Best thriller movie factual errors of 1987

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

Jaws 4 picture

Factual error: At the end when the shark is attacking the boat and the electronic device is used you can hear the shark roar. Sharks cannot produce this sound since they have no vocal cords.

More Jaws 4 factual errors
No Way Out picture

Factual error: The Pentagon is the largest office building in the world. It has seven floors, 28 kilometers of corridors and 620,000 square metres of office floor space. The idea that the entire building could be searched in one afternoon by six people is beyond absurd. If those six people could search an average of one office every five minutes and they worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week they'd get through the whole building in 89 days and 15 hours. I don't think the punter they are looking for has a lot to worry about.

More No Way Out factual errors
The Untouchables picture

Factual error: In the warehouse scene with the wooden crates with maple leaves, even though a correction has been submitted saying a maple leaf was valid, the real mistake is the type of maple leaf used. The film shows a modern graphic style of leaf that did not come into use until the 1960s and appeared on the new Canadian flag in 1965. In the time of Capone, the maple leaves used to depict things Canadian looked like actual maple leaves and not like a stylized graphic.

More The Untouchables factual errors
Escape From Sobibor picture

Factual error: Some of the SS rank insignia is incorrect. Most of them do wear correct insignia, with two exceptions. Wagner, who is addressed as Hauptscharführer, actually wears the collar and epaulette insignia of the next higher rank of Sturmscharführer. In reality, Wagner held the lower rank of Oberscharführer. Frenzel is addressed using his correct rank of Oberscharführer, but oddly wears the collar patches of the lower rank of Scharführer and the epaulettes of the higher rank of Hauptscharführer. Bauer and Beckmann, on the other hand, wear the correct collar patches and epaulettes for the rank of Oberscharführer which they did hold.

Necrothesp

More Escape From Sobibor factual errors
The Living Daylights picture

Factual error: Austria is famous for its mountains and ski resorts, but certain parts of Austria are quite flat. And the border region between Bratislava and Vienna is VERY flat. No chance to cross the border over a mountain with a ski resort like shown in the movie, unless you take a 600km detour with three more border crossings.

More The Living Daylights factual errors
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

More Predator factual errors
Robocop picture

Factual error: After Robocop stops the criminal from robbing the convenience store by bending his machine gun, the robber tries to run past him, only to get clotheslined by Robocop. The direction the robber flies after getting hit defies all physics. (00:35:15)

More Robocop factual errors
Beverly Hills Cop II picture

Factual error: Ronnie Cox is shot in the heart at point blank range by Brigitte Neilsen, and it looks to me like she's using a large caliber handgun. Keeping track of the action of the film tells us that Cox is sitting up in bed chatting to his friends just three days later. What nonsense. Even if he did survive (unlikely) he'd still be in Post-Op Intensive Care at that stage. He wouldn't be conscious, let alone allowed visitors.

More Beverly Hills Cop II factual errors
Full Metal Jacket picture

Factual error: When 8-ball gets shot, in the shot which shows the platoon ducking near a wall with Cowboy, Joker and Animal Mother in the front, there are two weapon related errors. Cowboy's M-16 has a nickel (silver colored) firing assembly and Joker's M-16 has an A2 type pistol grip. The A2 types were introduced somewhere around the 80s, and nickel plated assemblies are rarely used (and were invented after Vietnam, too). The nickel assembly is visible at the beginning of the shot, and you can see the A2 grip when Joker is changing magazines (while Cowboy shouts cease fire).

More Full Metal Jacket factual errors
The Running Man picture

Factual error: In the beginning of the movie just prior to the Bakersfield Massacre, the camera cuts away from Arnold periodically and shows a computer schematic for his location. The very first coordinate that we see is 29º, 43' N by 119º 23' W and is off the coast of Baja California. The last coordinate that we see is 45º 4' N by 119 8' W and is in north-east Oregon. So, in the 35 seconds or so between these scenes, Arnold's helicopter traveled approximately 1050 miles. That's one fast helicopter. This cannot be explained by saying that they just shortened the trip for the movie because in the first computer schematic you see Bakersfield in the distance which is certainly not 1050 miles away. (00:01:35 - 00:02:10)

More The Running Man factual errors
Assassination picture

Factual error: The bad guys attach over a pound of Semtex to the hull of the First Lady's yacht. When it explodes, the blast shatters the windows in a house a mile away, yet apparently doesn't impact the hull. Even as the vessel burns for 5 minutes, there is no discernible list.

More Assassination factual errors
Evil Dead II picture

Factual error: In the "Groovy" shed scene, Ash holds a double-barreled shotgun in one hand and saws through the gun barrels with his newly-mounted chainsaw in about 2 seconds flat. He could no more cut through a hardened steel shotgun barrel with a chainsaw than he could cut through a marble counter-top with a butter knife.

Charles Austin Miller

More Evil Dead II factual errors
Lethal Weapon picture

Factual error: In the desert shootout scene Murtagh throws what looks like an M67 "baseball" hand grenade on the ground. They wait for it to explode and Gary Busey says "it's a smoker". M8 smoke grenades look like a soda can, nothing like the baseball shape of a live M67.

stiiggy

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

Suggested correction: First, the grenade shown is more like the M61 "lemon" grenade. And there's no telling if Murtaugh/Riggs obtained a M61 based smoke grenade perhaps from a military surplus store that added the smoke effect for realism without the bang, or even a home made by Riggs grenade for this purpose, as opposed to using actual US Military M8 smoke grenades.

More Lethal Weapon factual errors
A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors picture

Factual error: This film begins with a foreboding quote attributed to Edgar Allen Poe: "Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them." Problem is, Poe never wrote any such thing (and neither did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), despite decades of misquotes and misattributions across the Internet. So, where did the quote actually originate? The answer is Walter Reisch, lead screenwriter on the 1959 film "Journey to the Center of the Earth." In Reisch's screenplay, the antagonist Count Arne Saknussemm is urged to get some rest, to which he memorably replies, "I don't sleep. I hate those little slices of death."

Charles Austin Miller

More A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors factual errors
R.O.T.O.R. picture

Factual error: In the farmhouse bedroom scene, the lead character wakes up and a close up shot of the alarm clock shows it is 5AM. Full sunlight is coming through the window, and an exterior shot shows the sun shining on the house and hay bales. The narrative lead-in just explained that it is early October on a farm near Dallas, Texas. The earliest sunrise occurs near Dallas in October is 6:40AM. (00:04:00)

More R.O.T.O.R. factual errors
Prince of Darkness picture

Factual error: In the movie's opening scene, it's night and we see the full moon. There's an elderly priest lying in bed. The next morning we learn the priest has suffered a stroke and been taken to the hospital. That day, Prof. Birack pauses before entering a campus building to look toward the sun. We see a thin crescent moon near the sun, as if there will be an eclipse in the next few days. That night, Brian is waiting outside a campus building for Catherine to come out. He looks up at the full moon. In following days, other characters see the daytime crescent moon, still approaching the sun. It's impossible to see the full moon at night AND a crescent moon during the day in that brief a time span. It would be more like 12-14 days for the lunar phase cycle to progress from one to the other (much less back again).

ConceptGuy

More Prince of Darkness factual errors

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.