Best movie factual errors of 2000

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Charlie's Angels picture

Factual error: Near the end of the film Knox is flying a Huey helicopter and the Angels hitch a ride by shooting it with a spear gun and dangling on the line behind it. Suddenly adding about 200kgs to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft - the pilot would know immediately that something was wrong. (01:23:20)

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Suggested correction: Knox wasn't a trained pilot. Either he had no clue to what was going on, or he thought something may have been wrong, but didn't know what to do about it.

Taking off and landing a helicopter are by far the most intense and difficult part of a pilot's training. Seriously, 99% of learning to fly is learning how to land and take off. If the pilot is skilled enough to take off in a Huey he is easily skilled enough to notice a massive additional drag on his helicopter due to the additional weight of the angels and the air resistance put up by such a bulky protrusion on his aircraft. If he isn't skilled enough to notice that, he isn't skilled enough to take off in the first place.

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Battlefield Earth picture

Factual error: Amongst the essential parts of a nuclear weapon's detonation mechanism is a radioactive isotope of tritium, which has a half life of just 12 1/2 years. The tritium in every nuke on earth has to be replaced every ten years or so. This is by no means unusual; there are other perishable parts including detonators made of conventional explosives which would be completely inert after a thousand years. After lying dormant with no maintenance at all for that amount of time the nuclear weapons the 'Man-animals' find would be big shiny paperweights and not much else.

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Hollow Man picture

Factual error: The serum is transported by blood. Hair has no blood traveling to it, only the root. So, unless Bacon shaved his body clean, his hair wouldn't have become invisible, likewise all of the fur on the gorilla.

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Suggested correction: The serum could have been absorbed by the roots and made its way to the tip of the hair strands (similar to colored water going up a piece of celery, changing the color of the celery).

Mammal hair is not porous and is not subject to capillary action.

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Mission to Mars picture

Factual error: Gary Sinise looks at a computer screen with a short section (about two full twists) of DNA on it and proclaims that "This DNA looks human." He could have been looking at DNA from any single-celled organism and it would have looked just as human as what he was looking at. All mammals have 90+ percent of their DNA in common, he would have to have sequenced the entire DNA strand (something like 3 billion pairs of nucleotides) to identify it as human, something that would be totally beyond the capacity of anything but a well-equipped genetics lab, something they show no sign of having.

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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)

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U-571 picture

Factual error: In the last battle scene when you see shots of the German destroyer through the periscope the last one shot before it's blown up is really bad angling. The ship is far away but in the scope it's very close and the periscope (in order to get that camera angle) is 100 ft in the air.

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Pokemon 3: The Movie picture

Factual error: In "Pikachu and Pichu," when Pikachu and the Pichu brothers come to the big play structure thing, there are a bunch of Pokemon around, including a red-and-white, ball-shaped Pokemon called Voltorb. The dubbers for the English version made a very noticeable error here: instead of Voltorb saying "Voltorb," (almost all Pokemon say parts of their names when they speak) it says "Electrode," which is the name of a similar-looking, but different Pokemon. The two are both red and white, but the difference is that Voltorb has eyes on the red part of its body, while Electrode has eyes on the white part of its body.

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Cast Away picture

Factual error: Shortly after the crash, when Chuck is in the raft, one of the engines continues to run even though it is half submerged in water. The engine would not have exploded like it did, rather, it would have just stopped running as soon as it became disconnected from its fuel source and flooded with water.

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Suggested correction: The aircraft seems like a Airbus A300 or 310 but it is really a MD-11 or DC-10 because you can clearly see that the front body with wing with engine attached sink leaving the tail section. So the tail has a fuel tank and the third engine. The engine normally compresses air then burns it by feeding in fuel and igniting it. But can't compress air because the turbines are in the water. The fuel would in this case would "flood" the engine then the igniter ignites it and explodes.

Fumes explode, raw fuel burns. Igniter will not ignite raw fuel nor would there be anyway to propagate the explosion that took place.

Even if the engine was flooded, and full of water, and the air couldn't, it still wouldn't explode. MD-11 engines run on a fuel that cannot be ignited.

Wrong, the tail section has fuel LINES not a fuel tank.

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Shanghai Noon picture

Factual error: The evil man request 100,000 pieces of gold for ransom. Each gold piece looks to be about 10 ounces, and 100,000 of those would make the entire thing weigh about 31 tons, but 2 guys are carrying it around in a little chest throughout the movie.

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Unbreakable picture

Factual error: When Bruce Willis is looking at his old high school news clippings you see a professional baseball score on one of the newspaper clippings. The game was Pittsburgh vs. Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks were not a team yet when he was in high school. (00:33:35)

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Big Momma's House picture

Factual error: In the movie, when the baby is born and Big Momma delivers it, the baby comes out without any blood and there's no umbilical cord. (00:34:20)

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Frequency picture

Factual error: A ham radio requires the person to hold down the button while talking. Numerous times in the movie they are talking without pushing the button.

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Suggested correction: This is actually subtly addressed in the film. The magic which allows the radio to work across time also allows the two men to speak without pressing the button. There is a moment where Frank wonders what is going on with the radio and presses the button a few times to talk but then notices that he doesn't have to press the button to be heard.

BaconIsMyBFF

If that was true, then it wouldn't make sense for them to continue to show Frank and John hitting the squawk bar throughout the film.

Bishop73

That is a separate issue. The mistake entry states that you need to hold the button to talk on a ham radio, which is true, but the magic ham radio in the film doesn't require it. If the actors continue to occasionally press the button that could be considered a character mistake but it could also simply be a force of habit by the characters.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Mission: Impossible 2 picture

Factual error: In the scene at the race track where they show the virus infecting and destroying cells in the blood stream, they clearly show that it is red blood cells being infected. Viruses, in order to replicate, require the cell's DNA replication machinery. However, mature red blood cells in the circulation no longer possess this machinery since they no longer have a nucleus or DNA. It would therefore be impossible for this virus to replicate.

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Almost Famous picture

Factual error: This is a wardrobe error... in the next morning scene after William has been deflowered, he is still in his Fruit of the Looms, which have the name printed on the elastic waistband. Fruit of the Loom did not print their name on waistbands like this until the 90s, in the 70s they just had single blue and yellow stripes. (01:08:27)

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The Patriot picture

Factual error: In the scene at Lord Cornwallis' outdoor party celebration, right after Benjamin Martin and his Continental Army blows up a British Ship, one of Lord Cornwallis' Captains throws back a big gulp of his drink from his Martini glass in grief and disbelief - the problem is this movie takes place in the mid 1700s and the Martini Glass wasn't invented until the 1920s, during the Roaring Jazz days.

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High Fidelity picture

Factual error: When John Cusack puts Springsteen on his LP-player, he places the needle at the start of the record. The song that plays is the studio version of "The River." Therefore, the album has to be "The River," which is a double album, but "The River" is not at the start of either of the two LPs, but is the last song on LP #1. (00:18:10)

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Billy Elliot picture

Factual error: In the scene where Billy's brother argues with a miner in the local shop, there is a plastic Polo dispenser that wasn't around in 1984.

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X-Men picture

Factual error: The helicopter markings and paint schemes are exclusive ONLY to POTUS (President of the United States). Senator Kelly, even thought he's trying to get a Presidential bid, wouldn't be allowed to fly around in aircraft marked like that. (00:30:10)

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Vertical Limit picture

Factual error: Nitroglycerin does not react with sunlight, nor does it boil in sunlight.

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102 Dalmatians picture

Factual error: The train leaves for France from St Pancras station (clearly identified by The Shire pub), which is Northbound and has no connection to go back south for France.

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