fifty men?" At the start of the next shot, as the camera begins to pan down, on the far right, just beside a person's (who is dressed in blue) head is a metal bullhorn (ie. used to give instructions to cast/crew, and which definitely doesn't belong in this time period).

00:36:35

Super Grover

Factual error: During the final battle, Gordo the tank driver calls out, "Panzerfaust, four o'clock!", as he looks through his periscope. He could not have seen any targets at four o'clock, as the driver's periscope could barely rotate towards the eleven and one o'clock positions, close to the left and right front corners of the tank's hull. The four o'clock position would be near the right rear of the tank.

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Continuity mistake: John's staff sergeant military shoulder epaulet markings become upside down in the scene when he and Savannah are having dinner at her house when he comes to see her after his dad died. In a later shot shortly after, they are correct.

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Continuity mistake: A group of Marines approaches a minefield and one of them falls with his back on a mine. The explosion throws him in the air and you can see his uninjured back. Not even his shirt got a scratch.

01:46:50

Continuity mistake: When David Niven climbs the ladder to place explosives on the gun he is fully clothed. In the next second, showing him at work on the gun, he has no tunic and no officer's cap.

02:09:30

Revealing mistake: When Mr Witt rides out of the Zulu camp in a 2 horse cart at the beginning of the movie, just before it exits, you can see it's a stunt double at the reins.

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Continuity mistake: During the early part of the movie, there are a number of references to the Blackhawk crew, yet the wreckage is that of a Huey.

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Continuity mistake: When the team are about to jump from the cable car into the river, the view from ground level shows a bare road with no snow on it on the right and a line of trees on the left with German trucks parked next to them, but the view from the cable car shows a snow-covered road and no trucks beside the trees.

02:06:00

Continuity mistake: When the Nazi SS guard puts a pistol to Rutger Hauer's head, it's a Luger, but when the guard turns around, he's holding a Walther P38.

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Revealing mistake: When the 54th Mass. marches past a liberated plantation some black children wave them on. One of them is wearing a digital wristwatch.

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Visible crew/equipment: In the fight scene on the stairs near the end of the movie, the camera shot looks up and there is a security camera mounted up in the corner.

01:29:40

Continuity mistake: In all of the aircraft scenes, almost every time they showed his aircraft, he has different types of weapons on it.

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Continuity mistake: In a major fight scene two soldiers on opposite sides are jumping and spinning and tapping each other on the head with their swords.

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Revealing mistake: In the final scene where Fonda and Holbrook are looking over the carrier at the crowds on the dock you can see that only the first rows of people are dressed in period clothes, the rest of the crowd are dressed as they would have in 1976 when the film was made.

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Continuity mistake: Luca and his friend are chasing a bus and come down an old dirt road, Luca in a side car with a dog in his lap. The next shot, there's no dog, then the next shot the dog is back in his arms again.

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Other mistake: As the special bombs are being towed onto the base, a modern white saloon car is seen driving past on the road.

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Factual error: When we see the United States flag, it is the wrong flag. It has 43 stars, something the flag did not have until 1891.

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Continuity mistake: When Tom Selleck rolls his plane upside down to dump the Afghan at several thousand feet altitude, you plainly see stationary tree tops at the bottom of the frame.

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Continuity mistake: When they go to find Private Ryan there are eight of them, when they go to a French town and a solider picks up the little girl and he gets killed there are seven, right? Wrong. A few scenes later, the camera shows all eight of them marching on to the next town, only in a far away camera shot so it's hard to see.

01:23:11

Factual error: The ribbon of Richard Burton's Distinguished Flying Cross is on upside down. The Air Force Cross following it is the right way up. The stripes on both should point the same way, as they do on the uniform of his colleague in the mess. Nobody would be allowed to get away with a mistake like this - another officer or senior NCO would soon point it out. In addition, as a long-service veteran (his colleague says he served in the Battle of Britain) he should be wearing the ribbon of the 1939-1944 Star (as it was then), which was issued to all qualified personnel from 1943.

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Factual error: Mel Gibson sits around the campfire at the railway camp with the lads, reading newspaper reports of the April 25, 1915 landing at Gallipoli. The 3rd Light Horse Brigade (including the 10th Light Horse Regiment from Western Australia) landed at Gallipoli on 20 May 1915. This would have given him less than 3 weeks to enlist, train, travel to Egypt by ship and land on the Peninsula. A bit of a stretch. In reality, the 10 Light Horse regiment was raised in October 1914, with the 1st-3rd reinforcements departing Fremantle February 19-22, 1915.

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